Dear Eckard Blumschein,
I don't doubt that reductionism can be very useful in a certain extent, but this is why it's not fundamental - it's important for our purposes.
I will read your essay soon to get your points and to reply there, thank you for sharing.
Francesco D'Isa
Dear Professor William C. McHarris,
Reliable evidence exists 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.
Joe Fisher, Realist
Alas (and I am no exception), most philosophers don't make good particularly good philosophers either.
Dear Professor McHarris,
Thank you for presenting such an interesting and thought-provoking essay. Reductionism seems to be beyond its limits. Your essay discusses deeper and deeper levels of understanding nature from the top-down. I am curious as to if and how you would extend this to the vast arena of the cosmos. In particular, the Big Bang theory. To me the Big Bang seems like a colorful name applied to curve-fitting. A singularity is not a beginning. If we consider it as such, then we deprive ourselves of looking elsewhere.
My understanding of your essay suggests that you may feel the answer of what is most fundamental must come from the way nature itself operates. Yet, your opening sentence says this is beyond human understanding. I do not share that view, but it is not something on which one votes.
If we accept that the answer to what is most fundamental must come from the bottom-up, where does one find a suitable discussion that explores different ways in which that may have happened? One can find philosophical discussions that are far too general to build into something. It seems we may be missing an important approach in our efforts to solve the mystery.
Richard Marker
Prof. McHarris:
It was a pleasure reading your essay, which brings up some important points that you have also emphasized in previous years. In particular, you focus on the role of nonlinearity in quantum mechanics, where the orthodox mathematics is entirely linear.
In my own essay, "Fundamental Waves and the Reunification of Physics", I point out that nonlinear behavior in an electron could give rise to a soliton-like wave packet, which could exhibit the exclusion principle without requiring Pauli's mathematical construction. It was Pauli's construction that inadvertently created quantum entanglement, which has been a source of contention ever since. In the past few years, massive funds have been poured into quantum computing research by governments and industries, but quantum computing requires entanglement to function. My prediction is that quantum computing will fail catastrophically within about 5 years, and only then will the foundations of quantum mechanics be reexamined.
Regarding your primary theme of reductionism, I would put things a bit differently. The paradigm of a small number of weakly interacting elements tends to be a good approximation in most regimes, but it is really only an approximation. So a world of electrons, protons, and neutrons works fairly well for most matter at ordinary energies. But look a bit more closely, and you have beta decay with neutrinos, and positrons. Look at higher energies, and you create a whole new zoo of other particles. That may work for a while, but in another regime, things will look completely different. There is no reason to think that we will ever have a final, complete theory of everything.
Best Wishes,
Alan Kadin
Dear Prof Mc Harris,
I am afraid I cannot follow your main thesis. Of course a system is not the sum of its components, it's the components plus interactions between them. I hence do not see how non-linear dynamics is incompatible with reductionism. Non-linear dynamics might make it very difficult, maybe impossible in practice, to reconstruct the underlying laws, for sure. I consider this one possible explanation for why we have not been able to make much progress in the foundations of physics in the recent decades indeed - we may be stuck on theories that are too simple. But that a more fundamental theory may not be simple is not in conflict with reductionism per se. Best,
Sabine
Dear David Brown,
Thank you for your comment and for bringing Milgrom's Modified Newtonian Dynamics to my attention. It's so new to me that I can't comment on how important it really is (the comparison with with Kepler is pretty strong). However, an initial reading of his ideas makes me want to learn much more, for MOND seems basically sensible. Unfortunately, I couldn't follow too much in your essay -- too much covered in too little space -- but I do agree with you that most scientists, theorists included, are unwilling to look outside their comfortable boxes, as exemplified by the quotation preceding my essay.
Thanks again for bringing new ideas to my attention.
Bill McHarris
Professor McHarris,
While you cover quite a few aspects of the problem, I think there is a particular issue that both illustrates the problem and has to be addressed, first and foremost.
