Dr. Mills' Causal Universe
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JohnEB
Nov 15, 2010, 4:02:36 AM11/15/10
to Classical Physics
The proponents of quantum mechanics have claimed many times that our
universe is not causal. Einstein never accepted this proclamation. The
1935 EPR argument between Bohr and Einstein supposedly settled this
issue - let's take a look at it:
What is really happening in EPR?
The Einstein point of view is that when the two photons are created,
they both have a definite polarization that is negatively correlated
with the other due to conservation of spin, but we do not know what
they are. When one is measured, we then know the polarization of the
other (it is the opposite polarization). Since both photons have a
definite polarization from birth, there is no question of whether the
measurement of one photon affects the polarization of the other. This
is the core of Einstein's "element of reality" argument:
"If, without in any way disturbing the system, we can predict with
certainty (i.e. with probability equal to unity) the value of a
physical quantity, then there exists an element of physical reality
corresponding to this physical quantity."
The QM point of view is that, after they are created, both photons
exist in a state of superposition of all possible polarizations. Until
measured, neither photon has a definite polarization. When one photon
is measured, we now have the question of whether the polarization of
the unmeasured photon is determined by the polarization of the
measured photon. Here is Bohr's argument:
"The criterion of physical reality proposed by EPR contains an
ambiguity as regards the meaning of the expression "without in any way
disturbing the system." Of course, there is in a case like that just
considered no question of a mechanical disturbance of the system under
investigation during the last critical stage of the measuring
procedure. But even at this stage there is essentially the question of
an influence on the very conditions which define the possible types of
predictions regarding the future behavior of the system. Since these
conditions constitute an inherent element of the description of any
phenomena to which the term "physical reality" can be properly
attached, we see that the argumentation of the mentioned authors does
not justify their conclusions."
universe is not causal. Einstein never accepted this proclamation. The
1935 EPR argument between Bohr and Einstein supposedly settled this
issue - let's take a look at it:
What is really happening in EPR?
The Einstein point of view is that when the two photons are created,
they both have a definite polarization that is negatively correlated
with the other due to conservation of spin, but we do not know what
they are. When one is measured, we then know the polarization of the
other (it is the opposite polarization). Since both photons have a
definite polarization from birth, there is no question of whether the
measurement of one photon affects the polarization of the other. This
is the core of Einstein's "element of reality" argument:
"If, without in any way disturbing the system, we can predict with
certainty (i.e. with probability equal to unity) the value of a
physical quantity, then there exists an element of physical reality
corresponding to this physical quantity."
The QM point of view is that, after they are created, both photons
exist in a state of superposition of all possible polarizations. Until
measured, neither photon has a definite polarization. When one photon
is measured, we now have the question of whether the polarization of
the unmeasured photon is determined by the polarization of the
measured photon. Here is Bohr's argument:
"The criterion of physical reality proposed by EPR contains an
ambiguity as regards the meaning of the expression "without in any way
disturbing the system." Of course, there is in a case like that just
considered no question of a mechanical disturbance of the system under
investigation during the last critical stage of the measuring
procedure. But even at this stage there is essentially the question of
an influence on the very conditions which define the possible types of
predictions regarding the future behavior of the system. Since these
conditions constitute an inherent element of the description of any
phenomena to which the term "physical reality" can be properly
attached, we see that the argumentation of the mentioned authors does
not justify their conclusions."
JohnEB
Nov 15, 2010, 10:57:53 AM11/15/10
to Classical Physics
The following is due to Franck Laloe:
"3.2 Of peas, pods and genes
When a physicist attempts to infer the properties of microscopic
objects from macroscopic observations, ingenuity (in order to design
meaningful experiments) must be combined with a good deal of logic (in
order to deduce these microscopic properties from the macroscopic
results). Obviously, some abstract reasoning is indispensable, merely
because it is impossible to observe with the naked eye, or to take in
one's hand, an electron or even a macromolecule for instance. The
scientist of past centuries who, like Mendel, was trying to determine
the genetic properties of plants, had exactly the same problem: he did
not have access to any direct observation of the DNA molecules, so
that he had to base his reasoning on adequate experiments and on the
observation of their macroscopic outcome. In our parable, the
scientist will observe the color of flowers (the "result" of the
measurement, +1 for red, -1 for blue) as a function of the condition
in which the peas are grown (these conditions are the "experimental
settings" a and b, which determine the nature of the measurement). The
basic purpose is to infer the intrinsic properties of the peas (the
EPR "element of reality") from these observations.
