'Theory of everything' tying researchers up in knots

SFGate.com ^ | March 14, 2005 | Keay Davidson

[snarks_when_bored]

'Theory of everything' tying researchers up in knots
- Keay Davidson, Chronicle Science Writer
Monday, March 14, 2005

The most celebrated theory in modern physics faces increasing attacks from skeptics who fear it has lured a generation of researchers down an intellectual dead end.

In its original, simplified form, circa the mid-1980s, string theory held that reality consists of infinitesimally small, wiggling objects called strings, which vibrate in ways that yield the different subatomic particles that comprise the cosmos. An analogy is the vibrations on a violin string, which yield different musical notes.

Advocates claimed that string theory would smooth out the conflicts between Einsteinian relativity and quantum mechanics. The result, they said, would be a grand unifying "theory of everything," which could explain everything from the nature of matter to the Big Bang to the fate of the cosmos.

Over the years, string theory has simultaneously become more frustrating and fabulous...

[snip]

 

[shibumi]

"It's a bias -- and a hope -- built on my own limitations, but my suspicion is that deep down, and I mean way deep down, the universe is based on a few very simple rules"


You and I have disagreed in the past on that lightning rod of subjects (crevo) which I have no intention of reopening at this time.

Your comment, quoted above, however, I could not agree with more. My personal belief is that for these "few simple rules" to be discovered and understood, seekers of the truth will have to step outside the box of their own scientific disciplines and realize that there literally is no spoon - that consciousness itself is the stuff of the universe.

[Zuben Elgenubi]

I'd be interested in Ward Churchill's take on the 'Theory of Everything'. I'm pretty sure he could come up with the credentials in short order.

[RightWhale]

I’d love to hear any arguments for why mathematics should not be given a higher seat in our body of knowledge than science!

There are limits, math theorems that cannot be proved within math. Ultimately we cannot know.

[Jonah Hex]

So they're searching for The Answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything?

[Alamo-Girl]

Thank you so much for your reply!

There are limits, math theorems that cannot be proved within math. Ultimately we cannot know.

Indeed.

Seems like every discipline has things which we can know, things which we do not yet know, and things which we can never know.

Concerning the unknowable - in mathematics, we have Gödel's Incompleteness Theorems. In physics, we have Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle. And in the historical sciences - evolution, archeology, anthropology, Egyptology - we have an incomplete record of evidence.

To me, all of these are cautions which attach to the value of evidence and/or work product - but not to the value of the discipline itself.

[RightWhale]

My copy of the new Goedel book just arrived. Incompleteness: The Proof and Paradox of Kurt Godel by Rebecca Goldstein. It is highly recommended as the author is a good writer and an actual philosophy of science prof. I have read the first couple pages and already it is getting heavy. This will be good; Goedel is variously estimated as the greatest logician since Aristotle.

[litehaus]

"I’d love to hear any arguments for why mathematics should not be given a higher seat in our body of knowledge than science!"

Well, just the opposite here...a vote for math and all the "wunnerful" things that it 'hath wrought.'(If explanation is needed, you just ain't gonna get it )

[LogicWings]

As for me, string theory is only an alternative geometric for space/time and therefore corporeals, cosmology, etc. - the great meaning is in the universals, an interpretation that everything is a mathematical structure which exists apart from space/time dimensionality (the Max Tegmark Level IV universe, radical mathematical Platonism).

Reification of mathematics. The map is not the territory. Mathematics is a map and does not "exist apart from space/time dimensionality" (or apart from the mind of man, for that matter.) If it did it wouldn't matter anyway because, by definition, we could never know that. Such radical Platonism would be unknown and unknowable.

[Alamo-Girl]

Thank you so much for the book recommendation! I look forward to reading it!

[Alamo-Girl]

Thank you so much for your "math first" vote!!!

(If explanation is needed, you just ain't gonna get it )

LOLOLOL! So true.

[krb]

It's happened once already.

I think that's his point.

[RightWhale]

Goedel also said that if we ever develop complete proofs of complete math that would prove that we are not computing machines. That would annoy the AI fans.

[Alamo-Girl]

Thank you for sharing your views!

Mathematics is a map and does not "exist apart from space/time dimensionality" (or apart from the mind of man, for that matter.)

This is the tension between the Aristotlean worldview and the Platonist worldview with reference to math. The Aristotles would say that the mathematician invents the mathematical structures. The Platonists would say that the mathematical structures exist and the mathematician only discovers them, e.g. pi exists, it was only discovered.

Tegmark: Parallel Universes

According to the Aristotelian paradigm, physical reality is fundamental and mathematical language is merely a useful approximation. According to the Platonic paradigm, the mathematical structure is the true reality and observers perceive it imperfectly. In other words, the two paradigms disagree on which is more basic, the frog perspective of the observer or the bird perspective of the physical laws. The Aristotelian paradigm prefers the frog perspective, whereas the Platonic paradigm prefers the bird perspective....

A mathematical structure is an abstract, immutable entity existing outside of space and time. If history were a movie, the structure would correspond not to a single frame of it but to the entire videotape. Consider, for example, a world made up of pointlike particles moving around in three-dimensional space. In four-dimensional spacetime--the bird perspective--these particle trajectories resemble a tangle of spaghetti. If the frog sees a particle moving with constant velocity, the bird sees a straight strand of uncooked spaghetti. If the frog sees a pair of orbiting particles, the bird sees two spaghetti strands intertwined like a double helix. To the frog, the world is described by Newton's laws of motion and gravitation. To the bird, it is described by the geometry of the pasta--a mathematical structure. The frog itself is merely a thick bundle of pasta, whose highly complex intertwining corresponds to a cluster of particles that store and process information. Our universe is far more complicated than this example, and scientists do not yet know to what, if any, mathematical structure it corresponds.

[Alamo-Girl]

Thank you for your reply! Lurkers interested in the point you raise might enjoy some of Penrose's books on the subject - he relies on the Incompleteness Theorems to illustrate that Artificial Intelligence is impossible.

[Lurking2Long]

You ain't got a thing, if you ain't got that string...do wop, do wop, do wop!

[RightWhale]

That might be so. Goedel was the best and in the same league with Einstein and Heisenberg. Too bad Heisenberg stuck to the losing side of WW II, he should have come to Princeton.

[Lurking2Long]

So they're searching for The Answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything?

And the answer is....(the envelope please)...GOD!

[Alamo-Girl]

Freepers and Lurkers wanting to wade deeper into the subject of dimensionality - especially as it relates to consciousness and the mind - might enjoy these links:

PSYCHE: Dimensionality (list of links)

Sirag: Hyperspace Reality

betty boop, you might find the second link particularly interesting considering our previous discussions of a universal vacuum field. Most of it is historical and putting string theory in context, but he gets into related concepts in the last few paragraphs.

[Alamo-Girl]

So very true, RightWhale! Thank you for your reply!

[malakhi]

And the answer is....(the envelope please)...GOD!

God is 42?

That explains the condition of the world. God is having a midlife crisis. He's out tooling around in a red convertible, and not minding the store.