Hi Gregory, thank you so much for your question. I am not trying to eliminate as many presuppositions as possible but to put modes of thinking about the physics that aren't compatible or would get in the way of thinking about my own proposition. For example Newtonian time is put aside because I am not suggesting a return to use of Newtonian time although I am suggesting a uni-temporal (same time everywhere), sequential time.

Reading through the essay the physics that has been put aside is replaced by alternatives that take its place. For example very early on fermion particles are seen as differentiated parts of the base existence. Later on electromagnetism is explained as a particular kind of disturbance of the base medium. Also very early on in the essay foundational time is introduced "Change together with existence provides foundational time, which is the changing configuration of the 'Object universe', that is, the pattern and substance of all concurrent existence, at all scales."

After talking about electromagnetism I point out "The above list of differences between products of EM processing and the fermion based sources of electromagnetic radiation should make clear the need to differentiate them and not treat 'the seen' as the external material existence.This does mean that as well as the seen, there are unseen sources. " This is a differentiation that was not done in the formulation of Relativity. Resulting in a category error and cause of the paradoxes.The space occupied by the content of the visual product is not the space where the physics of the external material universe is happening. So you see why "Block time and the space-time continuum; Parents of paradox" are put aside at the outset.

Later in the essay there is discussion of the nature of the space where things are happening. The difficulty of relating to it as a human being and how it can simplified to be made comprehensible.

You wrote "it's difficult to think about these issues in a manner similar to the pre-Socratic Greeks when we now have the kind of understanding that we do." Yes, that is why the heap of assumptions is put aside at the beginning to make room for different ideas, and avoid confusion by trying to use new ideas in the wrong context.

I am providing an alternative explanatory framework.It overcomes the incompatibility of Relativity and QM, and dispels the paradoxes. As well as addressing the measurement problem, by explaining that measurables are relative, not sole properties; and measurement is imposing a viewpoint or procedure that outputs a singular limited fixed state or value. The fundamental forces are also unified. Perhaps with all of the above in mind the essay will be more approachable.

Kind regards Georgina

Dear Georgina;

I like your style; you really have put together the best ingredients for an "Universe soup and sandcastles". You have touched all the fundamental aspects necessary for discussing what is fundamental, and have put yourself for so doing in the right position (universe centered instead of human centered approach). But a good cooking requires not just the right ingredients, but the right recipe (right quantity and right moment and way of adding together all the ingredients).

Adding some formalism to your essay would have made it great. Yours has what mine lacks (mine is arid). The way I see it, we complement each other. In my essay I start by establishing the general concept of "Fundamental". Then I summarize an epistemological critique of the practice of theoretical science, where it is demonstrated the inadequacy of the ways science constructs the fundamental concepts for studying the fine grain of reality. Afterward I propose an expansion of the scope of physical science to include the aspects of reality that cannot be observed directly or indirectly. Then I discusses the concepts of SPACE, DISTANCE,TIME, INERTIA, MASS AND ELECTRIC CHARGE, and develop new concepts for each of these scientific parameters; redefining them in ways that allows the determination of whether or not they could be categorized as Fundamental.

The interesting thing is that we both discuss the same aspects of reality but with different methodology. I hope we in the future we could put together the two parts.

    Wowow Georgina Woodward!

    Wonderfully matching essay with mine... Thank you...You visited my essay very early and gave a nice comment even!

    Your words "Selecting foundational time and electromagnetic radiation as fundamental, to the working of the Material universe, and the perception of "the universe" respectively. My dear Georgina Woodward !!!!.......... very nice idea.... I highly appreciate your essay and hope for reciprocity. I am giving the full appreciation... By the way

    I request you please spend some of the valuable time on Dynamic Universe Model also and give your some of the valuable & esteemed guidance

    Some of the Main foundational points of Dynamic Universe Model :

    -No Isotropy

    -No Homogeneity

    -No Space-time continuum

    -Non-uniform density of matter, universe is lumpy

    -No singularities

    -No collisions between bodies

    -No blackholes

    -No warm holes

    -No Bigbang

    -No repulsion between distant Galaxies

    -Non-empty Universe

    -No imaginary or negative time axis

    -No imaginary X, Y, Z axes

    -No differential and Integral Equations mathematically

    -No General Relativity and Model does not reduce to GR on any condition

    -No Creation of matter like Bigbang or steady-state models

    -No many mini Bigbangs

    -No Missing Mass / Dark matter

    -No Dark energy

    -No Bigbang generated CMB detected

    -No Multi-verses

    Here:

    -Accelerating Expanding universe with 33% Blue shifted Galaxies

    -Newton's Gravitation law works everywhere in the same way

    -All bodies dynamically moving

    -All bodies move in dynamic Equilibrium

    -Closed universe model no light or bodies will go away from universe

    -Single Universe no baby universes

    -Time is linear as observed on earth, moving forward only

    -Independent x,y,z coordinate axes and Time axis no interdependencies between axes..

