Essay Abstract

Alice and Bob have a nice chat about Wheeler's dream. They interchange their bird's-eye view of the topic and analyze the rudiments behind scientific proposals. From their discussion one can conclude that the problem may be a matter of semantics. Although they both agree that the it-from-bit approach may be useful to dissolve the crisis in physics. After discussing several roads to reality, Bob considers that it is worthy returning to the old way of doing physics in which intuition and "common sense" used to go along with the mathematical description of reality. Bob thinks that if physics wishes to maintain its high reputation among the sciences and the public, scientific proposals should not only explain the experimental observations but also be credible in accordance with "common sense". He then brings an example of these kind of proposals in which the "it" remains fundamental.

Author Bio

Dr. Israel Perez works as a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Saskatchewan in Canada in the field of condense matter physics. He is member of the National System of Researchers in Mexico. His innate passion for the understanding of nature has led him to do research also on the foundations of physics. This time, Israel has worked out a relaxed analysis of Wheeler's dream.

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Dear Israel,

You did a terrific job of conveying the rich theoretical landscape of modern physics! I wonder, though, if even something seemingly so certain -- "What is clear is that GR does not play a fundamental role in the realm of particles whatsoever" -- might not also be doubted by researchers who apply Mach's Principle to the many body problem on microscales.

No matter. It was fun to read your essay and I wish you the best in the competition.

Tom

    Dear Israel,

    Yeah, well done. Relevant and interesting. I should look at the references.

    A few words that you use where I fully agree a) context: you can see my essay, b) geometry: again there is geometry in quantum contexts, c) correlation: David Mermin is fun of them d) the rules are simpler to manipulate: Henri Poincaré, e) compactified: I hope to become familiar with that.

    Good luck,

    Michel

      Nice work, it was a pleasure to read it. Although, I do not think these are "common sense" thoughts... I do not think that any layman could write such kind of essay...

      I liked your point that:

      ..."agreement with experiment" is not synonimous of "fundamentally correct".

      particularly because the "agreement with experiment" is done on just a very few specific measurements. As you wrote, even the epicycles were in agreement with experiment.

      I wish you all the best for the competition!

        Dear Israel,

        Very interesting, well written, and entertaining essay! You rightfully advocate the return to intuition, which is lost these days in the sea of information and theories one is required to understand (correction, to use), which grows exponentially. These days, such a return is unjustly labeled as going back to ether theories, or to classical mechanics, etc. Great physical discoveries were always first found in mental simulations, in intuition, even though they defied the "common intuitions". For example, the "dark side" of the intuition told people that the Earth is not moving, or that heavier objects fall faster etc. But the "light side" of the intuition told people like Galileo that the truth is different. As theories became deeper and deeper, more such common sense intuitions became traps, and physicists started to avoid them, by hiding behind formalisms. By this, it became customary to also reject the good intuition, to throw out the baby with the bath water. Your essay advocates the return to the good intuition.

        Best regards,

        Cristi Stoica

          You are correct Luigi,

          You are correct "agreement with experiment" should not be done. That way truth will come out. One may not get the financial benefit. People who do the manipulation of results of experiments, will grow fast, earn money, surpass others.

          best

          =snp

          Dear Israel,

          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

            Dear Dr Perez,

            Nice to see another essay which explores It remaining fundamental. Also, I'm a big fan of classical mechanics, as it still has plenty to offer in a world without a full Quantum Gravity theory. My essay also doesn't abandon It's importance.

            Nice essay - well scripted - well done!

            Antony

              Israel,

              I enjoyed reading your essay, which provides both a clear and entertaining overview of various approaches to modern physics. I particularly appreciated the conclusion that a theory that unifies GR and QM should be more intuitive and less mathematically abstract than most of the current candidates. In that regard, you might be interested in looking at my essay ( "Watching the Clock: Quantum Rotations and Relative Time" ) in which I present a locally realistic quantum picture, whereby primary quantum particles such as photons, electrons, and quarks are soliton-like rotating vector fields with quantized spin, with rotation rate f=E/h (where E is the total relativistic energy). These constitute local clocks, which slow down when E is reduced in a gravitational field, thus deriving general relativity in a simple intuitive way. This picture also avoids non-locality, indeterminacy and entanglement. Yes, this is all highly heretical, but is more logically consistent than the orthodox approaches.

              Alan

                Hi Tom

                Thanks for reading my essay and for leaving your comments. Mach's principle was not included at all in GR. This is why many people (such as J. Barbour) are trying to build a truly relational framework, perhaps you will be interested in checking Daniel Wagner's essay and references therein.

                I'm glad you had fun reading my essay I'll try to read yours asap. I wish you the best too.

                Regards

                Israel

                Hi Michel

                Nice to know you find my work interesting. Thanks for taking some time to leave your comments, I appreciate it.

                I wish you good luck too.

                Israel

                Israel,

                I have had the pleasure of reviewing your essay. Although my findings dispute your statement, "What is clear is that GR does not play a fundamental role in the realm of particles whatsoever." I truly enjoyed how you presented your argument. Excellent indeed as reflected by my rating of your masterful work!

                I hope you will be open minded enough to review my essay which show how GR plays a fundamental role in the realm of particles. I believe you will somehow find the unification of gravity with the strong, weak, and electromagnetic forces relevant to your perspective as well:

                http://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/1809

                Good luck with your entry.

                Regards,

                Manuel

                Hi Luigi and Satyavarapu

                Thanks for leaving your comments. I appreciate it very much.

