Peter Lynds' paper and his 'theory' of time

[fando]

An article about some Peter Lynds fellow and his mind-blowing theory of time that has "rocked the physics world" appeared on Slashdork. Naturally enough, my combo quack and hoax detector started beeping. Well, here's his paper. I don't have time to deconstruct it, so I ask the community here: What do you folks make of it? Is this for real?

 

[Jonathan]

I went to the 'here's his paper' link, and once on that page clicked the link for the PDF, but nothing showed up.

 

[fando]

Hmm.. it works fine for me in both Windows Adobe and Linux gv. Perhaps upgrade? http://216.239.53.104/search?q=cach...'s+paradoxes+a+timely+solution&hl=en&ie=UTF-8 by google. If that doesn't work, search for "Zeno's paradoxes timely solution" on google and get the HTML link from there.

 

[Integral]

The linked article is ABOUT the paper and peoples reaction to it. It is impossible to make any judgement on the paper with this information. We need a copy of the paper itself to make knowledable comment.

 

[fando]

Um, hello? The paper is hyperlinked in both my first post and second. Again, in full blown URI format:

http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/archive/00001197/

 

[heusdens]

The idea of Peter Lynds is in no way new, since this idea already was put forward in dialectical materialism, as we can judge from the following text:

The contradiction of motion

Motion is a contradiction within itself, since if an object would at a precise moment be at a precise location, it could never move. The very concept of motion necessitates to accept the existence of contradiction in nature. One of the first philosphers to raise the paradox of motion was Zeno of Elea. The following excerpt explains the viewpoint of Dialectical Materialism on this issue.

=============================================
Motion and Change

Those philosophers who reject the dialectical approach also reject the claim that the concept of contradiction is necessary to the understanding of motion. Hegel distinguishes two kinds of change, quantitative and qualitative; and he maintains that dialectic is required to describe both. The main philosophical discussion has centred around the understanding of quantitative change; and I shall focus on this form of change here.
Quantitative change is change of place, mechanical motion. The understanding of it has posed problems since the very beginnings of Western philosophy. In the 5th Century B.C., the Greek philosopher Zeno presented a celebrated series of paradoxes designed to show that the very concept of motion involves contradictions and is therefore impossible. His arguments have remained controversial throughout the history of western philosophy. Hegel, in effect, accepts Zeno's argument that there are contradictions in the very nature of motion, but instead of concluding that motion is impossible he maintains that `motion is existent contradiction' (Hegel 1969, 440). Engels and other dialectical materialists has followed him in this.
Many analytical philosophers, however, reject the view that the description of motion requires the use of contradictions. Russell's (1922) arguments have been particularly influential. He maintains that a coherent and non-contradictory account of the motion of any object can be given by saying that at one instant it is in one place, while at another instant it is at another place.
This account of movement is quite correct as far as it goes. However, defenders of dialectic argue that it does not go far enough to answer the philosophical problems raised by Zeno's arguments or by dialectic. For to say only that motion consists in being in different places at different times is not to describe motion itself, but merely the effects of motion. To say of a moving body only that it is at a particular place at a particular instant, is not to describe it as in motion there. In order to get movement into the picture, according to dialectic, we must recognize both that the body is at that place and that, in the same instant it is ceasing to be so. For the description needs to capture the fact not only that the body is where it is, but also that it is moving ─ hence in a process of change and becoming. For this contradiction is essential (Priest 1985). As Hegel says, `something moves not because at one moment it is here and at another there, but because at one and the same moment it is here and not here' (Hegel 1969, 440).
=============================================

Excerpt from: http://www.kent.ac.uk/secl/philosophy/ss/DIALECTIC.rtf"

 

[fando]

Yeah, I was thinking that Lynds is proposing nothing new. The real question is, does he really have something that will make new physics? Wheeler calls him 'bold' and I'm inclined to think that it's just a polite put-down, unless it's actually a hoax.

 

[Brad_Ad23]

No, I just came across this article from space.com (reliable source)

http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/time_theory_030806.html


I think there is promise to this, especially if one considers quantum physics. There are no 'instants' of position in space...so why should there be 'instants' of posistion in time?

 

[jcsd]

It's not complete quackery, but he's npot really poposing anything new, the idea of an instant in time is only really a device used by physicists rather than any comment on the nature of reality. Quite frankly you can get the same result by still considering an instant of time as long as you still remember that particles, have, accelartion, momentum, etc, even when you are just considering them at a 'poin' in time.

 

[Tyger]

Wheeler had a habit of never saying anything unkind about someone else's ideas. So saying something was "bold" might have meant audacious or ridiculous.

 

[J-Man]

I agree with heusdens and jcsd.
It seems to me that Lynds is playing with words. I expect he'll soon be argueing that a Zebra doesn't have black and white strips but an array of differential gray hairs.

I believe that any physicist or even us lowly engineers fully understands and accepts the principles he is arguing even though it may not occur to us to even state them. That is the entire reason we utilize such concepts as significant figures, standard deviation, tolerances, calculus and a host of others. It is the reason Heisenberg formally stated his Uncertainty Principle.