We experience reality as flashes of perception and consequently experience time as this "flow," from past to future. While modern physics senses something wrong, it still codifies this perception by treating time as measures of duration, from one event to the next.
The reality is it is change turning future to past. As in tomorrow becomes yesterday because the earth turns. This makes time an effect of action, similar to temperature.
Duration is just the state of the present, as events coalesce and dissolve.
Time is asymmetric because action is inertial. The earth turns one direction, not both.
Clocks can run at different rates because they are separate actions. A faster clock will use energy quicker. Much as an animal with faster metabolism will age quicker, than one with a slower rate. Yet remain in the same present.
The simultaneity of the present is dismissed by arguing different events will be witnessed in different order, from different locations, but this is no more consequential than seeing the moon as it was a moment ago, simultaneous with seeing stars as they were years ago. It is the energy that is conserved, not the information. That this energy is radiated away is why we can see these events and why they no longer exist, except as information stored in the energy.
The future is not pre-determined, even if the laws of nature are deterministic, because it is only the occurrence of the event which can fully calculate the total input into it.
Think of reality as a dichotomy of energy and form. Energy manifests form and form defines the constituent energy. As living beings, we evolved a central nervous system to process information and the digestive, respiratory and circulatory systems to process energy. Consequently we tend to focus our attention on the forms, than the energy and try to understand the energy by breaking it into over smaller units, but that only multiplies the potential interactions.
If you want to understand the past, study the information, but if you want to understand the future, study the energy.
Reductionism is quite useful but always keep in mind that generals run armies, while specialist is an enlisted grade.
Regards,
John Merryman
I liked your essay a lot Bill...
Unlike Bee; I easily grasped and deeply embrace your main thesis. I'll expound that String theory is an obvious example, because it claims to elucidate the smallest structures possible in the universe - or in any possible universes. This has obvious appeal for people in Finance and Economics, because many of them are what I'd call hard core reductionist materialists. I can imagine them drooling over the potential when Strings first came into vogue. I've met some of the prominent ST researchers, and heard more than a few lectures, so I know many of the people in that field are very smart, but I wonder... What might we learn if ST did not get the lion's share of funding?
I agree that we should not regard nonlinear phenomena as the oddball, but rather see it as an essential part of any realistic attempt to study Physics. In my current essay, I talk about the tendency of physicists to be over eager in reducing models to linear equations that are easily solvable, and ignore nonlinear terms that make our models more physically-realistic. You will also like my description of gravity as a kind of condensation at the band merging Misiurewicz point coinciding with (-1.543689, 0i) in the Mandelbrot Set. This is the spot in the corresponding logistic map where all the divided trajectories appear to converge.
I've long been a fan of chaos theory and fractals, so on some level you are preaching to the choir with me Bill. But I hope there are more like me, who will find your essay transparently revealing and full of welcome insights.
All the Best,
Jonathan
Dear Flavio,
Thank you very much for your kind words. I have just completed studying your most impressive essay, and indeed we do reach rather similar conclusions, if from somewhat different directions and couched in different terms: All too many scientists are shackled by their preconceived ideas/prejudices when trying to proceed beyond the present frontiers of science. And one of the most ubiquitous of these prejudices is the adherence to a strict reductionism. When thoughtfully and carefully applied, reductionism can be a useful, even powerful tool, but it is by no means fundamental to advancing science.
I was especially impressed with your treatment of Bell-type theorems. You present these ideas in much more eloquent, philosophical terms than I do, for I proceed from an experimentalist's point of view, and I have worked primarily with the CHSH inequality, which was derived with specific experiments in mind. There wasn't space in this essay for me to elaborate much about Bell-type theories or experiments, but they are very important, especially since such far-reaching conclusions have been drawn from them. I have written more extensively about them in previous papers ([11-14] and references therein).
