Gravity Debate: Unanswered Questions on String/Loop Theories

[wolram]

As things seem a bit slow of late i wonder if anyone would give an over view
of the gravity debate, i know the Higgs is still elusive and the graviton remains
un found, no axions as yet, etc, etc, but what does this mean to string and
loop theories?

 

[marcus]

.., but what does this mean to string and
loop theories?

it isn't just string and loop anymore, wolram, it's triangles too

 

[wolram]

You beggars are never content, i have read about triangles, if they fit in then fine, i have no clue as to what they mean, but how do they fit with, no
higgs, graviton, axion?

 

[marcus]

You beggars are never content, i have read about triangles, if they fit in then fine, i have no clue as to what they mean,..

I keep this link handy in my sig
http://arxiv.org/hep-th/0505154
I think it's this year's landmark paper, the other paper is just a help in reading this one.

The Triangle people have generated a quantum spacetime groundstate, but haven't yet put matter on it. this is definitely a different spacetime continuum.
on page 14 it says

"Having generated a ground state of quantum geometry nonperturbatively, we would like to understand its geometric properties, in the sense of expectation values, which can be done in various ways. We will currently concentrate on the purely geometric observables, leaving the coupling to test particles and matter fields to a later investigation. We will proceed by first determining a number of “rough” properties of the quantum geometry such as its dimensionality and its global scaling properties. These properties of quantum spacetime play an important role, because for any viable candidate theory of quantum gravity, they must be shown to reproduce the correct classical limit at sufficiently large scales, namely, geometry as described by Einstein’s general theory of relativity."

 

[marcus]

When you ask me how things fit in the overall picture, you are asking for my opinion, wolram, and I will tell you without reservation. It's not a matter for scientific demonstration. Others may wish to disagree.

I think to a first approximation loop and string don't matter any more. They are of dwindling importance.

In a nonperturbative development of spacetime, the continuum pulls itself into existence by its own bootstraps

In a perturbative theory like STRING you give the theory a static already shaped (usually flat) continuum to start with, and make ripples on it. Perturbative QG is no longer good enough, as a fundamental theory. It can be a useful adjunct for certain kinds of calculations but if a nonperturbative theory is possible, nothing else is good enough.

Loop has been thought of as nonperturbative because it starts with an unshaped, kind of limp, continuum---something with coordinate functions called a diff. manifold. But I would call that "semi-perturbative" because the thing it starts with already has a fixed uniform dimensionality because of the readymade coordinate functions. The Triangle people have raised the bar.

Triangles is more THOROUGHLY nonperturbative than Loop is.
There is very little you have to specify in advance, very little you have to give Triangles. And the continuum it makes, pulls into existence starting with almost no prior structure, seems to ACT RIGHT. There is considerable evidence building up that the continuum that emerges this way will have the right dimension, the right classical limit.

So this sets a new standard for what QG has to achieve. this is the most important thing that has happened in QG (and probably theoretical physics) for the past year. This paper defines the front line.

And the bad news is what I quoted from page 14. The Triangles people have not gotten up to the point of coupling their quantum spacetime dynamics to "test particles and matter fields".

 

[marcus]

This paper "Reconstructing the Universe" defines what is now the front line and it also sets the standards for future QG

Perturbative approaches (where you feed in an initial version of what you want to get out) are to resort to if you can't get the nonperturbative to work. Perturbative QG is mainly STRING and to a first approximation we can forget about it.

Triangles is more non-perturbative, more independent of reliance on a prior specified background, than Loop. And it also even SUCCEEDS BETTER in some ways. It has hamiltonians and lagrangians and the consequent dynamics that Loop has had trouble with, and there's evidence that the full theory achieves a standard semiclassical quantum cosmology limit that Hawking gave credence to. By contrast, LQC has good semiclassical behavior but it is not the full LQG, it is a somewhat simplified version.
So Triangles not only bootstraps the universe into existence without much to go on, but it is showing positive signs of good behavior.

 

[marcus]

besides this main paper "Reconstructing", there is stuff happening in outlying Triangles areas like Black Holes (recent Loll Dittrich paper) and Wormholes (recent Loll Westra paper)

I think the point to get from the other stuff, especially the Loll Westra "sum over topologies", is that the new model quantum spacetime continuum that is emerging from Triangles is going to have a foamy commotion of very tiny very brief wormholes.

this microscopic structure could have something to do with dark energy and it could have something to do with inertial and gravitational mass.
Imagine a particle moving through this foam and interacting with it. Perhaps there is a mechanism by which particles acquire inertia and momentum by this interaction. The only inertia-giving interaction we know of, or hear about so far, is with the HIGGS FIELD. But suppose that interacting with the supposed Higgs field really corresponds to interacting with this topological foamy mess, all these wormholes, that it seems Triangles bootstraps into existence along with all the rest.

