Dear Luca,

A really clear and interesting essay despite the many ideas that it references. It's a pleasure to read it.

I'm not sure that Poincare was right to say that Newtons first law is merely a definition. Personally speaking, I think that good definitions can be hard to come by, it's not always easy.

I like 'parts have meaning only in the context of the whole.

The whole builds a web of connections, of meaning. No meaning can be assigned to the part without the others.'

It's one reason why I've come to dislike the term fundamental particle. Surely it's more fundamental for there to be a world for the particle to be in? I guess I'm not that happy with reductionism.

I also like 'there are difficulties in comparing two different theories as there might not exist a correspondence between the different concepts'. The same is true for translating poetry. It's not that we're translating propositional content here.

'Von Weizsacker describes the expansion of the universe as a crystallization process from a simple homogeneous low entropy state into complex structures.' Have you come across Aristotle's notion of an evolving organism? I think once I would have dismissed this but now I quite rather like it.

My own essay originally referred to Wigner friend experiment and his notion of consciousness causing collapse. I had to excise because of the 25k character limit. I've looked through Wigners essay but he doesn't address one of the most obvious questions which is what happens to the universe when there aren't anybody to observe it. Of course Rovellis relationalism gets around this by making interaction synonymous with measurement. Personally I feel part of the reason for Wigners interest in posing an interpretation in this way was the great interest in Indian philosophy then. For example I know that Schrodinger was in later life was much interested in Vedanta. Perhaps this might mean that the world has, in some sense, a mental quality.

Warm Regards

Mozibur Ullah

    Dear Mozibur Ullah,

    Thanks for your nice interested comment. I'm glad my essay remained readable, despite a lot of ideas could only be referenced. The 25k character limit ... Each section could have become an essay in its own. But I wanted to connect these things. Wanted to tell the whole story.

    You say: "I'm not sure that Poincare was right to say that Newtons first law is merely a definition. Personally speaking, I think that good definitions can be hard to come by, it's not always easy." Well Poincaré did not say 'merely'. But I was thinking the same: why, if it's merely a convention, is it so damn good to build up the theory? He only says it must be empirically guided. I found two answers: the first law defines the 'normal' behaviour of things. What it makes a good definition is that there exists a lot of things, that behave like that.

    But finally Poincaré's hierarchical reconstruction of the laws is maybe a bit artificial. It builds up a web of meaningful connections. What is definition and what is empirical consequence becomes a bit blurry and is finally underdetermined.

    Luca

    Dear Valeri. I learnt quite a lot from your essay.i was particularly interested in treating observer as object who participates in the universe.rated You accordingly. can cognitive Bias be a source of the science we partake?please take your time to read my take here .https://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/3525.Thanks.Wish you all the best in the contest.

      Hi Michael,

      thanks for your reply. Made me curious for your essay.

      Luca

      PS: by the way. Your rating seemed to have lowered my average rating. Which is fine. I appreciate the comment.

      Dear Luca,

      your essay touches on many interesting notions, and sketches some intriguing arguments. Indeed, it's so rich that I unfortunately found myself a bit lost, in places, and could not always follow the thread of argumentation you present. Perhaps it's owed to the contest's length constraints---which lord knows I've had my own struggles with---but I felt perhaps you might've chosen to focus more on one smaller aspect of your imaginative tapestry, to better bring it into view.

      Your notion of 'semantically closed theory' of course immediately evokes Heisenberg's 'closed theories'---as you later note yourself. However, I think you're right in drawing the dividing line between your concepts: Heisenberg's notion is essentially a syntactic one, where the change of any of its elements threatens inconsistency, hence making closed theories perfectly rigid frameworks, and theory-change an often revolutionary process.

      You want to include not just the theories' framework, but also the meat, so to speak---not just the axioms, but also, the model they apply to, and bake that into a 'closed' edifice. You mention Gödelian difficulties for such an undertaking, but I think that another source of difficulty is more dangerous here: in general, due to Tarski's undefinability theorem, theories can't formalize their own semantics, and hence, there's a sort of 'gap' between the formal structures and the things they apply to. So, is your proposal that a theory, as it's usually understood (i. e. as just the formal, structural part) is simply not complete, but must include that which the theory is supposed to be about, or do you claim there's a unity here---that each theory brings its domain of applicability with itself?

