A religious believer asked me to further expand on this comment. Well, from the perspective of the 18th century, God is most fundamental. Newton argued:

"God is more important than physics or mathematics. He created the world such as we see it now. Time and space are absolute. Space is the sensorium of God. God winds up the big clock again and again."

Leibniz distinguished three levels of infinity:

- the (currently preferred as mathematical) relative one

- the logically absolute (potential) one

- God as the highest one.

Leibniz criticized the absolute space as too restrictive. He argued, God doesn't need winding up the created by Himself big clock, the universe. On behalf of Newton, Samuel Clark commented: This implies God is redundant, Leibniz is close to atheism.

When I formulated the title of my essay "Semi-fundamental constructs", I was aware of the quite different meaning of the notion semi-fundamental in modern mathematics. With "semi" I rather meant a restriction to a fundament which needn't be straightforward correct but may possibly be of heuristical value.

I anticipate that only people with common sense will be ready to accept that the age of something is more fundamental than its arbitarily attributed location in a human (e.g. Christian) time scale. Please don't mistake this as blasphemy.

Only elapsed time, i.e. the age, can be measured.

Eckard Blumschein

Dear Eckard, Time is a synonym for universal total movement. Look at my essay, FQXi Fundamental in New Cartesian Physics by Dizhechko Boris Semyonovich Where I showed how radically the physics can change if it follows the principle of identity of space and matter of Descartes. Evaluate and leave your comment there. Then I'll give you a rating . Do not allow New Cartesian Physics go away into nothingness.

Sincerely, Dizhechko Boris Semyonovich.

Dorogoi Boric Semyonovich,

Perhaps you mistook my utterance "time is (merely) a construct" which means it is semifundanental. I meant, ordinary time is not directly measurable on the tevel of reality. It is based on the truly fundamental elapsed time.

I had two reasons for dealing a bit with what Descartes was teaching in the Netherlands.

At first his speculation about space challenged Guericke to perform experiments instead.

Secondly, Descartes combined ancient geometry with the pretty new use of negative numbers into Cartesian coordinates with extension from minus infinity to plus infinity. Ironically he didn't manage reaching as much freedom as possible because in Cartesioan coordinates one necessarily has to arbitrarily choose a point of reference. Hence, Cartesian coordinates are a mathematically perfect construct while not fundamental to physics.

What about your New Cartesian Physics, I found some interesting claims. However, a more careful scrutiny will take more time. Did you deal with the three belonging experiments (1881, 1889, and 1923) by Michelson?

Eckard Blumschein

    Dear Eckard Blumschein my attention to the concept of "time" due to the fact that I sometimes try to eliminate it from physics. I get it, but very cumbersome. Therefore, for brevity of presentation, we have to write "time". However, I don't like the phrase "space-time". I believe, that it is equivalent to the phrase "space-movement". The principle of identity of Descartes, then, would be: matter is space and space is matter that moves.

    I also have a claim to infinity from (-) to ( ) if this applies to the axes of the coordinate system, which are used as the inertial reference system in the theory of relativity. You are right that this leads to static. In the dynamics - this leads to existing paradoxes as if to say that in each inertial frame the speed of light is the same. I propose to separate geometrical space, where the statics of matter, from physical space, where the dynamics of matter. The geometric space may be associated with a coordinate system with an infinitely large axes, and each point of physical space you can put a coordinate system with only an infinitely small axes. This explains the results of experiments of Michelson. In geometrical space the speed of light depends on the velocity of the source. In the physical space, in points, of the trajectory of light are infinitesimal inertial frame of reference in which the speed of light is the same. Coming to the receiver, the light demonstrates the constancy of its speed.

    Dear Eckard, your high score I need to develop the New Cartesian Physics on. Visit my page and give your comment there, so I got a notice by e-mail and quickly respond.

    FQXi Fundamental in New Cartesian Physics by Dizhechko Boris Semyonovich

    Do not allow New Cartesian Physics go away into nothingness, which can to be the theory of everything OO.

