Dear Demond, thanks for your attention to our essay.
A part of it is to show that "self-evident, self-explanatory, and independent of any other supportive methods" unified theory (taking "theory" in scientific sense) cannot exist.
Regards,
Alexey Burov.
Dear Sujatha,
In a sense, this is true :)
I am taking the fundamental science as the most fundamental fact.
Thanks for your wit remark!
Alexey.
Dear Alexey and Lev,
I read with great interest your essay. I think we are going in the same direction. You write and bring important conclusion A.Vilenkin: "Because the logical structure of our universe can not be explained by chaos, and because it can not explain itself, we are left with only one possible explanation remaining, that it was conceived and realized by a mind. A. Vilenkin prefers to formulate this apparently inevitable conclusion about the cosmic Mind as a question: "... the laws should be" there "even prior to the universe itself. Does this mean that the laws are not mere descriptions of reality and can have an independent existence of their own? In the absence of space, time and matter, what tablets could they be written upon? The laws are expressed in the form of mathematical equations. If the medium of mathematics is the mind, does this mean that mind should predate the universe? "
As for the "Penrose triangle", I believe that his model of "three worlds" - a splitting of the triune world. Cosmogony of Pythagoras as the unity of the "limit" and "infinite" (thesis and antithesis) give access to the three-pronged synthetic structure, based on the absolute state of matter. The concept of "structure" in Russian - a structure that is «s-troe-nie», give a direct hint to build generating structure of the Universe as a "three in one", the measure of being whole, primordial structure of harmony generating "unity" and "plurality".
Kind regards,
Vladimir
Dear Vladimir,
thank you for your interest and good words in the address of our essay.
In fact, Vilenkin expressed the old Platonic vision, the realism. Then Linde questioned about a possibility for the laws, with all their simplicity/elegance, still to be anthropically selected. What we tried to show in our essay, is that this Linde hypothesis by no means can be true. For that, we counted those orders of magnitude gap between the anthropic requirements and the accuracy of the elegant laws of nature.
The Penrose Triunity is a good idea to contemplate about possibility of burbakian "La Structure mere". Apparently, they are not compatible, are they?
Dear Dr. Burov,
your philosophical essay is so full of good ideas that it is easy to loose track of them. It would have helped if you added some examples where math has led physics astray.
Your descriptions of Pythagorean truth are excellent. No wonder that the Pythagoreans were for hundreds of years a secret society that had to meet in lonely caves.
Please continue your quest for truth
Best
Lutz
Dear Lutz,
Thank you for your encouraging words in our address! Your suggestion to "add some examples where math has led physics astray" could give a new extremely interesting essay. At the moment, I'd like to mention just one important case in this respect. Perhaps, you know this story, but still I wish to mention it here for the sake of your wonderful question.
Copernicus was convinced that the planet orbits must be nothing but circles, as the most perfect, most symmetric among figures, corresponding to the symmetry of the Sun's attraction. The idea was beautiful, reasonable,--and still wrong. As a result, Copernicus was forced to introduce his own epicycles, and his heliocentric system was not as beautiful as he expected. Most likely that was why he held over with the publication. It required a genius of Kepler to solve this problem and to prove the heliocentric idea is correct. This was one of the most dramatic moments in the history of science, I am sure. Seeing the failure of Copernicus, Kepler still believed in the beautiful mathematics underlying the world. As well as Copernicus, he was Pythagorean/Platonic, but his field of search of the mathematical beauty in the sky was wider, and he was heavenly rewarded!
Many thanks and all the best,
Alexey Burov.
Okkam's razor has to be very sharp. But I am sure that the unified basis of knowledge can be constructed only on the simplest triangle is "a heavenly triangle" of Plato which sum of invariants represent both structures of the physical world and mathematical structures ("les stuctures mere"), modern and future, still the unknown.
Dear Alexey,
You avoid mentioning anything about reality as well.
Regards,
Joe Fisher
Dear Alexey and Lev,
As I noted in a reply to a statement about my essay, The Geometric Core of Spacetime, various mathematical types were created to solve a problem. We do not know which problem many of them were originally developed to solve, but this is not mysterious, we simply have incomplete information.
My essay is about simple geometry and how it can be used to identify specific characteristics of a physical law. You were much bolder in your title stating we have a Pythagorean Universe. I cannot prove that we have a Pythagorean Universe, but I did demonstrate a Pythagorean link to one of the physical laws of the universe.
What is mysterious is that our essays are juxtapositioned next to each other, as though they were meant to support each other.
Alexey and Lev -
Thanks for the excellent essay! I was delighted to read a strong defense against the prevailing metaphysical winds of physicalism and reductionism so evident in most essays. I, too, find mathematical order to be a fundamental organizing principle quite apart from the action of the physical world itself. Moreover, those positions cannot address what I refer to as "The Hole at the Center of Creation" - only consciousness and purpose can provide the answer. As you say: "Since the laws of our universe are not picked randomly, they can only be purposefully chosen."
Thanks for a great essay and good luck in the contest. - George Gantz
Dear George,
It's delightful to get so inspirational response as yours! Scientism, a deadly shadow of science, is indeed so prevalent in this contest, that it makes a special pleasure to be recognized by a likeminded thinker. Good luck to you too, dear friend!
Alexey.
Dear Frank,
Thank you for your comment. I have read your essay. What we mean by our universe being Pythagorean is reflected in "Starting with Pythagoras, it was a matter of faith for sparse groups of few people and lonely individuals that 'fundamental laws of nature are described by beautiful equations.'"
It's not the fact that the laws of nature are expressed by mathematics that's most mysterious, but that they're "rather simple in presentation and extremely rich in consequences," and that the Pythagoreans somehow knew that!