Triangles bootstraps into existence a continuum which we are not used to, which looks nice at large scale, as would please Newton and Einstein, but which looks messy and worm-eaten at very small scale. this is just what it does. The Triangles people did not ask for it to be that way. It is actually quite puzzling that it looks different at small scale than at large---maybe feathery and moth-eaten is a better image.

You were asking about "axion" and "higgs" and "graviton" and I am saying that when people start transfering their matter fields over from the OLD continuum that standard field theory is written on, and re-writing those fields on the new Triangles continuum, then the fields may look quite a bit different, or they may find they even need different fields altogether.
They might not even need a Higgs. Some other mechanism might turn out to work better, because of the different microscopic structure.

that is speculation, might be or might not, but my point is DONT TAKE FOR GRANTED that you are going to see this or that "this-on" or "that-on" that you heard about before carry over to the new context.

Well I think you wanted my individual take on it, and a sketch of the overall QG picture as I see it. that's subjective and speculative of course, and that's my view for now

 

[wolram]

Thanks Marcus

I have so many thoughts, but i will not put them into words, one thing is
i wish BHs were not so important in these works.

 

[marcus]

Thanks Marcus

I have so many thoughts, but i will not put them into words, one thing is
i wish BHs were not so important in these works.

I'm not sure I get the point. Did you mean to say
"one thing is i wish wormholes were not so important in these works."

Myself I have been leery of the notion of wormholes and Wheeler's image going back to 1970s of "spacetime foam".
For much of my life it has seemed suspicious and overly speculative to me to imagine that spacetime would be very rough and chaotic and non-classical at small scale.

But Wheeler is one of the physics greats of the 20th, and was Feynman's advisor, so one pays attention to what Wheeler says even if it sounds goofy.

And then lately I am seeing mounting evidence that geometry at very tiny scales may actually be chaotic. Wheeler may actually have been right back in 1970 even though it seemed at the time that he didnt have much reason to launch the idea.

but as for BLACK HOLES, if you really mean to say
"i wish BHs were not so important in these works"
then I have to point out that BHs are pretty much a fact of life, the simplest explanation for a lot of things astronomers see.
and furthermore in Triangles work they aren't even very important yet
Hardly anything has been done yet with BHs, by the Triangles people.
There is this recent Loll Dittrich paper but it is of a preliminary nature, they are really just tooling up to deal with BHs. this has had no effect on the core of the theory as yet. So I would say it has very little importance so far in CDT. On the other hand, BHs have been important in Loop and String, going back to mid 1990s. I don't know whether that is bad though

 

[marcus]

BTW a random note about the spacetime foam idea. Just now i happened to see this at Jacques Distler blog. He is a high-status string theorist with very pronounced views.

http://golem.ph.utexas.edu/~distler/blog/archives/000605.html

He doesn't think that string theory gives any evidence for spacetime foam.
So if you were a "Single Issue Voter" and only cared about having a theory that doesn't support Planckscale froth, then you would like String for that reason, I guess.

"I’ve long been of the opinion that string theory gives zero evidence for the popular idea of spacetime foam. Juan’s remark seems to confirm that."

================
[EDIT to reply to following post] I agree with you that hunches are part of what we are given to think with. And good to distinguish them from reasoned views. It is interesting that you have this hunch about what astronomers assume are BHs not really being BHs.

[EDIT reply to Richard's post #12] hello Richard you say "I won’t go into my current battles with the bears." Hope you and the bears are all right. If I remember you said they like cooking oil a whole lot. I realize that is probably good advice about Mandelbrot and I really should go read up some. But it is tempting to put my hindfeet up on the table and enjoy a nice bottle of cooking oil.

 

[wolram]

I admit i have no scientific reason for doubting the existence of worm holes
and black holes as described in the literature, But i have a feeling that
what ever lurks in the center of galaxies won't have an event horizon or
weired properties.

 

[nightcleaner]

"Imagine a particle moving through this foam and interacting with it."

Hi Marcus and Wolram

Marcus, your grasp and focus on these things is astonishing. I don't know how you keep all this in view. I have come to rely on you for your steady, balanced viewpoint. Thank you.

I quote you above because this sentence seems to encapsulate the one area in which I feel I have something to contribute here… (That is, other than providing amusement and/or irritation for the elders with cute nature stories. I won’t go into my current battles with the bears.)

For my purpose in this post, foam might as well be generalized to include strings, loops, triangles, feathers, and what the moths did to my wool shirt. I just mean that Wheeler’s foam is only an image, as far as I can tell, meant to evoke a quality sensed in the structure of spacetime, a quality in which spacetime structural members (bones or triangles or whatever) are interspersed with regions of non-structure (wormholes, bubbles, perturbations, what have you) which seemingly must be present to give the spacetime model enough flexibility (background independence) so that our macroscopic 3-space + 1-time observations may be recovered.

