WHY THE REAL UNIVERSE IS NOT MATHEMATICAL by Joe Fisher

Dear Joe:

I am responding to your request that I review your essay. Words, words, words, mean different things to different people, whether meant to be abstract or real. The key to look "underneath the surface" implies it is viewable, and obviously it is not.

BTW, there is some arithmetic error in my essay, it is a work in progress. But the simple approach of defining two things that exist, i.e. mass as an inscribed stable sphere within the energy of an unstable regular tetrahedron that surrounds it ...which interacts to shield mass from the surroundings. In short, surface-to-volumes of spheres and tetrahedrons differ and are at war for their existence as energy gains and losses fight with mass growths and decays, e.g., the ratio of Pressure =E/V and surface tension = E/A to produce A/V. that implies "action energy gains/losses" at small sizes or the inverse, V/A implying "action mass growth/decay".. One must always balance the other to exist or eliminates the other. Like electrons to protons... or males to females, or government to people..

Good luck to you. You are passionate about your ideas, not the usual essay.

Dear Joe

I read your essay. I seems to me, that you have a similar approach as I had 30 years ago: ''mathematics is not the most essential for physics, but the most essential is our feeling and insight of physical world.'' I do not think so anymore, math is essential for me. But not 100%. I think that the only nonmathematical element of physics is panpsichism. Mostly you can see my view in my essay. From reading essays here, for instance Maluga, Smolin, Woit etc, I make still some corrections.

One your claim is non uniqueness of physics. But, if mathematics predicted almosti all movements with a few laws, that mathematical part is not unique.

Another your claim is about surfaces ... You should also respect that two photons can interact with each other, according to QED, but very rarely. Some your claims about empty spaces seem similar as Mach principle. (Despite of General relativity it seems to me, that this still ever exists, for instance if we remove all matter from the universe, universe will not exist.)

Thus in principle I do not completely exclude all your ideas, because, I feel at you my way of thinking many years ago. But you should merge them with math.

I also do not like ideas of many physicists, that all except of math is useless in physics.

Best regards,

Janko Kokosar

Hello Joe,

Referring to your essay, it is not bad to be skeptical about assertions of others that one has no rational basis for confirming to be true or false. The world of relativity appears to deny the absolute. In using the adjective "abstract" we need to understand from what the abstraction has been separated from - matter or practice or particular examples. Similarly, in using the noun "abstract" we need to know the entity of which an abstract is the essence, a summary, an idea or a term.

We need to define what we mean by "real" before we use the term (e.g. being objective, natural, sincere, etc.) A "real" belief is not synonymous with the truth, it is merely a state of temporary acceptance pending the receipt of a more persuasive alternative. Your notion of "reality" appears to be applied solely to objective matter. Thus it cannot be applied (for example) to an idea. You use the term "real" (or reality) 158 times in your essay!

Insofar as all ideas (represented by words) exist, it is the form of such existence that is critical to qualifying as being "real". Believe it or not, the only form that God can be confirmed to exist is that of an idea.

It is inconclusive and unproductive to assert that certain ideas are "wrong" in the absence of a convincing argument to that effect - and a viable alternative.

Joe,

the boundary of a 3D object is a surface. In this point I agree with you. Of course this is the reason why we see only surfaces at the first. But at the other there is a lot of experimental evidence for three (space) dimensions. I would expect that it is part of reality too.

I'm quite sure that at the fundamental level (around Planck length) the world is 2D. But I remember on former discussions...

Torsten

Dear Lou,

Even an abstract universe could not exist prior to an abstract duo abstractly observing it.

No matter in which direction a real eye, or a working fabricated camera or radar sensor points, it will only encounter surface.

Unfortunately, all of the philosophers and physicists who have ever lived have never paid any attention to reality. If every single real thing you look at now has a real complete surface, due to the universality of the abstract law that abstractly governs the real Universe, complete surface, and only complete surface must exist whether it is observed or not.

