The Red/Green Sock Trick. Can Mathematics Demystify Nature? by Peter Jackson

Dear Peter,

I read with interest your depth analytical essay in the spirit of Cartesian doubt and new ideas. I fully agree: "But show the trickery is not the fault of maths but from misuse due to our poor initial conceptual understanding and analysis of empirical findings and thus valid formalisms. We propose more focus on teaching well developed methods of improving conceptual analytical and visualization skills, and also identify the importance of countering increasing 'compartmentalization' of physics by wide research and an open mind."

The problem of the ontological justification (basification) of fundamental sign systems, Mathematics and Physics - is the main task of knowledge. Ontological revolution Planck-Einstein must be completed. John Wheeler left physicists good covenant: "Philosophy is too important to be left to the philosophers". But how many people follow this covenant? What is needed is a synthesis of all knowledge accumulated by mankind. This problem is well formulated Edmund Husserl in "Origin of Geometry»: "Only to the extent, to which in case of idealization, the general content of spatio-temporal sphere is apodictically taken into account, which is invariant in all imaginable variations, ideal formation may arise, that will be clear in any future for all generations and in such form will be transferable by the tradition and reproducible in identical intersubjective sense."

Kind regards,

Vladimir

Peter, thanks for your communication. I appreciate that you are an architect with broad interest. Your suggestion that we avoid compartmentalization is easy to relate to since I am an engineer who spent many years in compartmentalized industry which probably destroyed Kodak, the place I worked. Your essay was on point regarding the FQXi question (unlike many of us that used the opportunity to weave our work into the FQXi theme). The examples you used to highlight the differences between math and reality were excellent. I had forgotten that polarized light acted the way you described and found it interesting that the scientific community continues to use the concept of "filter" rather than "modulator". Filters were used extensively in photographic products but we knew there was some "unwanted absorption". I also liked your examples that remind us that physics operates at the local level within a background and going outside the brackets can mislead us.

I was pleased to find that you also publish on academia.edu since I have found several people with similar interests on that website that say they read papers (but never interact beyond that). Your continued and deep insights into entanglement are well documented there. To me it says that nature uses complex numbers and is efficient at arriving at solutions that we can only observe as probabilities. I should probably derive more meaning from it. I do believe that every atom is identical and that they are manifestations of the physics that is everywhere and identical. As such, I am not surprised by correlations but this does not lead me to superluminal "cause and effect".

Your quote regarding "finding new ways of thinking about [facts)" is on point. I tried to "reverse engineer" nature by creating models. My interest in information theory led me to thinking about facts as probabilities. That led to a concepts that I used to model cosmology, force unification, gravity, atomic binding energy, elemental abundance, perception, black holes, meson and baryon masses, decay times, etc. I tried to point out in my essay that it was not nature. It was a new way of correlating natural phenomenon and makes it easy to understand. This is a preliminary step to true understanding just like the simple math that Newton used to correlate gravity. People don't get it (probably because I am not a very good communicator).

Gene H Barbee

Hello Peter my friend!

Just dropping in to tell you the Great Abyss you thought swallowed me could not digest me. And had to spit me back into the pages of these Forums! Good to see you here as always. Feels like home!

I have tried to download your essay in my iPad Air, but got a red flag warning! What's up with that? I will try again from a PC.

In the meantime, analyze this! The Anthropocentric Principle: Our Knowledge of the Universe is such as to make Life possible" From my current essay, "The 'man-made' Universe"

Constantinos

Hi Peter,

I have found your essay much more accessible than your previous one's. Perhaps because you are talking, in some sections, about more familiar things that I have also given some thought.I have also talked about the 3 polarisers in this years essay but offer an alternative solution to your own.

Once again you have given us lots to think about, and I will, but best of all it didn't feel that hard to read this time.

Good luck and Kind regards, Georgina

Peter,

Someone from this site inserted a virus into my computer. The virus disabled the Security and that prevented me from going on line.

Joe Fisher

Peter,

Good arguments to support your thought that "Science can sometimes be more about entrenched 'ways of looking' than sound techniques.

I agree with you well-supported statement, but aren't we saying, in effect, that the weak link is the human mind, standing between physics and math and that a system of peer review could help keep us honest (BICEP2, for example). Many of the old school go to the extent of decrying the easy tools of calculation like calculators and computers, but it's our programming that is at fault not the tools.

My connections: mind, math, and physics speaks of this.

Good read,

Jim

Peter,

I don't see you as duplicitous, so I am assuming the 2 was an honest mistake, not your true feeling.

