Connections: Physics, Math, & the Human Brain by James Lee Hoover

James,

I saw your note on mine. Someone's trolling. Mine just dived too - I'm sure without even being read! I've just added your (rather higher!) score now, in line with my honest comments (now 4.6).

Best wishes,

Peter

Jim,

Though it took me a while to get here, it was worth the trip. We find beauty in the same mathematical structures and equations, and largely for the same reasons.

Thanks for commenting in my forum. You get my top vote, and best wishes in the competition.

Best,

Tom

Dear James,

Always glad to detect people of this audience that have faith in mathematics and QM and ability for connecting the two. I like your reference to photosynthesis and entanglement, for QM and biology I also like http://arxiv.org/abs/1310.7761

As for the physical interpretation of Euler's identity, I propose the Bloch sphere representation of the single qubit, in which the south pole |1> and e^(i*pi)|1>=-|1> are the same. In group theoretical terms, this is the two to one homomorphism of SU(2) on SO(3). Yes mathematics is the right language for nature.

What you say about DNA and maths is very challenging and interesting. May be we already have enough maths that can be used in physics and biology to interpret some paradoxes and mysteries.

Best.

Michel

Dear James,

Thank you for your positive feedback. You deserve a similar compliment. You gave me to think about Euler's identity. About chemistry and biology, I have a few ideas based on the same free group (of Grothendieck) that I use for my monstrous topic.

All the best,

Michel

Jim,

thanks for writing this essay. It contains a lot of ideas and conclusions to agree with. As you know from ym essay, I'm really interesting into the relation between the disciplines like biology, sociology, physics, math etc. Your essay covered all these question.

It reminds me on a discussion with a biophysicist about consciousness and quantum mechanics. New experiments seem to imply that quantum mechanics is needed to get consciousness and higher brain functions. You explained it also at the example of birds finding their route.

Therefore you will also get a high rate from me.

Best

Torsten

Dear Jim

I really enjoyed your well thought out and lucidly written essay. Your ideas were presented so well the essay may well have been enjoyed as an after-dinner convention lecture for a group of engineers. As you noted in your comment on my page many of our ideas overlap, for example the highlighting of the Math Brain Physics trinity, or of biological phenomena exhibiting and mediating mathematical functions.

I learned some interesting things from the essay, for example why the Euler formula converts to sine cosine curves when adding a z dimension - or about quantum coherence (entanglement) in photosynthesis - wonderful.

You stress rather too strongly the difference between mathematics and computers while one can argue that digital computation is just a mathematical 'trick' discretizing continuous functions, and utilizing logical operations that are at the base of all mathematics.

As you may know my ideas of physical reality and the theories describing it are rather at odds with what is accepted unconditionally by the physics community, particularly regarding foundational concepts of quantum mechanics. Interpreted from the realism of my Beautiful Universe theory, Bell's Theorem appears as an unnecessary obfuscation of simple transfer of angular momentum across space with the local, causal and realistic interactions of the ether nodes acting like a slippery 'gear train'. Please read Edwin Eugene Klingman's essay debunking Bell.

In a similar vein I also highlight that mathematics, as a product of the mind, can be tricky, supporting multiple scenarios of the same phenomena, whilst physical reality should only have one. Hmmmm.

With best wishes

Vladimir

Dear James,

Can you explain "The cat map reminds me of machinations of Euler's Identity" ? Before I passed to QM I worked a lot on chaos in relation to the understanding of 1/f noise that I finally saw as number theory in experiments. Thanks to you, this year, I realized that Euler's identity has to be kept in mind in relation to the Bloch sphere. As Riemann sphere R is just another representation (a la Felix Klein) of the Bloch sphere, Euler's identity also has a meaning in this context. I just gave a reference on Zivlak's blog. My today favorite objects correspond to three punctures on R or other Riemann surfaces with genus (dessins d'enfants). I spent some time seing them as the molecules of chemistry and biology with moderate success until now (unpublished work).

Cheers,

Michel

ps/ I also rated your work highly a few day ago following our interaction.

Dear James,

Thanks for your note.

There is a blog at the Mathematics Stack Exchange under the title "Euler's identity: why is the e in e^ix? What if it were some other constant like 2^ix?" reminding that a^ix is a logarithmic spiral.