So let me imagine a particle moving through (insert spacetime model of your choice) and interacting with it. Particle moves through and interacts with spacetime. (Maybe to simplify the case we should only consider point-like particles. Presumably large particles like protons and neutrons will be resolved into point-like constituents such as quarks eventually.)

I parse: “Particle”…..”Moves through and interacts with”…..”spacetime.”

Clearly the particle is the macroscopic effect which we observe. The spacetime is the microscopic structure which we must infer, since no instrumented direct observation is currently available. “Moves through and interacts with” takes the place of the verb, and we see that whatever the verb in this case may be, it works in both directions. That is, the subject and object of the sentence are interchangeable. What the particle does to spacetime and what spacetime does to the particle is the same thing, or at least, the two sides are dual to each other.

Now that we see that the verb operates in both directions, I can point out the difficulty. Here it is: Causality. The sentence, seen this way, eats its own tail.

It is only a short step to see that spacetime and particle is in fact the one thing, and so the verb, whatever it might be, is inconsequential. We may get the full idea merely by stating “spacetime particle” or “particle spacetime.” Or we may choose the more elegant idea of an event. We wave our hands frantically, croaking out the existential assertion, with the frogs, “I am.” How can all this mathematical and philosophical elaboration be of any use?

Sunbear of the Rainbow Tribe said “I am not interested in your philosophy if it does not grow corn.” String theory is criticized for not having any results. Can any theory that starts with the idea of particles moving through and interacting with spacetime really do any better? I think not. “Causal Dynamical Triangulations” is very cool and I like it a lot, but I wonder about the assertion that causality is preserved. Which, then, does CDT say came first, the particle or the spacetime?

I have not gone through all of this merely to frustrate and negate. I wish to offer a solution. Here it is: Being is not conserved in the fourth dimension. Without the category we call “being” there can be no causality. How can one thing cause another if there is no thing? The very idea of cause depends upon a fixed arrow of time, and a way to separate that which causes from that which is caused. If there is only one thing, as seems to be necessary to any four dimensional view, then there can be no motion, no cause, no effect, no arrow of time.

Our human intelligence is found in three spatial dimensions and one time dimension. Any theory of spacetime must recover our macroscopic view of reality, including the standard models and GR. However it is not implied that our three space plus one time view is in some way preferred. I have tried to show that causality is part of our three space plus one time view, and is not possible to maintain as we transition to a form of intelligence that transcends our current dimensionally limited view.

I am not advocating a deterministic view. It is true that there are no degrees of freedom in 3+1=4 spacetime. But it is possible to extend intelligence beyond the rigid, frozen, acausal, deterministic 3+1 view. There are more degrees of freedom available as we learn to incorporate higher dimensionalities into our view. The freeze thaws as we follow the spacetime equivalence principle into the higher dimensionalities of 3 space plus 3 time view, and that is not the end of the transition.

Now I would like to return to CDT for a moment. Such a beautiful structure can hardly be left lying in the swamps, no more valued than the croak of frogs. Consider please that three points define a triangle, but they also define a circle. Add a fourth point and the tetrahedron defines also a sphere. All the machinations of triangles in CDT can be seen as the machinations of spheres. I suggest that the math would be a lot easier, much of the computation in CDT unnecessary, if we just took the basic structure (in 3 space one time) as a stack of dense packed spheres. The Monte Carlo randomizations of triangle sides results in a circle when carried to the limits anyway.

Marcus, I have been reading Mandlebrot on fractals, and he has a very good description of how dimensionality changes with scale. I think it would be worth a trip to the library to look at a copy of his book, which dates back to the 1970’s.

Thanks for being here,

Richard

 

[Canute]

Nightcleaner

Your approach seems solidly based in common sense to me, although the details are over my head. But the question arises, if you are right, of whether theorising at this depth is physics or metaphysics, or whether it is possible to make a distinction. Am I right in thinking that you see these issues as beyond a solution within physics?

 

[nightcleaner]

Hi Canute

Someone once observed that scientists are almost always right when they say something is possible, and almost always wrong when they say something is impossible. I would not say that a resolution to this issue is impossible for physics, but I would say that some physicists are currently working very hard to solve a paradox. The paradox is sharp in the three dimensional space plus one dimension of time view, but is easily resolved in higher dimensions, as I tried to argue above.

I think our physicists and mathematicians could learn something about the paradox if they would ask philosophers and mystics, who have been working on this same problem for centuries. Why do we have to battle over this same ground again and again, with increasingly elaborate models and more time consuming and expensive calculations, when it is clear as day to anyone who has thought about it that there is and can be no motion in spacetime? I speak of motion in the usual sense of some difference in a spatial quantity compared to some difference in a time, as in miles per hour or Kilometers per second and so on.