I do not see what would be a thought, the mental world, in that sort of basis of knowledge, Vladimir. Don't you consider a creative thought as a mathematical structure or physical phenomenon, do you?
Alexey! When you build a primordial generating structure, then the question arises: what it holds? This ontological (structural, cosmic) memory. Matter is that from which everything is born, and the ontological (structural) memory is what gives rise to all. Ontological (structural) memory - the measure of being of the whole, "the soul of matter", qualitative quality of the absolute forms of existence of matter (absolute states). Ontological (structural, cosmic) memory - the core of the world picture of Information age.
Vladimir, if I understand you correctly, you are following Plato's vision that the new knowledge is in fact nothing else but reproduction of what atemporally is in the "ontological (structural, cosmic) memory." Is it correct?
Yes, Alexey, such an interpretation is possible. But it's not just new knowledge. The main thing is the process of generating new material structures in Nature. Ontological (structural) memory - something that generates, keeps, maintains and develops. It permeates all levels of Universum. Remember the "Matter and Memory" Bergson. But Bergson's a lot of psychology and little ontology and no dialectic, at least in the spirit of Cusa - "coincidence of opposites." In fundamental physics and cosmology must enter ontological standard along with an empirical justification.
Dear Alexey and Lev,
Congratulations ! I found your essay to be among the few best in this contest. I already rated it 10 last week (but did not take the time to comment it then). I find it terrible to see that the best essays get so low rates, while nonsensical ones are rated among the highest, because the majority of authors here giving ratings are ignorant about science and the wonders of physical theories and they will only approve views that please their ignorance.
Please don't give these materialists the honor of having their position called "Scientism", as if their attitude was anyhow a scientific one. I just wrote an exposition of the conflict of ideologies in this contest, where I classify you among scientists, and the materialists in the opposite category of obscurantists. I also put there a list of essays I found most interesting, so as to help the authors of intelligent essays to find each other.
You are welcome to comment here my page, so that we can reach a sort of agreed view, such as completing the list of best essays (I will keep exploring essays, so I may update this list later).
Dear Sylvain,
Thank you for your high esteem of our submission.
I'd like to present a somewhat different point of view on the usage of the term scientism. It was coined by Hayek and defined as a misapplication of the scientific paradigm toward humanities. Later the definition was broadened to an absolutization of science to be the most fundamental knowledge. This absolutization can not be scientific because the claim that "science is the the most fundamental knowledge" is no longer a scientific but a metaphysical one.
In this manner, scientism is no longer a scientific attitude, to use your phrase, but a "deadly shadow of science," to use Alexey's. Seen this way, it doesn't seem to matter whether one is an accomplished scientist or someone who can't prove the Pythagorean theorem; as long as one is convinced of the omnipotence of a scientific explanation, one is under the irrational spell of our scientistic zeitgeist.
Alexey has made a series of lectures devoted to the subject, titled Faith of Fundamental Science, which I think you could appreciate. I recommend watching the latest one: Value of Fundamental Science, which is a sort of summary of scientism and that which it is a shadow of.
Thanks also for your careful review and organization of the other essays, it will certainly help us not to miss the important ones, including yours.
Lev
About this use of the term "scientism", I want to distinguish between what a term should mean, i.e. when it is the best term to name a real concept that deserves to be considered, vs. what it may accidentally happen to mean at a given time, due to its misuse.
Actually, while I consider consciousness as fundamentally non-algorithmic, I still consider the scientific method (as inspired from my familiarity with maths and physics) to be relevant to some parts of humanities, but of course, just like in maths and physics, a great care is needed to avoid any misapplication. It is possible that some claims of applications happened in a misguided manner, which could lead to the general rejection of any try to do so under a label of "Scientism" which thus became pejorative. I'm sorry that I did not actually look at what such attempts could be. What I know of course is that the "skeptic" movement with its materialistic prejudices (Committee for Skeptical Inquiry) has badly misrepresented science, with its methods and views that claimed to be scientific but actually weren't.
But my concern is not to claim or deny in the abstract any abstract claim such as "science is the the most fundamental knowledge", but to go to effectively do my own rational exploration of a number of issues of humanity's problems, and I consider that I had some success in rationally understanding a number of human problems and possible solutions, including with the use of some mathematical concepts.
For example you can look at all the elements of rational analysis which I exercised in my philosophical sites of criticism of religion and some social injustice, as well as how to built optimal online political and monetary systems, and humanity's failures to steer the future properly. I even see some mathematical concepts needed for the optimal design of an online dating system to be included in my project of decentralized online social network.
So I reach a concrete version of the claim, that is "Can it be efficient to use rational intelligence to understand some crucial problems and solutions about psychological, economic or political issues" that is no more a metaphysical claim but a genuinely scientific claim that can be directly verified by the experience of succeeding in such investigations.
I'm sorry I cannot watch any videos now, do you have any text version ?
All right I just read your slides "Value of Fundamental Science" and I noticed that you have nothing to say here beyond what I'm used to : all your opposition to "scientism" remains contained in the bubble of obscurantist Christian propaganda which you just blindly admitted, without any care of reality check. That is, pretty much what I would classify in the category "Religion" of my table, thus in the column of obscurantism. Do you not know how terrible can be this Christian anti-scientism propaganda that can even turn physicists into idiots ?
To understand what is wrong with this propaganda, I would recommend, first my criticism of essentialism, then, well, much of my anti-spirituality site, but also things by other authors, I would particularly recommend Fundamental misconceptions of science and Greta Christina's Atheists and anger article and video. Would you also ignore that science refuted the Biblical story ?
