Essay Abstract
What is knowledge? How is it possible to know the world? What is time? These and other questions are the basic questions that Karl Friedrich von Weizsäcker asked himself his life long. In this essay I try to give a short summary of his thinking.
Author Bio
I studied physics a long time ago and I try to underystand quantum mechanics ever since.
The essay has been written in a great rush and has been submitted in the last minute with no time to reread the text and so it is full of errors. I want to apologize for that and I hope the reader can understand the intentions of the arguments. I'm ready to clarify unclear statements in this forum.
Only a few books from Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker have been translated in English. But recently Michael Drieschner, a former student of von Weizsäcker has published two books in English:
- Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker: Major Texts in Physics
- Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker: Major Texts in Philosophy
I'm sure they will be worth reading.
Luca
I have to correct a statement on page 7. The right sentence is
"Von Weizsäcker felt, that if the possibility of failing might be thinkable, it could be enough to say, that his measurement apparatus is not independent of experience."
Dear Luca Valeri Zimmerman,
In your essay you write, "In quantum mechanics the open future is part of the theory." Let us assume that the future really is open (in the sense of fundamental quantum randomness) and that string theory can be successfully formulated within quantum field theory. Is the following hypothesis compatible with quantum field theory? String vibrations are confined to 3 copies of the Leech lattice.
Hi David,
I'm sorry, but I don't know much about string theory. The point in my opinion is, that I don't expect, that any future theory will be able to predict the future exactly given a measurement context, but only be able to predict probabilities for measurement outcomes, despite the deterministic (unitary) dynamics of the wavefunction. The notion of the open future structure of time and time logic would give us a language to talk consistently about this phenomena.
The reasons for this inability are still under debate. It is my personal belief, that reason for this is not because the underlying reality is random.(Which evokes the image of something having definite properties but changing randomly.) But because our knowledge is doomed to be described by complementary arrangements of the measurement apparatus.
Best regards
Luca
Hi Luca,
All the talk about the truth of sheep being "white" in your essay had me thinking about something that I had wondered before. I wondered what would be the case if every person had their own unique experience of colors. Would we ever be able to know that our subjective experiences are so different? We have come up with tests to determine if someone has color blindness which I think relates to how much distinctions there are between certain colors (a skewed color wheel), but suppose people that were not color blind still had their own unique rotation of the color wheel (i.e. a remapping with various colors being just as distinguishable). Would we be able to ever know this? Is language, in this sense, devoid of any meaning of the underlying reality, similar to a formal symbolic language in mathematics? Is it just something that helps us discuss relationships... Like we would both agree "orange" is a mixture of "red" and "yellow" even though my "orange" is experienced as your "green" and my "red" is your "yellow" and my "yellow" is your "blue". Anyway, just some thoughts. I hope it is not too off topic.
Please check out my Digital Physics movie essay if you get a chance.
Thanks
Jon
Hi Jon,
your thoughts are not at all off topic. The perception of colors is what Laurence Hitterdale calls in his essay "the subjective experience ... of the realty of the qualia which manifest themselves in consciousness." As far as this experience is subjective, we will never be able to know whether you and me have the same experience. However there are objective aspects of this very experience, that when you mix your 'red' and 'yellow' you'll get your 'orange', which corresponds to my 'blue' color. The objective part of the experience seems to be the relational or mathematical part of it. We experience the same structure.
Thanks very much for sharing this thought of yours.
I'll certainly will read your essay and comment on it.
Luca
Ps.
Hi Jon.
How is your 'orange' color? Mine is beautyfull!
Luca
Dear Luca,
I was happy to see another essay of yours, and I'm sorry you didn't have time to develop it more fully, since I think the ideas you're working with are important. The key issue is how to include possibility as a basic category - that is, how to describe what happens such that each new fact that appears in the world contributes to the physical "process schemes" that make further events possible.
Armin Nikkhah Shirazi has an essay in this contest that also tries to develop a logic where possibility plays a basic role. I'm also reminded of Ruth Kastner's "possibilist" version of the Transactional Interpretation of quantum mechanics. In both these cases, though, possibility seems to be conceived as "a mode of existence" that has to be taken into account alongside actuality. That is, it's relevant to quantum physics, but otherwise doesn't change very much how we think about time. Evidently von Weizsäcker was trying to work out a deeper notion, something like Heidegger's concept of temporality, where factuality and possibility are both essential aspects of present-time happening.