    -UGF (Universal Gravitational Force) calculated on every point-mass

    -Tensors (Linear) used for giving UNIQUE solutions for each time step

    -Uses everyday physics as achievable by engineering

    -21000 linear equations are used in an Excel sheet

    -Computerized calculations uses 16 decimal digit accuracy

    -Data mining and data warehousing techniques are used for data extraction from large amounts of data.

    - Many predictions of Dynamic Universe Model came true....Have a look at

    http://vaksdynamicuniversemodel.blogspot.in/p/blog-page_15.html

    I request you to please have a look at my essay also, and give some of your esteemed criticism for your information........

    Dynamic Universe Model says that the energy in the form of electromagnetic radiation passing grazingly near any gravitating mass changes its in frequency and finally will convert into neutrinos (mass). We all know that there is no experiment or quest in this direction. Energy conversion happens from mass to energy with the famous E=mC2, the other side of this conversion was not thought off. This is a new fundamental prediction by Dynamic Universe Model, a foundational quest in the area of Astrophysics and Cosmology.

    In accordance with Dynamic Universe Model frequency shift happens on both the sides of spectrum when any electromagnetic radiation passes grazingly near gravitating mass. With this new verification, we will open a new frontier that will unlock a way for formation of the basis for continual Nucleosynthesis (continuous formation of elements) in our Universe. Amount of frequency shift will depend on relative velocity difference. All the papers of author can be downloaded from "http://vaksdynamicuniversemodel.blogspot.in/ "

    I request you to please post your reply in my essay also, so that I can get an intimation that you replied

    Best

    =snp

    Hi Diogenes, thank you for reading and for your appreciation of the essay. I take your point about lack of formalism, I could have made it more obvious. I have put a paper giving some of the background in the additional page, appendix and reference section.

    My aims were; to write something that was an easy, enjoyable, read, addressing the topic and the program of which the competition is part. I also wanted it to be an advance on ideas already expressed not just a reiteration. I really wanted to emphasize the differences between seen or measured and existent unseen, relevant to understanding what is happening in the physics considered by Relativity, and considered by QM.

    The 'Sandcastles' section is about how we ought to regard science that has been superseded or dis-proven. Including continued value of the scientific method, when not previously dis-proven science is shown to have been wrong. In anticipation of inevitable changes that have the potential to be used to discredit science itself. That vulnerability to failure is its strength, and in my opinion needs emphasizing. Allowing adaptation in the light of new knowledge and thence progress.

    I have taken a quick look at your essay and notice there are similarities. I hope to comment on your page. Kind regards Georgina

    6 days later

    Negative results in science are not well enough appreciated. Wrong ideas that could have worked need to be ruled out. This is not a form of failure. Your "vulnerability is fundamental" message explains this nicely, and I think it has a double meaning. Our own vulnerability in the universe is also fundamental to the way the universe works. If life was not vulnerable there would be no evolution. Natures wrong turns with life also have to eliminated.

    Thank you for the different and thought-provoking perspective

      Georgina, sorry for a last correction, but "classical realism" is ONLY put "out of the game"! by QM not assuming a 'pre-result result' for Bob. John Bell discusses that at length.

      The 'goalposts' are set in stone as I show there IS a 'measurable' which would be the same if measured a bit sooner or later, BUT; that quality; ('same' or 'opposite' momentum, i.e. polarity) is REVERSED if Bob's detector field is reversed. That's the key.

      On 'simplicity', if there is no rotation, i.e. no 'motion' then there is nothing! No particles, no matter, no universe! ..Maybe rather fundamental then?

      Very best of luck for yours.

      Peter

      Dear Fellow Essayists

      This will be my final plea for fair treatment.,

      FQXI is clearly seeking to find out if there is a fundamental REALITY.

      Reliable evidence exists that proves that the surface of the earth was formed millions of years before man and his utterly complex finite informational systems ever appeared on that surface. It logically follows that Nature must have permanently devised the only single physical construct of earth allowable.

