Dear Luigi,

Sorry, for delaying with the answer (I just think you will visit my forum!)

You says:

,,on the other hand, I do think that mathematics and tongue are the primary tools to understand phenomena. I don't think it was possible to analyze any physical phenomenon without operating on any type of sign. If you want to study anything, you have to define at least the names of what you want to study,,

My Dear! I am fully agree with you and have nothing against! Maybe here some small misunderstanding? And mainly I find in your work honestly stated questions and sincere aftermathes. Your style of narration also likely for me. Thats why I have rated your work as good work (nine only!)You see as it will be right!

Best wishes to you, I am impressed by Italian thinkers at all!

Good luck,

George

Thank you for your email. Your essay is nice. Best wishes for the competition!

Dear George,

I am happy to read your message.

Chance coincidence: I too rated 9 your essay!

Good luck!

Luigi

7 days later

Dear Luigi,

I have down loaded your essay and soon post my comments on it. Meanwhile, please, go through my essay and post your comments.

Regards and good luck in the contest,

Sreenath BN.

http://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/1827

Luigi

Richard Feynman in his Nobel Acceptance Speech

(http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/1965/feynman-lecture.html)

said: "It always seems odd to me that the fundamental laws of physics, when discovered, can appear in so many different forms that are not apparently identical at first, but with a little mathematical fiddling you can show the relationship. And example of this is the Schrodinger equation and the Heisenberg formulation of quantum mechanics. I don't know why that is - it remains a mystery, but it was something I learned from experience. There is always another way to say the same thing that doesn't look at all like the way you said it before. I don't know what the reason for this is. I think it is somehow a representation of the simplicity of nature."

I too believe in the simplicity of nature, and I am glad that Richard Feynman, a Nobel-winning famous physicist, also believe in the same thing I do, but I had come to my belief long before I knew about that particular statement.

The belief that "Nature is simple" is however being expressed differently in my essay "Analogical Engine" linked to http://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/1865 .

Specifically though, I said "Planck constant is the Mother of All Dualities" and I put it schematically as: wave-particle ~ quantum-classical ~ gene-protein ~ analogy- reasoning ~ linear-nonlinear ~ connected-notconnected ~ computable-notcomputable ~ mind-body ~ Bit-It ~ variation-selection ~ freedom-determinism ... and so on.

Taken two at a time, it can be read as "what quantum is to classical" is similar to (~) "what wave is to particle." You can choose any two from among the multitudes that can be found in our discourses.

I could have put Schrodinger wave ontology-Heisenberg particle ontology duality in the list had it comes to my mind!

Since "Nature is Analogical", we are free to probe nature in so many different ways. And each of us surely must have touched some corners of it.

Good luck and good cheers!

Than Tin

Hello Luigi,

A very good work and plenty of useful arguments. Although you don't agree that It can come from Bit, suppose "existence/non-existence" is one of the binary codes you are talking about in your essay and conforms to Shannon's description, will that change your mind?

Then, concerning "the flap of a butterfly's wings in Brazil set off a tornado in Texas", consider this although I don't know your views about space: Is it being implied by the relational view of space and as suggested by Mach's principle that what decides whether a centrifugal force would act between two bodies in *constant relation*, would not be the bodies themselves, since they are at fixed distance to each other, nor the space in which they are located since it is a nothing, but by a distant sub-atomic particle light-years away in one of the fixed stars in whose reference frame the *constantly related* bodies are in circular motion?

NOTE THAT in no other frame can circular motion between the bodies be described in this circumstance except in the 'observing' sub-atomic particle.

Regards,

Akinbo

Dear Luigi,

You have written a beautiful essay, which I have read with great pleasure.

I like especially your statement: "...it is necessary and essential to study linguistics to understand certain fundamental knowledge." If this insight were common knowledge, a lot of meaningless discussions within this contest (and elsewhere) could have been avoided.

What we as physicists can learn from linguistics, is that meaningful information always consists of two things: The abstract carrier of information (e.g. a bit) and the semantic frame of reference, which gives the bit a physical meaning.