On p. 7 of your essay you state, "To summarize, local realistic theories have been falsified, and we have a theory, QM, which comes outside its borders. However, it is not the most fundamental theory we think of, since there is potentially room for theories that violate the bounds imposed by QM, and still lie in the domain of 'physically significant' theories (i.e., within the NS [no-signaling] bound)." I recommend the examination of nonlinear dynamics and chaos theory as a possible contender for such, along with the implication that quantum mechanics could be influenced or even contain nonlinearities. When people have tried to explain away the implications of Bell-type experiments, most of their focus has been on the quantum-mechanical side (e.g., reaching the 2в€љ2 -- rather than 2 -- upper bound on correlations for "entangled" pairs). However, some NONLINEAR systems can also exceed the so-called classical bound, making a strict elimination of local reality somewhat moot. (There is a fairly extensive literature on this under the guise of "nonextensive entropy." Gell-Mann and Tallis have edited a book based on a Santa Fe Institute conference, and Tallis has written a fairly recent book introducing the subject [although he tends to oversell his "Tsallis entropy."]) Nonergodic behavior, i.e., trajectories visiting some parts of phase space preferentially over other parts, can easily disguise itself as "spooky-action-at-a distance" -- and it is not uncommon in nonlinear systems.
Again, thanks. And I hope other readers will like your essay as much as I do.
Bill
Dear Francesco,
I read your most fascinating essay carefully and was most favorably impressed with it; naturally I have to agree with most of it on philosophical terms. Of course, Nature and the Universe are subject to the same logic as everything else, so according to Buddhist theory they, too, must be relative. However, in order not to spin our wheels indefinitely, we need an "origin" for our relative concepts, and in my essay I propose that Reductionism is not suited to be this origin. If we accept our perceptions, best as we can (I know it's a long shot and philosophically debatable), as our starting point, we can use various forms of logic, including "nonlinear logic" (cf. my ref. [13]), to work our understanding of Nature further away from this "origin" hopefully to a more useful and satisfying level. (I realize this is poorly stated, but I am by no means a competent philosopher.)
A suggestion for you -- and perhaps a modest challenge. Scientists, as well as philosophers, are not particularly adept at nonlinear logic, but it might be interesting for you to try applying nonlinear logic and feedback to the problem of truth being relative. Superficially, it complicates the problem immensely, but who knows -- perhaps some unexpected simplifications might come shining through. In my previous essay [13] I also attempt to demonstrate that infinite regression is intimately connected with "free will." I would be interested in your comments concerning this.
Again, thanks for your comments and for your own brilliant essay.
Best wishes,
Bill
William,
The notions of a whole being greater, equal to, or less than the sum of its parts are misrepresentations. In the universe of all-there-is, all things have a relation to all other things, and inter-dependent combinations of things, to the extent that the number of subdivisions of the whole is essentially limitless.
By these means the most fundamental element in the overall scheme of things is the whole itself, from whence one can proceed with an understanding that 'Reductionism is not Fundamental', nor does it lead to a fundamental axiom of the whole.
Having stated as much, we still have not addressed the subject; What is "Fundamental?" We need to ask ourselves what conditions must be present to enable and whole or parts of wholes? In doing so we need to ask ourselves the 'What', 'Where', 'Why', 'When' and 'How' questions bearing upon the subject under consideration.
We can probably agree that Time and Space are essential contexts within which all things operate, but Time and Space are not (I suggest) the ultimate fundamentals sought.
I concur with your conclusion that 'Reductionism is not fundamental. Nature - and the Universe - [aka Existence] is.'
Thanks for swimming against the stream. It is refreshing.
Good Luck.
Gary.
Dear Eckard,
Thank your your response to Francesco D'Isa about reductionism. I was also interested in your dealings with causality. There are two concepts in modern chaos theory you might find worthy of attention:
First, the "Butterfly Effect." Many chaotic systems display extreme, exponential sensitivity to initial conditions; hence, the quote about a butterfly's flapping its wings in Brazil causing a storm in Texas. What this means is that, while chaos is fundamentally deterministic, its results have to be treated statistically. A specific, definite starting point in phase space is causal -- it results in a single, definite result. However, the extreme sensitivity to initial conditions means that points differing infinitesimally can produce extremely different results! And this can be an infinite regression, so experimentally it is impossible to determine which starting point is involved, thus impossible to predict the exact result. I'm sure this has implications for your arguments about fundamental vs semi-fundamental constructs.