Joe Fisher

Interesting essay Joe,

I think your writing has gotten more polished, as this one is more easily readable than past attempts. I agree entirely with a portion of your thesis. A value of zero is just as elusive and unphysical as a value of infinity. Though these numbers exist in the abstract, and though they tell us something useful when they pop out of the Math, they are not part of our physical reality - strictly speaking. Buckminster Fuller talked about equilibrium as one of those abstract things that Physics and Chemistry folks bandy about, but isn't exactly real - because real physical systems only ever approach an equilibrium state, and never quite get there. In general; physical systems live just to one side of ideal states, in a unique configuration that exists exactly once. I also agree that there are no isolated systems or objects, as isolated states live in the world of appearances, and all isolated segments are actually part of a singular and unique whole - the universe. Beyond this; I have to stretch to find areas of agreement.

I find there is broad agreement of some of your ideas with thoughts shared in Jill Bolte Taylor's book "My Stroke of Insight." She spoke of finding that there was a large area of her brain, that all along had been taking in the universe as it is, and understanding it as it really is, without having to separate things into separate bins labeled with abstract categories. Unfortunately; the event which brought her that awareness was a stroke that rendered a portion of her brain non-functional - which forcefully pushed her into the acute awareness of her right brain, most people tune out. She describes seeing the universe as one connected whole, and reality as a continuously evolving unified entity - rather than a series of discrete events and objects sequentially interacting in time. From this perspective; she was able to note that a lot of the categorizing people do is artificial, and emanates from a few isolated portions of the brain - from which we cherry pick our views of the world. Similarly; you are pointing out a portion of our awareness of what is real, that modern scholars have typically learned to tune out or marginalize.

Accordingly; I have to give you some credit for boosting our awareness of some aspects of reality we might otherwise ignore. However; there are some points of issue Joe, possibly because your unique perspective only applies completely once - for you! As to the speed of light and surfaces thing; you seem to indicate that the 'real' light is the kind that propagates along the surface of objects, and gives them simultaneous existence. In the Physics jargon; light moving along a surface is said to consist of plasmons instead of photons - so you would seem to be saying that plasmons are real while photons are not. Or perhaps you are saying that a propagation in 3-d (as photons) is only real once the light reaches a surface. But again; you seem to be saying photons are not real. This makes it tough to explain the photoelectric effect, where light liberates electricity. So my thought is that while you offer some needed perspective, Joe; the abstractions you would have people throw away offer some needed insights also. Perhaps even in a world which is unique and only happens once, there is some room for many interpretations to be valid.

All the Best,

Jonathan

Ok Joe: You have asked that I read and comment on your essay, here goesy review.

You keep begging the existence and dimension from the eye to surfaces and subsurfaces, with the objection, as I understand it, that in your reduction one can go to one dimension and abstraction. Yea this is great for philosophers, but in the real world we need to live, eat, sleep & predict to make the best of life. When we can apply a math formula and get out a car that runs, or a house that is protecting from the absence of heat, we are happy and think we have mastered the Universe. If you want to take us to the nexus of existence and the issue of reality as posed by this essay, kindly read the Einstein, Rosen, Podolsky Experiment regarding whether the cat is alive or dead following a correlated event. You will have to decide if life has something different about it and how the subspace changes. It forces you to be practical rather than philosophical. At the most minute level we don't know; at the faster than light we don't know either; at below zero we are also ignorant. However, for what we know that we can predict, Einstein and Newton were brilliant and giants intellectually. You also seem to possibly be of the philosophical persuasion that when the lights go out, the Universe disappears. If so, I cannot speak to your truth, which does come from your senses and not mine. You DO have a point, but it won't go anywhere nor work for you to advance in life, Or a deep understanding of the Universe, I think.

Mary

Dear Mr. Fisher,

I think most people, though not all, would agree with you that existence is concrete, not abstract. Most people would also agree with you that physical existence and mathematical structures are two different things. The deep question is what relationship between the two allows study of the latter to be useful in understanding the former. Would you perhaps contend that mathematics is of no use at all in physics?

