Ultimately, in Physics the Rational shall become Reasonable! by Terry Padden

Dear Terry-

Thank you for your provoking essay. I must say that it is one of the best summaries that I have come across of the diversity of opinions and inconsistencies that exist in current physics. Clearly, something has gone astray in physics since the beginning of the 1900s. This 'something' is formalization, lacking a connection to reality. You can also deduce this from many of the essays in the current and previous FQXi contest that either have philosophical character or are based on mathematical modeling. Both types, I find unreasonable. I'm going to repeat some opinions that I posted in conjunction with other essays.

Formalization has had a kind of profound self-propelling effect because, over time, it has become the preferred tool to develop new theories and researchers are also educated this style of thinking. I believe that there is an impasse in physics to pursue truly novel new ideas. Sufficient interest in and funding of alternative research might be able break the current mode of operation. Indeed, as you say, none of the contemporary proposals facilitate understanding.

To my mind, contemporary theories of physics resemble a sheet spanned over an irregular object. One can pin the sheet to many different locations, but it always remains an approximation that inhibits true understanding of the structure and behavior of the wrapped object, no matter what kind of symmetries or beautifully 'optimized' mathematics one develops based upon studying the wrapped sheet. Approximate theories can still have some predictive value, but should not be confused with a reality-based description.

String theory and Quantum Gravity can be viewed as extremely course - reality approximating- mathematical models (spanned sheets). Speculation about an infinite number of universes does not bring us closer to describe structure and behavior from within our own universe. Quaternions / Clifford Algebras, Super-E8 are nice mathematical structures, but are unlikely to relate to provide insight into reality. Etc.

Many proposed virtual interaction particles have never been observed. So, it could very well be that virtual particles are only theoretical artifacts, which yield approximate models of physical interactions, but do not provide insight in actual physical behavior. It can be questioned if theories based upon non-observed particles will ever be able to provide a solid foundation for a truly unified theory of physics.

Quantum Field Mechanics (QFM), a theory created by A.P. Kirilyuk and extended by me, attempts to provide a reality-based solution for many of the issues that you describe. According to QFM, and unlike what other researchers maintain, time and space do really exist, time is not a dimension, space has 3 dimensions (and not 10 or so).

My essay is probably not the best format to describe QFM. I had to limit myself to highlight particular aspects only, resulting in some artificial shortcuts that reduce its impact. However, the details of the theory can be found in the quoted references, on my website (a summary slide deck can be found under reports), and extra notes on the page where you can find my essay.

Dear Terry:

What a fine, thoughtful essay! Without inflicting the overt pain of category theory (that's a kind of John Baez/Jeffrey Morton in-joke) you get straight to the epistemological heart of the matter which explains why physical ontology so persistently unwinds in both ill-stated and well-stated theory. A beautiful invocation of "problem of consciousness", central to natural philosophy but avoided by most post 1911 philosophers. This is a "deep" explanation of Smolin's "The Trouble with Physics". A good view of the arrows up/arrows down problem in reductionism vs. emergence and a thought provoking inquiry as to why both interpretation and unification of quantum mechanics has so far proven intractable. Bravo!

Phil Fellman

Dear Terry,

I would like to add my Bravo too even if I disagree in a few details.

Did I got you correctly? "Mathematical entities should all have physical correlates" and "abstract entities such as complex numbers are the supreme reality". Really?

Why did you ascribe the impossibility to resolve a line into points to G. Cantor?

It was already stated by Spinoza, and it follows from Euclid's definition of a point together with Peirce's definition of continuum. Why must physics exclusively deal with points at all?

Why do you not take into account the possibility that there are very basic mistakes in mathematics and its use in physics as I tried to indicate in my two essays and my manuscript M290 ?

Couldn't QM be easily understood as partially wrong.

Do you agree that theory should not entirely ignore the experience of those who performed practical work as did Al Schwartz too?