Second, odd-order nonlinear systems can have positive-negative (forward-reverse) asymmetries. You should investigate this with regard to your arguments about past and future being different. Iteration of the simple cubic map makes a good starting point.
I found your essay quite intriguing, but I do have a perhaps naive question. My understanding of complex numbers (and implications for the complex Fourier Transform) is that they are simply a convenience for properly handling the algebra of ordered pairs, as in waves and quantum theory. If so, then the terms "real" and "imaginary" are just labels without the philosophical implications people often give them. What do you think?
Cheers,
Bill
Dear Proffessor William C. McHarris
Your esteemed words on Reductionism... "the linearity necessary for Reductionism, and some questionable uses of statistics and the contemporary breakdown in feedback between experiment and theory in modern physics."..... are very important , Proffesor William C. McHarris...... I would like to state that Dynamic Universe Model is based entirely on experimental results and observations....
.... I highly appreciate your essay and hope you may 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
Dear Joe,
True, that Nature -- the Universe -- is ultimately most basic and fundamental, but you might wish to consider the following:
Emergent computer programs have done amazingly well in trying to simulate "bottom-up" behavior and evolution of some rather sophisticated systems. However, one of the difficulties often encountered is that they reach only local rather than global maxima. It is as if you are mountain climbing, but you choose not the highest mountain but a lesser mountain, and when you reach its peak there is nowhere to go -- and no incentive or path to reach the peak of the highest mountain. This can be circumvented by introducing "predators" into the emergent programs (producing a predator-prey feedback scenario similar to those found in nature), which supply mechanisms (motivations?) forcing the programs to leave their local maximum and try to reach the global maximum.
Now, suppose Nature acts in a somewhat analogous fashion to these emergent programs -- after all, evolution is basically a bottom-up process. There very well could be all sorts of local maxima, and our particular Universe could well be one of these local maxima, with no way to reach others. (Or, in the unlikely event that we are on he "global maximum" -- whatever that might mean in this context -- there are plenty of other, lower maxima that are unattainable for us.) How is this for an alternate (far less esoteric than Elliot's many-worlds ideas) version of a multiverse?!
It's all purely speculative but an intriguing exercise more or less in the spirit of your ideas.
Cheers,
Bill
Dear Jack,
Alas, we are all in this boat together -- but hooray, we can all keep trying to navigate and find our way toward better (more fundamental?!) explanations!
I was most impressed by your succinct essay, which on first reading might seem superficial but which contains some surprising insights packed into a small package. If I understand you correctly, you propose using our (complex) Darwinian cognition, even though we don't fully understand it, to attempt to find a rational/empirical understanding of quantum behavior.
Some of our difficulties in comprehension stem from the fact that we didn't evolve to understand fully concepts such as infinity and nonlinear logic. I cover some of this in a previous FQXi essay (ref. [13]), and in that essay I quote Danny Hillis, from his book, "The Pattern on the Stone":
"I have used simulated evolution to evolve a program to solve specific sorting problems, so I know that the process works as described. In my experiments, I also favored the programs that sorted the test sequences quickly, so that fast programs were more likely to survive. This evolutionary process created very fast sorting programs. For the problems I was interested in, the programs that evolved were actually slightly faster than any of the algorithms described... [standard algorithms] -- and, in fact, they were faster at sorting numbers than any program I could have written myself.
"One of the interesting things about the sorting programs that evolved in my experiment is that I do not understand how they work. I have carefully examined their instruction sequences, but I do not understand them; I have no simpler explanation of how the programs work than the instruction sequences themselves. It may be that the programs are not understandable -- that there is no way to break the operation of the program into a hierarchy of understandable parts. If this is true -- if evolution can produce something as simple as a sorting program, which is fundamentally incomprehensible -- it does not bode well for our prospects of ever understanding the human brain."
