Reality, No Matter How You Slice It by Ken Wharton

Hi Ken,

What I meant when I was responding to Armin was not-so-much tongue-in-cheek (though I meant no offense) as it was trying to point out that the all-at-once paradigm doesn't make any sense to me when coupled with the concept of "updating." The former implies a singular while the latter implies a plural.

So here's the way I see it. What you could be saying is that we do an "all-at-once" analysis of the universe and then as we learn more information about it (both past and future) we continue to do so and thus "update" our information. In this way the underlying universe remains essentially "static" while our knowledge of the universe possesses an arrow of sorts (since we are gaining information about it). Now, I'm not particularly familiar with Matt's notion of contextuality and I'll have to do some digging into it, but from my own notion of contextuality there's a problem: the universe does *not* remain static. In other words, it is not always possible to deduce *past* states from future ones. It would seem that your argument does not address this issue.

Now, regarding the time-asymmetry issue, I disagree with Carroll, Penrose, et. al. Rather, I agree with Eddington who did not, necessarily, postulate new physics to explain this problem (he postulated new physics to address other issues). Eddington viewed the time-asymmetry question essentially entirely in terms of probabilities (actually, that's pretty much how he viewed everything). I really don't think it is that mysterious. The problem with the Carroll, Penrose, et. al. interpretation is that it assumes that the Standard Model is correct which in turn says that CPT-symmetry is inviolable. But there are notable problems with the Standard Model (it fails on a number of counts not the least of which is in relation to gravity). In addition, there is some evidence that CPT-symmetry is no inviolable. Recent studies of neutrinos suggest that it is possible that neutrinos and anti-neutrinos have slightly different masses. If so, this would be evidence of CPT-symmetry violation. All of this is to say that I think the cosmological case for the arrow of time is built upon some shaky ground (and I didn't even mention inflation). Heck, Sean Carroll himself addressed some of these issues at the last FQXi conference.

Now, to the c-frame issue. Obviously you are correct in saying the the c-frame itself is unattainable and, perhaps, unphysical in some regards (though clearly it is at least partly physical since light exists!). But the bigger point is that there *is* an objective ontology to relativistic frames. Otherwise, the Twin Paradox would really be a paradox. But it's not. The space-faring twin really is older --- they both agree on that when they meet again. Likewise, relativistic muons created in the upper atmosphere really do take longer to decay. And as two frames get closer and closer to c, they get more and more in agreement. That's the objectivity that I'm talking about that we all tend to ignore. If reality were completely subjective (relative), then the twins would each think the other was older.

This all goes back to that deep issue of time. While the laws of physics (mostly) seem to be time-symmetric, there's clearly a problem since we never see them run in reverse. If this is a purely cosmological problem, why is it that we never see, say, sub-atomic particles "un-decay?" Time is simply different. Relativity provides us with a convenient framework within which to treat time in a similar manner as space, but even *it* has a preferential arrow built into it --- allowing for complete time-symmetry in relativity produces logically absurd results. This is precisely because time is different in the metric --- it's sign is always opposite that of space. Incidentally, Lev Okun wrote an article about this very point a number of years ago but the cosmologists and many high-energy physicists still seem to cling to this notion that space and time are the same (and thus mass and energy also are the same), that the universe is really symmetric, that the Standard Model is correct, and that time-asymmetry is just an illusion perpetrated by cosmological expansion.

I hope that answers some of the points you have raised. If I missed responding to something, let me know.

Cheers,

Ian

P.S. It is thankfully much cooler today...

Hi Ken and Ian,

Thanks for keeping this discussion going. And Ian, I'm glad to see that I wasn't mis-representing your point of view, and that we're in agreement.

First of all, I just want to ask you guys once more to look at the post I left above, on Jul. 10, 2013 @ 23:39 GMT. In relation to Ken's point about the arrow of time--i.e.

"All I'm trying to say about the arrow of time is that we shouldn't say anything about it that we shouldn't say about the arrow of space *given known symmetries*. There are no accepted physical theories that allows a process to occur in the +x direction that could not also occur in the -x direction, and the same is true for +t and -t."

--that derivation presents a clear case in which he's completely, unmistakably right.

Now, in response to Ken's comments for me: thank you very much for posting them, and taking up the challenge in the spirit that it's intended--i.e., seriously, and in good faith. In that sense, "them were fightin' words" indeed. I'm not able to respond properly right now, because I'm just heading out to a metaphysics of time workshop in (breathtakingly beautiful) Lausanne, but I wanted to let you know that I have seen your post, and I'm really looking forward to keeping up the discussion.

