Essay Abstract

Based on physical sensations the human brain manufactures mental structures leading to a theoretical framework that is used to make sense of life and external reality. Such framework turns out to be our physical understanding. To quantify and model physical systems humans have also invented both mathematics and experimental instruments. The physics developed in the last decades has trusted its validity on these two aspects above our physical understanding. I argue that undecidability and unpredictability might not be relevant for physics. Math and measurement are not the sole players in apprehending natural reality. Physical understanding should play a prominent role in physics if we wish to make headway.

Author Bio

Israel Perez is a physicist in hard condensed matter. He works for the National Council of Science and Technology and does research at the Physics and Mathematics Department at the Autonomous University of Juarez City in Mexico. For this contest he has written a thought-provoking essay.

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Dear Israel Perez,

Thanks for an insightful and enjoyable essay. I agree with you completely and my current essay supports your discussion. I consider the fact that space and time can be described mathematically as four dimensional or as (3+1)D. The math is correct in either case, so human understanding is needed to choose between these two. My essay is here: Deciding on the nature of time and space.

If we assume that there is a unique physical reality (ontology) and there is an alternate imagined reality, there is nothing that prevents math from describing both 'realities' in detail. Measurements may do the trick, but some measurements are hard to perform perfectly. In that case only intuition will guide us, and many physicists, as you point out, have been warned to ignore intuition -- 'shut up and calculate'.

Your essays are usually insightful, and I'm glad you focused on this issue. There are too many imagined realities [a dozen in QM?] and the best way to navigate through these is human understanding.

Thanks again and good luck.

Edwin Eugene Klingman

    " For if science is not about truth, then scientific activity becomes

    meaningless..."

    We may never know the "truth" or the ontology. Science is about helping humanity survive. Its realm is to be useful which requires prediction and creating models of how the universe works.

      Dear Israel Perez,

      I enjoyed your essay very much. Although I am a mathematician, it is clear to me that mathematics alone does not provide a complete picture of physical reality, and that physical understanding as you explain it is also required. I have also been wrestling with the fact that while rectilinear motion appears to be relative, both in theory and in practice, rotational motion appears to be absolute. Taking this physical understanding to its logical extreme in quantum mechanics leads me to some very surprising, but I believe inevitable, conclusions about the nature of mass. This argument, and its conclusions, form the subject of my essay, which I hope you will find interesting.

      Robert Wilson.

        Dear Israel Perez,

        Your essay is perfect clear and to the point. Personally I like the last part about Einstein's lectures by his friend Paul Ehrenfest at the University of Leiden the most. For me it was an eyeopener when I read about it some 15 years ago. Before I had already discovered that the curvature of space isn't real, it "terms" the visualization of Einstein's model.

        With kind regards, Sydney

          Dear Israel,

          since Paul Feyerabend we know that there is no golden methodology to do physics, because scientific effort is either gap-filling (Th. Kuhn) or in the worst case just permutation of existing knowledge - or it is making observable what so far was unobservable. In the latter case absolute novelty comes into play, the invention/discovery of which can not possibly be traced back to some methodology. Gravitation and el. mag. waves, for instance, came out of the blue.

          The above does, however, not exclude the existence of methodologies how physics (science if you will) should not be done. Now, with the help of Google and lots of estimation I believe that at least the order of magnitude holds, that the intellectual (let alone monetary) efforts put into theoretical physics since QM and relativity have been one million times higher than all the time before. And yet no substantial progress has been made beyond the tautological confirmation of what lies hidden in the axioms of those theories.

          So, I disagree with your conclusion that "a better understanding of physics" (beyond mathematics) will do the trick. Rather I think that physics has embarked on a necessarily unsuccessful methodology. Basically the title of your essay neatly puts it together, without providing the overarching clamp, however. So allow me to complete it:

          Lost in math... and measurements = Lost in models

          That this runs counter your intentions becomes clear right from the beginning of your essay:

          "Our physical understanding of nature is strongly rooted in sensory perception. Our senses provide us with information of different nature such as on shape, color, light intensity, motion, space, weight, sound, temperature, force, taste, smell, and so on. From these stimuli, or raw data..."

