Lev,

Your summary seemed to look at reality posited in models rather than the universe itself. Can we separate them?

Jim Hoover

    Hello Jim,

    The reason we cannot deal with the "reality", at least so far, has to do with our inability to approach it directly, without any special "language", or formalism, designed for that purpose.

    In my essay, I suggested that our present difficulties have to do with the fact that the numeric formalism, which has served us for several millennia, has exhausted its usefulness and needs to be replaced by a new formalism which is supposed to capture reality in a much more direct manner.

    Lev,

    One could never say that another's approach is wrong. Certainly mine depends on observed characteristics that models pose or reveal.

    Regards,

    Jim Hoover

    Lev

    Another excellent essay, and still too good a concept to expect any headway against the paradigm, but a top score from me. Perhaps a spectacular success in application is needed. I do have something in mind which originally used a different representational and conceptual structure to the mathematical, and hasn't yet 'hit the streets'. We can discuss if you feel happy with the concept.

    My own essay will provide a hint, the conception also based on moving entities and relationships not numbers. I believe you will also find it rewarding to explore a number of other excellent and consistent essays, such as Edwins, Georginas, Rafael Castel, Constantinos, Robert Spoljaric, and others!

    I'd be honoured for any thoughts on mine, which is mentally testing! but I hope you also find worth a good mark. Do ask about any doubts.

    Best wishes

    Peter

      • [deleted]

      • Post #16

      http://www.scienceforums.net/topic/32061-gerardus-t-hooft-doubt-about-power-of-calculus/

        Dear Peter,

        I sincerely appreciate your interest in my essay!!

        I already read your essay and would have commented on it if I felt confident/competent that those will be useful to you.

        I believe your remark that "Perhaps a spectacular success in application is needed." is absolutely correct, and the main reason I participate (for the second time) in these contests is directly related to my hope that some people might be motivated to develop with or without me some "physical" applications of the proposed new form of data representation.

        In fact, *all* I'm proposing is a fundamentally new (structural) form of data representation in science.

        Best wishes,

        --Lev

        Thank you, Yuri, for pointing to the quotes by Feynman (in your essay page) and 't Hooft (in the link) supporting my doubts regarding the applicability of the logic of calculus to physics (the second paragraph of section 3 in my essay).

        Lev

        Thanks. I see your work as a little more important fundamentally, as a tool that can avoid the limitations of other tools.

        As someone who can think non mathematically, can you tell me this ref my essay, (if you can remember or have time to check.) If we say the 'problem' is to explain how a constant speed of light is measured by all moving observers, does it understandably explain how this can be achieved with a quantum mechanism?

        If successful, this should lead to the success I referred to.

        Peter

        10 days later

        • [deleted]

        • Post #20

        Lev,

        Okay, here goes. No pressure about the ratings -- I rated you a long time ago and you know I marked you high. Time for the commentary I promised.

        Having spent several years now studying your work, and corresponding with you, I remain convinced that this is very important work -- and unfortunately, probably far ahead of its time. I wish that pattern recognition algorithms were sufficiently advanced for a proof of concept, but I don't think they are.

        All I can say at the moment is that I still agree in principle with the identity between time and information, and the independence of semantics and syntax. I think this all converges on my view of general self organization. My head is still into classical computation, though, and into the possibilities that quantum computing might bring.

        Be assured that I will follow the progress of your group as I am able, and I hope you put me on the mailing list for any significant breakthrough!

        (House remodeled to your satisfaction now? :-) )

        All best,

        Tom

          Tom,

          Thank you for your interest!

          By the way, I now believe that "the independence of semantics and syntax" in a formalism might be the main source of our scientific troubles. To avoid fulling ourselves, the formalism must be absolutely transparent: syntax = semantics.

          My renovations are still ongoing. ;-(

          I'm glad you are doing reasonably well in the rating.

          My best wishes to you

          Sorry, obviously, I meant "fooling" instead of "fulling". ;-)

          This is what twelve hours a day of renovations can do to my English. ;-)

          • [deleted]

          • Post #23

          Hi Lev,

          I knew what you meant. :-) I haven't been out to Canada's east coast since 1979, where in Halifax I took immediately to the taste of the local Ten Penny Ale. Mmmmm. Do they still brew it? The rocky coast is majestic and beautiful.

