Dear James,

I, like a classical physicist, believe in the objective reality of the physical world. But how to have a conception of it without reference to mind is the problem. Can you just imagine how it appears without mind? That is why I called both information and reality, empty and blind. This is just like the absolute concept of space and time in the Newtonian system as exposed by Einstein; what is space in itself and time in itself 'without reference' to something external to them (say, change). They have no 'meaning' in themselves.

By 'It', I mean 'reality' as it is evident from the title of the essay itself.

By 'consciousness', I mean it is an innate quality possessed by the mind as a result of billions of years of the evolution of Life. To know more about it, please, go through 'biology' section of my essay in which I have clearly described how mind, through the evolution of Life acquired this innate quality by interacting with the environment; there I have said how on parallel lines the relationship existing between the evolution of Life and the evolution of the knowledge of mind can be comprehended.

Thanks for your kind query and welcome more discussions.

Best regards,

Sreenath

Dear Dr. Michel,

Your essay is highly original and intriguing but at the same time it appears as if it is written for the experts in the field but not keeping general audience in the perspective. It is interesting to know how far the different geometric methods, you have followed in this article, are capable of solving other problems prevailing in QM. I congratulate you for producing such an innovative essay.

Sreenath

Dear Sreenath,

interesting essay. In particular I like your multi-disciplinary view. I have only some comments:

- I think, that quantum mechanics do not imply that space and time is discrete. We don't know the curve of the electron but the space points can exist.

- Pure mathematics based on axioms but that is not as rigid as it sounds. In particular as shwon by Gödel, every axiom system (expressing or encoding information in a specific manner) is incomplete. It left open a lot of flessibility to change math.

Hopefully more later

I will be absent for the next three weeks

Good luck and all the best

Torsten

    Dear Sreenath,

    As I already said, I liked your essay. In particular your view of the evolution of the knowledge of mind. Now my observation is that it should not be so easy to separate the different fields 'classical, quantum, mathematical and biological' in what regards our understanding of reality. All realities are postulated by our mind, depending on the object we are looking at we just fit to it with the constraints that the object is giving to us. In the past, I worked a lot on the synchronization of ultrastable (classical) clocks and I found the structure of rational numbers in the measurements (the Farey tree and the related mathematical objects). In each case, what we find is contextual. In classical physics, the observables are just real numbers while in quantum physics they are operators with the new problem of non-commutativity that creates problem with the time.

    My best regards,

    Michel

      Dear Dr. Michel,

      I appreciate your kind comments. It is good to learn that we share some common basic views regarding the existence of knowledge.

      Best regards,

      Sreenath

      Dear Sreenath,

      Hi,

      Your essay is clearly written. I have some comments on some individual passages.

      Your essay starts with a nice contrast between classical and quantum physics. However, I find it a bit harsh to say "String Theory, Loop QG and the like, ... lack new and original concepts and hypotheses." Also, your implication that these theories, albeit not yet tested, are untestable, is rather too strong.

      You then go on to define information as "the data that our five senses perceive from the environment by communicating or interacting with it". This is a defensible position, although in practice it would make physics rather awkward; definitions in terms of energy exchange and so forth tend to be more practical.

      ".... had begun on earth for about a billion years, even prior to the existence of simplest form of life, "

      I think this mistake (given that life on earth started more like 3.5 billion years ago) was spotted by another comment, so I won't go further into it.

      "Given its [life's] enormous complexity of existence (even in its simplest form), no sort of probabilistic explanation based on mathematical physics including QM can account for it and has defied all rational explanations based on physics." The fact that it hasn't yet been done does not imply that it cannot be. The general assumption in modern biology is, in fact, that biology will be able to be theoretically reduced to physics one day.

      "...the product of biological evolution and man is said to be at its pinnacle."

      No longer the general biological outlook. The pinnacle is occupied by any organism that has managed to survive. Man is at a pinnacle, but so is the cockroach.

      „there is no limit to the comprehension power of the human mind just as there is no limit to the horizon of his imagination‟.

      The results of the twentieth century outlined some of the limitations of the human (or any) intellect, or, put another way, they restricted the types of questions that it makes sense to ask. So, if humans keep their questions within those bounds, then of course they can get the answers, but alas humans tend to seek answers beyond those bounds.