This seamlessly leads to the basics of elementary particle physics, if we only follow the good physical practice to choose a mathematical formulation that is covariant with respect to changes of the (semantic) frame of reference.

Best wishes,

Walter

    Thank you, Walter, for your comment. It is intriguing your definition of "mathematical formulation that is covariant with respect to changes of the (semantic) frame of reference."

    Best,

    Luigi

    Dear Luigi,

    I have enjoyed your salient essay very much! I highly value your emphasis on the role of language in quantum theory and in this It/Bit discussion, in particular. Your distinction of "the material support" provided by language from the "meaning carried" by it, and your acknowledgement of the role played by conscious and unconscious structures in the human mind are both very insightful and useful aspects of your essay. I wonder, however, why you do not consider that a role may be played by nature itself in the storage and processing of information, given that humans are themselves a manifestation of nature? Is the ability to store and process information an exclusively human attribute or might aspects of it occur elsewhere in nature?

    Sincerely,

    Charles Card

      Luigi,

      A great essay on an important aspect, and well written. Perhaps as we both look from an astronomical view we have similar perspective. I commend you particularly for the following;

      "statistical mechanics had shown that maybe we were neglecting too many things"... ..."if you minimize the symbols used (i.e. only 0/1, yes/no), it is possible to neglect anything that has nothing to do with the binary code."... ..."above all, the key question is how the interpretation is generated?"... ..."mathematics is therefore a tongue with a reduced semantic field,"... ..."a mathematical tongue similar in structure to the spoken tongue allows you to do also

      works of fantasy.", and ."...it is now clear that the knowledge of the material aspect only is not sufficient to understand the problem of information."

      I too discuss the limits of representative symbols, or your better "signifiers", and propose a radical view as part of an ontology I hope I show has much power.

      My dense abstract puts some off, but I hope comments such as "It is groundbreaking", .."has very sophisticated argument and serious work of a lifetime", .."wonderful essay", may tempt you to read, score and comment on it.

      Very well done for yours. Strap in for the the Saturn booster! Good luck.

      Best wishes.

      Peter

        Dear Charles,

        thank you for your kind comment. Your question is intriguing. It reminded me the well-known barber paradox by Bertrand Russell. I think that the inanimate nature has no ability to store and process information, otherwise it would be necessary to think about nature as a living being with a coscience. For the moment, I can say that only humans have this ability. Animals have not. One could speculate about some extraterrestrial life form, but for the moment there are no proof of such beings. We surely know better as we will understand how coscience emerges.

        Thank you again for your note.

        Best,

        Luigi

        Dear Peter,

        thank you for your kindness and courtesy. I have read your essay and it is indeed something very interesting. Good luck for the competition!

        Best,

        Luigi

        5 days later

        Dear Luigi,

        We are at the end of this essay contest.

        In conclusion, at the question to know if Information is more fundamental than Matter, there is a good reason to answer that Matter is made of an amazing mixture of eInfo and eEnergy, at the same time.

        Matter is thus eInfo made with eEnergy rather than answer it is made with eEnergy and eInfo ; because eInfo is eEnergy, and the one does not go without the other one.

        eEnergy and eInfo are the two basic Principles of the eUniverse. Nothing can exist if it is not eEnergy, and any object is eInfo, and therefore eEnergy.

        And consequently our eReality is eInfo made with eEnergy. And the final verdict is : eReality is virtual, and virtuality is our fundamental eReality.

        Good luck to the winners,

        And see you soon, with good news on this topic, and the Theory of Everything.

        Amazigh H.

        I rated your essay.

        Please visit My essay.

        Late-in-the-Day Thoughts about the Essays I've Read

        I am sending to you the following thoughts because I found your essay particularly well stated, insightful, and helpful, even though in certain respects we may significantly diverge in our viewpoints. Thank you! Lumping and sorting is a dangerous adventure; let me apologize in advance if I have significantly misread or misrepresented your essay in what follows.

        Of the nearly two hundred essays submitted to the competition, there seems to be a preponderance of sentiment for the 'Bit-from-It" standpoint, though many excellent essays argue against this stance or advocate for a wider perspective on the whole issue. Joseph Brenner provided an excellent analysis of the various positions that might be taken with the topic, which he subsumes under the categories of 'It-from-Bit', 'Bit-from-It', and 'It-and-Bit'.

