Dear John

You wrote in abstract

It is striking that Physics is still without a universally accepted concept of the relation between the Cosmos, the Particles that compose it, and the field of Energy from which all entities and processes emerge.

But if you look in

Boscovich J. R.: (a) "Theoria philosophia naturalis redacta ad unicam legem virium in natura existentium", first (Wien, 1758) and second (Venetiis, 1763) edition in Latin language; (b) "A Theory of Natural Philosophy", in English, The M.I.T. Press, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts and London, England, first edition 1922, second edition 1966.

You would find a lot of answers. But keep in mind that three centuries ago liberally writing was very dangerous. Therefore, it is very difficult to read Boskovich. In my work, Bit, Cycle, Dimensionless, you could find a small portion of his views. Boskovich is a precursor to quantum theory. Many of his views, in the meantime forgotten should be reaffirmed.

Regards

Ziki

Thanks, David, for your most helpful and encouraging comments. Your opinion that I deviate into metaphysics touches upon the central aspect of the paper - and of this contest, I believe, in which we should be trying to further extend the reach of Physics into those questions that have till now been considered 'metaphysical'.

In attempting to discover the relation between It and Bit, we are ultimately seeking to define the relation between Mind and Cosmos. Perhaps this is a deviation into metaphysics in traditional terms - that is, in the terms of the single-field Cosmos. But the three-field system I have outlined (and physics' own 'deviation' into the biological and neurological spheres) takes us into another, more inclusive direction - and clearly towards the physics of the future.

You are right that there is material for a book here - and the first volume of this book has, in fact, been published (The Nature of Particles in the Unified Field). In it, these concepts are extended beyond the nature of Information - and are shown to yield important insights into the creation of atoms, stars, black holes, and dark matter.

Inevitably, many points are truncated in the present essay; but I'd like to make clear that the core of the argument is that if a General Field of Cosmae exists, then the single-field of physics becomes less likely than the three-field system I've described. The only reason we ever accepted the single-field in the first place is that it seemed more likely; but the Force that sub-divides the field of pure Energy into Cosmae is more likely to have a similar effect upon the Cosmae themselves.

Thus, this Force splits up into our fundamental forces, and creates a Cosmos in which life and cognition inevitably arise as Force continues to act upon the system and increase its complexity. This evolution is evidenced by the irresolvable 'quirky folds' between Energy, matter, Organic phenomena, and Sensory-Cognitive phenomena.

As for the question of this 'Force' having a possibly metaphysical interpretation as it appears in my paper - you must keep in mind that my Paradigm is based on a General Field of Cosmae. In this context, and you are correct in referencing Stephen Hawking, our Cosmos is in the identical condition of a Particle being acted upon by other Cosmae, or other 'Particles'.

It follows that such an interaction can only be understood in terms of Force - a Force that only differs from our fundamental forces, as I mentioned, in that it splits up to create them, and thus to create our Cosmos.

Therefore, this difference does not alter the basic meaning of Force, but expands our concept of it so that it might be applied to a participatory Cosmos.

As for dimensionality: Because the Inorganic, Organic, and Sensory-Cognitive fields, or Vortices, remain distinct and only interact directly with the General Field (as an effect of the Force that acts upon our system), our space-time parameters (our dimensional system) cannot be applied uniformly throughout.

My comments on dimensionality refer to this: The space-time continuum is the core of our system, the most measurable part - its Composite Zone - but both within Particles, and in the system as a whole, this continuum unravels into the less dimensional, or less measurable, Intermediary and Primal Zones.

I hope this sheds a welcome light upon these points, and thanks again for your comments.

Hello John,

I have studied your essay in an attempt to isolate the similarities you speak of in your comments on my essay. I find many similarities, and potentially concurrences, but this does not extend to extrapolations from your basic foundations. We all build clouds from foundations, and I must say that your foundations are close enough to mine that some rewording would make them even closer. But I suspect you are as fond of your terminology as I am of mine, but that doesn't mean we can not understand each other at the foundational level. With some simple rewordings of your essay, with words from mine, and visa-versa, we can understand each other with greater confidence, and possibly benefit by the exercise. For instance, I think of "Cosmos" as the ultimate encapsulation, and if the Universe is not the Cosmos, and there are entities larger than the universe, we will have to find a name for them because the Cosmos is the ultimate encapsulation. I also say centripetality because it may be spherical or vortex like, and that means I can use the word for the smallest things as well as the largest without invoking a shape in the imagination of those reading my essay.

Also, your vortex within a greater vortex, where vortices enforce an exclusion zone, can be likened to chips off the "primordial template form for thinking" which I depict in my essay. And if I were to reword your idea I would say that a centripetality, being a chip off the old block, repulses others of its kind because the direction of their intuitive domains is centripetal, and therefore apposite in direction, and in the case of centripetality that this opposite direction repulse each from the other. Likewise these same vortices (centripetality) have at their core the centrifugal domain, which while of the same nature and opposite in direction once again, attract each other via a mechanism which can explain the true nature of the conservation of energy. And it is the nature of the conservation of energy which allows us to define certain domains as attractive and the other as repulsive, even though they are both the same in nature and opposite in direction.