Incidentally, thanks for the note on Michael Drieschner's books. His volume on Philosophy actually just arrived in the mail as I'm writing this - so I'll finally get a broader view of von Weizsäcker's thinking. It's interesting that he seems to take over Plato's eidos as a way to talk about the structure of our possible experience.
I agree with you that measurement is a primary issue, and that it needs to be understood as a physical "transfer of information from one system to another", i.e. as communication. I'm sorry I'm not better equipped to follow your discussion of the "measurement field", though it's clearly related to what you explained at more length in your essay last year.
Apparently you're thinking of entanglement with this field as the default condition of things when they're not being measured, but which defines the parameters within which a particular measurement can take place? If that's right, then there may be a connection with my discussion of observable parameters in my essay on the mathematical language of physics. My emphasis is on the need for different kinds of parameters, to make a physical environment in which any of them are meaningfully definable. Your (tentative) model abstracts from the specific parameters, to give general conditions for the possibility that a qbit of information about one system can be determined by another.
Let me know if this is off track. Also, can I ask you to clarify the role of the time-logic in this model?
Thanks - Conrad
Exactly, Luca! The objective part is the relationships between the colors, not the colors themselves. Do you think "physics" could take something away from this idea? Do you think information, like the color "orange", is meaningless at the fundamental level? Information's real power lies in its ability to describe relationships? Does reality need more than the ability to describe relationships? Is it essential that a wall be made up of matter in order for reality to depict a relationship that says other "matter" won't freely flow through it?
Oh, and to answer your question...Orange?! Are you kidding me? It's a mixture of Red and Yellow...Please. That information patter is just...ugghhh
:)
I'd love hear your thoughts on my Digital Physics movie essay
Luca - Thanks for the insightful essay and the introduction (for me) to von Weizsacker. All of the efforts to build a coherent a priori foundation for knowledge has failed, so his failure should not be a surprise. But the distinctions between actuality and potentiality are critical and may help dissolve some key misunderstandings. You did very well in spite of the time pressure and working in a second language.
Regards - George Gantz
Hi Jon,
No, I don't think physics could take that away. As reality is objective describable, it is about relationships. Information is always only described between two semantical levels, between two terms: macrostate and microstate, measurement apparatus and measurement object.
I belief, that the formalism of quantum mechanics relies on that, but I couldn't prove it.
Luca
Hi Conrad,
thanks for your comment. The quantum theory part became very short. And surely needs some clarifications.
"The unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics" has two parts: 1. Why is mathematics the lanquage of objective science and 2. How can we explain, the incredible unity of physics? The first part may be answered by stating that objective knowledge must have a mathematical structure. The second part however is trickier. The unity of physics left us with only a few elementary particles (to many in my opinion) and a few interactions, that explain almost everything in our observable universe. How is that possible? Is the universe mathematical? And which mathematical structure must it have?
I don't belief the universe s mathematical. If the universe is not mathematical there comes the problem, how objective knowledge (physics) is possible? The kantian answer is "because physics is the precondition of objective experience". Can we derive physics from a priori arguments? Imagine Newton closes himself in a room and finds out the law of gravity. Unthinkable! How could we make that thinkable?
Every finite dimensional state can be decomposed into a tensor product of qbits. To measure a qbit we must be able to choose a direction in a 3 dimensional space. That means that the 3 directions must be commensurable. The associated observable must commute with each other. The two states get entangled in like in the von Neumann measurement. the 3 dimensional observable might be the space observable. To measure the 'space' (distance) observable a field might needed. And so forth. The only objectively knowable structures might be the ones derivable by this theory. We might get a kind of map of possible experience. We must use that map to order our experiences.
Now for the parameters. That is a very difficult discussion. In my theory of measurement after each step a new parameter pops up as 'interaction strength' combining the different structures in each iteration step. After the first step the interaction parameter would be the velocity of light. The next step would be the charge. The mass parameter is a problem.
