To Lawrence, Ray and Tom - the FQXi-MTP Group
Thanks for the invitation to join your discussion from the Free Radical blog here. Keeping up with this conversation is like seeking to understand a movie 'one frame at a time'. A little like understanding the Universe using particles!
Tom you write: "You want to have your cake and eat it too".
I don't even like cake. Such magic can only occur in modern theoretical physics, along with time travel. My 'trivial and naive view' (thanks for the complement Tom, really!) calls for 'physical realism'. No backward causality, no miraculous appearances, no parallel multiverses, no wave-particle dual nature.
If we start with the time-integral of energy, what I designate as eta in my papers, we are able to define energy, momentum, force, temperature and entropy in simple mathematical terms. We can mathematically derive such basic laws of physics as Conservation of Energy and Momentum, Newton's Second Law of Motion, Planck's Law for Blackbody Radiation, The Quantum Hypothesis, the average energy of a system per degree of freedom, and the Second Law of Thermodynamics. Furthermore, we are able to show that Planck's Formula is an exact mathematical identity using continuous processes, explain the photoelectric effect without using photons, derive an equation for the photocurrent, explain the double-slit experiment, provide an existence argument for Planck's constant, and give an interpretation of Schroedinger's Equation, with the associated wavefunction as being no other than our 'accumulation of energy' quantity eta. (link to papers)
Ray you write,
" ... you assumed Bose-Einstein statistics, and then showed self-consistency".
I have done no such think! This is forcing thoughts in my reasoning. Let's see if I can describe my derivation of Planck's Formula differently. Assume you have a physical quantity E(t) at any time t. Consider that you can measure the delta_E of this and the E{av} of this for any interval delta_t, but you cannot directly and absolutely measure the quantity E(t) at an instantaneous time t.
Question: How can you calculate E(t) at some instantaneous value of t?
Answer: Planck's Formula!!!!
If E(t) is exponential, the Formula will give you the exact value. If E(t) is any other integrable function, the Formula will give you the best possible approximation that can be experimentally obtained. This is a mathematical result! Nothing to do with Physics. No boson, no fermions, no quantum statistics involved.
I admire all great human achievements. Certainly painting the world with ideas is just as beautiful (more beautiful imho) as painting it with colors. But I don't mistake an abstract Jackson Pollock painting as being a true picture of the Universe. Likewise, I don't mistake abstract theoretical physics as being that Universe either. In both cases I see these as being a view (an interpretation) of the Universe, but not the Universe itself which is and will always be unknowable to us. (see The Interaction of Measurement). Theories are human creations. They are not 'real'. If physicists acknowledge that than I wont have any disputes. Just as I have no disputes with all areas of Mathematics no matter how abstract and incomprehensible. But I continue to believe that we can 'know' the Universe in simple (even naïve) terms that 'make sense'.
I value your comments and respect your points of view.
Constantinos