4 days later

Alyssa,

Your students in "Understanding Scientific Change" may be inclined to support research in physics and cosmology if they see a very real parallel between what may be the last signals from technically advanced beings millions of light years distant and the size and distribution of planets in our own solar system. I am not aware of any proposed research project asking for government funds to analyze "Gamma Ray Burst Light Curves" with the thought in mind that the multiple peaks in many GRBs may correlate with the mass and distance between planets in distant planetary systems. The students and "hypothetical" funding agencies should know that the length of a gamma ray signal corresponds to the size of the source. That is, a gamma ray pulse from a "Hydrogen Bomb" is very short. But the pulse from a small planet converting to energy would be on the order of the time of a light pulse traveling the diameter of the planet. And it is easy to see that many Gamma Ray Burst Light Curves match with a light speed shock wave radiating across a hypothetical star/planet system. Would WE want to know that self annihilation by "gamma ray photon torpedo" was common in the Universe or would WE collectively prefer to "see what happens?"

That said. It would be nice if more people realized basic research results in unexpected value in many ways.

Sherman

    10 days later

    Dear Alyssa

    If you are looking for another essay to read and rate in the final days of the contest, will you consider mine please? I read all essays from those who comment on my page, and if I cant rate an essay highly, then I don't rate them at all. Infact I haven't issued a rating lower that ten. So you have nothing to lose by having me read your essay, and everything to gain.

    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 and my essay 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. And again, how lucky we are! for if they didn't then 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 attempt of 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 a 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 formation 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 chemistry processes arose.

    By identifying atomic forces as having their origin in space, we have identified how they perpetually act, and deliver work products. 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 explain 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

    I have read your Essay and suggest that for conceptual views on Dark Matter, please read: http://vixra.org/pdf/1303.0207v3.pdf

    Quantum Mechanics claims that an electron can be both spin-up and spin-down at the same time. In my conceptual physics Essay on Electron Spin, I have proved that this is not true. Please read: https://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/3145

    Kamal Rajpal

    Dear Andrew,

    Thank you for reading my paper.

    Did you have in mind a kind of data analysis that might be incompatible with the framework for discussing fundamentality I propose there?

    Best,

    Alyssa

    Dear Edwin,

    Thanks so much for reading my essay.

    That's a great point that my proposed move from completeness to maximality introduces questions that would not otherwise be raised. But given that no (as you put it, near) theory is complete, if we are going to assess theories for fundamentality, then these are questions we ought to address. There seems to me nothing wrong with there being multiple criteria of explanatory power our best theories may meet, but we should have a clear means of justifying those we claim to underwrite the importance of continued support for physics.

    Best,

    Alyssa

    Dear Tejinder,

    Thank you for reading my essay and for these wonderfully rich comments.

    First I want to say that I was not trying to suggest that physics will not be able to explain dark matter. I believe that it will. I used dark matter to illustrate a case in which we are led to the postulation of a new kind of entity different than others that are well-understood. It's true that those preferring MOND would not view the situation this way, but the other mainstream proposals for dark matter do take it as a kind of nonbaryonic matter.

    The points you bring up about the motivations nations have for funding physics research are well-taken. This is exactly why I think we need to do a better, more perspicuous job of stating the importance of basic research in physics beyond mere satisfaction of curiosity. Your comments make it clear that it is important to pursue arguments that are not merely clear and compelling, but also that will appeal to individual nations rather than only society as a whole, at least given current structures of funding. This is something I will think about more.

    Best,

    Alyssa

    Dear Heinrich,

    Thank you for reading my paper.

    I don't view my project as taking another step toward deflation, but rather as trying to move the pendulum back a bit in the other direction. While we must recognize the truth in late twentieth-century critiques of reductionism, such as the fact that there are no explanatorily complete physical laws, there is an important sense in which physics does occupy a special status among the sciences. We simply need to state this sense in an accurate way.