3.2.1 Simple experiments; no conclusion yet.
It is clear that many external parameters such as temperature,
humidity, amount of light, etc. may influence the growth of vegetables
and, therefore, the color of a flower; it seems very difficult in a
practical experiment to be sure that all the relevant parameters have
been identified and controlled with a sufficient accuracy.
Consequently, if one observes that the flowers which grow in a series
of experiments are sometimes blue, sometimes red, it is impossible to
identify the reason behind these fluctuation; it may reflect some
trivial irreproducibility of the conditions of the experiment, or
something more fundamental. In more abstract terms, a completely
random character of the result of the experiments may originate either
from the fluctuations of uncontrolled external perturbations, or from
some intrinsic property that the measured system (the pea) initially
possesses, or even from the fact that the growth of a flower (or, more
generally, life?) is fundamentally an indeterministic process -
needless to say, all three reasons can be combined in any complicated
way. Transposing the issue to quantum physics leads to the following
formulation of the question: are the results of the experiments random
because of the fluctuation of some uncontrolled influence taking place
in the macroscopic apparatus, of some microscopic property of the
measured particles, or of some more fundamental process?
The scientist may repeat the "experiment" a thousand times and even
more: if the results are always totally random, there is no way to
decide which interpretation should be selected; it is just a matter of
personal taste. Of course, philosophical arguments might be built to
favor or reject one of them, but from a pure scientific point of view,
at this stage, there is no compelling argument for a choice or
another. Such was the situation of quantum physics before the EPR
argument.
3.2.2 Correlations; causes unveiled.
The stroke of genius of EPR was to realize that correlations could
allow a big step further in the discussion. They exploit the fact
that, when the choice of the settings are the same, the observed
results turn out to be always identical; in our botanical analogy, we
will assume that our botanist observes correlations between colors of
flowers. Peas come together in pods, so that it is possible to grow
peas taken from the same pod and observe their flowers in remote
places. It is then natural to expect that, when no special care is
taken to give equal values to the experimental parameters
(temperature, etc.), nothing special is observed in this new
experiment. But assume that, every time the parameters are chosen to
the same values, the colors are systematically the same; what can we
then conclude? Since the peas grow in remote places, there is no way
that they can be influenced by the any single uncontrolled fluctuating
phenomenon, or that they can somehow influence each other in the
determination of the colors. If we believe that causes always act
locally, we are led to the following conclusion: the only possible
explanation of the common color is the existence of some common
property of both peas, which determines the color; the property in
question may be very difficult to detect directly, since it is
presumably encoded inside some tiny part of a biological molecule, but
it is sufficient to determine the results of the experiments.
Since this is the essence of the argument, let us make every step of
the EPR reasoning completely explicit, when transposed to botany. The
key idea is that the nature and the number of "elements of reality"
associated with each pea can not vary under the influence of some
remote experiment, performed on the other pea. For clarity, let us
first assume that the two experiments are performed at different
times: one week, the experimenter grows a pea, then only next week
another pea from the same pod; we assume that perfect correlations of
the colors are always observed, without any special influence of the
delay between the experiments. Just after completion of the first
experiment (observation of the first color), but still before the
second experiment, the result of that future experiment has a
perfectly determined value; therefore, there must already exist one
element of reality attached to the second pea that corresponds to this
fact - clearly, it can not be attached to any other object than the
pea, for instance one of the measurement apparatuses, since the
observation of perfect correlations only arises when making
measurements with peas taken from the same pod. Symmetrically, the
first pod also had an element of reality attached to it which ensured
that its measurement would always provide a result that coincides with
that of the future measurement. The simplest idea that comes to mind
is to assume that the elements of reality associated with both peas
are coded in some genetic information, and that the values of the
codes are exactly the same for all peas coming from the same pod; but
other possibilities exist and the precise nature and mechanism
involved in the elements of reality does not really matter here. The
important point is that, since these elements of reality can not
appear by any action at a distance, they necessarily also existed
before any measurement was performed - presumably even before the two
peas were separated.
Finally, let us consider any pair of peas, when they are already
spatially separated, but before the experimentalist decides what type
of measurements they will undergo (values of the parameters, delay or
not, etc.). We know that, if the decision turns out to favor time
separated measurements with exactly the same parameter, perfect
correlations will always be observed.
Since elements of reality can not appear, or change their values,
depending of experiments that are performed in a remote place, the two
peas necessarily carry some elements of reality with them which
completely determine the color of the flowers; any theory which
ignores these elements of reality is incomplete. This completes the
proof.
