The Discreet Charm of the Discrete by Paul Halpern

Paul,

So, are we willing to attach the fuzziness of nothingness to create meaningfulness in the sensory world (sensed objects, forces and relationships that we actually can point to and even get close enough to touch)?

Here I would suggest what I think is an appropriate poem:

V

I don't know which came first

After the chicken

And sex

And the egg

And the empty can of soup

There's no need for

An opinion

Based on observed facts

Not in this day of

Revealing ignorance

What's left for modern man

Isn't even a bone

There's just the opportunity

To scavenge

To catch a glimpse of

A suggestive piece of evidence

An imprint exists

Where it once was

Substance

And now

Even

Ideas are Art

--------------------------

Paul, you have created a great piece of art!

Respectfully,

Irvon Clear

Paul,

I was looking forward to your entry in this contest, and I was not disappointed. You are so very expert at drawing a picture of abstract models in sensuous terms. I especially appreciate your comparison of an office tower to the possibility of a finite field theory (in itself a concept to launch a thousand dissertations). I was reminded of Jorge Luis Borges's short story, "The Library of Babel."

Interesting, informative and original. Just excellent.

Good luck in the contest, and I hope you get a chance to visit my essay, which shares in common with yours an emphasis on information theory.

All best,

Tom

Dear Paul,

Thank you for your very kind remarks on my essay. I had also read your essay, some days ago, and very much appreciated your holon idea.

With my best wishes,

Tejinder

Dear Paul,

I liked very much the historical part of your essay, which is much more developed than mine. Also, I liked the analogy of the information contained in an envelope and the size of the characters.

On the other hand, a minimal wavelength seems to me counternatural as this would mean an upper limit of the wavenumber. Intuitively both ends (linear and inverse linear) are unbound.

Best wishes for this contest.

Arjen

Dear Paul Halpern,

Thanks for your opinion.When I saw the heading of the essay contest 'Is it possible to reconcile digital and analog nature of reality' the idea of connecting it to Advaitha dawned on me.Because Advaitha in a literal sense means Non-dualism.If it is possible for us to reconcile both forms of reality,then it must be done only on the concept of Non-dualism (that is Advaitha).Combining digital with analog, in physics means combining QM with GR,leads to QG which is non-dual to both.

Today itself I will go thro' your article and express my opinion.

Good luck and best regards.

Sreenath B N.

Dear Paul Halpern,

In your intriguing essay,you have argued for the existence of a fundamental particle called,Holon.It is really good if such a particle exists as all of our knowledge of elementary particles can based on it.But you have not mentioned holon's mass and wave-length.I hope you will soon do it as it gives limits to our understanding of the physics.

Anyway your essay is enjoyable.

Best regards and good luck.

Sreenath B N.

Paul

I've just re-read your essay carefully. As a non 'professional physicist' I appreciated your knowledge and the latest detail of some current ideas.

I also fully understand the logic of the holon, May this perhaps be somewhat apparent in Cherenkov radiation? and do you consider there may also be any 'lowest' energy for a discrete particle?

I've been studying; .. "the overwhelming discrepancy between the calculated and observed values of the cosmological.." {'constant' I assume}, and the many other discrepancies, anomalies and paradoxes, and appear to have found a logical model which removes them all. This provides a resolution to the 'dark energy enigma' and evaporates the 'murky clouds', where indeed it derives 'exciting times' as you predict. I do hope you'll be able to read my essay. http://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/803

It is difficult to see beyond the murky clouds using current understandings, so you'd have to temporarily step back from those, use pure logic and focus on improving conceptual dynamic visualisation skills.

You may also wish to see the strings, in which much added explanation lies, and you may see that immediate conceptual understanding has now improved significantly to around 1 in 4 professional physicists and others. It also explains the issues, proofs and gives links. It is simply a fine tuning of SR with a Quantum Mechanism, removing all issues in SR and beyond. (see also the identification of the errors, the logic, and the many thought Gedankens).

I'd be extremely grateful for your thoughts if you have time to read it.

Best of luck in the competition.

Peter Jackson

Dear Paul,

Planck's own Nobel lecture is a good place to see the infrared issues that drove him to the idea of discreteness: http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/1918/planck-lecture.html. Still a very nice read, I think.

Best,

Dean

Dear Professor Halpern- I have downloaded, studied, and copied your essay: THE DISCREET CHARM OF THE DISCREET, to my folder of seminal manuscripts. It appears to me that you are very much the heir apparent to Abraham Pais.

You may find my paper: IS REALITY DIGITAL OR ANALOG? somewhat outside of mainstream thinking. I confess that my work, is of a decidedely different 'style' from your work. But the justification for my approach is not that I am right and you or any formally trained physicist is wrong. The virtue of my paper is that my methods allow for a completely mechanical explanation of the process of cell duplication. Coming to point on the subject of how it is that cancer cells duplicate faster than healthy cells. I'm going to make a thorough study of your books and papers. I'm hoping you can find the time to glance at: NEOPLASIA MATHEMATICS.