        Brenner himself supports the 'Bit-from-It' position of Julian Barbour as stated in his 2011 essay that gave impetus to the present competition. Others such as James Beichler, Sundance Bilson-Thompson, Agung Budiyono, and Olaf Dreyer have presented well-stated arguments that generally align with a 'Bit-from-It' position.

        Various renderings of the contrary position, 'It-from-Bit', have received well-reasoned support from Stephen Anastasi, Paul Borrill, Luigi Foschini, Akinbo Ojo, and Jochen Szangolies. An allied category that was not included in Brenner's analysis is 'It-from-Qubit', and valuable explorations of this general position were undertaken by Giacomo D'Ariano, Philip Gibbs, Michel Planat and Armin Shirazi.

        The category of 'It-and-Bit' displays a great diversity of approaches which can be seen in the works of Mikalai Birukou, Kevin Knuth, Willard Mittelman, Georgina Parry, and Cristinel Stoica,.

        It seems useful to discriminate among the various approaches to 'It-and-Bit' a subcategory that perhaps could be identified as 'meaning circuits', in a sense loosely associated with the phrase by J.A. Wheeler. Essays that reveal aspects of 'meaning circuits' are those of Howard Barnum, Hugh Matlock, Georgina Parry, Armin Shirazi, and in especially that of Alexei Grinbaum.

        Proceeding from a phenomenological stance as developed by Husserl, Grinbaum asserts that the choice to be made of either 'It from Bit' or 'Bit from It' can be supplemented by considering 'It from Bit' and 'Bit from It'. To do this, he presents an 'epistemic loop' by which physics and information are cyclically connected, essentially the same 'loop' as that which Wheeler represented with his 'meaning circuit'. Depending on where one 'cuts' the loop, antecedent and precedent conditions are obtained which support an 'It from Bit' interpretation, or a 'Bit from It' interpretation, or, though not mentioned by Grinbaum, even an 'It from Qubit' interpretation. I'll also point out that depending on where the cut is made, it can be seen as a 'Cartesian cut' between res extensa and res cogitans or as a 'Heisenberg cut' between the quantum system and the observer. The implications of this perspective are enormous for the present It/Bit debate! To quote Grinbaum: "The key to understanding the opposition between IT and BIT is in choosing a vantage point from which OR looks as good as AND. Then this opposition becomes unnecessary: the loop view simply dissolves it." Grinbaum then goes on to point out that this epistemologically circular structure "...is not a logical disaster, rather it is a well-documented property of all foundational studies."

        However, Grinbaum maintains that it is mandatory to cut the loop; he claims that it is "...a logical necessity: it is logically impossible to describe the loop as a whole within one theory." I will argue that in fact it is vital to preserve the loop as a whole and to revise our expectations of what we wish to accomplish by making the cut. In fact, the ongoing It/Bit debate has been sustained for decades by our inability to recognize the consequences that result from making such a cut. As a result, we have been unable to take up the task of studying the properties inherent in the circularity of the loop. Helpful in this regard would be an examination of the role of relations between various elements and aspects of the loop. To a certain extent the importance of the role of relations has already been well stated in the essays of Kevin Knuth, Carlo Rovelli, Cristinel Stoica, and Jochen Szangolies although without application to aspects that clearly arise from 'circularity'. Gary Miller's discussion of the role of patterns, drawn from various historical precedents in mathematics, philosophy, and psychology, provides the clearest hints of all competition submissions on how the holistic analysis of this essential circular structure might be able to proceed.

        In my paper, I outlined Susan Carey's assertion that a 'conceptual leap' is often required in the construction of a new scientific theory. Perhaps moving from a 'linearized' perspective of the structure of a scientific theory to one that is 'circularized' is just one further example of this kind of conceptual change.