Myself, at the moment, I start from the Riemann sphere R= Complex numbers union infinity as a way to approach the multivaluedness of mathematical knowledge following the giants: Henri Poincaré, Felix Klein and Alexandre Grothendieck. There is the online book by Lando and Zwonkin "Graphs on surfaces and their applications" (2004) where many aspects of this subject are explained. You may be interested to read it.

Best,

Michel

Dear James Lee Hoover,

I thought that your engrossing essay was exceptionally well written and I do hope that it fares well in the competition.

I think Newton was wrong about abstract gravity; Einstein was wrong about abstract space/time, and Hawking was wrong about the explosive capability of NOTHING.

All I ask is that you give my essay WHY THE REAL UNIVERSE IS NOT MATHEMATICAL a fair reading and that you allow me to answer any objections you may leave in my comment box about it.

Joe Fisher

Dear James L. Hoover

I see that you deepen in quantum biology. It is necessary to mention that theory of quantum smell of Luca Turin exist also. Besides, a presumption exists also, that number of four base pairs in DNA is a consequence of quantum mechanics. Quantum photosyntesis or quantum smell was already confirmed with a sure result of experiment, I do not know which one. What do you think about Tegmark's proof, that quantum consciousness does not exist. Do you think that Tegmark's proof is still valid?

When it will be proven, that consciousness is a quantum phenomenon, the model for it still ever will be necessary. One model is written by me. But it is speculatively, how quantum consciousness changes randomness of quantum measurement. Thus, it is a speculation, that spin 1 of photon can happen more frequently that spin -1. But, Slvain Poirer claims in his essay that he read articles which claims this.

You really gave interestion Euler's formula.

But, I do not believe that your mentioned telescope will observe antigalaxies. Namely, in Feynman's ''Lectures On Gravitation'' it is proved that antimatter moves in gravitational field on the same way as the common matter. I hope that experiment in CERN will show, how it is with this.

My essay

Best regards

Janko Kokosar

Hi Jim,

As I promised in my Essay web-page, I have read your nice Essay. Here is a couple of comments:

1) I see that you claim that "With the Santilli telescope, the first detection of anti-matter galaxies occurred, utilizing a new isodual mathematics". I am not sure be this. In fact, on one hand, Santilli's conception of anti-matter is different than the common one as he claims that anti-matter has negative mass (and this violates CPT theorem and Lorentz invariance as consequence). On the other hand, assuming that anti-matter galaxies exist, we should see the night sky completely filled by gamma rays, which we obviously do not see. Assuming the existence of anti-matter galaxies implies indeed also the inter-galactic medium to be filled of anti-particles in addition to particles.

2) I am fascinated by the Eulero identity. I recently found a connection on it in my research on black holes. I was thinking to write my Essay on this issue, but, at the end, I preferred to wrote my Essay on Mossbauer experiment as new proof of general relativity.

In any case, the reading of your pretty Essay was very interesting and enjoyable for me. Thus, I am going to give you an high score.

I wish you best luck in the Contest.

Cheers, Ch.

Dear Jim,

Thanks for the point you raised in my FQXi page. It permits indeed to clarify my position with Santilli also here in FQXi. Santilli is indeed considered a crackpot and a crank by the Scientific Community, see here. Differently from this general judgement, I think that there are parts of Santilli's research which should deserve a better attention, in particular Santilli's research on new clean energies. In fact, my general opinion is that although the 98% of the work of a researcher can be, in principle, wrong, it is a good thing to save the remaining 2%. This is the criteria on which I judge the research work, not only of Santilli, but of every researcher. But there are various other issues of Santilli's research on which I completely disagree. In particular, I completely disagree with Santilli's visions of astrophysics, gravitation and cosmology. I collaborated with Santilli in the recent past, but I ultimately ended my collaboration with Santilli and his running dogs this year. My collaboration with Santilli started to fall into crisis during a Greek Conference in September 2015. In that Conference, I criticized Santilli's stuff on antimatter, gravitation and cosmology. I am indeed very tired, bored and irritated in listening wrong claims as "general relativity is wrong" and/or "Hubble's law establishes that the cosmological redshift is the same for all galaxies having the same distance from Earth in all directions in space. Consequently, the conjectures on the expansion of the universe, the acceleration of the expansion and the big bang necessarily imply a return to the Middle Ages with Earth at the center of the universe". The last statements on the lack of the expansion of the universe can be easily dismissed with the simple example of the similarity between the expanding Universe and the expanding surface of a balloon... I also add that Santilli does not understand he difference between tensors and pseudo-tensor when he claims that general relativity is wrong, see here. I clarified that, although I think that part of Santilli research work should deserve a better attention by the scientific community, particularly what concerns the research of new clean energies, this does not mean that I agree with all Santilli's claims. In particular, I completely disagree with his claims on gravitation astrophysics and cosmology, which are completely wrong. After that issue, the Santilli Foundation started to reduce my salary and I was attacked various times by Santilli's servants (which I suspect to be mere sockpuppets...). It seems that the slaves do not permit their messiah to be criticized... Thus, I ultimately stopped to organize any conference activity for them. They also asked me to write papers criticizing Santilli's stuff on gravitation and cosmology. Thus, I decided to satisfy them by writing a strong rebuttal against those wrong claims. But I will not submit it in the American Journal of Modern Physics Special Issue that they are organizing. I will write a very strong paper in a serious journal which will show that Santilli's stuff on general relativity and cosmology is completely wrong.