If there is no motion then there can be no perturbation, can there? The old Zen koan about two monks watching the movement of a flag in the wind. One says the flag moves, one says the wind moves. The master, overhearing them, says it is their minds that are moving. The master knows that they are arguing over an illusion. The wind, the flag, nada. The only motion occurs within the mind. The spacetime reality is as fixed as the magnetic bits on a CD. They only make the illusion of music or video when the disc is spun under a lasar light. The point of light, traveling across the surface of the disc, creates the illusion of movement, just as the mind of the monk, passing through spacetime, creates the illusion of a flag moving in the wind.

The question of locality is very similar. How do we determine if a thing is close or far? We do not want spooky action at a distance, but how do we determine that there is or is not a distance? We get our common notion of space from swatting at danglies in the cradle. We see objects hidden by other objects, then we see them reappear as the intervening object moves aside. So we deduce that there is space, since the two objects can pass without bumping into each other. But math and physics introduces us to all kinds of spaces, vector space, phase space, configuration space, cyberspace. Some of these spaces obey different rules from the space we have from the cradle. Advocates of wormholes want us to believe that places which are not local in three dimensional space can be local in four dimensional space...see, you just fold the paper, and there it is. Never mind that three dimensional space cannot be folded like a two dimensional paper surface. And you and I, talking like this in cyberspace. Are we right next to each other or far apart in some dark uncrossable void? Questions about locality become meaningless.

Since the physicists and mathematicians are reluctant to study mysticism, I, having studied mysticism, have decided to undertake the study physics and math. I can tell you this: The language of physics and math is a lot more obscure and self-referential than is the language of mysticism. Background independent. Perturbative. DeSitter space. Calabi-Yau manifold. And indicies! It goes on and on. Vectors and tensors and spinnors, oh my. Dorothy only had to deal with lions, in the end, and tigers and bears never even entered the story. Lucky girl. Here, we have the whole menagerie, and most of the players are anything but cowardly.

oh well. I am trying, anyway.

Richard

 

[wolram]

Hi Canute

Someone once observed that scientists are almost always right when they say something is possible, and almost always wrong when they say something is impossible. I would not say that a resolution to this issue is impossible for physics, but I would say that some physicists are currently working very hard to solve a paradox. The paradox is sharp in the three dimensional space plus one dimension of time view, but is easily resolved in higher dimensions, as I tried to argue above.

I think our physicists and mathematicians could learn something about the paradox if they would ask philosophers and mystics, who have been working on this same problem for centuries. Why do we have to battle over this same ground again and again, with increasingly elaborate models and more time consuming and expensive calculations, when it is clear as day to anyone who has thought about it that there is and can be no motion in spacetime? I speak of motion in the usual sense of some difference in a spatial quantity compared to some difference in a time, as in miles per hour or Kilometers per second and so on.

If there is no motion then there can be no perturbation, can there? The old Zen koan about two monks watching the movement of a flag in the wind. One says the flag moves, one says the wind moves. The master, overhearing them, says it is their minds that are moving. The master knows that they are arguing over an illusion. The wind, the flag, nada. The only motion occurs within the mind. The spacetime reality is as fixed as the magnetic bits on a CD. They only make the illusion of music or video when the disc is spun under a lasar light. The point of light, traveling across the surface of the disc, creates the illusion of movement, just as the mind of the monk, passing through spacetime, creates the illusion of a flag moving in the wind.

The question of locality is very similar. How do we determine if a thing is close or far? We do not want spooky action at a distance, but how do we determine that there is or is not a distance? We get our common notion of space from swatting at danglies in the cradle. We see objects hidden by other objects, then we see them reappear as the intervening object moves aside. So we deduce that there is space, since the two objects can pass without bumping into each other. But math and physics introduces us to all kinds of spaces, vector space, phase space, configuration space, cyberspace. Some of these spaces obey different rules from the space we have from the cradle. Advocates of wormholes want us to believe that places which are not local in three dimensional space can be local in four dimensional space...see, you just fold the paper, and there it is. Never mind that three dimensional space cannot be folded like a two dimensional paper surface. And you and I, talking like this in cyberspace. Are we right next to each other or far apart in some dark uncrossable void? Questions about locality become meaningless.

Since the physicists and mathematicians are reluctant to study mysticism, I, having studied mysticism, have decided to undertake the study physics and math. I can tell you this: The language of physics and math is a lot more obscure and self-referential than is the language of mysticism. Background independent. Perturbative. DeSitter space. Calabi-Yau manifold. And indicies! It goes on and on. Vectors and tensors and spinnors, oh my. Dorothy only had to deal with lions, in the end, and tigers and bears never even entered the story. Lucky girl. Here, we have the whole menagerie, and most of the players are anything but cowardly.

oh well. I am trying, anyway.