      All objects, be they solid, liquid, or vaporous have always had a visible surface. This is because the real Universe must consist only of one single unified VISIBLE infinite surface occurring eternally in one single infinite dimension that am always illuminated mostly by finite non-surface light.

      Only the truth can set you free.

      Joe Fisher, Realist

      Hi Philip, thank you for reading the essay and commenting. I'm glad you appreciated the part about progress in science. I hope that it is a useful way of thinking about it, that can be used to defend science. Which seems more important than ever with recently apparent anti-science attitudes in popular culture and US government, in particular. Even huge changes can be seen in a positive light and not as failure of science itself.

      Hi Joe, I do not know why you think you are being treated unfairly. Your essay has been accepted into the competition and is on public display. You have had a number of comments left.I have noticed that Philip Gibs recently left an interesting question about it, showing that he has made an attempt to grasp your meaning. You are not bottom of the community ratings. There are now a huge number of competition entries. The competition process is what it is, imperfect for everyone but better than no competition. We do at least have the chance of getting our ideas more widely read than on the FQXi community pages alone. Georgina

      Georgina,

      Seems to be sparse reviewing and rating in this essay contest. I am revisiting those I have reviewed and see if I have scored them before the deadline approaches. I find that I have rated yours on 1/19. Thanks for your kind words about mine.

      Jim Hoover

      Dear Georgina,

      Sorry for the late fulfilment of my promise to read your essay.

      "Nothing can arise from nothing" interesting point of view. However if Nothing=Everything then the glass is not half empty but half-full...so not dull at all.

      "More here less there" this remark is maybe the origin of the existence of entropy. The goal of entropy is an even distribution of energy. I think that maybe consciousness is the counterforce of entropy because it is the creator of fluctuations. (irregularities, disturbances). Like you say "All forms of energy are kinds of change, and potential energy is the stored potential for change.". The forms of energy you mention are also irregularities submitted to entropy.

      "Without the continuation of existence spread over time, there is only unitemporal simultaneous existence of all existing things" here you are touching my Total Simultaneity where time and space are non-existing dimensions.

      What are you meaning with "Uni-temporal Now's"? Is this the same as the Eternal Now Moments from my earlier essay? Is it possible to implement such a "unit" and with what reference?

      "Information obtained from signals arriving at the observer sense organ etc..." Indeed we are only aware of signals from events from the PAST (see also my essay). Our experience of what is NOW is a jigsaw of signals from all pasts that we can become aware of.

      "The Earth/near Earth is at the centre of the entire Visible universe and the entire Observable universe,...." I would prefer to say the "Subjective Simultaneity Sphere" of an agent (with different lengths of radius) is at the centre of the agent's reality. The greater the radius the more overlap of SSSs of agents.

      I liked very much your (a little bit too reductionist) essay Georgina. We have lots of thoughts in common, but also there are differences. But it is as you say:"The value of the failed hypotheses, theories and methods is not limited to their certain in-correctness. They might act as cautionary tales for future scientists working in that subject, or be seen as interesting historical works of high intellect, or mathematical beauty." If you see all these thoughts brought together in this foundational contest, there is a lot of richness. I rated your essay UP (7)right now and hope that you did it already for me also.

      Best regards and good luck

      Wilhelmus de Wilde

      Hi Wilhelmus,

      there are some similarities but also significant differences in our models. Uni-temporal Now is the existing configuration of the entire Object universe. All existing substance, material things, and the relations between them. It is where physics is happening. I sometimes refer to it as the causality front. As everything is in motion, the uni-temporal Now (configuration) changes and is not eternal but transient. EM signals persisting within the changing configuration of the Object universe can be received at different times by different observers, producing non simultaneity of (seen ) events.

      Thank you for reading and your reply. Kind regards Georgina

      In regard to gravity: "Mass tells space-time how to curve, and space-time tells mass how to move." according to John Wheeler interpreting Einstein's field equation. As I see it this is incorrect.

      Mass does not tell space time how to curve. Instead the mass is affecting the distribution of the content of space around it. That effect is altering the paths taken by EM radiation passing through it. When the EM signals are received and processed into a product, the appearance is of curved space time because of signal delays. The space time product of signal processing has no affect on the material mass.

      Instead it is the content of uni-temporal space that is affecting the motion of the mass. It is that base medium that is 'told' by the mass how to distribute and in turn 'tells' the mass how to move. Both the mass and the base medium are parts of the Object universe. The space-time product of signal processing is not where the physics is happening.

