Dear Edwin,

I have read with great interest your deep essay on the problem of fundamentality. You give very important ideas that encourage the need to revise the ontological foundations of natural science. The FQXi contests provide an excellent opportunity to push new ideas and that's fine. Great job. I think that there will be a "big fight". And that's fine.

Successes in the Сontest!

My best regards,

Vladimir

    Good work, especially the elaborations on the fundamental relationship between (unperfect) clocks, energy and time.

      I like this essay very much!

      I admire the way the bartender-mediated conversational style makes it seem almost effortless going between using words and equations to communicate, without breaking stride to explain yourself. I am only now becoming able to weave the Math in without it interrupting the flow of my message, so your dexterity in that area is well appreciated. I chose instead to go with almost purely verbal content in the body, and saved the equations for the technical explanation in the endnotes.

      I will be reading this one again, before rating it or commenting much further. But I wanted to mention that some of what you said connects back to a lecture by Mikhail Altaisky I attended, talking about the complications of using a GPS system to guide travel in space. Choosing the nearest satellites fails to provide meaningful information sometimes, because the Jacobian vanishes. This can be traced to the need for a non-collapsing tetrahedron of measurement platforms, in order to provide meaningful or reliable positioning data.

      All the Best,

      Jonathan

        John Erik,

        in modern condensed matter treatment local gravity maps to defects in the matrix and these provide the correct Riemann metric (in 3D). So gravity maps to the static deformation of space in the density compressions of the aether. Light analogs appear as transverse elastic vibrations. Once you identify the transverse velocity of these waves with c then e=mc2 comes trivially from Hooke's law, or the amount of energy stored in a plastic defect as it were. Reconciling these ideas with Michelson and Morley null results, meaning the nature of time and speed of light in said aether occupies most of the essay I submitted (SR emerges from a fundamental Aether)

        Dear Vladimir,

        I very much enjoyed your essay and its insights, and commented on your page. I'm pleased that you find my look at our ontological foundations rewarding. Yes, FQXi offers a unique forum for questioning century-old orthodoxy, and for this we are all grateful.

        Thank you sincerely for studying my essay and responding as you have.

        My best regards,

        Edwin Eugene Klingman

        Dear Stephen,

        Thanks for reading and absorbing the critical message which you state so succinctly. I have read your essay, which, in spite of a list of problems, I interpret as optimistic.

        Best regards,

        Edwin Eugene Klingman

        Dear Jonathan,

        Thank you for reading my essay and offering to read it again. It is chock full of information, and I wasn't sure how it would come across. This is the first time I've chosen the particular vehicle and I appreciate that you found it 'almost effortless'. What a very nice comment.

        I look forward to reading your essay soon.

        My best regards,

        Edwin Eugene Klingman

        Dear Edwin Eugene Klingman,

        Thanks for your paper. I appreciate its novel presentation.

        I know very little mathematics and know nothing at all about important contemporary theories in physics. I confess that I did not understand arguments presented in the article (with the help of few functional entities like; mass, field, time, energy, etc. and mathematics). My inability has nothing to with quality of subject, arguments in the article or presentation, but it is due to lack of my education in contemporary theories in physics (and advanced mathematics). Therefore, I hope you will not take offence on the following.

        To have any type of nature, an entity should have some sort of recognizable form, structure, constituents and a mechanism of development and existence. In other words; the entity should be real. If your arguments about fundamental nature of 'time' are right, 'time' should be a real entity. What is time? Without a concrete definition of time, how could you ascertain its nature? Does time has all requirements that endow it with independent objective reality and positive volumetric existence? Assigning time with properties of real entity does not appeal to common sense. Time and related mathematical tools may be very good to explain different states of universe (history of events) and its constituents. But (I think) 'time' remains a functional entity, created by rational beings and its nature is fundamental only to corresponding mathematical analyses - It is neither a fundamental entity nor it may have fundamental nature. A functional entity can only fulfill functions assigned to it and its nature can be changed by its assigner as frequently as he pleases. Searching whole of universe, we cannot find time because it is not present anywhere. But searching our world, we shall find time in everything and in all modern theories.

        I consider gravitation and gravitational attraction (gravity) as different phenomena. Gravitational attraction is an apparent expression of gravitation. Gravitation is the most fundamental pressure ('force'), derived from existence of substance (matter) and it is enormously strong (beyond what we can imagine) compared to all other manifestations of gravitation, which include 'natural forces' (gravitational attraction, electromagnetic 'forces', nuclear 'forces', etc.) and other mechanical 'forces'. All of them are minutely weaker than gravitation and there are differences between each other's strengths and ranges. Gravitation is caused by relative mechanical movements of constituent particles in a universal medium, structured by quanta of matter and fills entire space outside basic 3D matter-particles.

        You discuss many other phenomena in the article, about which I am not confident enough to comment. Thanks again. Kindly pardon me, if I exceeded limits of criticism.

