D

David Jewson

Dear CeruleanJackal
I like very much the idea of the fractal basis of matter. My favourite book is Feynman's 'QED: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter' where he explains the basis of quantum theory. What surprised me is that he is able to explain quantum theory accurately (pointing out the things he left out) with remarkably simple calculations. However, to get a result using the theory, such as the probability of a photon going from A to B, requires doing the same simple calculations repeatedly, and the more the calculation is repeated the more accurate the result. It is having to do these simple things repeatedly that ends up in complexity. Feynman spends some time in the book showing how to calculate the fine structure constant (and explaining what it is) but again it involves doing simple calculations repeatedly. There is a classic computer simulation called 'The Game of Life' by John Conway where simple rules applied repeatedly can produce all sorts of interesting patterns on a computer screen. Interestingly some of these patterns can reproduce themselves and also die out - just like in real life! Fractals are a similar idea in that simple rules repeatedly applied can produce beautiful patterns that constantly enlarge. So, I agree with you - quantum theory definitely suggests matter is fractal, in that many repeated and simple calculations are required to predict the behaviour of matter, and as matter, in a sense, is simply the sum of its behaviour (i.e. the way it interacts with us or our experimental apparatus) it IS those repeated (fractal like) calculations. In my essay (and I appreciate your comments) I thought that possibly as little as two rules were required for the 'Physics Game of Life' - 1) Change goes from place to place, and 2) New change appears. That would be real simplicity in that those two rules would then explain (i.e., predict) everything, including, mass, energy, forces, and possibly even the toroidal gravitational fields you discuss in your essay, but maybe an explanation that simple is a little optimistic!

Dear CeruleanJackal
I like very much the idea of the fractal basis of matter. My favourite book is Feynman's 'QED: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter' where he explains the basis of quantum theory. What surprised me is that he is able to explain quantum theory accurately (pointing out the things he left out) with remarkably simple calculations. However, to get a result using the theory, such as the probability of a photon going from A to B, requires doing the same simple calculations repeatedly, and the more the calculation is repeated the more accurate the result. It is having to do these simple things repeatedly that ends up in complexity. Feynman spends some time in the book showing how to calculate the fine structure constant (and explaining what it is) but again it involves doing simple calculations repeatedly. There is a classic computer simulation called 'The Game of Life' by John Conway where simple rules applied repeatedly can produce all sorts of interesting patterns on a computer screen. Interestingly some of these patterns can reproduce themselves and also die out - just like in real life! Fractals are a similar idea in that simple rules repeatedly applied can produce beautiful patterns that constantly enlarge. So, I agree with you - quantum theory definitely suggests matter is fractal, in that many repeated and simple calculations are required to predict the behaviour of matter, and as matter, in a sense, is simply the sum of its behaviour (i.e. the way it interacts with us or our experimental apparatus) it IS those repeated (fractal like) calculations. In my essay (and I appreciate your comments) I thought that possibly as little as two rules were required for the 'Physics Game of Life' - 1) Change goes from place to place, and 2) New change appears. That would be real simplicity in that those two rules would then explain (i.e., predict) everything, including, mass, energy, forces, and possibly even the toroidal gravitational fields you discuss in your essay, but maybe an explanation that simple is a little optimistic!

Dear MagnoliaCentipede,
How interesting! I see physics like a giant jigsaw puzzle. At the moment, from a distance, the puzzle seems to fit together , but when you look at it more closely, some pieces of the puzzle seemed to have been rammed into place. You then try to rearrange the puzzle to get a better fit, but to do that you don't actually need new experiments, as there is already plenty of experimental results to work with. The WTF moment would be if suddenly all the puzzle pieces all fitted simply and perfectly together. That would be really satisfying! But then I would have nothing left to think about - Ouch!!!