It seems difficult not to agree that the method which led to these
conclusions is indeed the scientific method; no tribunal or detective
would believe that, in any circumstance, perfect correlations could be
observed in remote
places without being the consequence of some common characteristics
shared by both objects. Such perfect correlations can then only reveal
the initial common value of some variable attached to them, which is
in turn a consequence of some fluctuating common cause in the past (a
random choice of pods in a bag for instance). To express things in
technical terms, let us for instance assume that we use the most
elaborate technology available to build elaborate automata, containing
powerful modern computers20 if necessary, for the purpose of
reproducing the results of the remote experiments: whatever we do, we
must ensure that, somehow, the memory of each computer contains the
encoded information concerning all the results that it might have to
provide in the future (for any type of measurement that might be
made).
To summarize this section, we have shown that each result of a
measurement may be a function of two kinds of variables21:
(i) intrinsic properties of the peas, which they carry along with
them.
(ii) the local setting of the experiment (temperature, humidity,
etc.);
clearly, a given pair that turned out to provide two blue flowers
could have provided red flowers in other experimental conditions.
We may also add that:
(iii) the results are well-defined functions, in other words that no
fundamentally
indeterministic process takes place in the experiments.
(iv) when taken from its pod, a pea cannot "know in advance" to which
sort of experiment it will be submitted, since the decision may not
yet have been made by the experimenters; when separated, the two peas
therefore have to take with them all the information necessary to
determine the color of flowers for any kind of experimental
conditions. What we have shown actually is that each pea carries with
it as many elements of reality as necessary to provide "the correct
answer" 22 to all possible questions it might be submitted to.
3.2.3 Transposition to physics
The starting point of EPR is to assume that quantum mechanics provides
correct predictions for all results of experiments; this is why we
have built the parable of the peas in a way that exactly mimics the
quantum predictions for measurements performed on two spin 1/2
particles for some initial quantum state: the red/blue color is
obviously the analogue to the result that can be obtained for a spin
in a Stern-Gerlach apparatus, the parameters (or settings) are the
analogous to the orientation of these apparatuses (rotation around the
axis of propagation of the particles). Quantum mechanics predicts that
the distance and times at which the spin measurements are performed is
completely irrelevant, so that the correlations will remain the same
if they take place in very remote places.
Another ingredient of the EPR reasoning is the notion of "elements of
reality"; EPR first remark that these elements cannot be found by a
priori philosophical considerations, but must be found by an appeal to
results of experiments and measurements. They then propose the
following criterion: "if, without in any way disturbing a system, we
can predict with certainty the value of a physical quantity, then
nothing: an experimental result that is known in advance is
necessarily the consequence of some pre-existing physical property. In
our botanical analogy, we implicitly made use of this idea in the
reasoning of §3.2.2.
A last, but essential, ingredient of the EPR reasoning is the notion
of space-time and locality: the elements of reality in question are
attached to the region of space where the experiment takes place, and
they cannot vary suddenly (or even less appear) under the influence of
events taking place in very distant region of space. The peas of the
parable were in fact not so much the symbol of some microscopic
object, electrons or spin 1/2 atoms for instance. Rather, they
symbolize regions of space where we just know that "something is
propagating"; it can be a particle, a field, or anything else, with
absolutely no assumption on its structure or physical description.
Actually, in the EPR quotation of the preceding paragraph, one may
replace the word "system" by "region of space", without altering the
rest of the reasoning. One may summarize the situation by saying that
the basic belief of EPR is that regions of space can contain elements
of reality attached to them (attaching distinct elements of reality to
separate regions of space is sometimes called "separability") and that
they evolve locally. From these assumptions, EPR prove that the
results of the measurements are functions of:
(i) intrinsic properties of the spins that they carry with them (the
EPR elements of reality)
(ii) of course, also of the orientations of the Stern-Gerlach
analyzers In addition, they show that:
(iii) the functions giving the results are well-defined functions,
which implies that no indeterministic process is taking place; in
other words, a particle with spin carries along with it all the
information necessary to provide the result to any possible
measurement.
(iv) since it is possible to envisage future measurements of
observables that are called "incompatible" in quantum mechanics, as a
matter of fact, incompatible observables can simultaneously have a
perfectly well defined value.