Two things I will say: I'm very glad to see that we're in full agreement on the dimensionality of the growing block model--it's unmistakably 5D; and I agree that the DVD contains 3D data. On the latter point, my argument isn't that the data are "really 4D", any more than de Sitter space (see the post I mentioned) is "really 5D". I'll do a better job of explaining myself later, now that I have your argument to work with. Indeed, I do think the right conceptual framework has been missed in philosophy of time. Today, I'm going to look to either be shown that it hasn't, or to see which points in particular I need to address in order to clarify.

Best regards,

Daryl

Outstanding: A beautiful description of the independence fallacy. This is an excellent way to describe why slices in Minkowski space are profoundly unreal, and lead to inconsistent statistics in the "information record" of Bell states and other quantum experiments.

My favorite quote from the paper "But if one updates the past probabilities upon learning which measurement a system will encounter, the premises behind those theorems are explicitly violated."

It appears, however, to be incomplete in one aspect, it needs a more distinguished understanding of what "dynamical evolution" means. I suspect the "dynamical evolution" aspect you are trying to stay away from is the "monotonic, irreversible flow of time".

I have not yet read your other papers in the references, as soon as I get through this huge volume of FQXi material, I will be sure to go back and read all your papers. I really enjoyed this one, these are excellent ideas, and your writing style is very high quality.

I would differ with you in your description of the double slit experiment, where you talk of photons "not landing in the dark fringes". I assert that they do indeed "land" in the dark fringes, but they are "entangled" -- the photons are trapped between the emitter and detector bouncing back and forth in a timeless fashion. Entangled systems are DARK (from both an emission and an absorption perspective) [Ref: http://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/1897 ]

Hi Ken,

Please excuse me if I don't address points in the exchange you've had with Ian. I want to be as brief as possible in response to what you wrote to me. I do, however, need to provide some context for my criticism of your view.

My greater claim is that all accounts of any sense of temporal passage that I've read in my physicist's survey of the philosophy literature are abominations. They're no better (and maybe even worse because they're so explicitly wrong) than the physicist's foggy conception of temporal passage. All is a mess. And I think "subjective updating" falls right into this catagory. (Strong claim--and fightin' words indeed--so please allow me to explain. The upshot will be that you'll either see an error in a view that you support, that you weren't aware of before, or, by understanding my point, you'll be able to explain to me how subjective updating doesn't fall into this category).

More specifically, I claim that all accounts (that I've read or heard) of the presentist viewpoint, whether in favour or against it, make a very specific (and often explicit) error, which has confused the issue to the point that I do feel justified in calling these accounts "abominations". Because of this error, many--and then in light of relativity, many more--have committed what I'll call the Abortionist Fallacy (meant in the more general sense of "a failure to develop to completion or maturity") of arguing *from those erroneous descriptions* that presentism is false. In fact, the usual claim is that temporal passage is not as we commonly think of it--the most famous example being perhaps McTaggart's argument for the unreality of time.

Before I get to my main point, which is very simple, please let me explain what I mean by "Abortionist Fallacy". Consider the following (which I claim to be true): The purpose, or grand aim, of thought experiments, should be to make perfect sense of things that are not intuitively obvious to begin with (cf. Galileo's boat experiment). If this statement is true, then due to his prior definition of simultaneity, Einstein committed the Abortionist Fallacy when conducting his special relativistic thought experiments, from which he inferred the relativity of simultaneity, and therefore simply aborted the sensible notion of objective passage (cf. my first post above).

So, now: what's the one thing that's wrong with all attempts to describe temporal passage? It's simply the all-too-common idea that events (the things that happen, occur, take place, etc., which make up space-time) *exist*.

The error occurs whenever verbs are used to describe events. This is because all verbs--and particularly the copular verb 'is', 'will be', 'was', etc.--smuggle a sense of temporal passage into the mix because every last one of them has existential meaning. People are already dead wrong when they say, for instance, "look at this worldline, with a few points (t_1, t_2, t_3, etc.) labelled on it. The fact of the matter, in the presentist view, is that *at* t_1, only t_1 exists; at t_2, only t_2 exists, and t_1 no longer exists. The reductionist, or minimalist viewpoint--and what follows from McTaggart's argument--is that all t exists; i.e. the object represented by the worldline has temporal parts; etc."

