Physics Suffers from Unwarranted Interpretations by Eckard Blumschein

Yo put the same question to Tom Phipps. I largely agree with his answer with a few caveats.

Quote: "I do not have any particular religion of my own. That would partly close my mind, which I prefer to keep open. I do, however, have a sort of frankly irrational suspicion -- which is akin to faith -- that when we understand the fundamental ways in which nature works we shall be far more stunned, shocked, amazed than even the lyricists, poets, etc. have it in their power to imagine." Unquote.

Reasoning tells me that irrational analogy between e.g. Nemzov and Jean Jaurès is hopefully unwarranted.

Does nature "work" at all in the same sense as do humans? I would rather postulate causality.

At least I don't feel stunned, shocked or amazed by getting aware that primitive amimals/humans/religions tend to behave irrational as do rabbits, as if unlimited growth was feasible.

When Alfred Nobel did love poetry, this attitude helped him to envision the only rational road to peace.

Because, I did never before hear of Little Jack Horner and Henry David Thoreaut, I prefer more directly understandable arguments in a scientific discussion among unspecialized participants.

Kind regards, Eckard

Dear Vladimir,

Your essay guided me to an "Ontology of Mathematical Discourse" by G Gunter in Russian language. Chapter 2 deals with "Interpretation of Existence in Mathematics" and lists concepts by G. Cantor, by Brauer, and by Hilbert. Cantor mentioned the TND. As usual, I cannot accept his ideas, and I prefer reading at best his original papers in German which is difficult enough for me.

I looked in vain for Brauer in the bibliography. Perhaps Richard Brauer (1901-1977) is meant. Can you please confirm this?

Yours faithfully,

Eckard

Dear Vladimir,

Thank you for revealing my mistake. When I read "Brauer" I was mislead. Brauer is a frequent German name and means brewer (of beer). Brouwer means the same in Dutch and is indeed pronounced almost like Brauer. If I didn't skip reading the text then I should quickly have realized that Brauer meant Brouwer. While I wondered how Richard Brauer relates to the matter, Brouwer makes more sense.

Kind regards,

Eckard

Dear Professor Kayser,

While I appreciate confirming comments like yours, I am even more grateful for frankly uttered criticism. Maybe, you mistook me "helping the relativists defending their ideology." I neither intended to do so nor do I agree with your lecturing: "Newton was perfect in insisting on absolute velocities with reference to space."

I am distinguishing by capitalizing the ideology Relativity from relativity as understood by Galileo. The latter did also not refer to absolute space. Given Virgo cluster and CMBR were absolutely at rest, do you imagine velocities of light toward and away from this reference differing accordingly?

In endnotes of an earlier essay of mine I explained my interpretation of constant velocity: Distance between the location of emission at the moment of emission and the location of arrival at the moment of arrival divided by the time from emission to arrival. Even if the locations may change, this distance does neither depend on the movement of light with respect to a hypothetical medium attributed to space nor on the movement of its emitter or receiver wrt a reference location. Wasn't Newton wrong?

I didn't say that the use of singularities in mathematics is mindless. I merely criticize unwarranted interpretations in terms of reality. And yes, I omitted hints to further belonging implications. Average experts have already to swallow a lot and may then get proud of revealing some implications for their own.

We certainly agree with Thomas Phipps on that the wrong expectation and interpretation of Michelson's Potsdam/Cleveland experiment led away from the correct Maxwell-Hertz equations to the corrected (in the sense of spoiled) Maxwell's equations. Perhaps you are right in that Heaviside is to blame for the "correction". I just vaguely recall that Gibbs arrived at the same equations.

When I referred to Heaviside's trick I dealt with a different matter which I consider to have most serious consequences too.

Not even you seem to accept what I meant when I criticized Dedekind's mutilation of the notion number and belonging "not even wrong" interpretations.

All the best,

Eckard

Dear Lutz,

You asked: "Who has invented symmetrical relativity the first time? Was it Poincare?"