Best wishes,

Laurence Hitterdale

Dear Joe,

You are right that my example of the piece of wood was based on what I believe would be the result if you actually took a real piece of wood and covered it as I described in my comment to you based on my past experience with real things and was not based on an actual experiment done at that time on real pieces of wood. I, therefore, did a real experiment with real things to see if your belief that all real surfaces travel at the same speed can be true. The real me sat on a real chair in front of and facing a real table, which was in front of a real couch. I placed a real piece of wood on the real table and pushed it away from me so that I could really just touch it when my arm was really fully extended. I then extended my arm about ½ of the way between really fully retracted and really fully extended and wrapped my real index finger around a real marble and used my real thumb to really project it away from my real hand and it came to rest on the real couch. You are right that the marble did really look a little smaller than it did when it was in my real hand, but its position relative to the real me and my real hand also appeared to have changed. To check that out I then extended my real arm all the way again and found that I could still really just touch the piece of wood on the table, so my arm's reach really remained the same. With it fully extended I really reached for the marble, but found that I really could no longer reach it. If it was actually in the same position relative to the real me and my real hand, but had only become smaller, I would still have been able to reach out and grab the real marble, but I could not because its real position relative to the real me had changed. This could also be determined because it was now really sitting on the real couch which was in a position really located farther from the real me than the real table was. I then got up from the real chair and walked over to the real couch and picked up the marble from it to prove that it actually really was on the couch and not still in the air where it had left my real hand.

The point of the real experiment is to prove that the real marble's real surface changed in position relative to the real surface of my real hand and the other real things mentioned above. Motion is just a real continual change in position in some real direction. Speed is just how fast that change of position occurs. If the surfaces of 2 real things are traveling at the same speed and in the same direction then their real positions relative to each other (the distance between them) will remain the same. If the distance between them changes, it can only be because they are not both moving at the same speed or they are not both moving in the same direction. If the change in relative position was caused by only changing the direction of the motion of the real surface of the real marble, this could be detected by projecting the real marble in different directions. When it was projected in the same direction as the motions of the real me, the real chair, the real table, the real piece of wood, and the real couch, etc. there would be no change in direction and the real marble's position relative to the other things would not change. To check this out I projected the real marble in many real different directions and its real position changed from the real me by about the same real amount in each direction. Since the real position of the real surface of the real marble did change relative to the real surfaces of the real me, chair, table, piece of wood, and couch, the real surface of the real marble could not have really been moving at the same real speed of all the other real surfaces when it was really changing position relative to those real surfaces. Since we can observe these relative changes between the real positions of many real surfaces all around us in real life, all surfaces do not move at the same real speed. Also, when the real marble was moving from my real hand to the real couch, its real sub-surface (inside) had to be moving at the same speed as its real surface (outside) toward the real couch and not slower or its real sub-surface would have broken out of the back of the real surface of the marble and would have been left behind.

Of course, you could have a different definition of the word real than its standard meanings. If so, please give me your definition, so we can be talking about the same things. It might help to also get your definition of the words abstract, surface, and sub-surface if they are defined by you differently in any way than the way I have been using them above.

I noticed that you did not answer my comment that it appears that according to how your theory is described to work, either vacuum would have to exist around surfaces or all surfaces would be in contact with something else and thereby be changed to sub-surfaces by the contact. This would effectively eliminate all surfaces from existence.

In your examples, you carefully chose observations of things that are too far away from the observer to allow them to be observed by touch, but we do have the ability built into us to observe things that are close enough to us to allow them to be touched as I have pointed out in my comment above. In addition to this, our sense of sight uses two eyes separated by a space that allows us to have a three dimensional view of the world, so that we can observe that some things that we can see are closer to us than other things. When we observe real surfaces that are in motion in relation to other surfaces around them, we can see them going behind closer surfaces and going in front of more distant surfaces. If all real surfaces move at the same speed, then they could not move in the same direction relative to each other and their surroundings and at the same time have the distance between them change.

You have the ability to look at the world differently than most people are capable of doing, however, the new and different concepts that come into your mind must always be tested by all of the observations of the real world that you can and the concepts must be in agreement with those observations. Those concepts that pass all of the observational tests can be considered valid scientific concepts. Those that don't pass them are either complete fictions or they need to be modified until they do agree with all of the observations. When you see or someone else points out to you that your concept does not completely agree with reality, you basically have three choices.