In short, when nonlinearity and feedback become involved, we quickly lose our so-called intuition. (This is another approach to demonstrating that straightforward, linear reductionism is not fundamental.) Instead, somehow one has to strive to make use of some sort of holistic logic, to be able to see how how simultaneous widely-separate parts (and concepts) interact to affect the whole. This is a tall order for philosophy, as well as for science, but it seems to fall within your more abstract ideas of having our evolved cognition empower a rational understanding of, say, quantum concepts.
I would be very interested in your take on these subjects.
Best wishes,
Bill
... and increasing entropy...
Cheers,
Bill McHarris
Dear Bill,
Thank you for your in-depth response to my essay. Your incomprehensible sorting program does indeed present significant challenges. I agree that how evolution arrives at this is seemingly simple yet bafflingly complex - it gives in my view some weight to Leslie Valiants 'ecorithms' (if you haven't read his book on this I think you could get a lot from it given the results of your experiment). I also think your right to relate this in the context of the abstract ideas i have presented here. Perhaps this is because it may refer to the same hurdle - being that what makes those difficult natural algorithms that facilitate our mind, and evolution, are one and the same as that which facilitates quantum fundamentality. How else could evolution process if not innately equipped with the same underlying capacity? I am glad you appreciate the deeper themes of my essay.
Best,
Jack
Dear William C. McHarris,
I enjoyed your essay and agree with your main points. Being a 'come-lately' to theory is not necessarily negative. I left theoretical physics in the late 70s and returned circa 2006. As far as I'm concerned, I just missed a lot of fads, while all the data discovered in that period is still available. There are advantages to (re-)entering theoretical physics with more experience under one's belt.
For example, lifelong theorists seem to interpret Einstein's linear 'weak field' equations as implying that the weak gravitational field is "linear". This is one more example of projecting mathematical structure onto physical reality and then "believing" in the structure. In fact, changing the field equations by suppressing the self-interactive (non-linear) terms has exactly zero effect on the physical nature of the field! Because most instances of weak-field gravity are boring, this seldom comes back to bite one. But if one can construct a situation where iterative self-interaction repeats endlessly, (or as long as driving energy is available) this non-linearity dominates all other effects.
A comment is not the place to dwell on this, but results are quite fascinating. In short, I am in complete agreement that non-linearity is poorly understood, as it is one of the few places where our intuition really does have problems keeping up.
On another non-intuitive topic, I hope you will read my essay on the historical development of Einstein's space-time symmetry and an alternative energy-time interpretation of special relativity. I would appreciate any comments you might have.
Thanks for a great essay.
Best regards,
Edwin Eugene Klingman
Dear Alan,
Thank you for your comments and comforting thoughts about my essay. I have studied your essay as well, and I was most impressed, even overwhelmed by it. I'll have to follow up by studying your other, previous references before I can really comment intelligently, but here are a few preliminary ideas:
We more or less agree about the importance of nonlinearities necessary for further progress. I was fascinated by your ideas of soliton-like electron waves. I can't quite grasp your overall picture, but it is an impressive attempt to overcome procedures that don't seem to have worked. Even if it isn't true in toto, it's an important way to start out -- and a welcome journey into uncharted territory.
As for waves versus particles, one doesn't have to resort to quantum behavior to find this duality. A wave-particle duality of sorts occurs in classical chaotic scattering, where macroscopic balls scattering off arrays as simple as three triangularly-spaced other balls can result in diffraction-like behavior. Some interesting trajectories of this sort are shown in "Chaotic Scattering: An Introduction" [E. Ott and T. Tiel, Chaos, 3, 417 (1993)], as well as in Ott's book, "Chaos in Dynamical Systems." What do you think about waves and particles merely being two different mathematical approaches for describing things -- non-commuting mentally as well as physically?
I hope to get back to you after studying and thinking about these things in greater depth.
Best wishes,
Bill