    Sincerely, Dizhechko Boris Semyonovich.

    Hello Eckard,

    I find your essay relevant, a pleasure to see this redundance and how you interpret the maths and the physics which are different.

    ++++ :)

    Best Regards ; friendly

    Hello Steve,

    The word redundant might be a false friend. An Englishman warned me: Don't use it. I means "dismissed by your employer, out of job" (in German arbeitslos).

    What I intend to express is something quite different: the property of elements in a mathematical structure that are strictly speaking and with respect to an application unnecessary (= needless) in the sense of avoidable, in principle. Redundant elements increase the apparent volume of information. Hence I consider them and the structure that contains them definitely not fundamental.

    This view of mine collides with the also understandable but not always justified strive for more and more generalizing. Several essay authors hope for getting an ultimate fundament of physics by diving "deeper" and deeper. Actually, this strategy leeds to higher and higher levels of abstraction, being as a rule more remote from reality.

    What about my ++++, I enjoyed using the symbol box as long as it wasn't misused as to veil the fundamental difference between past and future. Our ancesters were in position to count elapsed days but not future ones. One can only abstract from fundamental observation, not he other way round.

    You got my essence. Thank you.

    With best regards,

    Eckard

      Some fundamental (historic) details from Lexikon der Antike:

      Jewish time counts from assumed creation of the world at 3761 BC. Greece counted from the first list of winners in panhellenic Olympic games in 776 BC. The Romans started with 753 BC (ab urbe condita). Some Roman provinces each referred to the begin of their Roman rule. Muslims refer to the year of Hedshra 622 AD.

      Abbot Dionysius Exiguus suggested referring to anno domini (AD). Carolus Magnus definitely died in 814 AD.

      The use of time before the birth of Christ (BC), i.e. negative time, goes back to the French theologian D. Petavius (1583-1652).

      Eckard Blumschein

      Dear Eckard,

      I highly appreciate your beautifully written essay.

      It is so close to me. «The alternative dynamic view has proved the more appropriate basis: In reality, in contrast to closed models of processes, the future is more or less open to erratic influences and evades therefore complete prediction».

      «Causality is most fundamental to reality»

      I hope that my modest achievements can be information for reflection for you.

      Vladimir Fedorov

      https://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/3080

        Hello Eckard,

        thanks for these explainations.

        Best Regards

        Dear Eckard: above you wrote:

        "Gordon Watson wrote: -- "Reality makes sense and we can understand it." --

        In my understanding, this is a tautology because I am merely distinguishing between mysticism and conjectured reality of anything including the also comprehensive notion of the physical universe."

        My use of that phrase is an affirmation that links to your statements: "There is only one reality;" and "Causality [see my use of -- "interactions" --] is most fundamental to reality." Thus, as in my essay, my efforts to understand begin with the premiss of true local realism (TLR)* in spacetime.

        "Not curiosity, not vanity, not the consideration of expediency, not duty and conscientiousness, but an unquenchable, unhappy thirst that brooks no compromise leads us to truth." G. W. F. Hegel.

        * TLR: true local realism is the union of true locality and true realism. True locality insists that no influence propagates superluminally, after Einstein. True realism insists that some existents may change interactively, after Bohr.

        All the best; Gordon

        Gordon Watson More realistic fundamentals: quantum theory from one premiss.

        Dear Eckard

        If you are looking for another essay to read and rate in the final days of the contest, will you consider mine please?

        A couple of days in and semblance of my essay taking form, however the house bound inactivity was wearing me. I had just the remedy, so took off for a solo sail across the bay. In the lea of cove, I had underestimated the open water wind strengths. My sail area overpowered. Ordinarily I would have reduced sail, but this day I felt differently. My contemplations were on the forces of nature, and I was ventured seaward increasingly amongst them. As the wind and the waves rose, my boat came under strain, but I was exhilarated. All the while I considered, how might I communicate the role of natural forces in understanding of the world around us. For they are surely it's central theme.