      I also appreciated the reference to von Weizsäcker. I think perhaps his notion of the 'Kreisgang' ('moving in circles', maybe) might be appropriate: you liken the semantically closed theory to something that comes back to its initial assumptions, but to von Weizsäcker, that wouldn't necessarily be a damaging notion---he thought that, coming back to our initial notions means we can obtain a refined understanding of them, cast them into a new light, and that, in fact, all knowledge generation is just coming back to the same principles at higher levels of appreciation.

      Anyway, I wish you the best of luck in the contest!

      Cheers

      Jochen

      Hi Jochen,

      thanks very much for reading my essay and for your reply. You are right. My essay is really fully packed and there was a lot, that I had to led go. The goal was to justify a view, where all concepts emerge from there relations to there surrounding, even the objects and their properties. This means in different configurations different objects and laws emerge, which might or might not be compatible with each other. This is difficult to imagine as we usually imagine fixed objects with fixed properties moving according the laws.

      Von Weizsäcker plays a huge role in my thinking. In fact the name semantically closed theories is a mixture of Heisenberg's closed theories and Von Weizsäcker's semantically consistent theories in his philosophy of 'Kreisgang'. In his book Time and Knowledge he tries to develop a temporal logic. At the very beginning he describes the meaning of propositions as imagination of possible actions. So that the meaning of concepts corresponds to physical operations which depend on the laws. In my opinion, this might bridge the gap - as you say - between the formalized languages and the physical world. That is why I immediately start with relation between objects. And try to find meaning in this relations.

      Tarsky I learned to know a little only recently, while I was writing. Sounds really interesting.

      Luca

      Dear Luca

      Nice and well discussed essay. You touch several important topics which are related to symmetries. I guess my favorite one is the arrow of time. It is indeed an exciting topic that I have studied a bit. There is a nice book authored by H Zeh who deals with this perplexing problem. Are you aware of this book? I am still struggling with the concept of time. As far as we understand, time is quite linked with motion for the rate of flow of time depends on speed and gravity. You mention that we do not have memories of the future. Indeed, we only remember events that are taking place (present), not events that have not taken place (the future). Then we stored these present events that turn into past memories as they are replaced in sequence by new ones. In this sense I agree that we remember the past, but in my view, we are just remembering present events. The fact that most physical laws are symmetric with respect to time reversal, implies that there is a problem in the way we are expressing those laws. For as you mention, the law of entropy seems to define a direction of time. What are your thoughts on these matter?

      Best regards

      Israel

        Dear Dr Luca,

        Thank you for writing a wonderful essay. Some of your nice words are ...........Wigner wrote that one of Newtons big accomplishments that made modern science possible is "the distinction between initial conditions and laws of nature."[14] Whereas the initial conditions might be complicated the laws are not..........

        Thank you for your well studied wisdom words!

        I want to say that Dynamic Universe model developed by me 40 years back under the guidance given by Maa Vak is also a direct application of Newtonian Physics. This model solved many unsolved problems and many of its predictions came true. This model is a general N-body problem solution.

        You are inspired by by Poincaré's math and hypothesis, so do I !!! Poincaré's work is on general N-body problem solution, I think you know that.

        Many similarities !!!

        I hope you will find some time to look at my essay at " https://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/3416 "

        Best Regards

        =snp

        Dear Israel,

        Thanks for your kind reply. Symmetry is so central in the conceptualisation of physics and in my opinion part of the conditions of the possibility to make science at all. And yet rarely it is used a foundational principle for the derivation of the structure of physics - beyond the practicality.

        And the symmetry or asymmetry of time is the most difficult one. If time would not 'appear' asymmetric, there would be no need to do any physics. And yet it is difficult not to see explain the asymmetry as an epistemic notion of our course grained perception.