      "Similarly the Reality derived from the axioms, through successive mathematical steps (which are intuitively certain), follows as logical conclusion from the axioms and it too is abstract. So Reality as conclusion is covertly contained in the axioms. In this sense, mathematics just like logic is a tool used by mind to realize Reality and the veracity of the Reality thus derived from the axioms, depends on the veracity of the axioms but not on the kind of mathematics (or logic) used."

      This was basically Immanuel Kant's position in "The Critique of Pure Reason", but this position was shot down by the results of Lobachevsky and Bolyai, and the twentieth century continued to shoot it down. It is no longer a defensible position.

      Best, David

      Dear David,

      Thanks for going through my essay in detail and with care. There is no exaggeration in what I have said in my essay. I would like to answer all your questions point by point.

      String Theory, Loop QG and the like are not physical theories; they are just mathematical ploys which intimidate physics by posing themselves as unified physical theories. I reject them because in spite of their formulation since at least two decades ago they have not been able to make a testable prediction which would either verify their veracity or over throw them. Whenever you formulate a unified theory, you not only just combine two theories in your mathematical scheme but also must be able to make some new predictions because you are viewing the 'reality' from quite a different point of view. Have they been able to make such predictions testable, at least, in the near future? They say that they are testable at an energy range of the order of 10^18 GeV or at a scale of the order of 10^-33 cm (Planck length). The energy range that we have attained now is of the order of 10^4 GeV and the corresponding microscopic range we have reached is of the order of 10^-19 cm; now just tell me when are we going to reach this scale so that we can test their veracity? Do you say let it take thousand years to reach that scale when they will surely be verified? Let them make, at least one immediate testable prediction which is the hall mark of any physical theory then I will agree with them. So far testable predictions made by LQG, super symmetries, etc. have been falsified and string theory is sterile because it is unable to make any testable prediction and on the contrary it claims that there are 10^500 universes and no man who is having 'common sense' is ready to believe this outlandish stuff.

      Regarding the definition of information, you are saying that it makes the position of physics awkward; the 'data' that we perceive from the world around us i.e., from physical objects are about their energy, position, motion, force, etc. and I don't know how it makes it awkward.

      Regarding the existence and evolution of Life on earth; it is generally believed that the age of the earth is about 4.5 billion years and about a billion years after its formation in the solar system, the evolution of the 'biological network' (biosphere) started to take place by living materials, especially DNA and this I have explained clearly in the essay. It is this process which led to the existence of Life in its simplest form and this process continued to become the evolution of Life and it is continuing even today. So the evolutionary process started about 3.5 billion years ago to form the biosphere and after about a billion years later, that is, about 2.5 billion years ago simplest Life forms originated and later more and more complex forms evolved. Now tell me where is the mistake regarding the age of the existence and evolution of Life?

      Regarding inexplicability of biology on the basis of physics; I want to give just one example which makes it quite clear to you why. Suppose I wave my hand towards a crowd and as a physicist you can explain the motion of my hand quite clearly but can you explain on the basis of your physics 'the intension or purpose behind the waving of my hand?' You know that it is absolutely impossible and it needs no explanation. It is because of this 'qualitative' difference between biology and physics, biology cannot be reduced to physics. It is this 'purpose' which is at the basis of the existence and evolution of Life. But this purpose is 'not divine'; it is as a result of the 'tendency' exhibited by 'living materials'.

      Regarding 'man at the pinnacle of the evolution of Life'; evolution of Life is not to be viewed as simply production of more and more complex organisms but it is to viewed as 'analogous to the evolution of the knowledge of mind'. In this sense man is at the pinnacle of the evolution of Life but not in the sense of adoptability to the environment.

      Regarding comprehension power of the human mind, you cannot restrict it and if you succeed in it like religious authorities in the past, remember that you would not have seen the sort of transformations in all fields of human activity that you are seeing now. But sometimes you got to ask right or useful questions to enhance the comprehension power of the human mind but not to mitigate it.