      The above is what was meant by the brief description in the essay.

      The base medium also provides resistance to change of trajectory. So force must be applied to overcome it. The amount of medium deceases moving away from the Earth or other gravitational mass and so the resistance decreases with distance, giving the decrease in the strength of gravity with distance, fitting the inverse square law.

        Dear Georgina,

        apologies for my late reply...

        "That comes from using Einstein's space-time continuum..." No! It comes from Parmenides! 'Mere happening' cannot be observed in principle. Assuming (just for probabilistic reasons) that you are not familiar with cricket, what you would observe in a cricket game is people moving in certain ways and doing things with bats and balls. Then, for you, every game-oriented 'move' by the players would be entirely unexpected, i.e. you wouldn't be able to observe the GAME. Likewise, what we see on an oscilloscope before synchronization is noise. The synchronization, however, is what WE bring to the measurement, namely, the a priori knowledge what it takes to make a signal of certain periodicity APPEAR to stand still. So, hypotheses, I think, are the most powerful scientific instruments there are, because -if they're good - they make things stand still, and they do this by finding the right way to think (speak) about the world (difficult job indeed). The solution of the equations of motion is always a body in space, e.g. an orbit or trajectory, which is why I said in a previous essay that in Newton's laws the apple does not even feature.

        Time, on the other hand, is what we experience when we are 'unsynchronized', because time begins to flow when we are permanently forced to change our expectations.' Time' is the indicator of things-going-wrong, and since disorder is wrong, the direction of time is in the direction of increasing entropy.

        I'll be back on evolution and species later.

        Heinrich

        Dear Georgina,

        from my previous post it is clear that I think something is 'wrong' with evolution just for the reason of being set in grammatical-historical 'time'. When things begin to 'happen' - SOMETHING has happened! - we admit that we don't have the faintest idea what's going on. Then we don't know what it was, why or how. That's why Parmenides said that change (and hence time) are inexistent or illusions. So, it was important to me to first show that there is no time to be found in the equations of motion (for the reason that human experience concerning e.g. the moon as a phenomenon and its geometrical orbit (an ellipse) are timeless and share no common measure). Likewise doesn't H2O share any common measure with 'water' (he who claims that H2O is cool, self-cleaning and a precondition for life as we as we know it, simply claims too much; these qualities don't flow from H2O, but from water). That is, the 'hard' sciences have ADDED entities to natural language incommensurable with the phenomena and, therefore, not possibly contradicting them. The hard sciences, however, became soft the very moment when their entities were regarded as really existing, i.e. independent of the phenomena. Hence relations between their entities inevitably moved to the foreground with the effect that the past became the playground of 'theories', thus losing any foothold in the present.

        Now let's look at evolution. What happened to the hard sciences only relatively recently (their historicisation), happened to biology already in the aftermath of Darwin. By reifying the extremely successful concept of the biological cell, the becoming of life on this planet had necessarily to disappear in the past.

        However, if paper is patient - even more so is the past!

        I'll be back with comments on the 'species' concept.

        Heinrich

        Attraction of the base medium to mass, and its distribution around it allows gravity to be an effect that is occurring locally between masses and the base medium, as a consequence of the mass, rather than force acting at a distance between masses (Newtonian gravity) or result of space-time curvature (Einstein's gravity).

        For example: The mass of a planet will affect the concentration of the base medium around it.The interaction that another mass has with the medium is related to the mass of the planet, the concentration of the medium due to that planet's mass, and radius that is the second mass's distance from the centre of the planet. Which are the things that relate to the distribution of the medium.

        A reason for tendency to orbit could be the difference in concentration of base medium above and below the object. The more concentrated providing greater inertia, producing a turning.This model makes gravity experienced at ground level a kind of compression from attraction of the medium to the planet, and that medium resisting change of motion through it, so there is inertia of objects on the ground. Energy required for elevation. This fits with the reading of a ground placed accelerometer being due to that compression.

        The additional torque needed for more acceleration at lower orbit could be just that turning from different concentrations previously mentioned. That seems like something that could be calculated.

        Maybe it just doesn't need saying here as it isn't directly about the essay. But it seems at first counter-intuitive that as concentration of the base medium increases there is no decrease in acceleration. Which is why understanding that the increase in concentration isn't increase in viscosity is important.A greater concentration is not hindering motion through it, as a greater viscosity would, but constraining the motion to that produced by the relation with surrounding medium and making change from that particular motion more difficult.