        Regards, Nainan

          Edwin,

          Reading through a number of the essays, it seems the questions surrounding the issue of time are starting to become a, if not the, primary issue. I recently suggested to Eckard that given this increasing concordance, some thought might be given to a cooperative effort to draw in the various fields of expertise and assemble a focused argument against the block time/eternalist view.

          It is not as though future generations of theorists are going to devote their careers to untestable ideas, just because the current generation has done so, so a revolution will occur, sooner, or later and having some theoretical reference points and arguments being put forth, could very well help it along.

            Dear Edwin Eugene Klingman, the fundamental has to be simple and clear to cherish our thinking. You wrote a great and wonderful essay. You are reviving the idea of the ether. I must say that the idea of identity of space and matter of Descartes is stronger than the idea of ether, which he also considered the matter and filled in the gaps between large particles, to obtain the space without holes. He believed that the voids in the physical space are filled immediately. New Cartesian Physics claims that the hole in space filled with the speed of light, according to modern ideas, forming the physical vacuum filled with energy. This energy as you think and creates time.

            Read my essay in which I have some examples to show the effectiveness of the principle of identity of space and matter of Descartes.

            Sincerely, Dizhechko Boris Semyonovich.

              Dear Nainan,

              Thanks for reading and commenting.

              You are certainly correct to note that the nature of time is difficult to nail down. My essay reviewed the way in which Einstein interpreted some 'facts' and ignored others to come up with his invention of multiple time dimensions, demolishing the intuitive understanding of time as universal simultaneity and claiming "the relativity of simultaneity." I show an alternative approach that retains the Lorentz transformation for relativistic particle physics based on an energy-time reinterpretation of space-time symmetry. This restores the intuitive understanding of time as universal simultaneity.

              You say you think 'time' remains a functional entity. I'm in sympathy with this approach, but I believe energy is spread all over pseudo-infinite 3D space, and it's hard for me to imagine energy functioning so perfectly across the cosmos for 14 billion years yet 'staying in sync' so to speak without a real phenomenon to enforce this. Because time is measured indirectly but experienced directly by all of us there will probably always be a disagreement among us as to its true nature.

              Thanks for your consideration,

              Best regards,

              Edwin Eugene Klingman

              Dear John,

              Like you, I've noticed a number of the current essays do focus on or in some way question the nature of time. I did not expect this but I'm pleased to see it.

              You suggest a possible joint effort to investigate/attack 'block time'. That's probably not a bad idea although I believe Daryl Janzen did an excellent job on this back in 2012 with his essay "A Critical Look at the Standard Cosmological Picture" and the associated comments.

              Your second paragraph shows that you are an incurable optimist. I think that speaks well of you.

              Best regards,

              Edwin Eugene Klingman

              Dear Dizhechko Boris Semyonovich,

              Thank you for your gracious comments. I'm not alone in "reviving the ether"; Einstein himself began such in 2013, as pointed out in my essay. Also, in my endnotes, the condensed matter theorists do much the same, as seen in Volovik's "The Universe in a Helium Droplet".

              I would be honored to be the first to suggest local gravity as ether, but after thinking of this and beginning to work on it I of course found myself late to the party. Perhaps I am first to re-interpret space-time symmetry as energy-time conjugation, but it would not surprise me to find others already there. In any case, the pieces are there, needing only to be put together.

              I do not understand your approach and will read your essay. You say "the identity of space and matter (of Descartes) is stronger than the idea of ether." As I noted in my endnotes, "Ether, physical space, and field became synonymous."

              Thanks again for your comments. I will read your essay.

              Best regards,

              Edwin Eugene Klingman

              Edwin

              I have to commend you on a witty essay, and I liked it enough so I gave you a grade of 8. i.e. very well done

              However, this is my nit.

              The initial time step, call it either delta t, is either intrinsic within a system as done by Barbour in his essay about emergent time, or it is super imposed upon the system say by cyclic cosmological intervention from prior universes upon our present universe.

              In essence, I would like to have a clear distinguishment made between emergent time, as stated by Barbour, or by some other agency, say as in cyclic conformal cosmology (penrose)

              Aside from these nits, I frankly felt your essay was the most enjoyable one I have encountered in this contest and I am saving it as a gem.

              Just because I raise this issue does not mean I disapprove. On the contrary I give you high marks and am asking for an extension of your dialogue to include the distinguishable choice I am referring to.

              Andrew

                I am going to put in here what I used to reply to your comment as to my essay:

                quoting upon what I said in your essay discussion

                quote

                Edwin

                I have to commend you on a witty essay, and I liked it enough so I gave you a grade of 8. i.e. very well done

                However, this is my nit.

                The initial time step, call it either delta t, is either intrinsic within a system as done by Barbour in his essay about emergent time, or it is super imposed upon the system say by cyclic cosmological intervention from prior universes upon our present universe.

                In essence, I would like to have a clear distinguishment made between emergent time, as stated by Barbour, or by some other agency, say as in cyclic conformal cosmology (penrose)

                Aside from these nits, I frankly felt your essay was the most enjoyable one I have encountered in this contest and I am saving it as a gem.