          Dear Charles,

          thank you very much for your nice review. However, I think my view is not in favor of the it-from-bit, but rather the "it-from-humans-almost-independently-on-the-bit". Anyway, do not worry. There is no misunderstanding, meaning that any "misread" or "misrepresentation" is always rich of new information. In front of the same bits (the same material support, i.e. the letters I used for my essay) there are always interpretations (it) different from mine. Lacan wrote that what is communicated is not a meaning, but a drift of the meaning. Kurt Gödel instead told: "The more I think about language, the more it amazes me that people ever understand each other at all". So, do not worry: the richness of interpretations is the basis of creativity.

          Thank you again for your nice post.

          Best wishes for the competition.

          Luigi

          Dear Luigi,

          I have now finished reviewing all 180 essays for the contest and appreciate your contribution to this competition.

          I have been thoroughly impressed at the breadth, depth and quality of the ideas represented in this contest. In true academic spirit, if you have not yet reviewed my essay, I invite you to do so and leave your comments.

          You can find the latest version of my essay here:

          http://fqxi.org/data/forum-attachments/Borrill-TimeOne-V1.1a.pdf

          (sorry if the fqxi web site splits this url up, I haven't figured out a way to not make it do that).

          May the best essays win!

          Kind regards,

          Paul Borrill

          paul at borrill dot com

          Dear Luigi Foschini:

          I am an old physician and I don't know nothing of mathematics and almost nothing of physics. maybe you would be interested in my essay over a subject which after the common people, physic discipline is the one that uses more than any other, the so called "time".

          I am sending you a practical summary, so you can easy decide if you read or not my essay "The deep nature of reality".

          I am convince you would be interested in reading it. ( most people don't understand it, and is not just because of my bad English).

          Hawking in "A brief history of time" where he said , "Which is the nature of time?" yes he don't know what time is, and also continue saying............Some day this answer could seem to us "obvious", as much than that the earth rotate around the sun....." In fact the answer is "obvious", but how he could say that, if he didn't know what's time? In fact he is predicting that is going to be an answer, and that this one will be "obvious", I think that with this adjective, he is implying: simple and easy to understand. Maybe he felt it and couldn't explain it with words. We have anthropologic proves that man measure "time" since more than 30.000 years ago, much, much later came science, mathematics and physics that learn to measure "time" from primitive men, adopted the idea and the systems of measurement, but also acquired the incognita of the experimental "time" meaning. Out of common use physics is the science that needs and use more the measurement of what everybody calls "time" and the discipline came to believe it as their own. I always said that to understand the "time" experimental meaning there is not need to know mathematics or physics, as the "time" creators and users didn't. Instead of my opinion I would give Einstein's "Ideas and Opinions" pg. 354 "Space, time, and event, are free creations of human intelligence, tools of thought" he use to call them pre-scientific concepts from which mankind forgot its meanings, he never wrote a whole page about "time" he also use to evade the use of the word, in general relativity when he refer how gravitational force and speed affect "time", he does not use the word "time" instead he would say, speed and gravitational force slows clock movement or "motion", instead of saying that slows "time". FQXi member Andreas Albrecht said that. When asked the question, "What is time?", Einstein gave a pragmatic response: "Time," he said, "is what clocks measure and nothing more." He knew that "time" was a man creation, but he didn't know what man is measuring with the clock.

          I insist, that for "measuring motion" we should always and only use a unique: "constant" or "uniform" "motion" to measure "no constant motions" "which integrates and form part of every change and transformation in every physical thing. Why? because is the only kind of "motion" whose characteristics allow it, to be divided in equal parts as Egyptians and Sumerians did it, giving born to "motion fractions", which I call "motion units" as hours, minutes and seconds. "Motion" which is the real thing, was always hide behind time, and covert by its shadow, it was hide in front everybody eyes, during at least two millenniums at hand of almost everybody. Which is the difference in physics between using the so-called time or using "motion"?, time just has been used to measure the "duration" of different phenomena, why only for that? Because it was impossible for physicists to relate a mysterious time with the rest of the physical elements of known characteristics, without knowing what time is and which its physical characteristics were. On the other hand "motion" is not something mysterious, it is a quality or physical property of all things, and can be related with all of them, this is a huge difference especially for theoretical physics I believe. I as a physician with this find I was able to do quite a few things. I imagine a physicist with this can make marvelous things.

          With my best whishes

          Héctor

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