      Regarding your last question on mathematics, I didn't know that Kant held similar views. Of course, Kant had no clue of the existence of non-Euclidian geometries and I don't understand what this has got anything to do with my view on mathematics. In my view, axioms are basic to mathematical theories and the veracity of the conclusions drawn from the axioms depends on the veracity of the axioms themselves but not on the type of mathematics used or applied. If you use in your axioms elements of non-Euclidian geometry, say, Lobachevsky, Bolyai and Reimann, the kind of mathematics you have to apply is what is already applied by them.

      So, please, go through my essay once again regarding this and if you still find anything confusing, have discussions with me.

      I will shortly post my comments on your essay.

      Best regards,

      Sreenath

        Hi, Sreenath

        Paragraph by paragraph:

        I do not dispute that string theory and loop quantum gravity have not as yet been tested and, if this keeps up, they may need to be relegated to the dustbin of useless theories. (But remember that it was many years between the first statement of Einstein's theories and the possibility to measure them; so too was Bell's theorem only much later tested in the lab, and so forth. It may be too early to rule out the possibility to test string theory or loop quantum gravity.) But in any case I would not say that they have not come up with new ideas, which is what you mentioned. Some of the mechanisms in these theories are quite ingenious; whether they are physics or just good fantasy is another question. But good fantasy can also come up with new ideas.

        When I said that the use of your definition might be a little awkward in practice even if valid in theory, I meant that physics is couched in terms which are mostly stated as if humans did not come into it: even the observers in relativity do not need to be human, quantum physics deals with changes by energy, not mentioning whether that energy is part of a chain linking it to a human. Physics equations do not need a human in them, allowing them to be used by both Idealists and Materialists. The interpretation as to what the equations mean is another matter. Hence, in measuring for example the entropy of a black hole, one does not put in a chain of equations linking it to the humans who make the measurements of the astronomers from their radio telescopes. You yourself emphasize the link of physics to mathematics, and one generally uses 2+2=4 without explicitly stating that humans invented the plus sign. Yes, it is understood that the link is there, that physics as a human activity (which may be different to the laws of the universe) requires humans, but in practice this link remains implicit, not explicit. Making it explicit would make physics very awkward. This does not mean that it is an invalid philosophical position, though.

        I now understand what you meant: I misunderstood your phrase ".... had begun on earth for about a billion years, even prior to the existence of simplest form of life, " to imply that "the existence of simplest form of life" preceded the point of time of a billion years ago, whereas you meant the billion years between the formation of the earth and the beginning of life. My mistake; thanks for explaining this to me.

        As far as biology's reduction to physics: this is, at the moment, a matter of belief, since of course right now one cannot carry out this reduction. However, there is nothing to exclude it, and the practice of modern neurobiology rests on the goal of completing this reduction eventually. Indeed, quite a lot about intention in the brain is already known. Your example only rests on your belief that the limitations of our present technology are absolute. Of course, even when the correlation between brain and mind will be perfect, there will still remain the option to say that it is only a correlation, and that they are not the same thing. This is known as the Mind-Body Problem; you can google it for further information.

        You are of course free to coin your own definition of evolution; I was merely pointing out that your definition does not coincide with the common definition in modern biology.

        The restrictions I had in mind were not akin to those of religion or religious authorities. Rather, I was thinking of the restrictions brought about by quantum physics (you cannot ask what goes on in the "quantum foam") and by mathematical logic (if you use mathematics in which arithmetic can be embedded, then you cannot determine, using the tools of that mathematics, whether your system is consistent; using another system to determine it then merely transfers the problem to your new system).

        Perhaps I understood your stance incorrectly, but it appeared to me that you were implying that Reality was deducible from pure mathematics. In Kant's terms, that there are a priori synthetic truths. For this Kant used the example of the statement that a triangle will always contain 180 degrees, which then was shown to be false. That is, a system of pure mathematics alone (I emphasize "alone") cannot explain Reality, because a mathematician can think of another system which will contradict that explanation, and is mathematically just as valid. That does not mean that mathematics is useless: that is, combining mathematics with something else could very well explain reality, but the problem is to figure out what that "something else" is. I don't have the answer to that one.