I'm claiming that "exists" in the first and second sentence, as well as "has" in the second sentence, are completely wrong words to use, which totally confuse the meaning.

People might refer to events at certain times as being "real" or "Real", in a sweeping spotlight sort of way (the past is "real" in some sense, because I can talk about it, etc.). But the thing that actually matters isn't the big "R"/little "r" distinction. The thing that actually matters is the use of "being", which carries existential meaning.

The reason is simple: in a Newtonian conception of reality (my previous essay shows that relativity presents no real problem either, as long as "simultaneous" isn't mis-defined a la Einstein), how many dimensions are there in the physical description of "this chair exists here?" Since the chair's a 3D object, I hope your answer is "4D" (otherwise we've got an even bigger issue; cf. quote from Einstein's autobiography, above). Similarly, when we say "t_1 exists" or "all t exists" or "an object has temporal parts", or "an observer's subjective knowledge updates", we smuggle in a further dimension.

Just as "the existence of a 3D block" requires a fourth dimension in the physical description (even if the block doesn't change, still "while changing it exists"--Heraclitus), or the "existence" of an event needs 1D in order for the event to be described as something that exists, so the idea of events in 4D space-time as "existing" requires a 5D description. In essence, when we say (or think) "Jan 10, 1982, 1:26:32 exists", we think of the 3D world on Jan 10, 1982, at 1:26:32, as *existing* (i.e., when we say "is", "was", etc., we impose another dimension in the conception of that *instant*). The dimension in which events are described to "exist" is a hyper-time dimension, above and beyond the time-dimension describing the 3D universe's existence.

No one in their right mind has every supported this view outright (except maybe science fiction writers and growing block supporters like Ellis--although there's an argument that he's therefore perhaps *not* in his right mind), yet what I'm claiming is that when people assume a "third person"-view of eternity, a "view from no-when", a "God's eye-view", there is an overwhelming tendency to think that "God", the "third person", *exists*. Then the confusion sets in. Greene very explicitly describes the frozen block as something that exists, for example, patently assuming this hyper-time-dimension.

Now, how does this ubiquitous error factor into our debate? Basically, when you think that something subjectively updates their knowledge of the block, I'm saying you can't but assume such a hyper-time dimension. If everything really is singularly on par, you simply can't get this updating of knowledge within the block, any more than a fish can swim a distance through water, or electricity can flow through a wire, in an *instant*. In the sense of this hyper-time, the entire block has to be instantaneous, and therefore perceptions of it can't crawl along it and update.

When you describe reality as all of eternity, all four dimensions of the physical description of events that occur in reality, *at-once*, assuming a "God's eye view" of all the events that occur, you simply can't turn around and claim that your "God" exists *without adding the metaphysical structure associated with that*.

Parsimony is supposed to favour the block universe view of reality, which doesn't assume the extra structure of "3D space that exists"--i.e. a foliation--but what I'm saying is that "blockers" really don't have the more parsimoneous theory anyway. In fact, the view that all of space-time exists (Greene's view, etc.) assumes the same amount of structure in the sense that it assumes that something (of any dimension) *exists*; but because the thing it assumes exists actually has one higher dimension, it actually assumes *way more* structure. That's argument 1 against the "Humean minimalist" view--i.e., it's not actually minimalist at all.

Argument 2 is that the structure in the "anti-reductionist" view that "minimalists" want to do away with--viz. the foliation of space-time--is actually supported by cosmology anyway, so it's really a non-issue in the first place, if you take empirical evidence to be the supreme arbiter.

That's pretty much my argument in a nutshell. I don't think I'm committing any of the errors that you mention, but simply saying that I don't think you can get what you want to get without committing them yourself. I'm ready to listen, though, if you think you can get out of argument 1. Then, even still, I think I win by argument 2, since empirical evidence is supposed to trump all. In order to argue against me there, you'll have to overturn a whole area of physics--but still, I am willing (eager, in fact) to listen.

Best,

Daryl

Dear All,

It is with utmost joy and love that I give you all the cosmological iSeries which spans the entire numerical spectrum from -infinity through 0 to +infinity and the simple principle underlying it is sum of any two consecutive numbers is the next number in the series. 0 is the base seed and i can be any seed between 0 and infinity.

iSeries always yields two sub semi series, each of which has 0 as a base seed and 2i as the first seed.