In my previous essay "Peace via Discoveries and Inventions", I expressed between the lines that I see both Henry and Raymond Poincaré tragic historic figures. Science and mankind, respectively, payed high prices for their successes.

Henry P. admired Lorentz and did not just coin the term Lorentz transformation. He also introduced the notion relativity and suggested x^2+y^2+z^2+(ict)^2 already in 1904, i.e. before Einstein's Relativity and Minkowski's spacetime.

We agree at least with Phipps on that unwarranted expectation and interpretation of Michelson's 1881/87 experiment implied Heaviside's variant of Maxwell's equations. The same misinterpretation caused FitzGerald and Lorentz to fabricate length contraction.

Looking for origins of the abstruse symmetry between past and future time, I delved into some much earlier made mistakes concerning how mathematics was founded and interpreted. So far I am not in position to at least skim through all essays. I merely got aware of Akinbo Ojo and Giovanni Prisinzano who dealt with related enigma.

Thank you for the request.

Best,

Eckard

Dear Lutz,

While I did never mention "Minkovski space-time bubble", and I am not at all focused on Einstein, I felt indeed forced to find out what went wrong. You might find elements of my investigation in all essays of mine. Initially I didn't even trust in Michelson's null result because I was trained to describe light like a wave within a medium like air.

Meanwhile I tend to agree with Leibniz on that space is just mutual distances without a naturally preferred point of reference. Imagine as a metaphor an empty white sheet of paper. Although it is white, any point on it refers to its boundaries. Acoustic waves refer to their medium. If space is not a medium and unbounded then the null result was to be expected, and all speculation by Lorentz, Poincarè, Einstein, etc. is unwarranted.

I quote from Mückenheim's booklet: Mathematician Nikolaus Cusanus (1401-1464) "The universe is endless. Therefore it has no center. It looks the same from any side." You caused me to find out that mathematician Mikolaj Kopernik (1473-1543) was caused by the church to deal with the calendar.

Those who are arguing that Einstein's Relativity corresponds to Maxwell's equations are perhaps mathematically correct. However, they ignore that the version by Heaviside (and also by Gibbs?) has been adapted to an unwarranted expectation and interpretation, as I learned from Phipps.

Thank you for offering your paper. I am shying back from signing up. To me, length contraction, Relativity and spacetime are anyway not trustworthy anymore.

Best,

Eckard

I should add that Phipps' arguments have not been considered by opponents of Relativity but not of relativity, e.g. van Flandern and Selleri. For my distinction between R and r see my not shown post.

Eckard

Hi William Amos,

I noticed that you followed the instructions given by fqxi and the formulation of the topic almost as closely as did Noson Yanofsky with perhaps more success in the contest. I don't agree with those like Yanofsky who consider symmetry a mystic basic principle behind physics. My essays intend to reveal the reasons, not just the historical but also the logical ones, that led to such unwarranted belief.

What about reality vs. interpretation, as an old engineer, I consider the conjecture of reproducibly confirmed and logically consistent reality in contrast to mere imagination a reasonable distinction.

Best of luck in your life,

Eckard

My reply to Matt Visser tries to once again explain my suspicion that theoretical physics might use complex calculus not as proper as required.

Dear Matt,

You got me and perhaps may essay repeatedly wrong. I am not David Garfinkle, and I hope you will not go on getting me wrong concerning complex calculus. While complex calculus is an application of complex numbers, theorists like you tend to be not aware of a few trivial trifles:

You are guessing that what you called an algebraic field extends the real numbers in the sense it offers additional freedom. Actually, the description of a physical quantity in complex domain is subject to Hermitean symmetry which means, it doesn't convey more essential information as compared with the unilateral and real-valued original function; let's say of either elapsed or future time. Future processes cannot be measured, past processes cannot be prepared.

Certainly you preferred what I consider the risky habit of introducing a physical quantity within complex domain.

In other words, when writing exp(i theta) instead of cos(theta) you are omitting i sin(theta).