        Best regards, David

        Dear Sreenath,

        As promised, I read your essay. I must confess I do not have the expertise to comment on issues which relate to mind, biology, and mathematics. In our essay we were addressing `it versus bit' in quantum theory - you say bit is more important than it in quantum theory. We argue against this hypothesis and conclude otherwise, even for quantum theory.

        A few statements in your essay puzzle me. You say: "Whereas in quantum physics, both Space and Time are discrete entities and hence there are gaps in both Spatial and Temporal intervals; i.e., Space and Time are quantized. " But this is not so - space-time is assumed to be a continuum in quantum theory. Also I could not understand what it means to say "In this sense, even our Knowledge is non-physical in nature although it tries to explain the physics of the external world."

        With best regards,

        Tejinder

          Dear Dr. Tejinder singh,

          Thanks for going through my article and also for your kind comments. It is true that in quantum theory, I view Bit as more important than It and this is what is to be expected from the Copenhagen interpretation of QM; in the quantum world, it is the experimental set up (with information fed in to it) which decides the probability of its outcome. That is, for the same type of experiment, we get different results which means that for the same Bit we get different Its and in this sense Bit is more basic and more important than It. I have not yet gone through your essay and hence don't know how you have argued there as opposed to my view and I am eager to read your essay and post my comments soon on it.

          It is true that Space-Time as back ground entity is assumed to be a continuum in quantum theory to describe the motion of the 'psi-function' or of quantum particles but once measurements are carried out we get an array of values which suggest that the motion is not continuous as is to be expected from classical physics if Space-Time were a continuum. That is, the results obtained do not match with the continuity of Space-Time. The quantization of space and time is explicit in the motion of electrons in the orbits of an atom, especially when they jump from one orbit to another, and this I have said in my essay in detail. The gap between the two orbits is said to be quantized as we cannot describe the motion between the two orbits whether we consider electron as a particle or as a wave. In this sense Space and Time are quantized and there are gaps in Spatial and Temporal intervals.

          Regarding our knowledge as non-physical in nature, it is to be noted that 'our knowledge' is as a result of function of our mind and hence intertwined to our mental processes and they are non-physical in nature; that is why our knowledge is also non-physical in nature although it might be objective corresponding to the physical world.

          Best regards,

          Sreenath

          Dear Torsten,

          Thanks for going through my essay and for your kind comments.

          The fact that space points can exist and these are disconnected itself shows that space is discrete in QM.

          I agree with your view on mathematics.

          I will post my comments on your essay soon.

          Best of luck,

          Sreenath

          Dear Sreenath,

          I like that you've considered the question of us as observers - it was an enjoyable essay to read! Also your conclusion that Bit may come from It is nicely explained.

          Well done & best wishes,

          Antony

            Dear Antony,

            I appreciate your comments and I have read your intriguing essay too and post my comments on your thread.

            Best wishes,

            Sreenath

            6 days later

            Dear Sreenath,

            As I promised in my FQXi Essay page, I have read your essay. I appreciated your idea to discuss the relationship between information and reality not only in Physics but also in Biology and Mathematics. I also find fantastic the aphorism "Bit comes from It, but mind can know of It only through Bit." Your work is very peculiar and I had lots of fun in reading it.

            Thus, I am going to give you an high score.

            Cheers,

            Ch.

              Dear Corda,

              Thanks for your compliments and so do I.

              Cheers,

              Sreenath

              Dear Sreenath,

              Thank you for the impact of your favorable appreciation. I did my best before on your essay. Reading you again, I realize that may be some questions regarding DNA/RNA and their three-dimensional embedding could be approached with dessins d'enfants or the related language. By the way, do you have any comment about the non-coding role of the genome.

              Good luck,

              Michel

              • [deleted]

              • Post #70

              Sreenath,

              Hi. This was a good essay, and I liked how you discussed the view of information from three different perspectives, physics, math and biology. A couple of minor comments are:

              1. In the conclusion where you mention:

              Although Information & Reality (Bit & It) have physical origin, without mind they are in themselves

              empty and blind. Bit comes from It, but mind can know of It only through Bit.

              my view is that the mind is contained within and made of the brain. That is, all the "abstract" abstracts in our minds are actually composed of neuronal interconnections, ion gradients between neurons, etc. I can't rule out the possibility of a mind separate from the brain, but until someone can show me where it is and provide evidence for it, I'll go with the brain. So, in a way, even the information/bits in the mind are made of its.