One of the sub series is always defined by the equation

Sn = 2 * Sn-1 + Sigma (i=2 to n) Sn-i

where S0 = 0 and S1 = 2 * i

the second sub series is always defined by the equation

Sn = 3 * Sn-1 -Sn-2

where S0 = 0 and S1 = 2 * i

Division of consecutive numbers in each of these subseries always eventually converges on 2.168 which is the Square of 1.618.

Union of these series always yields another series which is just a new iSeries of a 2i first seed and can be defined by the universal equation

Sn = Sn-1 + Sn-2

where S0 = 0 and S1 = 2*i

Division of consecutive numbers in the merged series always eventually converges on 1.618 which happens to be the golden ratio "Phi".

Fibonacci series is just a subset of the iSeries where the first seed or S1 =1.

Examples

starting iSeries governed by Sn = Sn-1 + Sn-2

where i = 0.5, S0 = 0 and S1 = 0.5

-27.5 17 -10.5 6.5 -4 2.5 -1.5 1 -.5 .5 0 .5 .5 1 1.5 2.5 4 6.5 10.5 17 27.5

Sub series governed by Sn = 2 * Sn-1 + Sigma (i=2 to n) Sn-i

where S0 = 0 and S1 = 2i = 1

0 1 2 5 13 34 ...

Sub series governed by Sn = 3 * Sn-1 - Sn-2

where S0 = 0 and S1 = 2i = 1

0 1 3 8 21 55 ...

Merged series governed by Sn = Sn-1 + Sn-2 where S0 = 0 and S1 = 2i = 1

0 1 1 2 3 5 8 13 21 34 55 ...... (Fibonacci series is a subset of iSeries)

The above equations hold true for any value of i, again confirming the singularity of i.

As per Antony Ryan's suggestion, a fellow author in this contest, I searched google to see how Fibonacci type series can be used to explain Quantum Mechanics and General Relativity and found an interesting article.

d-super.pdf"> The-Fibonacci-code-behind-superstring-theory](https://msel-naschie.com/pdf/The-Fibonacci-code-behin

d-super.pdf)

Now that I split the Fibonacci series in to two semi series, seems like each of the sub semi series corresponds to QM and GR and together they explain the Quantum Gravity. Seems like this duality is a commonality in nature once relativity takes effect or a series is kicked off. I can draw and analogy and say that this dual series with in the "iSeries" is like the double helix of our DNA. The only commonality between the two series is at the base seed 0 and first seed 1, which are the bits in our binary system.

I have put forth the absolute truth in the Theory of everything that universe is an "iSphere" and we humans are capable of perceiving the 4 dimensional 3Sphere aspect of the universe and described it with an equation of S=BM^2.

I have also conveyed the absolute mathematical truth of zero = I = infinity and proved the same using the newly found "iSeries" which is a super set of Fibonacci series.

All this started with a simple question, who am I?

I am drawn out of my self or singularity or i in to existence.

I super positioned my self or I to be me.

I am one of our kind, I is every one of all kinds.

I am Fibonacci series in iSeries

I am phi in zero = I = infinity

I am 3Sphere in iSphere

I am pi in zero = I = infinity

I am human and I is GOD (Generator Organizer Destroyer).

Love,

Sridattadev.

Whoa whoa whoa...

You're still holding up *acceleration* as the resolution to the twins paradox? It's a mathematically ill-posed problem. They *simply can't* come back together unless one of them hops from one inertial frame to another. One of them simply has to do that--and the one who does *really* returns the younger of the two. The problem derives from SR, and is resolved within SR as well.

Schutz' description in his intro GR textbook explains this very well.

But also, think of the acceleration argument this way: conduct the experiment with triplets, and picture from the frame of reference of the one who sits on Earth. The third triplet stays back awhile longer, but does eventually decide to quickly fly to the moon and back. When they all meet up in the end, he has been "accelerated" as much as the triplet who went on the longer journey, but he has aged more.

In fact, even if he took ten short trips, but mostly stayed home, so that he was "accelerated" more than the other triplet, he's still going to be older in the end.

This argument against the claim that acceleration resolves the paradox is (roughly) Tim Maudlin's.

Daryl

Dear Ken,

Very interesting essay.

Am I wrong if I say that your idea is in the same line that

http://arxiv.org/abs/1201.5590

I red your paper several times to grasp the idea and its consequences.