A simple objection against this habit is that it implies an arbitrary and therefore unwarranted and often ambiguous choice of the sign of rotation.

When someone like Schrödinger applied complex calculus on a real-valued function of elapsed time (extending from -oo to 0), he applied as do I Heaviside's trick in order to prepare it for the integration (from -oo to +oo) required by Fourier transformation. In a first step, zeros are attributed to the not yet existing future. The now zero-valued future part is then split into a positive and a negative mirror picture of the originally unilateral function. This creates multiple but necessary redundancies: an even and an odd component, both extending from -oo to +oo. The third step, Fourier transformation into complex domain leads to the mentioned symmetries of real part and imaginary part. An original function of time mutates into complex functions of positive and negative frequency (from -oo to +oo). A function of frequency in original domain gets the so called analytic signal, i.e. two complex symmetrical functions of past and future. So far nothing is wrong. We may benefit from complex calculus in either complex frequency or complex time domain. If no seemingly redundant component was omitted and not just the inverse Fourier transformation but also the inversion of preparing operations were properly performed, we safely arrive back in the original unilateral domain.

Schrödinger's original communications, in particular his 4th reveal the way he speculatively introduced the complex wave function as a trick to reduce the degree of equation from four to two.

Perhaps not just Dirac ignored that elapsed as well as future time are always positive too when he argued that frequency (and the Hamiltonian) must always be positive. Weyl confessed: So far there is no explanation in sight for the [mirror] symmetry of time in quantum physics. The envisioned symmetry of almost all fundamental particles with their antiparticles was not found.

There was something that puzzled me for a while when I compared cosine transformation in IR+ with Fourier transformation in IR and questioned the unavoidability of ih. Heisenberg's matrices seem to confirm the necessity of complex calculus in Schrödinger's picture. Meanwhile I understand that Heisenberg's square matrices also correspond to Hermitean symmetry in IR. A real-valued alternative corresponds to (triangular) half-matrices with elements only above or only below the diagonal which may reflect the border between past and future.

Accordingly I felt not just forced to criticize Einstein's imprecise wording "past, present, and future" but also to reintroduce Euclid's notion number as a measure, not a pebble.

Concerning ict, cf. the essay by Phipps.

Matt, I agree with your statement: "If a well-developed branch of pure mathematics turns out to have some use in the natural sciences, then the natural scientists will quickly appropriate that strain of pure mathematics and turn it into applied mathematics..." Yes, G. Cantor's well-developed cardinalities in excess of aleph_1 didn't turn out to have some use in the natural sciences.

Regards, Eckard Blumschein

P.S.: Michael Studencki, I apologize for hurting you. Read my essay(s), and you will find why I reinstate Euclid's notion of number based on the measure one, not on a pebble a la Hausdorff. So far, I did not yet read your bio and also not your essay. I consider Relativity and the belonging held for real spacetime in contrast to reasonable relativity not as harmless as you seems to describe it.

In Germany we have a proverb "sitting between the chairs". Maybe, the truth concerning Relativity/relativity sits likewise between academic pros and cons.

Let's benefit from comparisons; this is Robert McEachern's comment on my essay:

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Quote/ Eckard, I think the title of your essay hits the nail on the head. It is indeed the unwarranted interpretations, slapped onto the equations of mathematical physics, that cause all the problems in understanding the nature of reality.

Where we differ, seems to be that you believe that avoiding the usage of particular mathematical techniques, will solve the problem, whereas I believe that the problem is that mathematical identities have no unique one-to-one physical identity. For example, the statement:a(b+c) = ab+ac, is a mathematical identity, but not a physical identity. The left-hand-side requires one multiplier to construct it physically. But the other side requires two. Another example, pertaining to hearing, is: sin(a)+sin(b)=2sin(0.5[a+b])cos(0.5[a-b])

