Theos-Talk Archives (May 2010 Message tt00063)

On May 21, 2010, at 5/21/105:07 AM, yanniru wrote:

> Lubos Motl responds with regard to 'reductionism':
> 
> 
> Reductionism is alive and kicking


I:nteresting.   

But, I based my comments and conclusions on this entire dissertation of Moti ... And, I still can't see where reductionist physics will ever be able to understand the fundamental nature of ALL reality -- which must include BOTH subjectivity and objectivity.  

Apparently, reductive physics can only cover the "limited" (as Hossenfelder says) objective or material aspects of total spacetime.  And even then, it cannot say much about the information aspect, nor its functional mechanisms -- which serve as the intermediary between objectivity and subjectivity, or matter and spirit (or consciousness).  

That explanatory gap, alone, is bigger than all the unknowns of current physics by a country mile -- if not a whole multiverse. ;-)

So, agreed, reductionism is alive and kicking...  Okay... But what is it kicking, and how far can it kick it?   

Apparently, all that such reductive physics can do is kick around whatever material forms and forces are inside the sealed barrel of metric spacetime.  Naturally, if that's all one is interested in learning about, or requires, in order to develop the ever increasing technological basis of modern life -- then its limitations appear to be of no great hindrance. 

But, such understanding of physics only goes so far, and is just a tiny part of the really important scientific knowledge relating to  the cause and nature of conscious life, and  how it all works in relation to mind, memory, brain, body, senses, etc.-- whose physics can never be understood by the methods of reduction from observed phenomena, and its necessarily "renormalized" mathematics.  e.g.; How can the observation of neural processes, or the physics of their operation, tell us anything about the cause and nature, along with the actual mechanisms of phenomenal consciousness, or about the nature of mind-memory fields and the information they carry and transmit?  

Obviously, consciousness, as the only creative as well as observational aspect of total reality, cannot fit into such a limited picture  -- since it requires both zero dimensional absolute and infinite dimensional relative spaces and times, in order to function across all possible frequencies of resonant radiant energy fields carrying vibrational information... Which is necessary for transmitting such modulated wave interference patterned information, both efferently and afferently between consciousness (awareness, will) and those infinite possible informational space time field frequencies... Many of them beyond the reach, observation or detection by conventional scientific methodologies.

IOW, it's obvious that perceptive consciousness must be absolutely static and changeless, in itself, in order to distinguish between the finest possible vibrations of energy fields carrying modulated information through the absolute vacuum of completely empty space -- which, based on pure logical necessity, underlies all metric, or total multidimensional spacetime at every such motionless zero-point within its total hyperspherical volume.... This ineffable absolute (conscious/live) center of origin of everything, exists perpetually, beyond (before or outside of) the "unified field" or "compact manifold" (of near infinite but still finite) spin momentum) that "physically" generates and empowers all the lowest order physical spacetime's electro-gravitational fields of the cosmos (vibrating between zero and near infinite frequencies) -- along with their individual particle-standing waves and their composite forms, organisms, bodies, etc., that evolve after symmetry breaks on the physical level.  (Note that even the most tenuous, near infinite frequency, 3-d field of the manifest cosmos -- is still of a substantial nature and can carry near infinite holographic information on its 2.d radiant surface.) 

Thus, consciousness must be a fundamental a priori property (quality) of that infinite absolute zero-point space -- which underlies the finite "unified field" or "compact manifold" at the source of total manifest cosmic as well as the lower order physical spacetime -- beyond which reductive physics cannot go... Just as it cannot cross the highest order field of the physical phase of the cosmos.  (In esoteric cosmology, even before the ancient Vedas -- this is spoken of as "the ring pass not") ... Since nothing material within the lowest order physical plane of the cosmos, can go beyond the "event barrier" circumference that separates it from the next higher order hyperphysical field, nor can it pass through the spin momentum circling around the zero-point of absolute space at its center.  

To visualize these fields within fields within fields, etc.-- beginning with the cosmos' highest order field down to the 4h lowest phase order physical level of total cosmic reality (at least three quarters of which is entirely beyond material based observation or measurement) see:
http://leonmaurer.info/ABCimages/Cyclic-paths-cosmogenesis.jpg

To further understand how the microcosm is 'the mirror of the macrocosm" ("as above, so below"), analogously down to the smallest sub quantum particle-wave form prior to symmetry breaking at the particle separation level, see:
http://leonmaurer.info/ABCimages/Chakrafielddiag-fig.col.jpg
http://leonmaurer.info/ABCimages/PhotonField.gif
(Note the analogous and corresponding, quark, gluon, and other possible microlepton, axion, or tachyon particle fields inside the overall spherical photon/electron field.)  Note, also,  that all correspondences at each radiant field phase level follow the same E-8 symmetry configurations.