If I understand correctly, having a 4D relativistic viewpoint, one could reject many arguments in favour of the 'it from bit' perspective, including quantum contextuality? Or may be these arguments claim in favour of a a reintroduction of space-time thinking?

My point is about the underlying structure of observables and you may have interest in reading and rating it.

http://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/1789

Good luck,

Michel

Ken---

Superb job, one of a few essays I consider the very best I've read so far. I'll comment more on points of agreement later, but for now just want to record the way in which I'm engaged with these sorts of ideas, in part through your work and Huw Price's, in part through Matthew Leifer and Rob Spekkens, in part just from my own thinking. I tend to agree that the Bell correlations needn't worry one so much ... the absence of a "story" allowing one to get rid of them by conditioning on stuff in the intersection of the past light cones of the correlated events doesn't upset me. I am attracted to trying to understand this through a more "instrumentalist" account of what quantum theory does for us than the one you are suggesting for in this essay, but I tend to think that in the end the "instrumentalist" and "realist" approaches to "How to stop worrying and learn to love quantum correlations" (as I am thinking of titling a paper on the subject...) end up with something like the histories formulation. I'm not sure how the "no-dynamics" approach fits in... I tend to view any constraints between the events that comprise possible histories, as "substantive physics" and not care so much whether it's called "kinematics" or "dynamics". (I still need to read Rob Spekkens' winning essay from last year on exactly that subject...) And I see that you end up with a histories picture too. I view both an instrumentalist histories approach, and a micro-histories approach, as realist---just realist about different things. The thing I worry about is that *both* approaches may be committed to some level of "decoherence" arising from choosing a particular set of histories. It's the question of "what's the ontology". Even if it's a micro-ontology, it may generate decoherence. Now, maybe that's more likely on "standard" histories stories in which the "events" about which histories concern themselves are statements like "the particle is in this phase space cell" (or possible fuzzified, continuum versions that are more sophisticated...). Whereas the more sophisticated "microrealists" who wish to abandon Bell-like causality restrictions without worries, may have in mind more exotic kinds of "underlying reality", including, as Terry Rudolph likes to say, a reality that is not described in spacetime terms at all. Although it seems to me you may not want to go there! But then I wonder about getting the theory to avoid decoherence at a level that might be refuted by observation.

Possibly related is a certain similarity in my mind, which others in this thread (and elsehwere) have also drawn attention to, between "retrocausal" and "conspiratorial" explanations. I realize you have said they're not similar. But I'm not so sure. In situations like your description the two-slit experiment, the "retrocausal" influence seems to be coming from the different final measurement apparatus. Not sure how you would deal with a "which-way" measurement very near the slits (I guess you could put lenses there, too). But this seems almost as conspiratorial... the thing is that whatever determines some big macroconfiguration, determines the possible histories. And surely we *do* think we can predict, with high probability, that macroconfiguration from stuff in its past light cone... There is probably something I'm not understanding here, different in your explanation than in the conspiratorial one. It is likely in *just exactly what* the macronconfiguration is affecting: putting a different, and somehow less objectionable, kind of constraint on the set of histories in your case than in the conspiracy case. But I'd love to see an explanation of this that is as clear as what you've written on other points in this paper.

Just to be clear, again, this is not intended as criticism... just as a reaction. You wrote a paper that made me go back to what I've been thinking on these issues, and think about it some more... which is another sign of a good paper. Again, outstanding!

Cheers,

Howard

Hi Ken,

I finally got to your essay and gave it the best mark.

One minor criticism. A definition of dynamics would have helped less sophisticated readers like myself.

I invite you to visit my essay and see how I "give up dynamics", If you visit please be critical..... There is too much agreement around here.

Thanks,

Don Limuti

Dear Ken,

This is miles better!

First of all, I'm glad that you don't think acceleration resolves the twins paradox. But I do wonder why you would use 'acceleration' rather than saying something like 'the boosted twin', especially since acceleration has been wrongly thought by many to resolve the paradox.