Dear GambogeSheep
As regards time, if I have it right, the standard way of thinking about time comes from the theory of Special Relativity. Einstein's explanation of the equations of Special Relativity requires different observers to have different experiences of which events are simultaneous, and the logical outcome is that events cannot then be labelled as being in the past or in the future, i.e., an event cannot, in itself, be in the past or in the future, and that label can only be given to it by a particular observer. Practically this works perfectly, which is why it has been generally accepted, even though it is a rather weird idea. However, as I discuss in my essay, if Nature actually were to consist of fundamental parts that all travel at the same speed, then the equations of special relativity would result (you will need to take my word for this as the explanation is far too long to write down here!). This approach then allows all observers to have the same experience of simultaneous events, and so agrees with our own personal experience that there is a definite past and a definite future. It also doesn't have the weirdness of Einstein's explanation. So, by invoking Occam's razor (that the simpler of the two explanations is probably the correct one), I have to agree with you that, most likely, there is a definite past and a definite future, and that Einstein, although he was definitely right about the equations, was probably wrong about the physics underlying those equations.
As regards set theory and numbers, I think it ignores the importance of the calculating process when it comes to mathematics. So the calculating process requires moving things around in the real world (electrons in calculators, for example), and, because of this, mathematics actually reflects what is happening in the real world. I, therefore, see mathematics as a practical way of modelling the real world, which is why I think it is so important in physics.

Dear GambogeSheep
I found what you said about time interesting. If I have it right, the standard way of thinking about time comes from the theory of Special Relativity. Einstein's explanation of the equations of Special Relativity requires different observers to have different experiences of which events are simultaneous, and the logical outcome is that events cannot then be labelled as being in the past or in the future, i.e., an event cannot, in itself, be in the past or in the future, and that label can only be given to it by a particular observer. Practically this works perfectly, which is why it has been generally accepted, even though it is a rather weird idea. However, as I discuss in my essay, if Nature actually were to consist of fundamental parts that all travel at the same speed, then the equations of special relativity would result (you will need to take my word for this as the explanation is far too long to write down here!). This approach then allows all observers to have the same experience of simultaneous events, and so agrees with our own personal experience that there is a definite past and a definite future. It also doesn't have the weirdness of Einstein's explanation. So, by invoking Occam's razor (that the simpler of the two explanations is probably the correct one), I have to agree with you that, most likely, there is a definite past and a definite future, and that Einstein, although he was definitely right about the equations, was probably wrong about the physics underlying those equations.

Dear LilacPig,
Thanks for your comments. I suppose I would say 'things' are definitely nebulous as they cannot be directly experienced (we only experience a model in our brain of that table over there, not the table itself) but change is not nebulous as it can be directly experienced, especially if you accept that all our perceptions actually are change (or at least represent change). As far as subatomic particles go, all I am saying is that Einstein couldn't say what a photon really 'is' and I think, likewise, if he was alive now, he wouldn't be able to say what a quark or any other subatomic particle 'is'. However, I can say exactly what I mean when I talk about change, for example what I mean by a change in position, even if that change in position is so small that I can't actually see it. Also, I think it is fair to assume that our perceptions are related to changes in our brain cells, and, as these cells are incredibly small and the things that are changing (like the position of sodium ions across the cell membrane) are atomic in size, I think our perceptions could well reflect some extremely small changes, i.e., perhaps we can, after all, directly experience extremely small change.
As to the point of having a theory of change, I would say it makes things much simpler: instead of umpteen particles and several forces all in a four-dimensional spacetime, there is just change moving at a single speed from place to place in a three-dimensional space, along with the ceaseless appearance of new change. It also removes much of the 'weirdness' associated with theories based around 'things', for example, that a 'thing' can be at one place when detected and then, in a way, everywhere at once in-between detections. Finally, the practical point would be if it was able to make better predictions than a theory of 'things', but I guess that remains an 'if'. The point for me is that I enjoy thinking about it - and I'm quite happy to accept that it could well all be nonsense!