It's easy to see from all this, that reductive physics, while still having a long way to go to be fully understood, still covers only a very small part of the vast expanse of cosmic reality that is accessible to our unbounded individual and collective consciousness. 

Additionally, it's also easy to comprehend that all laws of nature are rooted in fundamental spin momentum, and that there is no such thing as chance or probability underlying the properties or dynamics of basic physical nature -- or its hyperspatial models..  Although, there can be infinite random variations on micro levels of ideal macro forms, due to the unpredictability of individual particle motion and their group interactions -- which is interpreted  as indeterminacy and probability at the quantum physics level.

Best wishes,
Leon Maurer
http://knol.google.com/k/how-it-all-began#
		


On May 21, 2010, at 5/21/105:07 AM, yanniru wrote:

> Lubos Motl responds with regard to 'reductionism':
> 
> 
> Reductionism is alive and kicking
> 
> Reductionism is the attitude or philosophical position that the objects and phenomena in the real world are composed out of simpler, more elementary objects and the fundamental interactions in between them; or the scientific strategy to study things by assuming that the first part of the sentence is correct. 
> 
> A vast majority of the theoretical progress in science during the recent centuries has been a story about the success of reductionism. And nothing is changing about it at the beginning of the 21st century, either. Hossenfelder lives in a very different world. She interprets the current situation as follows:
> 
> You sometimes find today people in talk vigorously arguing that reductionism has limitations, just to find there's nobody actually disagreeing with them. Except for the old professor in the front row.
> Well, there are unfortunately many people who make living out of spreading vague nonsense about the limits of reductionism. And there are kilotons of people in all kinds of scientific institutions who nod when they hear this vacuous babbling.
> 
> In fact, Hossenfelder reveals what is behind this attitude of - mostly young - people. The old white male professor in the front row - imagine someone like Steven Weinberg - thinks that reductionism works and no "limitations of it" have been found. Because the old white male people are considered "uncool" by all the other people in the "fifth row" who have gotten to these institutions because they're neither old nor white nor male, such as Ms Hossenfelder herself, they immediately pick the opposite position.
> 
> Now, younger generations may often have a point. But they can't have a point just by their being younger. In this particular case, the opposition to the key role of reductionism in science is clearly justified by nothing whatsoever.
> 
> In theoretical physics, the last two decades did show us that the notion of "compositeness" may be subtle. If we change the conditions of the environment - in particular, the value of some scalar fields - the objects that used to look elementary (and light) become composite (and heavy) and vice versa.
> 
> Dualities, i.e. the equivalences between superficially vastly different descriptions, became an important family of the true paradigm shifts that have changed physics during the last 20 years. In particular, the holographic duality implies that many gluons and quarks - interacting by the strong interaction - may become physically indistinguishable from e.g. a black hole in the Anti de Sitter space.
> 
> Of course, such a configuration of matter is a high-entropy state in both descriptions (because black holes do carry a huge entropy, too, and because the counting of microstates has to agree in all descriptions). But the two descriptions lead us to very different ideas which configurations are "simple" or "elementary" and which of them are "complicated" or "composite".
> 
> But in some important sense, this duality revolution - while teaching us many new subtleties about the issue of compositeness - has strengthened reductionism rather than weakened it. It has provided us with many new ways how physical phenomena can be reduced to the elementary ones. Instead of one way how things are made out of the elementary building blocks, we must acknowledge that the number of ways is larger.
> 
> There's one more reason why the duality revolution has strengthened reductionism. The foes of reductionism used to say "more is different" or "infinitely many is different". This proposition implicitly contained the assumption that "more is more complex" or "infinitely many is more complex".
> 
> However, dualities imply that "infinitely many is, on the contrary, simpler". When you have a large number of particles, a large number of colors, or another integer asymptotically approaches infinity, there typically exists a "dual description" in which the "infinite N" limit is well-defined and the large N situations may be calculated as its small perturbations: there exists a new 1/N expansion.
> 
> So the original procedure to "reduce" still works, but for each "infinitely complex" limit, we actually have one new method how to reduce the phenomena to different building blocks. We may say that the dualities don't reduce the validity of the original methods of reductionism; instead, they add new and equally functioning new methods.
> 
> It seems obvious that the further progress in science will continue to be proportional to the number of new achievements in the realization of reductionism. Every time two phenomena, A and B, are connected in some way, which is a key process that theorists' work of organization of experimental insights includes, it is either the case that A is composed out of B, or B is composed out of A, or both A and B are composed out of something else. All these three possibilities mean a success of reductionism and there's really no other way to show that A and B are related.