"I don't think your score represents the essay and think it should be higher. I'm certainly marking it so. Best of luck in the competition."

Jim

Thanks, Peter,

I generally do the same in scoring, but had already scored yours. Such trolling is too common. I think we all have experienced it.

Jim

Peter Jackson,

Our approaches remain to this day very different. However, I recognized and stated several competitions ago you arrived prepared. Good essay that deserves comments from deliverers of such low scores.

James Putnam

Excellent essay, enjoyed to read it!

Respected Peter Jackson,

because, you are 1951-born, whereas i, in November 1952.

The quality of your essay is also far superior to mine.

All physicists should read your essay.

When i was first introduced to the three-filter-paradox, i could see no paradox in it. The very name 'polarize r' means that it is the polarize r which polarizes the light. You have used more appropriate word "modulator". There is no paradox. Only the mathematical logic was wrongly applied.

Similarly, i agree with your other ideas.

With my best regards,

Hasmukh K. Tank

Hi Peter

Thank you for your generous comment on my page. You also placed a link for a video about your ideas which I watched. I have read your essay and as always find it refreshing that you forge bravely to investigate new ideas, debunk old ones, and still adhere to a general 'theme' you have been investigating over the years - helical motion.

Both the video and the essay introduce rather a dense domain of ideas, and it is impossible to absorb them all in one viewing/reading the video in particular needs pacing. The other difficulty in responding to your essay is in my own personal unquantum state just emerging from my annual bout of cherry-blossomitis fever trying to capture this glorious Japanese season in painting and photos leaving me drained. You deserve better!

I have a feeling that your geometrical/conceptual speculations will be comfortable in an absolute universe where, for example, each point on the Earth's surface rotating and also going around the sun is an actual ellipse in 3D space free from the observer-relativities of SR and GR where everything is in 'straight lines'. Ditto for the polarizer paradox. Oh I think you meant Buckminster's Domes not Bucky Balls - their Carbon-60 molecule version.

With best wishes from the other Vladimir

Dear Peter,

As I told you in my Essay web-page, I have read your beautiful Essay. Here are my comments:

1) I did not know Galileo's statement that "He who undertakes to deal with questions of natural sciences without the help of geometry is attempting the infeasible". This is exactly my dream of researcher, i.e. the geometrization of physics, which is also the foundation of my 2015 FQXi Essay.

2) I agree that the solution to Bell's problem can arise only from a merging between maths and imagination (Einstein stated that "Imagination is ore important that knowledge").

3) I did not know the Vienna experiments by Zeilinger A et al. Thanks for pointing them out.

4) Concerning your question if departures from paradigms are ignored or shunned as not mathematically driven, from fear of abandoning old beliefs, or simply from unfamiliarity, I suspect it is a mixing of both.

5) I like the similarity you raise between difficult financial periods and theoretical physics concerning the "bracketing".

6) I find intriguing the statement by Sir Bragg that "The important thing in science is not so much to obtain new facts as to discover new ways of thinking about them".

7) I am a bit perplexed by Susskind's interpretation of Eulero's equations in terms of Cosmic Strings.

8) I learned a trick to prove 2 = 1 when I were at high school. I remember that my maths teacher became astonished!

Finally, the reading of your nice Essay was very interesting and enjoyable for me. Thus, I am going to give you the highest score.

I wish you best luck in the Contest.

Cheers, Ch.

Dear PETER

I find your essay very interesting, because it raises many other issues. Certainly, we share many things. but for the moment, I think, we should go step by step . In my essay, I suggested that quantum mechanics alone is not enough,because we have to explain, how particles spin around the center of the atom. How the milky way rotate around the center, for this, it was neccessary and fundamental to introduce Mechanics Iterative. I think it is one of the possible way to justify,from where the polarization comes... the rhythm. Only, in this moment, I realize that the formula was correct, because it explains the origin of the time. ie units iterative, are the source of 'acceleration, force and time. They are the real core.

In my opinion, a mathematics that reflects the reality remains a priority for the current science. Bi-iterative calculation, could be the right math .because it has all Characteristics of a pure mathematics.

"NUMBERS"

first, are integers

second, are geometric shapes

Third, are physical quantities with infinite degrees of freedom

Fourth, always maintain the aspect ratio ....

fifth are elastic ... ..

Sixth are compact, and unseverable by two egual part.

That's why, I firmly believe that this can be the math right.

Any thing we do is characterized by the repetition, for example, The language is a sequence of words (voice waves) each word has its stamp and its duration.

sincerly yours

Bannouri.A.Wahed