Richard

Richard, i think you should write a book, what a refreshing breath of air, your
reply is thought provoking, but watch out for the main stream paddy wagon.

 

[Canute]

Yes, a breath of fresh air is what that is. Few people are prepared to take physics and mysticism seriously. Yet in the mystical view there is an answer to all these paradoxes of physics if physicists bothered to check. They used to do this, and most of the pioneers of quantum theory had a fair understanding of the mystical view, and some even held it, but those days are gone. Bohr even had the yin/yang symbol added to his family crest, and in the view represented by this symbol motion is an illusion. As you say " Why do we have to battle over this same ground again and again, with increasingly elaborate models and more time consuming and expensive calculations, when it is clear as day to anyone who has thought about it that there is and can be no motion in spacetime?" Why indeed. Temperamental prejudice and lack of research is the answer, I feel, continually reinforced by the misleading gobbledygook written about mysticism in the current scientific press, where it seems that no publisher ever thinks of employing a qualified referee to cut out the nonsense. I look forward to discussing some of these things with you.

Cheers
Canute

 

[wolram]

Yes, a breath of fresh air is what that is. Few people are prepared to take physics and mysticism seriously. Yet in the mystical view there is an answer to all these paradoxes of physics if physicists bothered to check. They used to do this, and most of the pioneers of quantum theory had a fair understanding of the mystical view, and some even held it, but those days are gone. Bohr even had the yin/yang symbol added to his family crest, and in the view represented by this symbol motion is an illusion. As you say " Why do we have to battle over this same ground again and again, with increasingly elaborate models and more time consuming and expensive calculations, when it is clear as day to anyone who has thought about it that there is and can be no motion in spacetime?" Why indeed. Temperamental prejudice and lack of research is the answer, I feel, continually reinforced by the misleading gobbledygook written about mysticism in the current scientific press, where it seems that no publisher ever thinks of employing a qualified referee to cut out the nonsense. I look forward to discussing some of these things with you.

But we are the heratics, we will be caught and riddiculed by the MS army
i hope you have your priest hole ready.

 

[Canute]

I'm in it!

 

[arivero]

I think our physicists and mathematicians could learn something about the paradox if they would ask philosophers and mystics, who have been working on this same problem for centuries.

Indeed we did. Almost all our technique is built upon Democritus and Archimedes, who in turn built (esp. Democritus) upon Zeno. And the description in Lucretius's poem is still adequate if you are not interested in the fine details, (and even you have fermions bosons and a finite speed).

when it is clear as day to anyone who has thought about it that there is and can be no motion in spacetime? I speak of motion in the usual sense...

That is the key: You speak of..

Which we have learn, already from Zeno paradoxes if you wish, is that we can not speak of motion, that any way of speaking about it drives to inconsistencies. Your Zen monk very accurately points to the mind. You can not mind about motion (actually, with the English most current meaning of mind, I would say people don't mind about any of this, but that is other point). And you can not mind motion because you can not speak about it, you can not aspire to a precise description of it.

The physics usually spoken about in this forum is mostly a try to inquire how much can we endure the inconsistencies when speaking of movement. We have advanced a long way by absorbing some of them into the uncertainty principle, and by getting used to logic systems of a different kind that classical logic. It is possible that a TOE will be not at the end a theory of the movement "out there", but a theory of the best language possible to speak about movement.

We do not reject misticism, we build upon it. In more of one sense, the part of mystics we reject is, er, inmovilism.

 

[selfAdjoint]

Indeed we did. Almost all our technique is built upon Democritus and Archimedes, who in turn built (esp. Democritus) upon Zeno. And the description in Lucretius's poem is still adequate if you are not interested in the fine details, (and even you have fermions bosons and a finite speed).


That is the key: You speak of..

Which we have learn, already from Zeno paradoxes if you wish, is that we can not speak of motion, that any way of speaking about it drives to inconsistencies. Your Zen monk very accurately points to the mind. You can not mind about motion (actually, with the English most current meaning of mind, I would say people don't mind about any of this, but that is other point). And you can not mind motion because you can not speak about it, you can not aspire to a precise description of it.

The physics usually spoken about in this forum is mostly a try to inquire how much can we endure the inconsistencies when speaking of movement. We have advanced a long way by absorbing some of them into the uncertainty principle, and by getting used to logic systems of a different kind that classical logic. It is possible that a TOE will be not at the end a theory of the movement "out there", but a theory of the best language possible to speak about movement.

We do not reject misticism, we build upon it. In more of one sense, the part of mystics we reject is, er, inmovilism.

