Is the Quest for a Theory of Everything Getting Out of Hand?

[marcus]

I understand that physicists consider the gravitational field to be just another field to be quantized... I don't understand how you can derive spectral spacetime from continuous spacetime?

The gravitational field is the geometry in which the other fields live. The other fields must be defined ON whatever mathematical structure is used to represent the quantum state of the geometry.

Now we have the stimulating exercise of considering various possible math structures (which must have finite d.o.f) to represent the quantum states of the geometry.

So you think of MEASURING because that is how you determine geometry. The quantum state must represent a state of knowledge or information about things like curvature, dependence of volume on radius, dependence of angle and area...

The quantum state must correspond to making a finite number of measurements or fixing initial conditions or constraints or testable outcomes etc etc. The experimenter's interaction with the system.

In any case this is all we ever have. We never actually deal with the ideal continuum. To verify a continuum geometry would take uncountably infinite number of measurements and the whole idea (given uncertainty) is stupid. So we are talking finite d.o.f.

And so the story goes on and on. It is basically a common sense thing. How do we know geometry and how do we interact with it? Get a simple math device to represent quantum states (states of information and measurement). Then figure out how to put the other fields into that or "ON" that structure. Then model how the geometry evolves while it is being inhabited by the matter fields.

It's a hard problem but considerable progress has been made.

About what you asked: the bridge between continuous and discrete? The recent paper by Freidel Geiller Ziprick was specifically focused on that bridge. You can study it separately from quantization, in a purely classical context. Geometry must first be reduced to finite d.o.f. before it can be quantized, so FGZ decided to study first things first. . they got some interesting results. You can look up on Arxiv by author name.

 

[bill alsept]

Marcus, it does sound like I am outdated on this matter. This, I am rather pleased to hear, and I will thus cede need for discussion. Not to sound childish, but I'm not quite sure how out-dated is the same as "fantasy" though. For the sake of cordial conversation, it is always worth watching terms. It really is hard, I feel, in any scientific context to get a feel for the "consensus" currently. You seem to follow this well, so if you've got any tips I'd be interested.

I don't think it's outdated. We have been searching for TOE for a long long time and there seems to be no shortage of interest these days on continuing that search. There may be a lack of interest from those who have followed the wrong paths and hit a dead ends. There will always be new ideas you just can't discuss them on this forum for some reason. I don't think its to much to say that some of the theories seem a little outlandish. Why are they talking eleven demensions? Why not seven and a half? Who can picture or even explain four? At this time are there ANY TOE that you or Marcus think are on the right path. Can you list the problems that the best ones have?

 

[Chronos]

The search for any TOE invokes first principles, I suspect first principles are beyond the grasp of science [or even philosophy] as we know it. If you strictly apply Godel's incompleteness theorem to its logical limit, the universe should not even exist. Most scientist disagree.

 

[PatrickPowers]

The search for any TOE invokes first principles, I suspect first principles are beyond the grasp of science [or even philosophy] as we know it. If you strictly apply Godel's incompleteness theorem to its logical limit, the universe should not even exist. Most scientist disagree.

I have read Goedel's theorems. What he says is that once you allow infinite sets and exponents to be variables (y = 2^x) then there are statements in mathematics that cannot be proved without introducing more axioms to make a more powerful system. This more powerful system in turn has statements that can't be proved without introducing more axioms to make a yet more powerful system, and so on. So such mathematics can't be proved from first principles.

As to whether you can deduce a TOE, well, who knows until you try. There isn't much alternative to using this unproved mathematics to do so.

I have a strong suspicion that there is something circular about the universe. The definition of A influences the definition of B which in turn influences the definition of a A and nothing is well-defined. Even if everything is fairly simple this makes things tough if you are trying to use the axiomatic model.

 

[juanrga]

I'll start off by admitting that just because the "laws of the universe" go against what we might intuit them to be is no grounds to assert their falsehood, but I do have to pose a subjective question:

Do you guys feel that perhaps our current stabs at a ToE are just getting a bit outlandish?

Personally I do. I understand the idealism that "if the math works, then we've got to run with it" but I wonder if the many multi-dimensional ToE's with all sorts of complicated geometries involving string and the like are just throwing layers of math to cover up the initial logic that is being sacrificed. And of course, the more we find out, the more math (and complicated semantic explanation) we need. In short, at gut feeling I believe we just don't know enough about how the universe works right now to be taking stabs in this manner, and we end up laughing at Occam's Razor in the process.

Like I said, this is totally subjective, but does anyone feel me on this?

A TOE is a fantasia believed by some people (very often theoreticians disconnected from experiments and labs) and that apparently have never taken good courses in metaphysics and metamathematics.

This is the same kind of people who is developing string theory and other TONs.

 

[bill alsept]

A TOE is a fantasia believed by some people (very often theoreticians disconnected from experiments and labs) and that apparently have never taken good courses in metaphysics and metamathematics.



Lucky for us history is full of such forward thinking people who were willing to fantasies such things. Especially at times when they had no such courses or the proper technology to do the right experments.

 

[juanrga]

A TOE is a fantasia believed by some people (very often theoreticians disconnected from experiments and labs) and that apparently have never taken good courses in metaphysics and metamathematics.



Lucky for us history is full of such forward thinking people who were willing to fantasies such things. Especially at times when they had no such courses or the proper technology to do the right experments.

Lucky for us, when that people was claiming that they got a TOE, the rest of the community just ignored them and advanced physics and chemistry developing new theories really connected with the phenomena observed in the lab.

 

[friend]

Lucky for us, when that people was claiming that they got a TOE, the rest of the community just ignored them and advanced physics and chemistry developing new theories really connected with the phenomena observed in the lab.

It would certainly be motivating to know that all of reality does make sense.