Item (i) may be called the EPR-1 result: quantum mechanics is
incomplete (EPR require from a complete theory that "every element of
physical reality must have a counterpart in the physical theory"); in
other words, the state vector may be a sufficient description for a
statistical ensemble of pairs, but for one single pair of spins, it
should be completed by some additional information; in still other
words, inside the ensemble of all pairs, one can distinguish between
sub-ensembles with different physical properties. Item (iii) may be
called EPR-2, and establishes the validity of determinism from a
locality assumption. Item (iv), EPR-3 result, shows that the notion of
incompatible observables is not fundamental, but just a consequence of
the incomplete character of the theory; it actually provides a reason
to reject complementarity. Curiously, EPR-3 is often presented as the
major EPR result, sometimes even with no mention of the two others;
actually, the rejection of complementarity is almost marginal or, at
least, less important for EPR than the proof of incompleteness. In
fact, in all that follows in this article, we will only need EPR-1,2.
Niels Bohr, in his reply to the EPR article [43], stated that their
criterion for physical reality contains an essential ambiguity when it
is applied to quantum phenomena. A more extensive quotation of Bohr's
reply is the following:
"The wording of the above mentioned criterion (the EPR criterion for
elements of reality)... contains an ambiguity as regards the
expression 'without in any way disturbing a system'. Of course there
is in a case like that considered (by EPR) no question of a mechanical
predictions regarding the future behavior of the system.... the
quantum description may be characterized as a rational utilization of
all possibilities of unambiguous interpretation of measurements,
compatible with the finite and uncontrollable interactions between the
objects and the measuring instruments in the field of quantum theory".
Indeed, in Bohr's view, physical reality cannot be properly defined
without reference to a complete and well-defined experiment. This
includes, not only the systems to be measured (the microscopic
particles), but also all the measurement apparatuses: "these
(experimental) conditions must be considered as an inherent element of
any phenomenon to which the term physical reality can be unambiguously
applied". Therefore EPR's attempt to assign elements of reality to one
of the spins only, or to a region of space containing it, is
incompatible with orthodox quantum mechanics 23 - even if the region
in question is very large and isolated from the rest of the world.
Expressed differently, a physical system that is extended over a large
region of space is to be considered as a single entity, within which
no attempt should be made to distinguish physical subsystems or any
substructure; trying to attach physical reality to regions of space is
then automatically bound to failure.
In terms of our Leitmotiv of § 1.1.3, the difference between ordinary
space and configuration space, we could say the following: the system
has a single wave function for both particles that propagates in a
configuration space with more than 3 dimensions, and this should be
taken very seriously; no attempt should be made to come back to three
dimensions and implement locality arguments in a smaller space.
Bohr's point of view is, of course, not contradictory with relativity,
but since it minimizes the impact of basic notions such as space-time,
or events (a measurement process in quantum mechanics is not local;
therefore it is not an event stricto sensu), it does not fit very well
with it. One could add that Bohr's article is difficult to understand;
many physicists admit that a precise characterization of his attitude,
in terms for instance of exactly what traditional principles of
physics should be given up, is delicate (see for example the
discussion of ref. [8]). In Pearle's words: "Bohr's rebuttal was
essentially that Einstein's opinion disagreed with his own" [46]. It
is true that, when scrutinizing Bohr's texts, one never gets
completely sure to what extent he fully realized all the consequences
of his position. Actually, in most of his reply to EPR [43] in
Physical Review, he just repeats the orthodox point of view in the
case of a single particle submitted to incompatible measurements, and
even goes through considerations that are not obviously related to the
EPR argument, as if he did not appreciate how interesting the
discussion becomes for two remote correlated particles; the relation
to locality is not explicitly discussed, as if this was an unimportant
issue (while it was the starting point of further important work, the
Bell theorem for instance24). The precise reply to EPR is actually
contained in only a short paragraph of this article, from which the
quotations given above have been taken. Even Bell confessed that he
had strong difficulties understanding Bohr ("I have very little idea
what this means.." - see the appendix of ref. [33])!
20 We are assuming here that the computers are not quantum computers
(if quantum computers can ever be built, which is another question).
21 In Bell's notation, the A functions depend on the settings a and b
as well as on .
22 Schrodinger used to remark that, if all students of a group always
give the right answer to a question chosen randomly by the professor
among two, they all necessarily knew the answer to both questions (and
not only the one they actually answer).
23 One could add that the EPR disproval of the notion of incompatible
observables implies that, at least, two different settings are
considered for one of the measurement apparatuses; this should
correspond, in Bohr's view, to two different physical realities (every
different couple a,b actually corresponds to a different physical
reality), and not to a single one as assumed in the EPR reasoning.