An interesting post. So you take the Zeno paradoxes seriously and consider discussions of motion (and I suppose any change - Zeno's point^*) to be incoherent? I don't think many physicsts would agree with you, nor would Lucretius and his source Democrites.

^* Zeno was a disciple of Parmenides, who taught that change is an illusion. It is possible to accept this in the spirit of Minkowsi spacetime; all apparent change is just a static worldline in spacetime. Like MWI, this raises the question of how our consciousnesses track along such a thing.

 

[marcus]

remember the poem of Borges "Everness"

 

[marcus]

one thing does not exist: oblivion
god saves the metal and he saves the dross
and his prophetic memory guards from loss
the moons to come and those of evenings gone.
everything is, the shadows in the glass
which, in between the days two twilights, you
have scattered by the thousands, or shall strew
henceforward in the mirror as you pass.

And everything is part of that diverse
crystalline memory the universe
Whoever through its endless mazes wanders
hears door on door click shut behind his stride
and only on the sunset's farther side
will see at last the Archetypes and Splendors.


Borges, Willbur translator, approx. from memory
orig:
http://www.lamaquinadeltiempo.com/poemas/borges01.htm

 

[arivero]

An interesting post. So you take the Zeno paradoxes seriously and consider discussions of motion (and I suppose any change - Zeno's point^*) to be incoherent? I don't think many physicsts would agree with you, nor would Lucretius and his source Democrites.

Not sure if most modern physicist think about this, but for sure that almost any of them will jump at a phrase such as "lets A be a minute particle having momentum P at position X" and recognise the incoherence of it, then asking you for broader terms as "wave packet", "approximation", etc. In relativistic quantum mechanics, even a naive "electron speed eigenvalue of c/2" is an inconsistent phrase.

I don't think Lucretius could agree, neither. He got already an altered theory via Epicurus, empty of mathematical content, and presented in a very positivist way, if we can use the term here. But the ancient sources tell us that Democritus built his theory inspired by the objections of Melisso and Zeno. Modern commentators read this inspiration in different ways: they claim that the objection of Melisso was incorporated (multiplicity of the identity, or "all the electrons are the same") while Zeno was rejected (and they do not explain how). But on the other hand, Democritus himself (Chryssippos inform us, via Plutarco) developed a version of Zeno paradoxes even in absence of time. Democritus ask us to cut a cone with a plane parallel to the basis, and then to examine the circles in the upper and lower surfaces of the plane (or equivalently, take a plane indefinitely near of the basis, and consider the circles in the plane and in the basis). Both surfaces are to be equal, because change can not happen in such indefinitely thin object. But then its composition will form a cylinder, not a cone.

We can recognise here a cunning version of the Arrow Paradox, just in geometrical shape (lets say, rotated from "Minkowskian" to "Euclidean" space ). And we are informed that Democritus did use of this paradoxical construction, and Archimedes tell us that Democritus was the first one calculating "in a non rigourous way" a formula for the volume of the cone. IE he was able to recognise the contradiction but even then to derive a volume for this cone. The problem becomes more involved when you want to describe "Minkowskian Movement" instead of "Euclidean Change" because in change the time is external while in movement it is internal to the description: speeds, etc.

To solve the geometric problem, probably Democritus did use of its dualistic setup: he defined "thing" and "no-thing" in the same footing, and he adscribed properties to the thing (say density) and to the nothing (say space) then being able to define an interative process of cutting and refining the measures. No clue of such process has survived nor in Leucipus nor in other text; only Archimedes, in the text where Democritus is alluded, happens to use a method of indefinitely fine indivisibles. On other hand, a mathematical treatise of the taoist school did use such iterations to proof the volume of a pyramid.

There is a hint that also Galileo suspected of Democritus working in the lines I am telling, because he suggested to Cavalieri a relevant name for the infinitesimal calculus: "indivisibles". Ie the latin/italian translation of "atoms".

 

[marcus]

http://www.lamaquinadeltiempo.com/poemas/borges01.htm

in order to be a proper mystic these days
it seems almost required that one should
have learned at least special relativity

and now arivero will be telling us more
that we must study as well [bravo A.R., this is not criticism]

"Priest hole" is a funny idea
in case some readers do not know what is a "priest hole"
after that King with all the wives (henry 8) you were
not supposed to be a Roman Catholic any more, you should be Anglican instead,
but may of the headstrong British aristocrats wanted to still have masses and
get regular communion from their in-house priests, as they were used to.

So in many of the Great Houses of UK one can still find these special
holes (like closets) to hide the priest in, in case unexpected company
comes who one thinks might be Thought Police.

So if one is enjoying a little private wafer with one's Bootleg Roman Priest and there is a knock on the door, one quickly hides one's illegal priest in the priest-hole, and goes to see who it is knocking.