                Just because I raise this issue does not mean I disapprove. On the contrary I give you high marks and am asking for an extension of your dialogue to include the distinguishable choice I am referring to.

                Andrew

                end of quote

                Answering you was a pleasure, Edwin, but the choice I made was to include in time as in the form of Barbour,

                https://arxiv.org/pdf/0903.3489.pdf

                And the super structure I used was to focus upon the cosmological constant as I referenced it, as a way to initiate the placing of time as I saw it in the present cosmos.

                Hence, I worked with forming the cosmological constant, as a bench mark for initial conditions enabling the development of time as given by

                https://arxiv.org/pdf/0903.3489.pdf

                What may surprise you. Edwin, was that I initially was to make my essay about time,and shifted to the cosmological constant as referred to in my essay after reviewing what I know of time, as a way to conjecture out an initial structure consistent with

                https://arxiv.org/pdf/0903.3489.pdf

                Please consider what I brought up about either emergent time, or the other choice of time, as I tried to answer it in my replies to you

                I after this FQXI contest, will continue this discussion at great length, Edwin

                Finally, please tell me if you think Barbour is full of beans, i.e. this essay

                https://arxiv.org/pdf/0903.3489.pdf

                https://arxiv.org/pdf/0903.3489.pdf

                Please comment upon this idea by Barbour.

                Thanks

                Andrew

                Edwin, it turns out, space is the ether, and the ether is space. It's mythology, it remains to say that in the ether聽聽fly聽angels. Descartes firmly, space is matter, which we cannot see because it is transparent as glass, and which constituted the whole world.

                You deserve to be the winner, but I appreciate those who take a look at my essay and give a comment, i.e., apply Descartes.

                With respect Dizhechko Boris Semyonovich

                Dear Boris,

                There's much overlap in our interpretation of physics, particularly your emphasis on the fact that

                "Sometimes discovery is not a physical property of an object, but a property of the mathematical structure."

                I touch on this in my essay when I quote Maudlin:

                "...even if we can describe a mathematical structure that everywhere looks locally like a possible space-time structure, it does not follow that the whole object corresponds to a physical possibility."

                There are many examples of such projection in physics, many of them applying to quantum mechanics. As one example I would suggest that the Compton wavelength, considered as the size of a particle, is almost certainly incorrect. Nevertheless it appears useful.

                My focus is on the Einsteinian "ether, physical space, and field" becoming synonymous. I prefer the concept of 'field', and in particular the gravito magnetic field, which is a circulation/vortex in the field. This seems to agree with yours/Descartes's view in many interpretations.

                If you read my last essay on the Nature of Mind, you will find it not far from your final sentence.

                Best regards,

                Edwin Eugene Klingman

                Dear Andrew Walcott Beckwith,

                Thank you for your very kind remarks. I'm very impressed with the work you do and generally attempt to read your papers. [I still pity your reviewers.]

                The topic of cyclic cosmology is beyond a comment, so I will attempt to respond to your questions about Barbour's nature of time (an earlier FQXi essay).

                He begins by noting that his mechanics books define neither time nor clocks. He further complains that the fundamental notions of duration and simultaneity are almost universally ignored, the latter due to Einstein's 'relativity of simultaneity'. In fact, Barbour states that only Newton discussed duration. Barbour hopes to persuade one that time as an independent concept has no place in physics.

                In agreement with Einstein, ("There exists no space absent of field.") I view 'space' as contingent on 'field', where field is substantial in the sense it has energy, hence matter. Similarly, I view time as contingent on energy, essentially energy in the field (see Hertz's 'energy' quote, on my page 5). Barbour quotes Mach to the effect that 'time is an abstraction'. I would not go that far. I would agree with Newton that:

                "Absolute, true, and mathematical time, of itself, and from its own nature, flows equably without relation to anything external, and by another name is called duration."

                The nature of time, in my opinion, is universal simultaneity, and its property of 'duration' is almost certainly tied to local energy, and very likely to the constant of action.

                In this sense I somewhat agree with Barbour that

                "...intervals of time do not pre-exist, but are created by what the universe does."

                The "intervals of time" are supposedly what clocks measure, as described in my essay as "counting frequency" or "measuring energy".

                Ignoring his 'rotation of the earth', etc., I disagree with Barbour that "Newton was wrong... Mach was right, we do abstract time from motion." This is, if not duplicitous, at least confused; motion is no more fundamental than time, in my mind not as fundamental. Motion is essentially local, while time is universal simultaneity. Universal outranks local every time. Perhaps Barbour believes that Einstein's attachment of time dimensions to local moving objects make time also 'local' in nature. I do not.

                The key to Barbour, as I see it, is his statement on page 4:

                "Modern textbooks, leave us to fathom the meaning of t, say that all these quantities are functions of the time: phi(t), a(t), r(t)."

                If this is true, one would expect that a clever approach could factor out t and this is what he does, ending on page 9 with an expression for delta-t in terms of energy.

                I'm not impressed that Barbour has accomplished anything other than to support my arguments in my essay. I do not support all of his arguments.

                My very best regards,

                Edwin Eugene Klingman