        Beyond my essay's introduction, I place a microscope on the subjects of universal complexity and natural forces. I do so within context that clock operation is driven by Quantum Mechanical forces (atomic and photonic), while clocks also serve measure of General Relativity's effects (spacetime, time dilation). In this respect clocks can be said to possess a split personality, giving them the distinction that they are simultaneously a study in QM, while GR is a study of clocks. The situation stands whereby we have two fundamental theories of the world, but just one world. And we have a singular device which serves study of both those fundamental theories. Two fundamental theories, but one device? Please join me in questioning this circumstance?

        My essay goes on to identify natural forces in their universal roles, how they motivate the building of and maintaining complex universal structures and processes. When we look at how star fusion processes sit within a "narrow range of sensitivity" that stars are neither led to explode nor collapse under gravity. We think how lucky we are that the universe is just so. We can also count our lucky stars that the fusion process that marks the birth of a star, also leads to an eruption of photons from its surface. for if they didn't then nebula gas accumulation wouldn't be halted and the star would again be led to collapse.

        Could a natural organisation principle have been responsible for fine tuning universal systems? Faced with how lucky we appear to have been, shouldn't we consider this possibility?

        For our luck surely didnt run out there, for these photons stream down on earth, liquifying oceans which drive geochemical processes that we "life" are reliant upon. The Earth is made up of elements that possess the chemical potentials that life is entirely dependent upon. Those chemical potentials are not expressed in the absence of water solvency. So again, how amazingly fortunate we are that these chemical potentials exist in the first instance, and additionally within an environment of abundant water solvency such as Earth, able to express these potentials.

        My essay is an attempt at something audacious. It questions the fundamental nature of the interaction between space and matter Guv = Tuv, and hypothesizes the equality between space curvature and atomic forces is due to common process. Space gives up an energy potential in exchange for atomic forces in a conversion process, which drives atomic activity. And furthermore, that Baryons only exist because this energy potential of space exists, and is available for exploitation. Baryon characteristics and behaviours, complexity of structure and process might then be explained in terms of being evolved and optimised for this purpose and existence. Removing need for so many layers of extraordinary luck to eventuate our own existence. It attempts an interpretation of the above mentioned stellar processes within these terms, but also extends much further. It shines a light on molecular structure that binds matter together, as potentially being an evolved agency that enhances rigidity and therefor persistence of universal system. We then turn a questioning mind towards Earths unlikely geochemical processes, (for which we living things owe so much) and look at its central theme and propensity for molecular rock forming processes. The existence of chemical potentials and their diverse range of molecular bond forming activities? The abundance of water solvent on Earth, for which many geochemical rock forming processes could not be expressed without? The question of a watery Earth? is then implicated as being part of an evolved system that arose for purpose and reason, alongside the same reason and purpose that molecular bonds and chemical process arose.

        By identifying process whereby atomic forces draw a potential from space, we have identified means for their perpetual action, and their ability to deliver perpetual work. Forces drive clocks and clock activity is shown by GR to dilate. My essay details the principle of force dilation and applies it to a universal mystery. My essay raises the possibility, that nature in possession of a natural energy potential, will spontaneously generate a circumstance of Darwinian emergence. It did so on Earth, and perhaps it did so within a wider scope. We learnt how biology generates intricate structure and complexity, and now we learn how it might apply for intricate structure and complexity within universal physical systems.

        To steal a phrase from my essay "A world product of evolved optimization".

        Best of luck for the conclusion of the contest

        Kind regards

        Steven Andresen

        Darwinian Universal Fundamental Origin

          Terry,

          Your comment is valuable to me. Let me quote and reply in > to it:

          Eckard,Your essay caught me completely off guard. For a number or reasons I pretty much accept the "now is real" interpretation a the only one that is logically self-consistent, since all block models of time require a sort of magical preconstruction of the block that on closer examination cannot be made self-consistent without some kind of causality-enforcing "growth" from past to future. Any such "growth' process looks a whole lot like... well, time, and time with a very definite sense of "now" at the future face of growth.

