Bernard D'Espagnat, practicing and well know physicist, in his 2006 On Physics and Philosophy makes the following points based on contemporary limits that nature has imposed us via quantum mechanics:
-- Common sense is not an adequate test to establish unquestioned validity -- The principal of "incomplete determination of theory by experience" creates difficulties for Pythagoras (complete mathematical theory of the universe) because it so happens that there are 3 distinct theories, all o f them ground on the general quantum rules, yielding essentially the same observational predictions, but widely differing concerning the ideas they call forth. These theories are the "theory of the Dirac sea," "Feynman graph theory," and "quantum field theory." -- Locality as particles, and so forth are not the constitutive materials of the universe there is only a "something", a wholeness of some sort. -- Nonseparability or nonlocality is the foundation of this wholeness (work by Bell and experiments by Aspect and others) -- Objectivity language as providing a grammatical form that makes it possible to speak of essentially contingent space- and time-localized data as existing quite INDEPENDENT of us generates insurmountable difficulties. -- The cop-out of saying its all "just a model", in particular the standard model, only results in ignoring the fact that the observed is entangled in measurement--but such a model fails because it does not leave out the classical requirement of objectivity or of no reference to us. Check it out. Gus Gus Koehler, Ph.D. President and Principal Time Structures, Inc. 1545 University Ave. Sacramento, CA 95825 916-564-8683, Fax: 916-564-7895 Cell: 916-716-1740 www.timestructures.com -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of steve smith Sent: Sunday, November 25, 2007 11:05 AM To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Is mathematical pattern the theory of everything? I'm waiting for Wolfram to weigh in.... Carl Tollander wrote: > Some are sympathetic but have reservations. > Sabine Hossenfelder: > http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2007/11/theoretically-simple-exceptio > n-of.html > and > Christine Dantas: > http://egregium.wordpress.com/2007/11/10/physics-needs-independent-thi > nkers/ > and > Peter Woit: http://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/?p=617 > and > John Baez: http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/week253.html > and > Steinn Sigurðsson: > http://scienceblogs.com/catdynamics/2007/11/overly_simple_theory_of_so > meth.php > > Some of the sharp-elbow folks have stronger reservations. > Lubos Motl: > http://motls.blogspot.com/2007/11/exceptionally-simple-theory-of.html > and > Jacques Distler: > http://golem.ph.utexas.edu/~distler/blog/archives/001505.html > ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
