Dear Erwin Phipps,

I agree with you: 'mathematical concepts' masquerade as 'physical concepts', and this is the major problem in present-day physics. Equations are just tools. Different tools can be used in different situations. But the argument that the tool can tell the whole tale is incorrect. Space-time, curved space, expanding space, mass-less particles, mass-giving particle, force particle, etc. are examples of meaningless physical concepts derived from equations. The present philosophy can be termed 'mathematicalism', the view that the real nature of the physical world can be understood based on equations alone. I argue for 'physicalism': an equation can be interpreted in many ways; out of these, physically meaningful interpretations alone need be considered. My essay will soon be available.

    Honourable Sir,

    I'm quite impressed with your essay. Your work is very thoughtful.

    Simply great!

    Kindly,

    Miss. Sujatha Jagannathan

      Thank you for your kind words. No, I never heard of the Bondi k calculus. Being 90, I finished my education long before Bondi came along. Good luck with your essay.

      Best, Tom

      Thank you for the most explicit and insightful comments I have received. I have my own tweaks I would like to make to the math of quantum mechanics -- but that is a separate topic. Good luck with your essay.

      Best, Tom

      Thank you for your kind words. Yes, there does seem to be increasing entrenchment of rather ludicrous ideas these days. The politics of it reminds one of climate science.

      Best, Tom

      Thanks for your comments. I agree with you about Michelson-Morley.

      Good luck with your essay.

      Best, Tom

      I have tended to favor Bridgman's operational philosophy. I expect it has much in common with your physicaliam. Good luck with your essay.

      Best, Tom

      Thanks for your favorable assessment. I appreciate your kind words.

      Best, Tom

      Many thanks. I would like to do a similar number on mathematics itself. Its practitioners have been riding high too long. They are great on proofs, but what about definitions? Those are even more important, and seldom critically discussed.

      Best, Tom

      Dear Tom,

      I will be lucky if you could read my essay and comment critically on it. We shouldn't expect luck with the scores. Some author who did definitely not yet take part in the discussion of your essay rated it 1. At least he understood its implications.

      Best,

      Eckard

      I am reading through these essays. Some are about a disconnect between physics and math. These papers have this in common. Then these papers use examples to demonstrate the disconnect as does my own essay. The examples vary widely. This is my observation. My main goal here is to applaud your point of view of the disconnect of which you get some of my points. I suspect pressure from people like you are going to change the face of physics. Thank you.

      Al Schneider

        Dear Dr. Phipps,

        I read your essay with great interest. I will have to read it more carefully before making substantive comments.

        Incidentally, I remember your advisor Prof. Ramsey. I worked in his atomic beams laboratory in 1974, before moving on to a thesis project in superconductivity.

        You might be interested in my essay "Remove the Blinders: How Mathematics Distorted the Development of Quantum Theory"

        I argue that premature adoption of an abstract mathematical framework prevented consideration of a simple, consistent, realistic model of quantum mechanics, avoiding paradoxes of indeterminacy, entanglement, and non-locality. What's more, this realistic model should be directly testable using little more than Stern-Gerlach magnets.

        An earlier FQXi essay was entitled "Watching the Clock: Quantum Rotation and Relative Time"

        But I have not been critical of classical mechanics. Maybe I should reconsider that, as well.

        Alan Kadin

          I should like to think that my rather impassioned attempts to reform physics might succeed. But, realistically, I doubt that is possible. I have never participated in the academic life. This means I am an outsider. My impression is that the Worldwide Professors United, though not a recognized organization, nevertheless exists and knows how to close ranks in defense of a status quo. This means that progress can occur only from inside, and at a snail's pace. It is to be hoped that the snail increments are more or less in the right direction. But the creature responds only to its own internal rumblings.

          Best, Tom

          I will read your "Blinders" essay with interest. Thanks for the link.

          My first and only Phys. Rev. publication was in 1960, called "Generalization of Quantum Mechanics." It was about hidden variables. It disturbed me that a whole class of classical canonical variables, the "New Canonical Variables" or constants of the motion, were absent from QM. What kind of "formal Correspondence" omits a whole class of formal variables? So, I explored the possibility of restoring those variables to the formalism. I claimed advantages from so doing. That paper was several years in the refereeing, and I learned my lesson: Don't bother.

          Best, Tom

          At age 90 I am not of that generation that is computer savvy at birth. It is not obvious to me how to get hold of your essay. Can you send me a link? I must admit I find the consequences of submitting an essay to be bewildering.

          Best, Tom

          After reading your "Blinders" essay, I must say I am struck by how different intuitions can be about a problem. We agree that something is not right about QM, but have gone about looking for the flaw in almost diametrically opposite directions. You have discarded Hilbert space and looked at a nonlinear alternative. I stuck to Hilbert space and looked for a rigorized formal Correspondence. It has been over half a century, but what I vaguely recollect ia that when I included formal analogs of the classical constants of the motion, these attached themselves to the wave function in such a way that by assigning numerical values to them one could sever phase connections. So, instead of everything being phase-connected forever, the equations of motion contained parameters that could cut the connections. That was my approach to improving the theory's relationship to reality.

          After all, as long as phases are uninterrupted everything stays in a pure state and is therefore unobservable. Sorry, this is not helping you, since you have chosen a different path. I see it as rather bad news for physics, if nonlinearity is needed from the start. The beauty of QM via formal Correspondence is that it connects directly to the grand Newtonian tradition (through the canonical version of that, due to Hamilton and the rest).

          Dear Tom,

          when I first read your fantastic essay I knew it would attract many positive comments and votes. Congratulations! It seems still worthwhile to try to stem the tide of mainstream concordance in physics.

          Best Lutz Kayser

            Yes, the physics mainstream does seem to be settling into a particularly muddy rut at this stage of history.

            Best, Tom