There are some lovely ideas in this essay that really struck me - that scientists should be explainers rather than discoverers - that we cannot make ourselves understand; the most we can do is to foster a state of mind, in which understanding may come to us - that we cannot know where new discoveries come from, we can’t know who’ll provide them or what paradigm they’ll use: the most we can do is foster a general environment of creativity and communication, and hope for the best.
Just excellent stuff!
I love thinking about science and making up theories i.e., trying to explain things and solve mysteries and puzzles (and reading other people's ideas too). I do it because I really enjoy it. I'm not part of an academic community, I will never have a paper published and I'm not interested in winning prizes. I can make the world a better place, but I don't think it will be through some great discovery but rather (perhaps) by helping others discover the joy of thinking for themselves - or maybe it's all just my excuse for lying on the sofa! So, going back to the title of your essay, science for me is not about discovery in the sense of a some breakthrough finding for the scientific community, but more about personal discovery and fun (and I hope that doesn't sound too selfish).

Also thanks for your comments on my essay and I will try to post a reply that is helpful.

All the best,
AzureFlyingfish

Dear ThistleLion,
I was really writing to thank you for your really helpful and kind comments about my essay and to say I posted a reply.
I've read your essay and was intrigued by the idea of hierarchically nested kinetic states of space and feel the need to find out more! Having an interview with an alien was a brilliant idea - the alien seems to know so much that we don't! We clearly have a lot to learn - but I guess that is what makes physics so interesting!
All the best.

Dear CoralBear,
I really wanted to thank you for the comments about my essay, to which I have now replied, however, your very interesting essay did make me think of another path to truth. .
So, if a theory consists a a small number of very simple rules that have to be repeatedly applied many many times to achieve a result, and that result matches reality, then that theory is likely to be true. This assumes that the more times you apply the rules, the more likely any error in the theory is to show up, so if there are no errors after a large number of iterations, then your theory is probably on the right track.
It is like being shown a fractal and being asked to reproduce it with your own computer program. You might be able to do this with a complicated program, which you then change to accommodate the changes in the fractal as it grows (so that the predictions of the program match the fractal), and there might be lots of different complicated programs that could do this. However, if you found a really simple program that repeated in a loop over and over again and continuously and accurately reproduced the fractal, then you would rightly think you had most probably discovered the original fractal program.
Perhaps you could call this proof by construction.
I would like to think this is an original idea - but I'm sure someone else will have thought of it!
All the best.

Dear ThistleLion,
Thank you - I think you are the first person to ever say my ideas might be 'on target', so I feel quite overwhelmed!
I'm glad you mentioned entanglement, as I think it's yet another area where using change to describe physics gives a completely different understanding of what is going on. If you imagine change in the world being like waves in a pond, with different waves in that pond will be crossing each other and either adding or subtracting from each other at different points in the pond, then, in a sense, all the waves are entangled with each other. It is this kind of entanglement that is absolutely key to the operation of a theory of change. However, the current understanding of entanglement depends on there being 'things' with certain intrinsic properties that move from A to B, and, for quantum theory to be true, this assumption unavoidably leads to very weird conclusions, for example, that information can pass instantaneously between two particles, whatever distance separates them. However, by using the idea of change along with the idea that the mathematics of quantum theory is describing that change (and so dispensing with the idea of 'things') it seems possible to reach an understanding of entanglement that is not the least bit weird and where there is no instantaneous transmission of information, although I realize a much deeper analysis would be required to make this sound at all convincing! However, I truly believe that a new approach using the idea of change could solve many of the fundamental problems in physics in a straightforward way while avoiding the need for many of the 'magical' conclusions that basing physics on the study of 'things' has required.
Anyway, thanks for your comments which are much appreciated.

P.S. I'm glad I'm not the only person who talks to aliens!