          Since this view is the pseudo-empirical model-view of the world and since models have no explanatory, intuitive or understanding powers, your plea for more physics must remain wishful thinking under the assumptions you make.

          best,

          Heinz

            Dear John

            Thanks for reading my essay and leaving a comment. As I said,theories should reflect the true reality because this is the only way science can be used in favor of humanity. If science were not about true knowledge, it would be useless.

            Regards

            Dear Robert Wilson

            Thanks so much for reading my essay and leaving your comments. I am glad that you recognized that math is not enough to prescribe reality.

            Regarding motion, I think Newton was right, there is absolute and relative motion and one can be distinguished from the other by forces and accelerations. Uniform motion appears to be relative because we were taught that there was no preferred frame. I do not think this is correct you may want to check one of my previous entries

            I would be happy to read and comment your essay, I also did some research on mass some time ago, I guess it would be exciting to see your view.

            Regards

            Dear S. E. Grim

            Thanks a lot for your comments and reading my essay. I am glad that you enjoyed it. Einstein theory of relativity is just a geometrization of space which in that context is understood as curvature and in some sense can be seen like that. But I guess there are other approaches that not resort to geometry. I wonder how you discovered that there is no space curvature. In what sense you say it.

            I would seek for your essay and comment asap.

            Best regards

            Dear Edwin

            Thanks for reading my work and for your comments. I wonder what you mean by (3+1)D, as far as I understand it is already that way; but I will read your essay asap to make this clear. Certainly quantum mechanics is a theory that requires deeper understanding. I have also worked out this theory to deeper understandt it, especially entanglement and its spooky action at a distance. I am looking forward to seeing your essay.

            Best regards and good luck!

            LOST IN MATH ... AND MEASUREMENT sounds a bit hopeless.

            I claim having FOUND among others a possibly important mistake by Fourier.

            Eckard

              Dear Heinz

              Thanks for reading my work and leaving your important comments. I would like to ask in what sense Gravitation and el. mag. waves came out of the blue. To my understanding there was a gradual process for the development of these theories.

              You mention that: no substantial progress has been made beyond the tautological confirmation of what lies hidden in the axioms of those theories.

              Definitely I agree, no much progress, but as always, attacking the principles will lead to progress. For instance the question on the origin of the particle spin.

              Regarding your disagreement, certainly, measurements and math might compose a model, but what kind of model? Current models are merely mathematical and the explanations are also mathematical, with barely no physical insight, this is why nobody understands quantum mechanics. I argue that we should work out a physical understanding to make physical sense. This would help us, for instance, to rule out the different interpretations in quantum mechanics and make some progress in this field.

              As for your last comment, I wonder why you call it pseudo-empirical model-view of world. Why pseudo? Where is the pseudo part? and what is your understanding of a model?

              I will be looking forward to seeing some feedback.

              Best regards

              Dear Eckard

              Thanks for your comment, I hope you enjoyed my work. I will take a look at your writing, it sounds interesting.

              Regards

              Dear Israel,

              as regards concepts it is difficult to see how they could evolve. Until Newton it was uncontested knowledge that force can only be conveyed by collision. Accordingly was his gravitation, which is action at a distance, initially ridiculed by some. I also don't see a viable trajectory from Newton's to Einstein's gravitation. Further, Huygens' superposition of unit waves explaining diffraction etc. can't be derived from then prevailing geometrical optics. Also from Huygens to Fresnel I see no change of principles, only refinement. Rather, if concepts were soft, I believe that nothing at all could be observed. Models, on the other hand, are indeed soft and for this reason no laws of nature - just models. Let me explain in some more detail and bore you with a little bit of philosophy...