The role of time logic in this theory is that the theory is probabilistic. To get a coherent interpretation of the probabilties in the theory time logic is needed.
Luca
Thanks for your kind comment. I'm sure you would like von Weizsäcker a lot. As he was very activ in the dialog between the churches and was very relgious man. He also tried to think scientific and religious knowledge together and succeded quite well in my opinion.
But I will try to comment more on that in your forum.
Luca
Dear Luca,
Your essay raised some interesting points and had a strong emphasis on the theory of CArl Friedrich von Weizsaecker. The first time I got exposed to his views was in fact through an essay in another one of these contests; you may find it interesting, it was written by Charles Raldo Card, and he set in comparison with some other views:
http://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/1837
Concerning temporal operators, perhaps you may already be familiar with the work of Arthur Prior, but he used the same kind of modal logic to define temporal operators with Kripke Semantics that I am also using. Google him if you are not familiar with him.
Regarding the connection between Logic (and, more generally, philosophy), mathematics and physics, you are certainly correct that time is one of the major pieces that brings such a connection about. I am not convinced by the the currently popular view that time comes out of thermodynamics because it is already present, deeply embedded, as it were, in the structure of Minkowski spacetime, even in the absence of matter, or only a few particles.
Your last point comes close to one of the projects that I intend to tackle next, namely learning Von Neumann's approach of building up the Hilbert Space from orthomodular lattices. I believe this exercise will help me make it much clearer how my model relates to various aspects of standard QM.
Thank you and best wishes,
Armin
Dear Luca Valeri Zimmerman,
I do not wish to upset you, but I honestly feel that abstract mathematics and abstract physics have nothing to do with how the real Universe is occurring.
As I see it, I have a complete skin surface. Every real object appears to have a complete surface of one form or another. one must conclude that all of the stars, all of the planets, all of the asteroids, all of the comets, all of the meteors, all of the specks of astral dust and all real objects have only one real thing in common. Each real object has a real material surface that seems to be attached to a material sub-surface. All surfaces, no matter the apparent degree of separation, must travel at the same constant speed. No matter in which direction one looks, one will only ever see a plethora of real surfaces and those surfaces must all be traveling at the same constant speed or else it would be physically impossible for one to observe them instantly and simultaneously. Real surfaces are easy to spot because they are well lighted. Real light does not travel far from its source as can be confirmed by looking at the real stars, or a real lightning bolt. Reflected light needs to adhere to a surface in order for it to be observed, which means that real light cannot have a surface of its own. Real light must be the only stationary substance in the real Universe. The stars remain in place due to astral radiation. The planets orbit because of atmospheric accumulation. There is no space.
Warm regards,
Joe Fisher
Hi Joe,
Not upset at all. Physics and mathematics have nothing to do with reality. If I would have wanted talked about reality, I would have written a poem. Or just been silent. So I tried to avoid the term reality in my essay.
But here the fun starts. How s possible, that mathematical physics is so successful in making predictions?
So I don't know what real objects are, what constant speed means, what time or real space is. But I know, what they mean in classical newtonian physics. And maybe also in special and general relativity. There is some experience how these theories can be applied to explain certain phenomena. Quite successfully.
So if I try to develop a new theory, I will have to explain, why these theories are so successful. And maybe I have to use their understanding to explain my new theory. Otherwise my theory would not be understood. That how I want to proceed in getting an understanding of our physical world view.
Best regards
Luca
Dear Luca,
Thank you for not reporting my comment as inappropriate and have it classified as Obnoxious Spam by the Moderator.
Do you not have a real complete skin surface? Does every natural or manufactured object you have ever seen not have a real complete surface of some sort? The moon has a surface, right? The chair in your room has a real complete surface, right?
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 Luca,
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 Luca,
Your essay regarding the Weizsäcker deserves attention, for the portion related to quantum mechanics I am not competent.
Your both references are Weizsäckers. Then please read this http://vixra.org/abs/1303.0008
I agree with Weizsacker that Mathematics is the theory of structures. The structure is also in the title of my essay.
My essay is in accordance with the teachings of Hegel and Bošković and fully meets the Mach principle.
I'd like you to read it, and in this sense to comment.
Regards,
Branko