Wolram says that there may be Thought Police lurking around and so we should all get our priest hole ready. then a muffled voice from Canute says that he is already in his.

this is or should be European Intellectual History 1.

Canute's post:
https://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?p=681354#post681354

 

[Canute]

Arrivero - thanks. I didn't know that Democritus was on to this problem. I've never read him but gained the impression somehow that he was a naive realist, given his ideas about fundamental physical atoms, and on that basis rather agreed with Plato that his books should have been burned. But I'll get around to checking what he actually said sometime.

It seems not quite right to say that our physicists and mathematicians could learn something about the paradoxicality of motion if only they would ask philosophers and mystics, who have been working on this same problem for centuries, as Nightcleaner wrote. I suspect he meant 'mystical philosophers' and mystics, for analytical philosophers find motion no less paradoxical than physicists and mathematicians. Philosophers in this category might include Parmeneides and Plato but maybe not Lucretius or Democritus. Either way, by Nighcleaner's implied definition, it excludes any philosopher who finds motion paradoxical. Perhaps we should bear in mind also that ALL fundamental features of reality appear to be paradoxical to metaphysicians and phsyicists, not just motion in spacetime.

To give a little substance to Nightcleaner's remark about mystics, the mystical view of motion is, roughly speaking, that all motion is relative or, equivalently, that all things that move have only a relative existence. This is sometimes 'relative phenomenalism' in the Western philosophical literature, a renaming of the Buddhist doctrine of 'dependent existence'. Mystics agree with Parmeneides about the reality of motion.

One presumes that this is why they speak of their experience of the 'absolute' as being one of absolute stillness, or a 'peace that surpasses understanding'. In this view the universe is infinitely extended in spacetime and/or not extended in spacetime at all, depending on which way you look at it, with neither view being quite correct. These aspects are 'complementary' in the sense that physicists use the word, or 'nondual'. Perhaps the concept of 'superposition' from physics is relevant here. Hence the paradoxes of motion and many others. The actual situation is said to be not only inexplicable (one person to another) but inconceivable, although all mystics say that in principle anybody at all can know and understand it if they wish to. In the words of one: "Seek and ye shall find".

Er, my apologies to the moderators if I'm out of bounds again. Just clarifying what the mystics say about this.

Canute

 

[arivero]

http://www.lamaquinadeltiempo.com/poemas/borges01.htm

in order to be a proper mystic these days
it seems almost required that one should
have learned at least special relativity

and now arivero will be telling us more
that we must study as well [bravo A.R., this is not criticism]

Well, but perhaps we could smooth this call to study by suggesting some other brave attacks on time that do not rely on the heavy math language of modern physics. I can think of one of them, regretly in Spanish

"Contra el Tiempo", by Agustin Garcia-Calvo, ed. Lucina

Going back to the theme of Mystic and mystics, my main worry is that a bad "training" carries easily to a vision of relative and absolute distorted (Canute has just make a good try to pinpoint these concepts). On one hand the relative, being relative, doesn't matter anymore. On the other hand, lacking communion with external evidence -rejected as relative-, an alucination of the absolute can be mistaken with experience of the absolute. The first problem damages -or slows- further research on the reality and the language; the later causes a failure of the mystic program. I am not telling anything new; the failure of the contemplative way was already explained by Buddha to his first companions. And note that Buddha approach is such that he comes back to teaching even after illumination, when he is free of any attachment.

Of course, I am not telling that science equal mystics. The goal of science is just an understanding of the reality, being agnostic about its absoluteness. The tool of science is Logos, language in action. Still, as marcus says, a proper mystic can benefit of sharing tools with science, when his way is also based in action (instead or jointly with contemplation). Mystical alchemy, for instance, shared a long travel with science, because the communion with the absolute and the communion with the matter were similar requeriments in the alchemical way, and communion with the matter was proved in a scientific way ( via your ability to analyse, sinthetize, deduce, operate...).

 

[Canute]

Arivero - I'm greatly enjoying your posts. Your point about misinterpreted meditative experience is important. I don't know your Spanish reference, but I expect you'll agree that a clear exposition of the mystical view of space, time, phenomena and events is given by Nargaruna. An easy way (in English) is via Gyamptso's commentary 'The Sun of Wisdom' (Shambala, 2003). I can't find a quote specifically on motion at the moment, but here he is on time, without which motion is clearly impossible.

"If time really existed, we would be able to perceive it independent of forms, sounds, tastes, and tactile sensations. It would exist on its own, and we would be able to perceive it. The fact is, however, that time can exist only in dependence upon there being something to which we can relate the notion of time. For example: if nothing had ceased, we could have no notion of the past; if there were nothing here, we could have no notion of the present; and if we did not anticipate anything happening, we could have no notion of the future. Since time can exist only in dependence upon these things, it cannot truly exist."