              Irrespective whether model or natural law, any speculation beyond the given requires pre-knowledge. How otherwise could we express such speculation? The task then at hand is the weighing of such speculation in light of pre-knowledge. There was a 17th century philosopher, Baruch de Spinoza, who held the following: "A thing necessarily exists, if no cause or reason be granted preventing its existence." What he says is, that a thing exists, if it is non-contradictory. Popper said that we can accept a theory as long as it hasn't been falsified. Falsification, however, is contradiction. So, are Spinoza and Popper saying the same?

              It is important to recall that Popper's theory of falsification (and Spinoza's assertion per se) is a theory over propositions (Sätze). "Only propositions can falsify propositions. Measurements, experiments and data as such have no place in Popper's theory, i.e. falsification is an armchair job. This means mere facts can neither verify nor falsify theories. The first stage of attempting the falsification of a theory consists according to Popper in its consistency check, which I call the semantics-check. Can we reasonably speak about what the theory pretends to claim? In the case of quantum mechanics his conclusion was: no we can't, unless we consider statistical quantum ensembles in a frequentist's sense. Well, it doesn't really need super-intelligence to find that any other traditional interpretation is a-semantic, thus failing the pre-test. Also recent QM and relativity interpretations/extensions would not pass the semantic test and hence end up dead in the water even before reaching the core of the falsification procedure, the weighing of two semantically consistent theories against each other. I guess Spinoza would buy this.

              But then there is a difference: the important word in Spinoza's assertion that things exist "if no cause or reason be granted..." is the word NO! whereas Popper suggests falsification against so called Basissätze, i.e. a set of fundamental propositions that is believed to be 'true'. This is where Popper changes over from falsification to affirmation, which is super-critical not because the chosen set may contain false propositions, but because it reduces the totality of human knowledge down to almost nothing and entirely excludes human experience in the world, i.e. the phenomena. This is what Spinoza would have rejected, for other knowledge domains (e.g. biology) and the phenomena make up for an estimated 99.9% of our daily propositions.

              What Popper effectively proposed is the minimization of pre-knowledge and physicists increasingly began to substitute propositions by facts (data), which eventually led to the outcry of physicists 'we cannot possibly falsify our theories', while they actually meant 'we cannot possibly falsify our data'. Now, empiricism is a posteriori rule-making over data censored by the phenomena, i.e. modeling (e.g. of the climate), which is to be distinguished from a priori (Spinozean or Kantian) laws of nature, which value the whole of knowledge and experience. In the absence of phenomena, which is the case for all of theoretical physics, the modeling turns into pseudo-empiricism, for data are no empirical evidence of whatsoever..

              the best for your essay,

              Heinz

              Writing a function as F(x,y,z) does not mean that F really exists in physical space, even though x, y and z seem to refer to physical space.

              Israel,

              Excellent essay. Nicely expressed and argued, and we're in very close agreement yet again.

              You well describe the issues of Absolute v Relative motion etc, but it seems may not recall that you (with others) briefly grasped the solution I posited, consistent with Einsteins final (1952) rationale. That's proved powerfully resolving so I'll outline it again here for your view;

              Physical systems only have ONE assignable state of motion k, and occupy bounded 3D spaces. Each is mutually exclusive, but can be embedded within a larger one, and also contain smaller ones. So forming a hierarchy. Now Einstein's (Appx.V) words; "..there is an infinite number of spaces , which are in motion with respect to each other...so..an infinite number of spaces in motion relatively to each other. This latter idea is indeed logically unavoidable, but is far from having played a considerable role even in scientific thought."

              When we actually look for the boundaries they're hiding right before our eyes, literally! Fine surface structure electrons play the same role as astrophysical shocks, modulating LOCAL propagation speed to c in each system.

              NASA's E H Dowde and C Su found the same, i.e. (Eur. Phys. J. C 21, 701-715 (2001))

              That explains observed CSL, with ALWAYS a 'local background' frame but no accessible 'absolute' frame. I recall you agreed that logic, but fqXi essays are hard to remember!

