Professor Josephson,

This is of interest to me:

"And why are there these constantly changing but in some ways staying the same 'entities'? That's because there are emergent mechanisms that achieve this: 'entities are always part of a process'... "

And indeed, physics giants have often come to discoverys with thinking about processes, not about things (Newton, Kepler, Planck ...). The entire Boskovic Philosophiae naturalis is about the forces that drive nature. I think that Bošković anticipated much of what was later discovered, probably regarding the topics of your essay too. My question is:

Why is Boskovic very little quoted in modern science? And

Do you agree? Plancks units are 'entities that are always part of a process'. So there is no beginning of the universe with the Planck time. Planck time rather is an entity in the flow of the universe.

Regards,

Branko

Professor Josephson

Thank you very much for a deep and thought provocative article.

A short question: Do you think that we could change causality in Bohm's theory? Instead of a wave guiding a particle we could assume a particle to generate a real wave function. Think about a boat moving in water.

Best regards from ______________ John-Erik Persson

    Jack Sarfatti is the main defender of the original Bohm theory (not the later Bohm that I quoted), so you need to ask him.

    Dear Professor Josephson,

    It is not easy to comment your essay. I found it interesting and very accessible. Thank you for sharing your thoughts.

    Introducing biology and siemiosis into the equation is judicious to me. I am more sceptical on simple living organism examples. I wish you would have focused on the brain and its interaction with its environment.

    Kind regards,

    Christophe

      My FFP15 talk, which goes into a lot more detail, is uploading to our university's media system at this very moment. I'll post notification when it becomes available for viewing.

      Jack Sarfatti

      If you read this: What is your opinion regarding my question to Josephson?

      Regards from ________________ John-Erik Persson

      However, I am aware of recent expts. suggesting that there is a connection between the pilot wave theory and what happens with ordinary water drops. Here is a link to an article about this: https://www.wired.com/2014/06/the-new-quantum-reality. But, if you think about it, it sends to support my approach to the extent that it shows that you do not have to invoke early Bohm to get analogues to QM effects.

      Dear Professor Josephson,

      I am interested in your work presented here, also because I have my own, scientifically rigorous arguments in favour of the probable existence (necessity) of "other", biologically active levels of reality, not (yet) directly observable, but ontologically real. And I obtain this conclusion with the help of extended (reality-based and causally complete) mathematics of "unreduced dynamic complexity", corresponding to the description at the end of your essay abstract. You can find some major points in my essay here, with much more details in references therein. This is to say that the necessary mathematical framework may already exist, with clear signs of its efficiency. And what's interesting, it is the same one that helps to clarify "quantum mysteries" and other accumulated "contradictions" of standard science framework at "usual" fundamental levels of physical reality.

        Explanatory Video now on line

        The lecture I gave in November 2017 at the Frontiers of Fundamental Physics 15 conference is now online, complete with slides, in a range of formats at https://sms.cam.ac.uk/media/2657924. It goes into a lot more detail than was possible in this essay, and is strongly recommended for those wanting to understand more. The slides are also available separately, at http://www.tcm.phy.cam.ac.uk/~bdj10/Documents/Spain-2017.pdf.

          I wanted to bring to your attention...

          There has just appeared an essay by Todd L Duncan entitled "What if Meaning is Fundamental?" asking as you do if meaning is an attribute fundamental to Physics.

          All the Best,

          Jonathan

          Professor Josephson

          Ive admirred your Essay ( as all your works!) I am also in opinion that "biologisation) of science can help to understanding it

          My best regards

          M.Kozłowski

          Emeritus Professor Warsaw University

          The grip that preconceptions have on one's mind

          To be serious now (following my dig at arXiv above, 'the physics revolution will not be brought to you by arXiv', etc.), I've been starting to realise the necessity of tearing oneself away from one's preconceptions as to what reality is like, and as to what one's model of reality should be like. Karen Barad is quoted as saying 'Matter feels, converses, suffers, desires, yearns and remembers'. That sounds absurd, but might it actually be true? Is it not possible that some kind of supermicroscope able to see matter at the femtometre scale would support such a picture, more or less what the fractal/scale-invariance postulate suggests?

          Once one as able to throw off the idea that Barad's claims are absurd, one can put on again one's scientific glasses, and see that this is a messy situation but that a number of methodologies may be possible, each addressing the issues in its own unique style. I concentrated on biosemiotic concepts in my essay, but Hankey's approach involving critical fluctations may also have things to say, as well as Yardley's Circular Theory. And again the approach that Sarfatti advocates, involving pilot waves and circular causation, may also have value but, as Jonathan points out, claims like Sarfatti's, claiming that his preferred formulation makes other work irrelevant, are highly suspect. One should make things as simple as possible, but not too simple!

            An individual is considered to have a body, mind and the soul. The last can be taken as the life force that mediates between body and soul to provide pathways that we chose and take in our lives. I wish to raise the question if the Nature followed some super logic to create this marvellous Universe for us to understand and comprehend through science alone? What you think consciousness plays in relating matter/energy with the spirit. Can spirit lend human consciousness to comprehend cosmic consciousness of Nature itself?

              Prof. Josephson,

              If you really want to irritate people enough for them to take notice, why not raise the issue as a point of philosophy, rather than science?

              For one thing, what you propose is the source of consciousness as an element, rather than an ideal and that is a very real threat tot he logic of monotheistic religion. That a spiritual absolute would be the essence from which we rise, not an ideal from which we fell.

              Given that religion is a top down cultural frame, it would also bring up some basic social and biological issues. Such as that good and bad are not a cosmic duel between the forces of righteousness and evil, but the basic biological and emotional binary of attraction to the beneficial and repulsion of the detrimental. What is good for the fox, is bad for the chicken.

              Though in order to function as a coherent entity, a society needs some basic moral compass. Hence top down religious institutions.

              This would open a very large Pandora's Box, but it might also give humanity some clue as to why life has so much grey areas and complexity. Looking around the world today and the impending limits being approached, we might need to wake up a little more.

              Get that ball rolling and the scientists will have to take notice.

              Dear Brian D. Josephson,

              I read your essay and the accompanying comments here. Good that you question a lot which is held to be true at the present by many scientists.

              According to Yardley's Circular Theory, I just want to annotate that the American poet T.S. Eliot seemed to have expressed the circular movements of the analytic (and emotional) mind in his poem "little gidding" by writing

              "We shall not cease from exploration

              And the end of all our exploring

              Will be to arrive where we started

              And know the place for the first time."

              In my own essay here, I trace back all formal systems (including antivalent logics) to a circle, the latter being the beginning of mathematics and logics as we know it. Of course, I use the circle merely as a metaphor, a container that encapsulates the deeper meaning of existence beyond any formal systems. Goethe did a good job in his Faust to show how formal systems (preconceptions) have a grip on one's mind:

              "Where sense fails it's only necessary

              To supply a word, and change the tense.

              With words fine arguments can be weighted,

              With words whole Systems can be created,

              With words, the mind does its conceiving,

              No word suffers a jot from thieving."

              I would be happy if you would read my essay and comment on it.

              Kindly respond to the query. Also, request to see our Essay ' Foundamentalism in Context with Science & Spirituality ' for your consideration .

              I've looked at your essay. I've not had time to study it in detail but it seems to make sense. Once I gave a talk with a similar turtle slide, with an infinite series of turtles and a bottom one at infinity, but I don't recall what argument I was making at the time. It would be interesting to see how closely your circle concept fits with Yardley's, which is an abstraction (metaphor?), with concrete realisations.