              2. I think it's theoretically possible to describe all of life in terms of physics, but it would require almost infinite amounts of time, complexity and computing power. So, for all practical purposes, the emergent properties of biology are much better explained in terms of biological properties than physical properties.

              3. I agree with you that the human mind can eventually grasp everything about reality. It may not be able to prove everything because humans can't step outside reality but it can grasp everything. But, in millions of years when we can grasp everything, eventually there will be nothing left to grasp, and the growth of the human mind may plateau. This kind of flat growth at first, then exponential growth, then plateauing growth is very similar to the growth curve of microorganisms.

              4. You're right about prebiotic evolution, but back then, there wasn't even DNA and RNA, there were just some molecules that could use the other molecules in the environment to make additional copies of themselves. Eventually, this became more complex, got enclosed in lipids (for a membrane) to become a cell, and on and on.

              5. The study of information flow from the outside of an organism (cell, tissue, organism) to the inside is usually called signal transduction at least in the case of cells, and there are lots of studies being done on analyzing this not only biochemically but with information and signal processing theory. Also, even separate from cells, biomolecules like proteins can also respond to information such as the pH of a solution by changing their shape, and this is really a type of information sensing, too.

              Anyways, very interesting essay! Thanks!

              Roger

                Dear Roger,

                Thanks for your kind and good analysis of my essay. Out of the five comments you have made, I agree with the last three comments fully as you are an expert in that field and for the first two comments I want to make minor clarifications.

                The mind is contained not only within the brain but it is as a result of the 'functions' of the brain and I have made this point clear in my article.

                Regarding the second comment as to why it is impossible to explain biology in terms of physics is for the following simple reason; suppose you are waving your hand to a crowd, the waving of your hand can be precisely defined in terms of physics, but the 'intension/ purpose' behind it cannot be described in terms of physics. Physics cannot describe 'purposive acts' which are 'often' the hallmark of living beings and these are also behind the evolution of Life, and even nonlinear or chaos dynamics based on physics can explain them but only if these dynamics are based on biology then they can account for them.

                Thanking you once again for your fine comments and I will post my comments on your essay soon.

                Sreenath

                Dear Sreenath,

                Thank you for your very nice comments on my essay. I have gone through your nice essay also, and conceptually your is similar to mine. I am giving account of both below. Your concluding words

                - - - - Although Information & Reality (Bit & It) have physical origin, without mind they are in themselves empty and blind. Bit comes from It, but mind can know of It only through Bit- - - -

                That is very nice, and in my opinion, we have physical 5 s-enses and a sixth sense called mind. We form pictures of all the real things around us in our mind from these senses. Mind interprets these real things around us for forming these pictures. All these information will be lost when we die.

                We invented the communication to transfer these pictures to fellow humans.

                This communication uses information which is nothing but description of our mental picture.

                - - - -

                Your comments - - - - The theme up on which your essay is based is having deep rooted meaning and you have aptly said that it is 'IT from Bit' - - - -

                Here I mean to say, whatever the manner one describes the material or matter with words, mental thoughts, using information technology or computers, his descriptions will not produce matar bits or atoms. This explanation can give information describing the material bits only and nothing more.

                Here I used words - -IT- - for: - -Information technology- - and - -Bit- - for : --a piece of material or a bit of material- -

                Please reply in my thread so that I will get a communication from FQXi, and I can reply you. .

                best

                =snp

                  Hi Sreenath,

                  I just read your essay and noticed that of all the ones that I have read so far, yours is the closest in organizational structure to mine, although I did not cast my net as wide so as to include biology and mathematics.

                  As for whether reality can be really considered separate from it, I think it would have helped if you could have mentioned some quantitative relations that support your assertion. What equations in physics point to the existence of a reality apart from it or bit? I am genuinely curious because I believe that existence is not a binary concept, so it would be stimulating to see your idea tied more precisely to known relations in physics.

                  All the best,

                  Armin