The very concept of motion implies change, or more precisely, continuous change. It should be a very easy deduction to conclude that even in the smallest fraction of time you can measure that an object will still be moving. However when you attempt to describe phenomena it reads much better to say that "at time t=1 second, the object was at position x = 1 meter" rather than say "between the interval time t = 1.000000000000000000 and t = 1.999999999999999999 seconds, the object was at position x = 0.99999999999 meters and 1.49999999999999 meters." or whatever the actual case may be.

I must wonder, if Lynds needs to blow his nose, does he say, "please pass me a kleenex" or "please pass me a Puffs brand tissue paper"? I would say "please pass me a kleenex" regardless of the brand of tissue paper at hand because I fully expect the owner of the tissue paper to understand what I mean and not drive down to the store to buy Kleenex brand tissue paper.

 

[heusdens]

The points is, Peter Lynds says nothing astonighing new. For example the philosopher Hegel already stated a likewise vision on reality and time, and before Hegel there must have been many other philosophers and scientists who had expressed that.

 

[bk227865]

its a distance Jim , but not as we know it ...

hmmm i don't really see the problem with these zeno paradoxes...


granted if we have to travel 1 meter we first have to travel 0.5 meters

but that would take also exactly half the time we need for 1 meter

the time needed to travers the subdivison and the number of subdivisions you have to travers keep canceling each other out.

since every subdivision will have a certain size (half of the original) you cannot line up an infinite number of them and expect to end up with only 1 meter.

and as the subdivisions get smaller so dous the time needed to travers them. This way of calculating however is NOT infinite because all subdivisions will have to have a certain size and you cannot line up an infinit number of objects with a certain size (however small) and expect to end up with only 1 meter.

As long as you don't want to do something at every subdivision which takes a certain time that is not in relation with the size of the subdivision (like taking a picture or write down the distance traveled) you will get happely where you want to be.

So moving is certainly ok because the smaller the subdivision the smaller the time needed to travers.

maybe in these digital times we are forgetting what an analog value really means ...

 

[FZ+]

Actually, Zeno's paradox is more subtle than this. It is cleverly constructed to require an INFINITE number of steps.

Ignore the fact the steps take different lengths of time, and just look at the infinity.

With each step taken, the total number of steps taken increases by one. But according to the mathematical definition, it is simply impossible to reach such an infinite number, adding one step at the time. You can tend closer and closer, but you never get there.

Therefore the paradox.

 

[bk227865]

Originally posted by FZ+
Actually, Zeno's paradox is more subtle than this. It is cleverly constructed to require an INFINITE number of steps.

Lol… Well that’s the problem if we keep dividing things we don’t really understand….

According to “zeno’s theory” the following should also stand

I have 1 gram of water…
Now if i throw half of that away I am left with 0.5 gram of water right ?
Now I repeat this for only about 90 times (so we are still waaaay of getting to infinite),
I should be left with 0.000000000000000000000000000808 grams of water right ?

Well no , because even 1 molecule of water weights more than that …so actually I don’t have any water left at all.

Now for objects to have different distances they have to have different amounts of space between them. Who says we can keep dividing that amount of space and still have space left at all ?

The fact that you can move from one locations to another across an amount of space suggests to me that you cannot infinitely keep dividing these amounts of space (otherwise you would have to cross an infinite number of those amounts to get somewhere, and since all objects then would have an infinite amount of space divisions between them every object would be at the same ,infinite, distance from every other object.)


So applying zeno to “1 meter of distance” and “1 second of time” is probably is a silly as applying zeno to 1 gram of water. Just because we don’t understand what space (meaning the distance between two objects) is made from does not give us the right to keep dividing it in half….

The same for an amount of time, who says we can take “1 second” and keep throwing half away and what remains would still be definable as time … at infinitum …. Lol



http://faculty.washington.edu/smcohen/320/GrainySpace.html

 

[C.Kelly]

Quantum solution

Zenos paradox as analysed in the paper comes to the conclusion that it is impossible for a moving particle to ever pass another, as it approaches the distance between them becomes infinitely small but never zero. However, with quantum physics the solution to the paradox is fairly obvious; the particle has no absolute position, its wavefunction occupies an area, so at any time there is a probability, however small, that the particle exists on the other side of the object its chasing. In fact i should imagine this probability tends towards unity as the distance decreases.

One could apply a similar logic trap to the energy levels in a hydrogen atom given by Bohr's formula, which allows for an infinite number of energy levels which are taken in discreet steps (without the electron occupying the intervening space, note the analogue with the discreet units of position idea). How does an electron ever escape this potential trap? : Tunneling. Part of its wave function exists outside the trap (seeing as the distance is very small).

 

[clicky]

Good point bk227865!

You are quite right in your post that problems arise from “dividing things we don’t really understand….” You may see my thread Space and Time are Discrete or look for Eugene Savov’s theory of interaction.

 

[fando]

A Hoax!