Also, bringing our conceptions of energy, and the conservation of energy, together, would facilitate greater understanding of each others work as well; and so on and so forth, but I am sure you have some understandings in reserve as I have.

Please feel free to reword some of my understanding within the context of my essay, with words from yours, which I can then agree with or disagree with, with appropriate reasons given of course.

Regards and best of luck in the competition.

Zoran.

Hello Zoran - nice to hear back from you.

I am going to re-read your essay later on, since I'm quite busy reading essays in the competition. I think the main point of interest for me is that I have redefined the Cosmos as being a three-field system, in which each field, including the Sensory-Cognitive Vortex, interacts with the elemental Gravitational-Magnetic Force, so that they are correlated with one another, in the immediate and evolutionary time planes.

I think you tend towards the all-in-one structure of the Cosmos, but get into details and mechanisms which could be very usefully integrated with a structure such as mine that completely accounts for the contiguity of Sensory-Cognitive phenomena with the physical Cosmos across all time planes.

I look forward to delving deeper into this after the competition - I'm sure we'll all stumble across many interesting perspectives by the end of the month.

Let's confer again - good luck!

in comparing our two approaches is that you work within an - to see if it isn't possible to correlate your insights into cognitive mechanics with a Cosmos-structure that is

Dear Mr. Selye,

Thank you for stopping by to comment on my entry. I have just read your essay where you paint such a vivid vision of the world. Your style flows easily exposing a skillful writer in you. Thank you for sharing your unique view. Happy holidays and good luck with the rest of the competition!

Dear John,

Nice prose which is expected being the head of an editorial team. The story is captivating but seems to be entirely original to you since you quote no references. Your account may however contain things that can be verified in future.

One or two questions for you: "on those 'quirky folds'.. which have troubled and motivated Physics more than any other science... for clearly, there can be no gaps in a single-field Cosmos. In seeking to smooth them over, Physics keeps searching for ever-smaller Particles that might LINK ALL THINGS TOGETHER... But for all these efforts, the gaps persist to this day;- and that it makes clear these gaps actually do exist, and really do violate the integrity of the single-field".

Is it only particles that can link all things together? Would gaps still not remain between such a particle and what it is linking together? If gaps do not remain, on what ground would you then refuse that both that particle and what it is linking together are not one thing, thereby returning to the same problem you initially tried to solve by conjuring such a particle?

Just food for thought. This is part of the discrete vs. continuous debate in physics.

Then you believe that the law of energy conservation is Sacrosanct. I am still thinking of an appropriate response on that.

My regards,

Akinbo

    Hello Akinbo -

    You are actually agreeing with me about the gaps: I say that they do indeed remain even though we've been looking to bridge them for the better part of a century. What physics has been trying to link together (Inorganic, Organic, and Sensory-Cognitive phenomena) are three distinct fields that have only recently emerged as valid domains of physics.

    The chain reaction that produces atoms, organisms, and cognition presents us with persistent causal gaps between these phenomena.

    My paradigm shows that these gaps are caused the nature of our cosmic system - that is, a system consisting of three distinct Vortices that are in perpetual Correlation within a General Field of Energy.

    There is no direct interaction between Inorganic, Organic, and Sensory-Cognitive phenomena (though this is counter-intuitive); they are instead minutely correlated over the course of evolution, and it is this that produces our Species Cosmos and all its phenomena.

    You mention the sacrosanct nature of the Law of Conservation. I think you see that there's some room for doubts in this area.

    I've re-defined conservation as the balanced exchange of energy between our cosmic system and the General Field. Clearly, over spans of time so great they are hard to grasp scientifically, energy need not - and indeed, most likely is not - stable in any Cosmos.

    Systems expand and contract. Our own Cosmos might well have briefly contracted at various times, and then resumed its expansion. (I put this out as a potential explanation for the alternation of polarities that seem to occur every hundred thousand years or so, as revealed by magnetic deposits).

    But so long as the Universe remains on the course of expansion that has generally prevailed since our evolution began, it is useful to assume that energy is exchanged in a stable way with the General Field. (Though it is tempting to say that it might instead be increasing in a stable way, due to Cosmic expansion, we cannot yet understand the less-dimensional Zones of our Cosmos well enough to know whether the expansion we are experiencing is anything more that the expansion of the space-time continuum (Composite Zone) alone - or whether it is the expansion of the whole system.

    Thanks for getting back to me, Akinbo. I'm sure we'll communicate again soon.