Khenpo Tsütrim Gyamtso
The Sun of Wisdom
Teachings on the Noble Nagarjuna’s
'Fundamental Wisdom of the Middle Way'

Physicists these days regularly speak of spacetime as not fundamental. To me the only possible interpretation of this is that motion is not fundamental. But physicists, as far as I can tell, do not reach this conclusion. Marcus - you're very clear on these issues, any chance you could discuss the ontological status of motion in any of the current background independent theories of the universe?

 

[nightcleaner]

Hi all

Wonderful discussion. My guess is that we are writing a book, but I have no idea what sort of binding could hold it.

The bears have totally vandalized my kitchen, wasteing my store of survival food, dumping oil and oatmeal for the smaller creatures to enjoy. They know more than I do of survival. In fact they were here first and I am the intruder on their property, and no doubt they have my best interests at heart. If I want to store up nutrients in future, I shall have to build my larder in the tops of trees, as folk in Alaska do.

I am sure there is divine justice in this somewhere. I speak of time as if I knew anything about it, like a child laughing at a prophet, and the bears give me the real lesson. Oh well. The kitchen needed a good cleaning anyway.

But what do the learned gentlemen think of my main point, which I will try to speak of again, despite the warnings of bears? Paradox is resolved by the transformation of vision. I seem to have learned this from a book called "The Transformative Vision," which I remember reading at university, but I seem to have lost my copy. Yes, Google and alibris inform me that it is by Jose Arguelles.

Paradox is resolved by the transformation of vision. For example, from the cradle, we see dangly objects appear and disappear behind each other, and so learn of the third dimension of space. If there were only two dimensions, we should have to wonder how the information about object-ness is preserved. The hidden space behind the object would be a black hole. We see information go in, we see information come back out, so there has to be space behind there somewhere, out of sight, where information is preserved. Our vision is transformed to include the third dimension.

Now Hawking (ArXiv 050717) tells us large black holes are eternal. Can we transform our vision to encompass this? There are no baby universes, Hawking revises, but only just the one universe. Throw in the encyclopedia of baseball, and out comes a puff of smoke. How do you get Babe Ruth's averages out of that? Very hard to read, indeed, for anyone on this side of the hole.

Burning books! I am still horrified by the idea, still mourn the seven losses of the Library at Alexandria. Even if it is no more than the record of taxes paid on an amphora of oil, no more than the dull statistics of a boreing game, no more than the childhood adventures of Harry Potter. Book burners are abhorent. Ack! Terrible freak of nature, giant black hole that burns entire universes!

Or is it?

Time does not pass, but we do. If the black hole is eternal, and we are in the black hole, then we are eternal. Some giant at infinity, looking at our wee bit of glint in the gleam, might turn the smokey pages after all, and read of muggles and the taxes paid. We are that giant, reading the story of our baby universe. Hawking tells us to join the cylander end to end, and the base of the cone maps perfectly, without loss, to the single point of frustrum. Well it has to if the universe is Euclidean, the only sane choice. The fifth postulate holds.

This is a beautiful day, fair weather clouds, 72 Fahrenheit degrees, a light breeze, baby blue sky. I have, once again, a kitchen to clean, and more than that, I have footings to pour, mud to push into the cracks, a rotten corner of my cabin to try to uphold. And there is the ongoing argument with the bears. And now, haveing read Hawking's 050717, I have a terrible urge to study smoke.

Be well, all. Smoke and ashes! And then, only then, there is love.

Richard

 

[arivero]

nightcleaner, all the point is that paradox is not resolved. That was Newton(ians) and Marx(ists) mistake.

Canute, I agree that Nagarjuna is interesting reading, but I have only touched him via third party references and quotes. The Spanish reference I gave is not a logician nor a mystic but a linguist. For Spanish translations of Nagarjuna, if someone here is interested, I'd suggest my old friend Abraham Velez' Nagarjuna: Versos sobre los fundamentos del camino medio , Ed. Kairos, 2003. Velez took time in SriLanka and India to learn pali and sanskritt, so it is better that translations filtered from german, french or english.

PS: If some of you are at Georgetown next fall, consider register in Abraham Introduction to Buddhism, code THEO-167-01

 

[marcus]

... wasting my store of survival food, dumping oil and oatmeal for the smaller creatures to enjoy...

how awful
around here the raccoons are on the order of 1/1000 destructive on the bear scale and I get furious with them
I have covered our fishpond with a sandwich of 6-inch mesh and chickenwire and they still come nightly to reach thru and see if they can grab a fish
the squirrels got all but two of the apricots on the tree, just when they were about to get ripe
I was too sad to eat those two, so I gave them to a small quiet lady next door who is a professor of linguistics.
squirrels are a kind of tree-born rat.


there is no law that says we have to love nature, or our parents
at least not all the time