This just in, it was all a hoax!

http://www.museumofhoaxes.com/comments/peterlynds.html
http://www.thequantummachine.com/

I'm going to start trusting my baloney detector more. :)

 

[sascha]

It seems to me that Zeno’s paradoxes boil down to something much more simple, which has nothing to do with how we imagine matter to be constituted.
After all, he simply says that it gets us nowhere if we worry eg. endlessly about little bits of distance when in fact the discussed reality occurs in another category, namely speed (which in this case is distance per time). I think Zeno wanted to get the philosophers of his time out of a narrow view in which words are taken for things. This is a problem even today.

 

[Lightyear]

I'd suggest that some of you actually read his papers. They're dead on. The ideas in them are also certainly original. He's definitely no hoax. Try http://www.peterlynds.net.nz (papers, articles and notes)

 

[Martin2003]

"Zeno is
saying through the use of dialectic and by showing that an idea results in contradiction, that an infinite
series of acts cannot be completed in finite period of time."

Lynd is saying
"there isn't an instant in time underlying the body's motion (if there were, it couldn't be in motion), and as its position is constantly changing no matter how small the time interval, and as such, is at no time determined, it simply doesn't have a determined position."


If there is no determined position for moving matter at any time - it therefore doesn't exist.

Does this mean nothing moving exists. And time doesn't exist or that nothing can be shown to exist as everything is moving.

 

[selfAdjoint]

Originally posted by Martin2003
"Zeno is
saying through the use of dialectic and by showing that an idea results in contradiction, that an infinite
series of acts cannot be completed in finite period of time."

Lynd is saying
"there isn't an instant in time underlying the body's motion (if there were, it couldn't be in motion), and as its position is constantly changing no matter how small the time interval, and as such, is at no time determined, it simply doesn't have a determined position."


If there is no determined position for moving matter at any time - it therefore doesn't exist.

Does this mean nothing moving exists. And time doesn't exist or that nothing can be shown to exist as everything is moving.

Well that would be Zeno's conclusion, since he was a disciple of Parmenides. Except for the motion part. Parmenides held that motion is an illusion. Underneath the veil of appearances there is only the unchanging One.

 

[bollinger]

Paradox not solved

I don't believe Peter Lynd has solved the zenos paradoxes. If a body is said to have moved continuously from a to b then it would seem self evident that the body must have past a point p1 that could be said to be between a and b. It doesn't appear to matter when this body passed this point to say that, only that it must have passed it if the body has moved contiously from a to b. Since it is shown that there are an infinity of points p(n) between a and b it seems we must say that the body must have passed an infinity of points in order to complete a finite journey. How is that possible? This is the essence of Zeno's dichotomy. It seems to me that the measurement of time is irrevelant to introduce this paradox in the first place. The other part of the dichotomy can be stated thus: how is a journey possible in the first place. When a body begins it's journey it must move from one point to another but for every point it could move too there will be an infinity of points before that point that it could have moved too first. So how can the journey get started in the first place. Again is time revelant to the creation of this paradox?
What's more if we do see this motion as a function of time then surely we need to say that an infinite amount of time has passed in order to carry out a finite journey in a finite time as each point p between a and b could be thought of as a distance traveled and must have a corresponding time value t. This statement does not require the idea of an instant of time to be made.
I certainly think that Mr Lynd is right that the solution to these paradoxes will come from a re-evaluation of how we measure things. But I just don't believe that his proposed solution solves most of the problems.

 

[A010Z]

thanks a lot

You are quite right in your post that problems arise from “dividing things we don’t really understand….” You may see my thread Space and Time are Discrete or look for Eugene Savov’s theory of interaction.

Holy Kiss (keep it simple stupid)

 

[polyb]

And not one mention of Hesienberg anywhere? I'm kind of disappointed guys.

How about the Planck lentgh?

or time?

Seems to me that these considerations would be quite relevant to this discussion. According to Heisenberg/Planck there is a fudamental limit to how small we can chop up our divisions in zeno's paradox(?). So it seems the author has not really provided any new keen insight into nature, at least not in my mind.

On another note, when you divide the Planck length by the Planck time you get c! I find that interesting even though it is trivial and tautological.

 

[dewfish]

And not one mention of Hesienberg anywhere? I'm kind of disappointed guys.

How about the Planck lentgh?

or time?

Seems to me that these considerations would be quite relevant to this discussion. According to Heisenberg/Planck there is a fudamental limit to how small we can chop up our divisions in zeno's paradox(?). So it seems the author has not really provided any new keen insight into nature, at least not in my mind.

On another note, when you divide the Planck length by the Planck time you get c! I find that interesting even though it is trivial and tautological.

good post, I was thinking the same thing about how far do you keep dividing and whether position was only relevant to your unit of measurement. I need to read some more about Planck.

 

[DrChinese]

And not one mention of Hesienberg anywhere? I'm kind of disappointed guys.

I read the paper, and completely missed any reference to the HUP. Stating that something does not have a specific position when its velocity (momentum) is being discussed does not seem particularly new.

So I guess I am asking: what is the utility or application of this hypothesis? Seems like the "same old" to me. I guess the value of the paper is simply applying what we now know about non-classical mechanics (HUP) to resolving an old paradox that I considered resolved anyway.