        Sometime I think the problem time is the reverse one than the usually discussed. And the question is: How can one derive the time symmetric laws from the asymmetric phenomena and operationalization of actions.

        Thanks for pointing me out Zeh's book.

        Luca

        Dear Luca

        Thanks for your reply. That is the difficult part. Zeh's book is entitled "The arrow of time", I am sure you will like it.

        Good luck in the contest!

        Regards

        Israel

        Hi Luca,

        On the quantum eraser experiment, this is too strange for the general public. On the other hand, such gendanken experiments seem to "real" in the researchers mind. From this thoughts, the real experiments should be "confirmed" or "verified" in some sense. This shows that the boundary between the realistic understanding and the imagination is wobbly or depends on the background understanding. From the historical viewpoint on scientific development, I hope that our understandings are improved.

        Best wishes,

        Yutaka

        Dear Dr Luca,

        This is one more similarity with Dynamic Universe model.

        It was proved by Dynamic Universe model by simulations, all the matter and radiation that are ejected out, from the Galaxy at the edge of Universe will be attracted by Universre and comeback into the Universe.... Have a look at my Blog.............

        " https://vaksdynamicuniversemodel.blogspot.com/ "

        Best Regards

        =snp

        Hi John,

        Very good question! Thanks for asking it. By definition every quantity has do be defined and must be measurable within the theory. I would say as a first instance this can be decided formally within the theory. In the reconstruction in the essay you have a symmetry defining the basic quantities. Also the free evolution is defined. Then one needs an interaction, that correlates these quantities to another system or objects, which then serves transporting the information about the quantities of the first object to the other one. The interaction doing this is mostly defined by some gauge principles.

        I would say, that quantum field theory, the standard model, are semantically closed theories, depending maybe on the Interpretation (relating to the measurment Problem). Except maybe for the time measurement, since time is entering the theory as external parameter and not as observable.

        But also Newton classical mechanics might be a closed theory. Maxwell's theory also. Here I am not sure, if the length scales can be defined within the theory.

        General relativity, I'm not sure if it is closable, because it needs rulers defined in another theory. It is questionable if a general covariant gheory can be a closed Theory, because no seaprable objects can be defined in it.

        Now the question is: how do we know, this theory is realized? There are several problems here. One of them is connected to the Duhem-Quine thesis. In here to falsify theory trough observation needs always an auxiliary theory describing the measurement. Usually this theory is well established and no reason to doubt it. But for closed theories the observational theory is the same as the theory to be falsified. This looks really circular.

        The objects and systems to be well defined must be separable from the rest. But this separability is only approximative. The rest can be modelled as external forces, that change the 'normal behaviour' of the system. But whether the theory has to be modified or the not normal behaviour explained by external forces might not be decidable from observation alone. See for instance dark matter vs. MOND.

        Finally such a closed theory generated from symmetry and some principles is a big tautological construct. We might not expect to create some empirical theory from principles. So in order to give meaning to the concepts in the theory, the theory must contain Newtonian classical mechanics as limit, which is the language of our intuition.

        Sorry. Long answer for a short question.

        Luca

        Dear Dr Luca,

        Very good explanatory answer with wonderful knowledge. You touched Newtonian Gravity, MOND, GTR etc in cosmology in addition to quantum field theories. I was working on this Dynamic Universe Model using Newtonian Gravitation and got many results.

        I was feeling sorry to say that you did not yet looked at my essay. I hope you will get some time before closure of this contest....

        Give me your mail ID so that we can discuss even after this contest

        Best wishes to your essay

        =snp

        • [deleted]

        • Post #30

        Hi Luca,

        In response to your comment on my essay.... I believe there is a single Arrow-of-Time: the radiation AoT (see my ref's. on ECD). The asymmetry between past and future in terms of memory stems from logical consistency:

        "...and indeed, the 'memory' of our future is much more selective than that of our past. Had we 'remembered' also everything from our future, we would surely choose, whenever possible, to avoid its unpleasant aspects, thereby creating a paradox."