But now to important stuff. I was talking with someone yesterday about my concerns with using verbs to describe space-time points, events, all of space-time, etc. What I learned was that a B-theorist uses the word "exist" non-existentially. Personally, I consider it nonsense to use language that doesn't actually apply to things by redefining words in such a convoluted way. Moreover, I think it leads to a lot of confusion, especially because it's so hard to not fall into the trap of thinking of these non-existential things that 'exist' as *existing*. (As an example, when you read what you wrote, don't you find it hard to not think of a *static* block? I think it's really hard to think of the block as a temporally singular, non-existential thing. I honestly can't make sense of "a thing that doesn't exist." Then I also have a tough time not thinking of existence *and* motion along the block when you write "updating is performed by a 3D agent over time"). And finally, I think if what's being proposed is so nonsensical that it can't even be properly described because the language comes to mean something else entirely, that's a pretty good indicator that it really is just nonsense.

So what's my point: I do understand what you've written here, insofar as every time you say "I'm" you're really speaking non-existentially about what you "are". I'm actually pretty okay with the description until the last paragraph, because I don't think you're being too cavalier with your use of non-existential verbs until that point. But in the last paragraph, I think you're getting a bit carried away when you use three in a row ("updating is performed") in a way that tends to give the impression that you're not only talking of the block as something that 'exists' but doesn't really exist, but also of a sequence of updates that move up the world line.

Alternatively, you could say (with the use of single quotation marks to indicate non-existential use of verbs) "The whole 4D block 'exists'. My world-line 'exists' in it. At each point along my world-line, I 'have' some knowledge of the entire 4D block; i.e., as I may 'know' something about past, present, and future events at each point of my world-line. At 'later' times, my knowledge of the block is more complete than at 'earlier' times." (I know "earlier" and "later" are adjectives, but I think it's good to still use the single quotes there). Maybe you could sum that up by saying, "one's incomplete knowledge of the 4D block 'is' a monotonically increasing function of one's worldline, where at each point along the worldline, that incomplete knowledge 'is' 4D".

I think we're now on the same wavelength about what you want to describe, and I think the description of 'subjective updating', if stated carefully in this way, making sure to note the non-existential meaning of 'exist', etc., is about the best you can do. But then I simply have to wonder why you want it to be that way anyway. One reason, from our discussion above, might be that you don't like quantum non-locality. But I have a tough time seeing how a fear of existence in a world in which magic happens, can lead one to want to 'live' in a world where one doesn't actually *live* at all; where one doesn't actually *exist*. I think it's better to try to sort out our problems than just give in to unrealistic implications--and I honestly think a realistic version of quantum theory, or really quantum gravity, will come about after we've taken the more immediately necessary step of properly interpreting and understanding relativity.

I guess that brings the discussion back to the one we were having above. Would it be at all possible to take that up again now? I think I've shown an ability to really understand this position that I think needs to be rejected, being very open to thoughtful consideration of its meaning and implications. I think you'll find if you do read what I wrote there, that I've given the same thoughtful consideration in coming to my own position on the matter.

One more thing I wanted to say before I quit, in relation to the point you made early on about symmetry, is this: last night at the summer school on physics and philosophy of time that I'm attending, Stephan Hartmann gave a talk about the No-Alternatives Argument, which basically runs as, "Physicists have identified certain constraints, C, and have a set of data, D, that they want to use to construct a quantum gravity. To date, only string theory seems to meet all of C and D. Given the amount of effort that's been put into the construction of an alternative, we can be optimistic to some extent that there reall are no alternatives." The "some extent" is evaluated using Bayesian analysis.

My objection to this entire line of reasoning comes in at the very beginning. It's true that having identified C, the usual goal is to try to construct a theory that adds C explicitly into the framework. But we know of cases in history, where ideas have been rejected for a long time just because they were naively thought to be at-odds with some constraint or other that people thought necessary to hold onto. For instance, given a butterfly's ability to easily flutter about, or even the fact that the Earth retains its atmosphere, people felt quite strongly for a long time that the Earth has to be fixed at the centre of the solar system, and this constraint was violently held onto (e.g., Bruno). But then Galileo showed (with a simple thought experiment that didn't even need to be conducted) that butterflies can flutter around just as well in the cabin of a ship, as they can when it's back at harbour, and it was realised that this constraint wasn't necessary to the realisation of the data, and the Solar System could, for all that constraint had mattered, be heliocentric. In light of what I've written about symmetry above, I would like you to consider that perhaps the standard symmetry constraint of modern physics maybe is being made too explicitly, for all the observed symmetries that must be reconciled.

Cheers,

Daryl

Dr. Wharton

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 you have touched some corners of it.

With regards,

Than Tin