From this math identity, one might suppose that one could CHOSE to perceptually hear EITHER a superposition (sum) of two tones, or an amplitude modulated single tone (beats). But one CANNOT do that; depending on the frequency separation of the tones, one always perceives one form of the identity, but never the other. The math identity is not a physical identity. Thus, different physical identities, different physical realities, cannot be entirely described by mathematical identities. This is the ultimate reason why entirely different physical "interpretations", can be slapped onto mathematically identical equations. The same thing happens with the Fourier Transforms (and hence superpositions and wave-functions), at the heart of Quantum Mechanics. Physicists remain blissfully ignorant of the fact that Fourier Transforms are mathematically identical to filter banks, not just superpositions of wave-functions. The filter-bank "interpretation" completely eliminates the very existence of wave-functions, and consequently, all the nonsense about wave-function collapse and mysterious superpositions etc.

In both the hearing and QM cases, the cause of the difference between the math and the physical, is the "amplitude detection" of the filter-bank signals being described by the math. /Unquote

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I rather see various unwarranted interpretations. I begun with the interpretation of the notion number, and I omitted e.g. what I consider the misinterpretation of Michelson's 1881/87 null results, see Phipps.

No, I don't focus on a single problem. I collected a treasure of paradoxes from set theory to Special Relativity and beyond on the one hand and sound hints to ways out on the other hand. I never agreed with those who suggested a bijection between reality and abstraction and even ascribed singular points to reality.

What about mathematical identity, could it be you got me wrong? When I revealed time symmetry just an artifact due to careless use of complex calculus, I criticized the confusion between mathematical identities and the TRANSFORMATION into an arbitrarily chosen fictitious complex domain; translation from there back to the adequate immediate picture in real domain is a must.

As you know, I claimed elsewhere to understand hearing not just as formally as do you in terms of Fourier transformation and filter banks but from a more natural physiological perspective with restriction only to already existing data (IR+). If you will read my essay carefully, you will not just find your excellent previous essay quoted; you might also stumble about my seriously meant characterization of functions as unrealistic if they are thought to extend in time from -oo to +oo.

Best,

Eckard

Dear Giovanni,

Let me first try and answer your question. Mister moon was imagined male, lady Luna female; this more or less ideal model of a pretty old point mass in space is not the only one that was repeatedly changed, corrected, explored, and even exploited.

What about rational vs. real numbers, I largely agree with G. Cantor on that rational numbers are discrete, i.e. numerically distinguishable. Real numbers are not altogether numerically distinguishable. Stiefel spoke of a fog, Weyl of a the sauce of continuum. While I would with pleasure call this continuum of real numbers the mathematical one, set theory occupied and mystified the notion mathematical continuum. Therefore I am calling the continuum of the liquid of measures the Peirce continuum or the logical one, something every part of which has parts.

Are there spacial and temporal continua? The attribution of continuity to space or time is reasonable guesswork. I see a more serious problem in the persistently denied fact that elapsed and future times denote essentially different scales. That's why I see spacetime belonging to speculation and Phipps providing light at the end of the tunnel.

With right line you did perhaps mean straight line?

Thank you very much for your good wishes,

Eckard

Dear Joe Fisher,

My essay does neither address gravity nor Hawking. What about spacetime, I prefer attributing it to Poincaré 1904 and Minkowski, and I see its root in a unwarranted guess by Maxwell, Michelson, Lorentz, and others, cf. Phipps. I don't guess that we need dealing e.g. with the GZK paradox in order to question SR.

I agree with you on that reality "is not mathematical". In particular modern mathematics lost connection to common sense.

I am arguing that there is an ignored paradox: Mathematics putatively demands using complex Fourier transformation for frequency analysis, i.e. integration over time from -oo to +oo. Perhaps one must be self-taught like you, just a user of MP3, or a physiologist in order to admit that a real-valued cosine transformation, i.e. integration only over elapsed time, yields the same result except for an unnecessary arbitrarily chosen reference.

I enjoy Leifer's cut between useful and in principle aviodable mathematics.

Eckard Blumschein