> 
> At the beginning, I mentioned that reductionism can either be a "belief in the reductionist structure in principle", or a practical activity arising from this belief. These two interpretations of reductionism are partially correlated. At any rate, I think that the latter, the "reductionism in practice", has been very successful and continues to be successful. This success, together with the absence of any negative evidence against the reductionist principles, also supports the former "philosophical belief".
> 
> --- In MindBrain@yahoogroups.com, Leon Maurer <leonmaurer@...> wrote:
>> 
>> Unfortunately, if the final conclusion of Moti is true, and spacetime continues to be considered fundamental -- then reductive physics will still never be able to explain the cause and nature of consciousness and its linkage to mind, memory, brain, body, senses, etc. ... And, will forever be an incomplete scientific explanation or description of ALL fundamental reality... Since it can never escape from a finite dimensional of material spacetime. 
>> 
>> So, in order to come up with a true theory of everything (TOE), a new holonomic paradigm of physics -- where consciousness is fundamental along with absolute space of infinite potential energy that exists prior to ALL dimensional space, time, unified fields or multiverses -- will have to supersede and encompass ALL current physics theories, including QM, SR, GR, string, QG, QF, SUSY, M, etc., etc.  
>> 
>> In such a case, the current standard model will have to be completely revised.  One suggested model is my ABC theory of cosmogenesis, consciousness and mind -- starting with absolute consciousness and infinite spin momentum as fundamental
>> http://knol.google.com/k/how-it-all-began#
>> 
>> Leon Maurer
>> 
>> On May 18, 2010, at 5/18/1011:21 AM, yanniru wrote:
>> 
>>> String theory goes deeper than quantum field theory in that matter and spacetime are unified at a fundamental level. We know from General Relativity that gravitons and geometry are related or unified.
>>> 
>>> Because in string theory, gluons, electrons, and other particle species are "made out of" the very same stuff as gravitons, it's clear that the matter and geometry is unified. For example, the E8 x E8 gauge bosons in heterotic string theory arise as very similar excitations to the gravitons.
>>> 
>>> You may either say that there are two forms of "existence" whose origin used to be split but it is unified in string theory. Or you can say that the E8 x E8 gauge bosons, while being "matter" in the pre-stringy theories, become a part of the "generalized stringy geometry" (involving the extra left-moving 16-dimensional torus), and everything is made out of the "generalized geometry". This kind of unification of matter and geometry has essentially been known already to Kaluza and Klein who were the first ones to realize that photons (and gauge bosons) could arise just as gravitons in a higher-dimensional geometry. String theory has brought us many new ways how to link gravity and other, conventional types of matter.
>>> 
>>> Of you can say that everything is made out of matter and some forms of matter, namely strings (and/or branes) in particular vibrational patterns etc. living on a pre-existing spacetime with no dynamical geometry inserted, and some of the vibrational patterns - the gravitons - just happen to be indistinguishable from deformations of the spacetime geometry: the spacetime geometry is made out of them and you ultimately find out that it is de facto dynamical, anyway.
>>> 
>>> In all three interpretations, the mathematics that ultimately describes what's going on is identical. So you can't really say which of the three answers is correct. However, it's clear that the "absolute" separation of the forms of existence into "matter" and "underlying space" is gone. While it will be forever useful to separate these players in the analysis of any conceivable realistic situation, the iron curtain that separated them has been torn down in fundamental physics.
>>> 
>>> The spacetime is no longer "absolute" and it is no longer "strictly separated from other forms of matter" that used to occupy it. The iron curtain between these different forms of existence has been torn apart. 
>>> 
>>> However, there's one crucial point that I haven't articulated in this text yet: it's still absolutely critical for any theory considered in physics to predict something that behaves as space and something that behaves as matter living in this space - and the major classes of particle species - that live in this Universe.
>>> 
>>> If we say that the spacetime and matter ceased to be fundamental and/or separated, it surely doesn't mean that they have disappeared from physics. Quite on the contrary. They're still essential parts of physics - essential predictions that every theory has to make unless it wants to be instantly eliminated. The reason is that the matter and space are being observed all the time and physics has to agree with the observations.
>>> 
>>> Exactly because the most accurate theories we are testing and elaborating upon today can't build the world out of a pre-existing spacetime and a strictly and permanently separated matter living on the spacetime - because that's not how the world works at the fundamental level - it becomes extremely nontrivial for these theories to predict physics that approximately, with a huge accuracy, does seem to separate the phenomena to spacetime and the required types of matter. 