Dear CoralBear,
Thank you for making some really important points which is I have also really struggled with. Our science is based around the idea of things and that idea is deeply set in our psychology, and ,because of this, when I started thinking about change I thought that that the perceptions in our consciousness, such as red, were 'things' and were code for what was going on in the real world outside our heads. Then I realized they could be a code just for change, so, for example, when there is a change of a particular frequency in my brain I might experience red. Red then remains a 'thing' that is code for a certain type of change, i.e., red is my human experience of change. But then I thought that as red seems to have no other properties, or perform any other function than describing change, that describing it as 'a thing' doesn't really add anything, and it would be simpler to just say that red is change. In a similar way, one might ask what it is that is changing in the world outside our heads. So, you might then say that is the 'aether' that is changing or 'the CoralBear field' that is changing - but these ideas don't add anything new so one might then wonder if they have any value at all. This realization was a sort of epiphany for me, as it led me to think that 'things' aren't actually necessary to describe our world and, bizarre as it sounds, instead of experiencing things, we experience change. However, if you prefer to think of red as 'a thing' I think that is perfectly justifiable. I also agree that change has to take place in a space, so you also need the idea of space as well as change. I can understand it when you say objects in the outside world are what really exist, so, for example, a table is what really exists. But a table consists of empty space and point particles. You can imagine those point particles being 'something' but I would say it is equally possible to describe them in terms of the changes they cause, i.e., solely in terms of change. You might think that this is all just a matter of definitions, but it turns out that describing physics in terms of change gives a completely different picture of the world we live in, which I have found refreshing and revealing (but I am biased!). This is especially so as it then seems possible to describe the world without all the weird conclusions that come from describing it in terms of things.
The article on structural realism (which I didn't know anything about) looks really interesting and I will look at it carefully as I sure I could learn something from it.
Thank you, and also thank you LilacSeahorse for your further comments, I am very tempted to try the Ganzfeld experiment! I think the link between consciousness and neural activity is fascinating and hides some deep secrets!

Dear MagnoliaCentipide,
Thanks for your comment and sorry for the late reply. What you say reminds me that the most important things in most people's lives are their friendships and personal relationships. I like the philosophy of John MacMurray which suggests that if science has a point, ultimately that point should be about improving what is really important to people, i.e., friendship. I haven't really considered how muddling science up with technology might play into all of this and lead to the crackpot theories and social distrust you mention, and it all sounds really interesting. I'm hoping your essay might have something more to say about it and and will give it a read to find out!

Dear FlaxTern

Just to let you know that I did reply to your interesting email (just in case the reply went into your spam folder!).

Dear LilacSeahorse,

I read the article about time as you suggested. Strangely and unexpectedly, I found myself agreeing with it. You may have noticed that, in my essay, I suggested everything at the fundamental level travels at the same speed, This means that the distance one fundamental thing travels exactly matches the distance any other fundamental thing travels. This then dispenses with the need for a separate concept of time as, in effect, everything exactly 'times' everything else. Brilliant! Thank you.

Dear LilacSeahorse,

I thoroughly agree with you!
I've read you really interesting essay and have left a comment on how I think neuroscience could make a difference.

I liked your essay and the really interesting issues you discuss. I know you are a neuroscientist and I deeply believe that neuroscience (and neuroscientists) could make a big difference to science. It seems to me that the brain has developed to cope with the world by using lots of practical shortcuts that work really well most of the time but are also the root cause of many deep misunderstandings. The obvious remedy is for all scientists to take a course in neuroscience and psychology!

P.S. I personally love the study of illusions.