                Satyavarapu:

                An experiment is not accepted in science if it's not reproducible. So, manipulation of results doesn't help reproducibility and reliability. Luigi refers to the parameters of a model that allow us to fit the model with the observations. Given that we have several parameters one can find many combinations of values that match the observations. So, the questions to answer are: what is the right set of values? and what is the physical reality involved?

                Luigi

                I have also read your essay, I have already left some words. Indeed, "common sense" is relative, that would depend on the expertise on a topic. Popper said that scientific knowledge is nothing but the refinement of vulgar knowledge. So, one can talk of common sense for the layman and common sense for the specialists.

                Good luck in the competition!

                Best regards

                Israel

                Hi Cristinel

                I'm glad you took some time to read my essay, thanks for your comments. You have opened a couple of interesting topics. Indeed, many people who don't appreciate the importance of intuition in the development of science consider those ideas as retrograde. But, you may recall that Einstein revived the notion of light as a particle. Evidently, he was a rebel. I have no doubts that many people thought that this conception of light was retrograde, nevertheless, at the end, the proposal was accepted. Thanks to this, we now believe that light presents two facets: particle and wave (this is what appears intuitively). So, as long as the proposals appear to be reasonable one should not worry about those labels.

                The other topic that you touch and that also drew my attention is the dark and light side of intuition. Many disregard intuition and common sense because they feel that they can fool us and misguide us in the search of the physical laws. Well, math is not excepted of this, there are many examples in the history of science. This is why I think it is important to find a balance between math and common sense.

                The conception that the earth was the center of the universe seems quite natural when we do not understand the notion of system of reference. For the layman of the XV century the earth appeared static. This belief is totally justified based on the knowledge of the world that people had in that time. But Copernico and Galileo taught us that this was just a matter of perspective. Galileo then brought empirical evidence from which he showed that celestial bodies were not perfect and that the earth could be a planet just as the others. These kind of arguments tells us not that intuition was wrong but that our view of the world was very narrow. A similar situation occurred with the case of heavier objects falling faster. This was "evident" to everyone given the degree of technological development that they had and given the amount of experimental evidence they could collect. They didn't have precise rulers and clocks to asses a considerable difference in the speed or acceleration of falling objects. Today, we have enough technology to immediately rule out a statement like this. Thus, based on the poor experimental data at hand, intuition was right (we have to consider also social factors, such as religious beliefs, etc. that had influence on the perception and judgement of physical phenomena). When more experimental data emerged, they realized that what they had intuitively understood, was actually incomplete and therefore they were forced to update their intuitive beliefs.

                So, intuition tells us what is going on based on the data at hand, but if we don't work intuition we will be blind resting our knowledge of the world just in mathematical structures. This is why, it is common to hear that nobody understands quantum mechanics, or proposals with eleven dimensions, a myriad of landscapes, etc. Those are mathematical results that we try to translate into intuitive language. But the truth is that, in our physical reality, intuition doesn't see any of these "mathematical objects". So, shall we blindly believe what our mathematical models are telling us of data? Of course, no. It's hard to reconciliate ourselves with such exotic proposals that easily surpass science fiction movies.

                There are those who don't care about our an intuitive picture of the world, because what matters is quantification of phenomena and, in this part, math does an excellent job. Therefore, the questions to answer are: Do we really wish to build theories to understand the world? or do we want to construct just prediction machines? The last decades seem to favor the latter option. My guess is that both are necessary.

                Well, thanks for your insightful and stimulating comments. I hope you have enjoyed this chat. I wish you good luck in the contest.

                Regards

                Israel

                Hi Manuel

                I really appreciate your comments. Definitely I'll take a look at your essay as soon as I can. I'm just arriving to the contest and there is a lot of material to see. I'm intrigue that you say that GR plays a crucial role at small scales. As I mention in my essay the final goal of physics is to find a unifying theory and if you claim that you have it, I'm open to persuasion.

                Thanks again and good luck!

                Regards

                Israel

                Dear Sreenath

                Thanks for leaving your comments and for the invitation to read your work. I'll read it as soon as possible. I just arrived to the contest and I already have a pile of essays in my list, including yours.

                I wish good luck too!

                Best Regards

                Israel

                Dear Antony

                I'm glad that you have enjoyed reading my work. I'm also looking forward to reading yours. I do indeed think is worth trying to recover an intuitive picture of the world. This will give us a new insight of physical reality.

                I wish you good luck in the contest!

                Best Regards

                Israel

                Hi Alan

                Thanks for reading my essay and leaving your comments, I'm happy that you have found it entertaining. I realized that the topic is controversial and I thought that it would be fun to invite Alice and Bob for a nice chatting.

                You: ...thus deriving general relativity in a simple intuitive way. This picture also avoids non-locality, indeterminacy and entanglement.Yes, this is all highly heretical, but is more logically consistent than the orthodox approaches.

                I'm curious about how could you derive GR. Heresy is not bad as long as the approach is logically consistent and make the right predictions. I'll definitely take a look at your work. I wish I had more time to read them all, so please give me some time, I'll take a look at it asap.

                All the best

                Israel

                Hello Dr Perez!

                It is so nice to see you take part in this contest too. I very much enjoyed reading your essay and sincerely hope it too will be a winner.

                I decided to join on the fun in a spur of a moment 2 weeks before the deadline and now, waiting for mine to show, wanted to tell you that, while I was writing this essay, I changed my mind on Absolute Ref Frame -- remember I denied it on practical grounds? Looking at SR as a theory of relativity of information, I suddenly saw that an absolute frame is a very useful, practical, concept, for we could place in it all the info that we know must be there, but is not available to us at the moment. I could not help thinking of you then.

                Good luck and have fun :)