>>> 
>>> If a theory with a "non-fundamental spacetime" fails in this task, it was probably too abstract or detached from the reality and it immediately dies. Only the theories carefully walking on the thin rope between the "hot philosophical sexiness of the new concepts that destroy all the boundaries" and the "cold empirical realism required to match all the strictly classified experimental facts" has a chance to survive.
>>> Lubos Motl 
>>> http://motls.blogspot.com/2010/05/fall-of-reductionism-and-other.html#more
>>> 
>>> 
>>> ---"yanniru" <yanniru@> wrote:
>>>> 
>>>> That's not the latest research. The latest research is based on quantum field theory in which photons and other particles are ripples in fields, even according to references you provided.
>>>> 
>>>> Tell me why I do not like the idea. I did not know myself that I did not like particles. I just happen to know established physics like the Standard Model.
>>>> 
>>>> --- "Anna" <pantheon@> wrote:
>>>>> 
>>>>> I understand why you may not like the idea. However, according to the latest research,  photons are particles FIRST.  Isolating a single photon seems to be a good evidence too. If you can prove otherwise, do it, as it means a guaranteed Nobel Prize.
>>>>> 
>>>>> Anna
>>>>> 
>>>>> From: yanniru 
>>>>> Sent: Monday, May 10, 2010 4:51 AM
>>>>> To: MindBrain@yahoogroups.com 
>>>>> Subject: [Mind and Brain] Re: a particle or a wave?
>>>>> 
>>>>> Bad science: " But when one of these photons hits a boundary between the layers of material, it creates waves at each surface"
>>>>> 
>>>>> Photons are waves to begin with.
>>>>> 
>>>>> --- "Anna" <pantheon@> wrote:
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> Science News
>>>>>> Single Photons Observed at Seemingly Faster-Than-Light Speeds
>>>>>> ScienceDaily (Jan. 27, 2010) - Researchers at the Joint Quantum Institute (JQI), a collaboration of the National Institute of Standards and Technology and the University of Maryland at College Park, can speed up photons (particles of light) to seemingly faster-than-light speeds through a stack of materials by adding a single, strategically placed layer.
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> ----------------------------------------------------------
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> At the boundaries between layers, the photon creates waves interfering with each other, affecting its transit time. (Credit: JQI)
>>>>>> Ads by Google
>>>>>> This experimental demonstration confirms intriguing quantum-physics predictions that light's transit time through complex multilayered materials need not depend on thickness, as it does for simple materials such as glass, but rather on the order in which the layers are stacked. This is the first published study of this dependence with single photons.
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> Strictly speaking, light always achieves its maximum speed in a vacuum, or empty space, and slows down appreciably when it travels through a material substance, such as glass or water. The same is true for light traveling through a stack of dielectric materials, which are electrically insulating and can be used to create highly reflective structures that are often used as optical coatings on mirrors or fiber optics.
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> In a follow up to earlier experimental measurements, the JQI researchers created stacks of approximately 30 dielectric layers, each about 80 nanometers thick, equivalent to about a quarter of a wavelength of the light traveling through it. The layers alternated between high (H) and low (L) refractive index material, which cause light waves to bend or reflect by varying amounts. After a single photon hits the boundary between the H and L layers, it has a chance of being reflected or passing through.
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> When encountering a stack of 30 layers alternating between L and H, the rare photons that completely penetrate the stack pass through in about 12.84 femtoseconds (fs, quadrillionths of a second). Adding a single low-index layer to the end of this stack disproportionately increased the photon transit time by 3.52 fs to about 16.36 fs. (The transit time through this added layer would be only about 0.58 fs, if it depended only upon the layer's thickness and refractive index.) On the contrary, adding an extra H layer to a stack of 30 layers alternating between H and L would reduce the transit time to about 5.34 fs, so that individual photons seem to emerge through the 2.6-micron-thick stack at superluminal (faster-than-light) speeds.
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> What the JQI researchers are seeing can be explained by the wave properties of light. In this experiment, the light begins and ends its existence acting as a particle -- a photon. But when one of these photons hits a boundary between the layers of material, it creates waves at each surface, and the traveling light waves interfere with each other just as opposing ocean waves cause a riptide at the beach. With the H and L layers arranged just right, the interfering light waves combine to give rise to transmitted photons that emerge early. No faster than light speed information transfer occurs because, in actuality, it is something of an illusion: only a small proportion of photons make it through the stack, and if all the initial photons were detected, the detectors would record photons over a normal distribution of times.
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/01/100126175921.htm Email or share this story:
>>>>>> 
>> 
> 



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