Concerning the report that you cited, its author,i.e. Pamela Fleming is one of Santilli's slaves, a crackpot and ignorant woman who claims that Santilli is the Messiah of science and that people who criticize him are corrupted and/or criminal. On the other hand, S. Beghella-Bartoli from Italy, P. M. Bhujbal from India, and A. Nas from the U.S.A., who should be "the scientists having independently confirmed the first detection in history of antimatter galaxies, antimatter cosmic rays and antimatter asteroids achieved by Santilli" are three collaborators of Santilli. In my personal opinon, Santilli did not detected antimatter galaxies, antimatter cosmic rays and antimatter asteroids while Beghella-Bartoli, Bhujbal and Nas confirmed nothing.

Cheers, Ch.

Dear Jim,

Thank you once again for the comments you left on my essay's page. Yours is certainly a very eclectic essay that touches on many points of contact between mathematics and science. Like you, I find Euler's identity absolutely fascinating, and I wish you good luck in the contest!

Marc

P.S. I am glad Christian Corda (in the thread above) put in perspective Santilli's strange claim of "antimatter galaxies" that you refered to in your essay. It did seem quite peculiar, and indeed it was!

That **** auto-log-off issue again! The previous post was mine! :)

Dear Jim,

Your easy to read essay has a nice collection of thoughts and observations, ranging from Euler's identity to quantum biology. It was nice to see the reference to Khalili's book on quantum biology, which we have enjoyed reading. From the little that we know, the case for quantum entanglement is good in magneto reception and the avian compass; whereas when it comes to photosynthesis, we have of late witnessed skepticism and assertions that the case for entanglement has been overplayed.

You made one statement namely that imaginary numbers appear in quantum theory because there are things in the theory which are hard to imagine. We cannot agree with this Jim! :-) imaginary numbers have a very concrete and well defined role in the theory, without which it would be impossible to formulate the theory. We trace their origin in the theory to the discrete relation between energy and frequency.

You might have already seen this...the book Where mathematics comes from? by Lakoff and Nunez has a very nice discussion of the cognitive origin of the Euler identity.

And Jim we do not seem to find in your essay an explanation for the central question as to why mathematics is so successfully employed in physics. Wonder what your thoughts on this are.

Thank you for an enjoyable read, and with kind regards,

Anshu, Tejinder

Many thanks Jim, for responding on our page, to our post above.

Anshu, Tejinder

Thank you for reading my essay, in a sea of essays.

I read your essay some weeks ago, like everyone else, and I reread it.

I understand the possibility of black hole of antimatter, or antimatter planets, but it seem unlikely the existence of galaxy of antimatter; anyway I don't understand the difference of a photon from antimatter, and a photon from matter, so that it seem that the Santilli's telescope is an extravagance.

The Euler's identity is a bridge between different branches of mathematics, so similar to the Einstein field equations that condense centuries of theory in a simple, and beautiful, equation.

I don't know if the Turing completeness can be applied to the brain-computer equivalence, so that a brain of an elementary organism can be simulated by a usual computer (and in a next time a classical supercomputer could simulate parts of human brain), but it seem possible.

The analogy between mathematics and poetry is perfect; there is pure invention, without restriction except in the composition rules.

I write an essay in a reversing the order of the propositions, so that I try a Wittgenstein's numbering to play with the readers (a citation), and to point out that human knowledge has not a single time evolution, but many possible.

Domenico

Dear Jim,

Thank you for an interesting essay. I will never look at the Euler Identity in the same way.

All the best,

Noson Yanofsky