A Framework for Thinking about Knowability by John S Schultz

John In my essay "Clarification of Physics...." I introduce the mathematical pattern used to create "nature" ( i.e. the physical world and its contents). This mathematical pattern is isomorphic with nature and can be used to understand and explain the natural world. Are there other solutions to the creation of the universe? Not likely. John Crowell

Hi John, Your essay is full of food for thought. Well set out and easy to read. Though I did the many abbreviations difficult to remember and had to keep scrolling through the essay to re-find their definitions, as you had not put them all in one place. Kind Regards, Georgina

I think it is bad form to start with an apology.

You have no reason to do that, I took a lot from your view and presentation.

Dear Mr. Schultz,

thank you for this essay, in which, although not fully spelled out in detail, there is interesting food for thought. I wish you good luck in the contest!

If you have a moment, I would also appreciate if you could have a look at my essay.

All good wishes,

Flavio

John,

Well done. Extremely cogent and orderly in your argument. I do see that our lack of understanding of the quantum world is a limitation on our accomplishments. You speak of nature as a way of studying the patterns of nature, but the quantum world has a part in all of nature's structures, something we seem to have little of a handle on. Randomness not patterns enters into quantum behavior according to our theories. We all know it is difficult to cover the scope of all 3 of the "Us". Undecidability seems to weigh more squarely on algorithmic solutions. Thought your conclusion was masterful. Your zeroing in on Knowable, its nuances in the science world & its assessments. I think yours is on of the best efforts. My essay seems to parallel many of your ideas.

My rating is your 5th. I say this because someone is giving 1s w/o comments.

Jim Hoover

Dear John S Schultz

Thank you for a thought provoking essay with a smooth flow... !!

What will we do for the scientific processes with out any Pattern? For example, we can see some in quantum mechanics..............

Best

=snp

Hello,

I liked a lot your essay, you explain with relevance these limitations in making a distinction between patterns in Nature and patterns in the abstract, your introduction for a partial taxonomy of pattern types is very interesting for the ranking in a deterministic way if I can say. That permits to sort and see the real isomorphisms and our limitations. I love the maths and I beleive strongly that without them we cannot prove of course our assumptions, extrapolations, they must utilised with a kind of wisdom because they can imply also with their properties confusions, that is why it is necessary to rank these mathematical properties to see the real deterministic ones. I wish you good luck in this Contest, your essay was a pleasure to read.

Best Regards

I have shared your essay on Facebook, regards

You are welcome, I am understanding , we try to capture in Words our ideas , like we formalise them in maths and try to prove our assumptions. Personally I work about my thjeory of spherisation, an optimisation of the universal sphere or future sphere with quantum 3D pshres and cosmological spheres, I consider that all is made of particles and I consider 3 main series finite of 3D spheres having the same number than our cosmological finite serie of spheres, I consider a main primordial serie for the space and two fuels, photons and cold dark matter and when they merge they create the topologies, geometries, matters, particles and fields. I formalise all this puzzle with an intrinsc Ricci flow, the Hamilton Ricci flow, an assymetric Ricci flow also for the unique things probably in the smallest volumes of these series , the lie derivatives, the lie groups, the lie algebras, the Clifford algebras, the topological and euclidian spaces and the poincare conjecture mainly, it is not easy but I try to do my best for this formalisation, I have quantified and renormalised this quantum gravitation with this general reasoning. Don t hesitate to ask details, I will answer with pleasure. Wish you all the best ,

Regards

Hi John,

I enjoyed reading your essay. It was very clear, and your characterization of different pattern types was quite insightful. I had never thought of patterns like that before. I have a hard time imagining what a non-algorithmic patterns would be, especially in a pure sense. It almost seems that without an algorithm, it is not fair to call them patterns, but that is solely based on intuition, and is not highly thought out. Your example of mutation seems true, but chaotic, and chaos strikes me as a lack of a pattern, or at least one too complex for humans to understand, right now at least. Perhaps I need to think more on what you mean by non-algorithmic pattern.

I think I disagree that there is no adequate way to cut down on the infinitely many mathematical patterns that fit data, because some mathematical structures fit more data than others, and that is one way to cut-down on the possibilities. But based on intuition I do have a sense that science might very well go on forever regardless. We may never be fully right, but we can strive to be less wrong.

All the best,

Ernesto

Hi John,

I like your symmetric distinction of science and pure mathematics. Also it seems natural attach the question about knowability to the study of pattern as our main mental capability seems to be the recognition of pattern. Also very interesting is the distinction of algorithmic and non-algorithmic pattern. The non-algorithmic one you seem connect with random processes. I'm not sure if that is a to strong limitation. Although I couldn't come up with an other idea, what else non-algorithmic could mean.

My main critic in your approach is one that became clear to me in the course of a few discussions I had in this contest and that is a bit the topic of my essay. It is a critic on your conjuncture 1a: You postulate (at least implicitly) the existence of real world-patterns. And that they are isomorphic to the mathematical pattern. For me conjencture 1a is a pattern theoretic version of what I call naive or simplistic realism in my essay.

But the pattern version is much easier to criticize because it is used as a conjecture in all science and not only in fundamental physics, ,where it is much, much harder to criticize and even to think, the world could be otherwise. (This is what I try to show in my essay).

But what I mean by that? Let us take as example the classification of species. Certainly one can say, that there exist pattern, that favour some classification (although the pattern is never fully precise and without ambiguities). On the other hand, one could say that the classification (and the matching pattern) are somehow arbitrary, man made and serve different purposes depending on the field of inquiry: evolution, ethology, ecology, etc. You may say: but as far as these pattern can be found, they are objectively in nature. And have a corresponding mathematical pattern, that describes it. But the pattern to have a meaning and to be recognized as such, needs a context under which it becomes meaning full.

Somehow, I. have the feeling the pattern is imposed by us, as something functional and lies not in nature itself.

Does this make any sense to you?

Luca