1. You can do what most do and hold onto the concept as it is and strongly talk up the places where the concept does agree with observation while at the same time ignoring and trying to distract others from seeing and exposing the places where it doesn't agree with reality. This tactic usually ultimately fails in the long run. In the few cases that it works, the result can be that scientific advancement can be held back for long periods of time. I, therefor, discourage the use of this choice.

2. You can completely throw out the concept as false and go on to look for a better concept. This can be a good strategy if the concept is shown to be completely invalid, but there is the potential that you might have almost had the right concept and a little work on it might give you the insight needed to correct it and make it work.

3. You can look at the observations that don't agree with your concept and see if modifications can be made to your concept that will bring it into complete agreement with all observations. This can not only save some valid concepts from being discarded, it can also give you insights of new concepts to look into if your current concept turns out to be uncorrectable.

In summary here are some points that you must be able to explain about the concepts that you have presented or to correct if you can't explain them, so that they agree logically internally and with external observations that I have not yet seen you present explanations of:

1. If, when a surface comes in contact with another surface, the parts of the surfaces that are in contact with each other change from being surface into being sub-surface, then vacuum or empty space must exist and be around all surfaces to allow them to continue to be surfaces. If there is no vacuum or empty space, then all surfaces are in contact with some other surface and are, therefore, no longer surfaces, but are now all sub-surfaces. This is a logical inconsistency that is internal to your concept that calls for a change in the concept to allow it to work.

2. If all surfaces travel at the same speed their relative positions would always remain the same if they are all traveling in the same direction. Those surfaces that are traveling in other directions would all have a specific speed of travel that would be dependent on their angle of travel compared to those surfaces that appear to be at rest. The greatest apparent speed would be twice the speed that all things are traveling for a surface that is traveling in the opposite direction to a surface that is traveling in the predominant direction of all other surfaces. As you change the direction of travel of that surface so that it travels closer and closer to the direction of travel of the predominate surface direction, its apparent speed would decrease until it came to a stop when it was traveling in the predominant surface direction. This would mean that all objects traveling in the same direction would travel at the same speed, so that it would be impossible for one object to pass another object that is traveling in the same direction. In reality, however, we often observe one car traveling down the road passing another car that is traveling in the same direction. When we are driving down the road in one direction, we often either pass or are passed by other cars traveling in the same direction down the road. Your concept does not agree with observed reality in this respect.

3. If all sub-surfaces traveled at a slower speed than the surfaces that surround them, they could not maintain their positions within the surface that surrounds them. They would either apply pressure to the side of the surface that was opposite to the surface's direction of travel and slow the surface down to a speed that would equal their own speed or they would be speeded up to a speed that equaled the speed of the surface, or a combination of both until their speeds were the same, or they would break out of the side of the surface that is opposite to the surface's direction of travel and be left behind. The new surface of the sub-surface that was left behind would then start to travel faster than its sub-surface and would thus leave the sub-surface behind again. This would continue until all of the sub-surface had been turned into surfaces that were internally empty of any sub-surface. Your concept does not agree with observed reality in this respect because we do not see this happen in reality.

I hope this gives you some constructive things to consider concerning your concept. Of course, you may already have considered these things and have valid answers for them in which case you can tell me about them so we can both understand your concept at the same detail level.

Sincerely,

Paul Butler

Dear Joe

I have read through your essay and agree that much of physics is abstract as opposed to the real. But abstraction is what gave power to the laws of physics! Reality has too many confusing details and aspects. Without abstract concepts like mass, speed, gravity and so on Newton's laws, for one, could not have been so effective in creating the technological miracles of the Industrial Revolution. Abstraction, however can go too far, and String Theory is a case in point.

I must admit I do not understand your concept of surface, subsurface and their constant speed. No matter, others seem to have understood. Having said that I like that you have dared to present a completely new unified way of looking physics. Much of physics needs exactly that sort of sweeping rethinking from new first principles. At any rate you are thinking about the Universe and mathematics indicates a far from decrepit mind as you claim! With very best wishes,

Vladimir

Dear Joe

I cannot follow you, what is the point that skin is not a complete surface?

Regards