    Dear John,

    Your essay gives a non-standard reinterpretation of the 'it from bit' subject. It is also very well written in my opinion. Reading it, I had in mind two FQXI essays, the one by Eugene Klingman about the unity of the cosmos and the one by G. G. Miller about the Quaternio and the fourthness. I mention the latter essay because, to "the three pricipal vortices, the inorganic, organic and sensitive-cognitive ones" you add a fourth one, related to us. I have no idea if this analogy makes sense in your interpretation, at least you can check it.

    I liked the "quirky folds" and the science fiction paragraph at the end.

    Thank you again for your interest in my own work.

    Best wishes,

    Michel

      Hello John,

      I read your essay with great interest. I think you are absolutely on the right track in pointing out that we must think of reality as a multi-field Cosmos. To me, it makes sense that the Cosmos consists of several distinct fields.

      I also agree that in order to understand what's 'going on' we must take into account the undeniable fact that Organic and Sensory realms exist within our universe. Life and Mind exist; we not only observe this - we experience it directly for ourselves. So any description of the universe/Cosmos as a whole must somehow account for these things.

      Although my essay differs from yours somewhat on the details, I have given your essay a very high rating. I believe, that based upon the rules of evaluation of the contest, you have come forward with a fresh, new perspective and found it to be interesting and well written. I would invite you to read my essay at your convenience and would even be interested in corresponding with you in the future, if you are so inclined.

      Best to you in the future.

      Ralph

        Dear John,

        We are concerned with the same problems, but we diverge in the details of our solutions. As you note on my page, you propose multiple universes, and make a reasonable argument therefor, while I prefer a single universe, based on one field initially. You define this as "essentially, a very large 'room'... into which are heaped together all particles, entities, and organisms." In my view these are not 'heaped together' but have 'evolved from' the field. You say that "unbridgeable gaps... conceal the mechanism that allow atoms to assemble themselves from pure energy." You are correct in so far as there is currently a large monetary prize offered to the first to solve the 'mass gap' problem. But then you say that physicists search for ever smaller particles to fix these gaps. I do not. I have predicted for several years that no other particles exist, as my theory accounts for the currently known particles but has no way of generating others. As part of the self evolution, the gravitational field gives rise to the electromagnetic field, which for practical purposes is a second field. As I noted in my essay, I could propose a third, 'consciousness field', as you seem to do (?) but instead I associate this with the original primordial field of gravity.

        You say that your fields are "prevented from interacting directly with each other", whereas I believe gravity interacts with both electromagnetic fields and itself.

        We both identify vortices as extremely significant phenomena. And we both focus on gravito-magnetism as key, but, out of caution, I point out that there are two possible interpretations of those words, and mine is not involved, except analogously, with the 'magnetism' of the electromagnetic field.

        I've not followed all of the structural details of your theory but you seem to generate more structure than I do. It's not clear to me whether you propose literal physical structures or abstract hierarchical concepts. Nevertheless our ideas overlap to some extent, and, as is the case in all FQXi essays, they diverge in many details.

        Thanks for your comments on my page and good luck!

        Best regards,

        Edwin Eugene Klingman

        Dear John

        What an amazing essay! You relate a tale of physics and humanity as gripping as a Star Trek thriller: Vortices beckon, we zoom through a gear-mesh system, we correlate with a Greater Cosmos and look to a future of transformed humanity. The wonderful language (even the short paragraphs) is poetic - Blake comes to mind - but as science it is more Tiellard de Chardin isn't it? You obviously have seriously have thought long and hard about the concepts you can only outline in this essay, and approach the Bit from It question as relating to human consciousness and cognition. I think Wheeler's idea of Bits is much more basic and arid: just bits of "yes-no answers".

        It does not lessen my admiration for your effort of thought and imagination that my reductionist approach to physics is quite different - rather than go beyond the quirky folds you speak of, I try to show that they are only tricks of vision that will disappear when a more fundamental scale is considered. In fact my Beautiful Universe Theory also found here here can be described as a flexibly correlated gear-mesh system (as in your your words) ...and nothing else!!

        With all best wishes

        Vladimir

          Hello John,

          Thanks for your kind comments over on my thread. As promised, I've read your essay. Still got 60 left to read and comment on! ;-/

          I thought your essay was interesting and a nice balance of the sciences too. Also very well written.

          The vortices and higher dimensions were a neat idea too. I can see a near overlap of our papers in the section you wrote:

          "Omni-dimensional in nature - that is, of no fixed dimensionality itself, but perpetually expanding and sub-dividing into an infinite number of distinct dimensional systems, each representing a unique type of Cosmos - which is, in turn, sub-divided into its own internal fields".

          I think you've hit on some very good points, that we need to assess if we've got things right since physics began and also we need to take an observer's consciousness into account.

          Well done!

          Best wishes,

          Antony

            Hi Anthony -

            Your kind comments were most appreciated.

            I only wish we could permit ourselves a more detailed analysis of each other's work - but there are so many works to read, and to rate, in order to make the contest as valid as possible for everyone.

            Thanks again, Anthony - and best of luck in the contest!

            John