        As you note, a future memory of a truly original `thing' is initially necessarily "fuzzy", as that thing is not yet present in one's normal experience (to be contrasted with `future memories' of simple variations of existing things, which need not be fuzzy).

        I have thought a lot about the possibility of factoring-in our own limitations, as observers, into our description of `reality'. I once even thought that, since we are essentially some `representation' of the laws of physics, there is no real mystery as to why we can describe nature so effectively with our invented theories. But as with Goedel's theorem, you need an `outside look' at a physicist which, being a physicist, you are not privileged to. Ultimately, only a solipsistic stance is consistent, which takes you outside the scope of physics (or anything communicable for that matter).

        I enjoyed reading your essay,

        Yehonatan

        Dear Luca Valeri Zimmermann!

        We highly appreciate your serious work in the highest sense. We are happy to inform you that our rating of your essay is 10 points. Only one important issue needs clarification... Henri Poincare wrote of "hidden axioms". For example, we take a complete turn as something given. But you can imagine a world where the rotation around its own axis will never end! Can we extend your approach to worlds with other fundamental foundations?

        We wish you a successful scientific work!

        Truly yours,

        Pavel Poluian and Dmitry Lichargin,

        Siberian Federal University.

          Dear Pavel and Dimitry,

          Thanks a lot for your rating, your kind reply and the question.

          I am not sure about Poincaré's hidden axioms. I have read about the hidden definitions. Although axiom and definition might be the same. But to return to your question: Yes, I think - and that was exactly the point of my essay - that it is possible to apply it to different foundations. In my approach it is the symmetry group defining the foundation - the basic concepts. One can imagine, that under different environmental conditions different symmetries are realized. For instance in free space or near black holes. Leading to different fundamental laws and objects.

          The main difficulty is then on how to describe the change from one system to the other as objects do not maintain their identity and the fundamental laws and concepts change. I don't know, how one could do that.

          I imagine the following situation: In free space objects and system are well defined. (The free space or vacuum itself is not defined independently of the laws or symmetries. It is itself as the objects of the theory an emergent thing.) If there is an external force like gravity, the identity of the objects and the free laws can be maintained and the force is treated as an external disturbance. This is a good and well defined approximation as long the back reaction of the system is small enough. But when gravitational forces are becoming to big, the approximation do not hold any more. We have to look for new symmetries, which create or define new separable objects and systems. These determine new foundational concepts and new laws.

          Luca

          Hi Luca, this is a very interesting essay. I'll have to give this some thought. But I'm not entirely convinced by some of your examples. I like the way you've framed the argument in terms of semantically closed theories, but I'm not entirely sure such a theory even exists (but perhaps that it your point).

            Hi Ian,

            Thanks for your reply. The question you raise is very interesting. In short I would say, that the standard model is semantically closed and General Relativity is not. GR needs the laws of optics for the definition of the Geodesic, or QM (atomic spectra) for a length scale. There are indications, that general covariant theories are not semantically closable.

            On a mesoscopic, emergent level there might be Newtonian mechanics, chemistry, biology that are semantically closed.

            I want to stress 3 points, that are connected to the question:

            1. The meaning of physical concepts are defined by possible physical operations and hence the meaning depends on the laws they ought to describe. So there is something inherently circular in these theories. But this might be merely a self consistency requirement.

            2. There is a unity between the formal system and the physical system as the concepts are not defined independently.

            3. The separability condition as condition for the definability of concepts is always only realized as an approximation. Insofar semantically closed theories are never strictly realized. If separability is broken the environment can be modelled as external system with external forces (gravitation for instance) or heat bath (decoherence). If the back reaction of the system is too strong or the influence of external disturbance is too strong, one needs to find another separable systems, ie. symmetries within the system, that describe separable subsystems.

            Finally the main point, I want to make, is that under different environmental conditions (low gravity vs. black holes) one might have different semantically closed theories describing these systems and there might not exist a unified theory describing both.

            And another point is that semantically closed system might change. Such a change is not describable within one theory and is maybe untheorizable (as Daniel Sudarsky writes in his essay). I belief this opens new ways to talk about consciousness and free will.

            Luca