Regards,

Eckard

Hi Terry,

I could really relate to your quote from Wheeler:

" Surely someday, we can believe, we will grasp the central idea of it all as so simple, so beautiful, so compelling that we will say to each other, ' Oh, how could it have been otherwise! How could we all have been blind for so long!' "

Inevitably, some Alexander will come by and cut through the Gordian knot that physics has become in the last century. And then, hopefully, we'll even have some relevance to our own lives as well.

Steve

Dear Terry,

What about your higher authority, my wife needs me too.

You wrote:

1. When I wrote (a) that "Mathematical entities should all have physical correlates" I misused the word "physical". I should have written "real' and put that in a "possible worlds" context.:

-- I do not know negative people in reality, they merely occur as a result of an abstract formalism.

(b) and that "abstract entities such as complex numbers are the supreme reality" this was not expressing my view. It is one of the logical but unreasonable conclusions of the current structure of, and therefore the standard view in, mathematical science whether expressed or implied- one I strongly disagree with - because it is an inevitable part of mathematical science.

-- Is use of mathematics really the duty of mathematics?

2. I used Cantor (a) because his work is THE foundation of mathematics according to mathematicians; and (b) his diagonal argument is a proof we all know and accept (?).

-- Bourbaki claimed so. Read this , in particular below the heading "How to cope with what is behind Cantor's paradise?"

3. RE Points, Why indeed ?

-- Relations between numerically addressable points are indeed the zero-dimensional correlate to discrete mathematics.

4. I am not sure what you mean by basic mistakes. I assume for convenience that all the mathematics we have is logically correct, that is all

-- This might be a serious mistake. Read my essay and respond there.

5. I am not sure what you mean by by understanding QM os being partly wrong. I think that QM is 100% empirically correct.

-- Find in my essay examples related to Weyl, Schulman, Schroedinger, etc.

What about SUSY, quantum computers, etc.?

Therefore it is reasonable. This is not a problem for realists. Most of what we experience is probabilistic. For me the problem is that we don't have a 100% rational formalism. We have 2 rational pieces that don't fit well together.

-- Is the belief in an a priori existing future time rational?

Why waste time trying to understand it before we have the proper formalism. I spend most of my life, so does everyone, accepting and dealing with things we don't understand - other people. For physicists of course there is a job to be done. Find the right formalism - not an interpretation of the wrong formalism.

-- I doubt that set theory and given spacetime are correct fundamentals.

6. All useful theories must fit experiments i.e. empirical reality. How someone arrives at the best theory is an individual thing.

-- Arguments and experimental results by Gold, Kemp, and Ren, proved v. Békésy wrong.

I have followed the Uncle Al saga for many years. I look forward to a denouement. I agree someone should look. It won't be me. If you want people to do things for you Dale Carnegie is the standard authority. Otherwise you have to make it happen yourself. Uncle Al knows that, and it seems to be happening - but a lot more slowly than he or spectators like me would like. That's normal.

-- It seem to be normal that nobody cares about Galilei, Gompf et al., Aseltine, Terhardt, Ren, and me.

Regards, Eckard

Dear Terry,

As an engineer who understands much more from physiology than from physics of particles, I can tell you for sure that application of mathematics to auditory function is definitely a series of notoriously inappropriate models, at least so far.

What about negative people, even the most nasty ones are entities without a sign. Everyone should have just one positive vote.

Did you not understand how I commented on the distinction between life and dead?

I blamed mathematics not to be humble enough as to understand the message of Buridan's ass and accept that discrete and continuous complement each other.

Perhaps many physicists here consider EPR just unnecessarily dramatized. I contempt those who feel safe behind allegedly rigorous formalism while on the other hand unable to grasp that real numbers only differ from rational ones if they are really real, i.e., irreal.

Follow this reasoning and understand that in principle there is nothing tangible between past and future. Only in practice there are gradual transitions between alive and dead, non-pregnant and pregnant, etc. Reciprocals of zero-crossings, i.e. poles are irrational. Integral transforms are inevitably linked with transitions from rational to irrational. For your convenience:

Regards,

Eckard

Hi Terry. You stated:

"Physically sensations are independent of our mental descriptions."