          Hope you're not working yourself into exhaustion. I know that renovation is one of those things that feel so much better when it's over.

          Re semantics = syntax, I will look closer and hopefully be able to convince myself that it's not a return philosophically to the Logical Positivism school.

          All best,

          Tom

          Dear Lev

          I have enjoyed your essay very much. You point a very interesting fact and is how our conception of the continuum through points is based on the notion of limit. On my essay I try to explain how this conception of limit and others are just the tools that allow classical logic work on our conception of reality. Once we remove the excluded middle from our logic, concepts like limits, closed sets etc. loose their meaning and our continuum recover its relational character. We can keep then a lot of the richness of our classical formalism but getting the powerful relational character that you propose. I wonder what kind of logic governs the models you proposed, I think my ideas can be useful to you, I find particularly interesting your new conception of the Peano axioms I think it could have a closed relation with the models I propose. I would like to hear your opinions about it.

          Regards,

          J. Benavides

            Hi John,

            Thank you for your interst in the essay!

            First, I should mention that I believe in the priority of (object or data) representation in science over any logical considerations: the latter should follow the "logic" of the chosen representation, i.e.logic should emerge during our "manipulation" of data.

            Regrettably, the concept of representation emerged basically outside natural sciences (and was driven by CS applications), mainly because mathematics has not yet addressed it (and that is why it has been developed properly).

            It took me some time to gradually realize that when replacing "point" representation by a structural representation, you get a much richer "geometry", because of the much richer variety of various path between two entities (just look at the variety of paths between two strings over a finite alphabet under deletion, insertion, and substitution operations).

            I am familiar with category theory, but I felt that the concept of category is useful under the conventional mathematical (point) representation. What would be necessary in the "structural" mathematics is not yet clear to me: in the conventional math one has to seek (and build) various math. structure "outside" the (point) representation itself, since such numeric representations are too "simple". So the "structural" math. in view of very rich natural data structure, there is much less pressure to seek it in a manner similar to the conventional math.

            I will comment on your essay shortly, in your essay's page.

            Dear Lev,

            Your essay offers a fascinating analysis of why science has historically viewed nature as spatial and continuous. I very much enjoyed your methodical account of how spatial measurement has served as a core of mathematics, and how we may need to re-examine our assumptions. Well written and developed!

            Best wishes,

            Paul

            Paul Halpern, The Discreet Charm of the Discrete

              5 days later

              Dear Lev,

              Congratulations on your dedication to the competition and your much deserved top 35 placing. I have a bugging question for you, which I've also posed to all the potential prize winners btw:

              Q: Coulomb's Law of electrostatics was modelled by Maxwell by mechanical means after his mathematical deductions as an added verification (thanks for that bit of info Edwin), which I highly admire. To me, this gives his equation some substance. I have a problem with the laws of gravity though, especially the mathematical representation that "every object attracts every other object equally in all directions." The 'fabric' of spacetime model of gravity doesn't lend itself to explain the law of electrostatics. Coulomb's law denotes two types of matter, one 'charged' positive and the opposite type 'charged' negative. An Archimedes screw model for the graviton can explain -both- the gravity law and the electrostatic law, whilst the 'fabric' of spacetime can't. Doesn't this by definition make the helical screw model better than than anything else that has been suggested for the mechanism of the gravity force?? Otherwise the unification of all the forces is an impossiblity imo. Do you have an opinion on my analysis at all?

              Best wishes,

              Alan

              Dear Alan,

              I'm sorry, I'm by far not the best person to address your question.

              My best wishes to you!

                Lev

                You have found a solution I've spent some years looking for. I've tried many words but they have normally failed me and been inadequate. I have to congratulate you on your inspired use of the word 'cataclysmic'. Well done for finally pinning the right word down so precisely.

                I've recently added a couple more analogies and explanations to my string which, if you have time, I'd greatly appreciate your looking over. The last in in response to a tome by Basudeba.

                The solution has come through departure from the abstractions of points and lines and reversion to simply the 3D 'body' Einstein originally specified. This is so close to your own thesis I do hope you can perceive the enormous result, well able to extract us from cataclysm. You will need all your dynamic visualisation skills and a tiny bit more. An earlier post breaks the variables down and deals with each observer and path 'condition'.

                Very best wishes

                Peter