Dear LilacSeahorse,
I very much like Buddhist ideas and will certainly look at the article you suggest which looks really interesting.
You are quite right, scientists have always studied change, and, of course, it is only common sense that something must be changing. But what if there are two worlds, a model 'dream' world inside our heads and a real world outside our heads - and we are trapped in that inner world? It would be like being trapped in a room and having to watch a tv picture of the outside world. Although you could tell how the outside world was changing from how all the tv's pixels were changing, you couldn't say what those pixels were representing, i.e. what it is that really exists in the outside world. It's the same if you look at a model of DNA made out of ping-pong balls in that the ping-pong balls themselves aren't telling you what they are representing (something round? Maybe, maybe not). So, the title of my essay should really be 'Is change all we can know about the outside world?'.
I also agree that the creation of new change should have a cause. In the case of light, you could call that cause a photon, but the word 'photon' doesn't seem to add anything much and doesn't change the calculations, so it is probably more honest to say that the cause isn't known just yet. If you believe in the Big Bang, then that is the greatest creation of new change, but no one really knows the cause of that huge new change.
Lastly, when I said 'nobody knows why the mathematic works' I simply meant there is currently no good physical explanation for the mathematics of quantum theory. This is what Feynman says in his book QED. He called the mathematics absurd and said that no one, not even the most learned professor, had a good explanation for why it worked. It was the same when Balmer discovered a formula for the spectral lines for the hydrogen atom - he knew the mathematics worked but didn't have a good explanation for why it worked. So, you could say mathematics become a model of the world when there is a good explanation of why that mathematics works, but up until that point it is a mysterious procedure!
Anyway, thanks for your thoughtful comments - I have found them very helpful.

Dear KakhiHeron
A quadrivector identity is an interesting idea which I will need to think about!
The idea for the swarm of bees came from Feynman's description of a simple photon clock where a photon bounces back and forward between two mirrors with one bounce being one tick of the clock (so many fractions of a second). When the clock accelerates, then the photon has to take a longer route between the mirrors and so the ticks slow down and time appears to have slowed down. Using this simple model it is possible to deduce Einstein's time dilation equation. So, when time slows down with the Feynman clock, there is nothing particularly special or unusual happening, it is simply due to the geometry of the situation. However, it does depend on the timing elements of the clock (the photons) all moving (or changing) at the same speed. A little bit of investigation shows that having a physics where all fundamental things travel at the same speed is a physics that entirely agrees with the equations of relativity - which is an interesting discovery (I can email you the mathematics if you are sceptical!) and, incidentally, would fit with the idea that change travels at a single speed.

Dear FlaxTern,
Your essay has certainly given me a lot to think about! As an example, the point you make about the qualitative (unchanging) and quantitative (changing) is one of the very interesting things I came across myself when thinking about the fundamentals of Nature. A colour, such as 'blue' is definitely qualitative - there seems to be no dispute about. We experience it in consciousness as something that 'is', that doesn't have a number and doesn't change. But, paradoxically' blue is also a frequency - a changing number, and in that sense something completely qualitative is also completely quantitative. I found this very odd and disturbing, and it leads me back to your essay where the C* elements are both quantitative and qualitative.
I would very pleased to discuss all of the interesting points in your essay further and how they might relate to my essay 'Is Change All We Can Know?'. I think you can email me at AzureFlyingfish@temp-fake-email.fqxi.org (if you would like!)
All the best, AzureFlyingfish.

Dear Vladimir,
Thanks for your comments which were very helpful (and I'm very pleased someone has read my essay!) I love John Wheeler and, as you probably noticed, referenced him in my essay. You are quite right, the idea of change doesn't immediately provide an ontology of the world, i.e., what it is that exists in the world. If you are an 'idealist' you can say the world is made up of 'ideas', or rather all the things you experience, such as 'green' or 'blue', and that would be a type of ontological explanation (would you agree?). But colours also have a frequency, so, in a way, they are also change, and then saying the word change is simply the same as saying colour (and vice-versa) and, therefore, is a type of ontological explanation - or is that just semantics? So, I guess, in that way, the idea of change does provide an ontology of the inner 'conscious' world simply because it is another word for all the things, such as colour, that make up that world. But you make an interesting point in that if the change in consciousness is modelling the real world (the world outside our brains) then it must be modelling change in something, but change in what? As in the story of the alien's room in my essay, it would seem impossible to give an answer to that question - so, bizarrely, nobody can know what is changing on the outside world, and then the outside world has no ontological explanation. But the key thing is, does that practically matter? Probably not!

I thought you might find this interesting (or challenging!) as it calls into question the very idea that an ontological basis for the world outside consciousness is required or even possible.

Thank you again for your comments and all the best,
AzureFlyingfish