          >

          If you get a chance sometime and have not already done so already, you should look up the chirality issue for fermions in the Standard Model. The left-handed and right-handed version of the electron (and other fermions, except neutrinos) present some interesting opportunities to link Fourier components to both particles and how particles obtain mass.

          >

          My only disappointment in your essay was that I was hoping that in the last couple of pages you would take your model a bit further into particle physics to show how it might connect there.

          I realize though that the length limits of these essays are tough, but for me this one ended too quickly.

          >

          Thank you very much for your honest attempt to grasp what I tried to convey.

          Cheers,

          Eckard

          Sorry Steven,

          While I agree on that Darwin's idea has proven utterly useful, I prefer a more concise academic style. You might read my essay "Toward more reasonable evolution".

          Kind regards,

          Eckard

          Someone edited my reply by omitting what I wrote in parentheses.

          Let me try and add something even more simple instead:

          Kronecker argued: "The natural (positive) numbers were made by God.

          Anything else is manmade."

          Doesn't this mean, the natural numbers are more fundamental?

          In the same sense I see the elapsed time more fundamental than time and accordingly cosine transformation more fundamental than the complex Fourier transformation.

          I am not at all against negative numbers and Fourier transformation but against not warranted speculative generalizations in physics.

          Eckard Blumschein

          Dorogoi Vladimir Nikolaevich,

          I have to confess, I cannot judge your admittedly impressing practical work on measurement of toroidal gravitational waves. I don't yet see many direct relations to the topic of this contest. At least you failed to critically read my own essay. Nonetheless I may confirm your excellent command of English.

          Vsjevo choroshevo,

          Eckard Blumschein

          10 months later

          Dear Eckard Blumschein,

          On Jan 26, 2018, you suggested (with regard to my essay on re-interpreting special relativity) that I comment on Michelson's later (1923?) experiment.

          I believe you were referring to the Michelson-Gale-Pearson Sagnac-type experiment(of which I was unaware). I have now done so and it turns out that this experiment has major consequences, so thank you very much for your suggestion.

          The new paper is a much expanded version of the 9-page essay and can be found here:

          [link:vixra.org/abs/1812.0424]Everything's Relative, or is it?[/link]

          My thesis is that special relativity, with all it's contradictions and nonsense, was accepted primarily because of the many experimental 'proofs' of time dilation, from muons to the Hafele-Keating experiments. Because Einstein's theory was the only interpretation, these proofs caused physicists to accept his space-time symmetry [no preferred frame], relativity of simultaneity, and all associated paradoxes [logical contradictions].

          Unlike quantum mechanics, with its Bohr, deBroglie-Bohm, Everett, QBism and other interpretations, special relativity has had only ONE interpretation, that of space-time symmetry, thus it's been a package deal; take it or leave it. The energy-time interpretation provides an alternative way to interpret time dilation that does not lead to logical contradictions.

          I hope those who were interested in this essay will download the extended version from http://vixra.org/abs/1812.0424

          My very best regards,

          Edwin Eugene Klingman

            Dear Edwin Eugene Klingman,

            The text of your paper is very good readable to me although my computer fails to correctly print some details (in particular headings, copy right, datum, page numbers, and many symbols in formulas). Could you please check whether or not other readers might also be affected?

            Being already aware of many out of the compelling arguments you collected so far, I hope for a clarifying discussion. Wasn't Claude Shannon correct when he stated that the past cannot at all be changed but its traces are readable in principle, while the future is influencable in principle but cannot be completely predicted?

            While space seems to be symmetrical in all directions, it is obviously not reasonable to assume time as also symmetrical just because the abstraction made laws of motion symmetrical.

            Therefore I consider Poincaré/Minkowski spacetime just a mathematical construct. Although you wrote to me that you were not earlier aware of Michelson/Gale/Pearson, I acknowledge your effort to deal with the huge heap of Relativity support.

            My very best regards,

            Eckard Blumschein

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