              I write all that as it's so important, (consequences presented in my essay) but very well done for your own essay of which I can find no criticism! I'm sure you'll like mine again, and as our ratings are close

              agree as gentlemen both are worth a high score (mine was hit by an annoying 1.0 again!)

              Finally ref your abstract. I showed one implication of the above last year, that A & B can reverse their OWN outcomes by reversing their dial. That needs thought, but a PHYSICAL sequence producing it was described in last years essay, outlined again in this years.

              Very best regards

              Peter

              Dear Heinz

              Thanks for your comments. Despite your explanation I still don't see any justification of your claim that those theories came out of the blue. For instance, Newton was aware that gravitation was not conveyed in total emptiness, he always held that there was aether. However, his theory does not include it and for this he was criticized. So why at the end was his theory established? First because it made testable predictions and explained known phenomena. Besides, at that time people discovered that it was possible to create vacuum with machines and that light and gravitation could travel through the vacuum. This was an argument that many invoke to justify Newton's gravitational theory. When one studies relativity one easily realizes from analyzing Newton's theory that this formulation suggests that gravitation and acceleration are strongly related: [math]F=ma=G\frac{mM}{r^2}[/math]

              by eliminating the inertial mass

              [math]a=g=G\frac{M}{r^2}[/math]

              we see arrive at the Galilean equivalence principle(Einstein's happiest thought). The rest was just to put these ideas in mathematical terms following the four dimensional formulation of special relativity derived by Minkowski. So, I see no "out of the blue" and similarly for the theory of electrodynamics. For this was also a long and complex process that one can trace back. I do agree that some ideas may come out of the blue, but as you put say it they came from some pre-knowledge.

              As for your comments on philosophy, I am aware of Popper, I have read his most important works on the philosophy of science. I have not read much about Spinoza. I know that sometimes propositions cannot be tested for they seem to be beyond experience or data, but as I said, data requires a theoretical framework to have meaning. Experimentation itself cannot rule out propositions because data itself depends on the theoretical framework where laws (principles, propositions) and definitions are embedded. So, in my opinion a model, understood as an abstract construction of some phenomenon, can be useful to understand something about reality (this is how we have built it). For instance, I suppose that materials are composed of atoms with a given arrangement. The atomic composition and the arrangement of the atoms define the physical properties of the material. If I check such or such property of that material and fits with my predictions it means that my model is correct and therefore my model does have explanatory powers because it is helping to understand the observed phenomenon. Models along with the principles help us understand reality.

              Israel

              Dear Martin

              Thanks for your comment. For instance, the electron density [math]\rho (x,y,z)[/math] depends on the spatial variables, and exists because electrons exists, so if the density exists why not its mathematical representation? The problem as I argue in my essay is that we think that what exists is what we can detect with instruments or our senses but that just half of the story. I think you should first start by telling what you understand by "exist".

              Regards

              Dear Peter

              Thanks for reading my essay, I am glad you find it interesting. Definitely you have a very good memory, I do recall we discussed these matters in the past. I am sorry for not recalling the details and thanks for the reminder. The reference appears to be interesting, I will take a look at it asap. As I argue in my essay, math does not tell the whole story. The preferred frame is sound and can be used to make some progress in physics, let's see what happens in the following years in this respect. The article you cite seems to be in agreement with this view.

              As for Einstein's arguments, it seems that he was happy with the mathematical formulation of general relativity but not very much with references frames. In the book Relativity authored by Pauli, it is clear that Einstein's tried several times to remove any trace of the absolute frame, without success.

              Thanks again, I will read your essay and leave some comments asap. I am sure you did a good job.

              Regards

              Israel I appreciated your essay. Perhaps because my creation theory came from "physical understanding" and then finding the mathematics to explain the measurements. In my essay I describe a flowing "picture" of compositional changes that originate in chaos and become our universe. It also creates the mathematics that can be used to describe it and match the its measurements. I would appreciate your comments (coming from your perspective) on my "revised" essay. John Crowell.