This is the main reason that physics is so far off track, along with lack of common sense.

1. Thoughts and emotions are differentiated feelings. By involving the mid-range of feeling between thought and sense, dreams make thought more like sensory experience in general. The reduction in the range and extensiveness of feeling during dreams is why there is less memory and thought therein.

2. In keeping with the fact that dreams make thought more like sensory experience in general (including gravity and electromagnetism/light), the ability of thought to describe or reconfigure sense is ultimately dependent upon the extent to which thought is similar to sense. Thoughts are relatively shifting and variable. Likewise, dream vision is relatively shifting and variable. The interactive aspect of being and experience limits the understanding, as it allows for our growth.

My essay is the second listed.

Hi dear Mr Terry Padden,

I like a lot your pragamatic essay where the rationality dances with the logic in the song of prime and naturals numbers .

The imaginaries lost in the ocean of the uncertainty for a complexification bad uderstood .

Only the reality and its fundamentals laws are essentials .

A specific dynamic .

You say

Perhaps their axioms are questionable;....

Very well said ,those simple words resume all .

all is said even axiom must be fundamental ,the hypothesis thus are on the good road evidently.

Sincerely

Best Regards

Steve

Dear Terry,

Elsewhere you told us to be not convinced about quantum computers because you are sharing Laughlin's reservation. Could you please explain this?

Regards,

Eckard

Dear Terry,

Thank you for replying to my question concerning a Laughlin, maybe the same Laughlin who dealt with time frequency representation. No, I do not understand what selling the Brooklyn bridge means. I merely guess that he referred to a gut feeling.

The reason for me to doubt is a coincidence between my distrust in Schroedinger's reaction to EPR and the obvious failure to fulfill promises. Likewise I doubt that aleph_2 is reasonable for two reasons: It has never found an application despite of acceptance by virtually all mathematicians, and I got aware that the putative evidence provided by Cantor and Zermelo is not tenable.

Presumably the last seemingly independent book on the matter was written by Christian Betsch in 1925 and won 1,000,000.00 Reichsmark which was a lot of money after the end of inflation. It pretended to seriously deal with Vaihinger's theory of the "AS IF" in a manner that did not hurt Fraenkel.

Regards,

Eckard

Dear Terry,

Congratulations with your essay. I think I agree with the guts of it, but I also think the line of reasoning shoots itself in the foot sometimes.

For instance you mention: "Science must be rational, therefore eventually mathematical". How can you both claim that physics is poisoned with an overkill of unexplained(aka. unreasonable) math while at the same time claim that ultimately science should be ruled by math? Math will always be hopelessly inadequate to describe science for a.o. reasons that mathematical dimensions or numbers are not physical dimensions or numbers and that it is descriptive, aka. post-fact. This fallacy is shown in your statement "a continuum is a sequence of points". The mathematical point has no physical meaning as anything physical needs extension, let alone that it could be a sequence of points which implies structure without energy. It is also shown by the statement 'complex numbers are the supreme reality", no they are not reality, they are just two dimensions trying to pose as one. Then you also conclude "Proper science must use advanced mathematics", which says it all.

Still I agree with many of your other remarks. I really like "Post classical physics fails at its primary task: explanation". That's just a great observation.

Finally I like to conclude with the remark: it is not that "everything is made of atoms", it should be: "everything is made of photons".

Good luck with the contest!

Steven Oostdijk

Dear Terry,

Your essay is really meaningful. Thanks for your voice of reason. I am totally in line with "True science requires the rational to become reasonable". Whenever I'm confronted with a mathematical formulation, I need a reasonable picture from everyday life. This implies that for some of the unreasonables you mention, I personally developed reasonable pictures (for example complex numbers). Your essay is full of interesting sentences. Would you mind if I quote some on my twitter profile or on my blog?

Sincerely,

Arjen