    That said, there is room in this position for, as you put it, the unbounded creativity of the social sciences. I try to address this in another paper of mine "Physicalism, Not Scientism" I have available on philpapers.org. It is coming out later this year in an Oxford volume on Scientism.

    Best,

    Alyssa

    Dear Andrei,

    Thank you for reading my essay. I will take a look!

    Best,

    Alyssa

    Dear Francesco,

    Thanks for reading my essay and for these questions.

    I don't dismiss the possibility of emergent properties in this paper. My only discussion of emergence in this essay is to warn against conflating emergence with reduction.

    As for whether my interpretation of what it means to say physics is fundamental is circular... The focus on scope, accuracy, and precision, as opposed to comfort, simplicity, and holiness, comes from my interest in providing a sense of fundamentality that can underwrite the arguments for support of physics. A theory that is comfortable, simple, and holy may have benefits for some purposes, but I don't see how these characteristics would translate to making that theory more useful for developing new technologies.

    Best,

    Alyssa

    Dear Steven,

    OK, thank you for reading.

    Best,

    Alyssa

    Dear Satyavarapu,

    Thank you for reading!

    Best,

    Alyssa

    Dear Sherman,

    I completely agree, as you say, that "it would be nice if more people realized basic research results in unexpected value in many ways." The challenge for us then is providing concrete cases where this has occurred. The case you describe is of course fascinating to think about and I hope it would be for my students as well. I will teach the course again this spring.

    Best,

    Alyssa

    12 days later

    There is no problem with supporting research in fundamental physics. The problem is on funding that pseudoreligion that has taken over fundamental physics in last years, mostly driven by string theory and related nonsense. So she is rigth on that we would spend resources on people finding cures for diseases rather than wasting resources on supporting this pseudoreligion camouflaged as physics.

    Fundamental physics, real physics, has helped other disciplines as chemistry, biology, or medicine. Many tools developed for particle physics have no applications on medical diagnose of diseases.

    "Physics thus enjoys a form of constitutive explanatory completeness: all entities are either physical or have a complete constitutive explanation in terms of the entities of physics". No. This is confounding the substrate with the discipline. All matter is made of elementary particles but this doesn't imply all is reduced to physics. Physicists as Weinberg studying elementary particles in an accelerator are making approximations don't apply to particles inside a living cell. As a consequence properties of a cell aren't described by the formalisms developed by physicists as Weinberg. It is also worth to mention emergent properties. A given collection of particles forming a macromolecule, a living organisms, or a social group have a set of properties that don't exist on the inferior levels. So an physicist can be studying particles during centuries without discovering those emergent properties that only exist on the more complex levels.

    "Fires, heart attacks, and mass rallies all require the influx of oxygen". Sure, but the failire here is on believing that "oxygen" means the same in all instances when it doesn't. In atomic physics oxygen can be represented as a sphere, because an isolated atom is spherical. Oxygen in the watter molecule is radically different. Attached is a 3D draw of an oxygen atom in a H20. The atom boundary has been obtained by QTAIM computations. So one can study atomic oxygen and know nothing about the properties of oxygen in a molecule of water.

    "And all effects, when the demand for explanation is traced out far enough into the past, find nothing other than explanation in terms of early physical features of the universe". But this is assuming a deterministic conception of Universe.

    "The Einstein field equations hold for classical, i.e. nonquantum systems, the Klein-Gordon equation for free, i.e. non-interacting quantum fields, and t here is neither a general equation holding for all relativistic quantum systems nor for all types of free particles, let alone particles that interact; nor is there a patchwork of principles we might stitch together to cover all regimes." This is an excellent summary of current mainstream physics.

    "A natural response to these points about the current explanatory incompleteness of physics is that when it is claimed that physics is complete, it is not being claimed that any current physical theory is able to explain everything, but rather only that some future physical theory we can expect to reach on e day will have the resources to provide a complete class of both causal and constitutive explanations". And stuff such as emergent properties will guarantee that any theory developed by physicists cannot describe the properties of chemical, biological or any other kind of high-level structured matter.Attachment #1: H2O-oxygen.gif

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