24 If Bohr had known the Bell theorem, he could merely have replied to
EPR that their
logical system was inconsistent (see § 4.1.3)!
25 In this reference, Wigner actually reasons explicitly in terms of
hidden variables; he
considers domains for these variables, which correspond to given
results for several possible
choices of the settings. But these domains also correspond to
categories of pairs of particles,
which is why, here, we use the notion of categories.
From
Do we really understand quantum mechanics?
http://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/0209123
"3.2 Of peas, pods and genes
When a physicist attempts to infer the properties of microscopic
objects from macroscopic observations, ingenuity (in order to design
meaningful experiments) must be combined with a good deal of logic (in
order to deduce these microscopic properties from the macroscopic
results). Obviously, some abstract reasoning is indispensable, merely
because it is impossible to observe with the naked eye, or to take in
one's hand, an electron or even a macromolecule for instance. The
scientist of past centuries who, like Mendel, was trying to determine
the genetic properties of plants, had exactly the same problem: he did
not have access to any direct observation of the DNA molecules, so
that he had to base his reasoning on adequate experiments and on the
observation of their macroscopic outcome. In our parable, the
scientist will observe the color of flowers (the "result" of the
measurement, +1 for red, -1 for blue) as a function of the condition
in which the peas are grown (these conditions are the "experimental
settings" a and b, which determine the nature of the measurement). The
basic purpose is to infer the intrinsic properties of the peas (the
EPR "element of reality") from these observations.
3.2.1 Simple experiments; no conclusion yet.
It is clear that many external parameters such as temperature,
humidity, amount of light, etc. may influence the growth of vegetables
and, therefore, the color of a flower; it seems very difficult in a
practical experiment to be sure that all the relevant parameters have
been identified and controlled with a sufficient accuracy.
Consequently, if one observes that the flowers which grow in a series
of experiments are sometimes blue, sometimes red, it is impossible to
identify the reason behind these fluctuation; it may reflect some
trivial irreproducibility of the conditions of the experiment, or
something more fundamental. In more abstract terms, a completely
random character of the result of the experiments may originate either
from the fluctuations of uncontrolled external perturbations, or from
some intrinsic property that the measured system (the pea) initially
possesses, or even from the fact that the growth of a flower (or, more
generally, life?) is fundamentally an indeterministic process -
needless to say, all three reasons can be combined in any complicated
way. Transposing the issue to quantum physics leads to the following
formulation of the question: are the results of the experiments random
because of the fluctuation of some uncontrolled influence taking place
in the macroscopic apparatus, of some microscopic property of the
measured particles, or of some more fundamental process?
The scientist may repeat the "experiment" a thousand times and even
more: if the results are always totally random, there is no way to
decide which interpretation should be selected; it is just a matter of
personal taste. Of course, philosophical arguments might be built to
favor or reject one of them, but from a pure scientific point of view,
at this stage, there is no compelling argument for a choice or
another. Such was the situation of quantum physics before the EPR
argument.
3.2.2 Correlations; causes unveiled.
The stroke of genius of EPR was to realize that correlations could
allow a big step further in the discussion. They exploit the fact
that, when the choice of the settings are the same, the observed
results turn out to be always identical; in our botanical analogy, we
will assume that our botanist observes correlations between colors of
flowers. Peas come together in pods, so that it is possible to grow
peas taken from the same pod and observe their flowers in remote
places. It is then natural to expect that, when no special care is
taken to give equal values to the experimental parameters
(temperature, etc.), nothing special is observed in this new
experiment. But assume that, every time the parameters are chosen to
the same values, the colors are systematically the same; what can we
then conclude? Since the peas grow in remote places, there is no way
that they can be influenced by the any single uncontrolled fluctuating
phenomenon, or that they can somehow influence each other in the
determination of the colors. If we believe that causes always act
locally, we are led to the following conclusion: the only possible
explanation of the common color is the existence of some common
property of both peas, which determines the color; the property in
question may be very difficult to detect directly, since it is
presumably encoded inside some tiny part of a biological molecule, but
it is sufficient to determine the results of the experiments.
Since this is the essence of the argument, let us make every step of
the EPR reasoning completely explicit, when transposed to botany. The
key idea is that the nature and the number of "elements of reality"
associated with each pea can not vary under the influence of some
remote experiment, performed on the other pea. For clarity, let us
first assume that the two experiments are performed at different
times: one week, the experimenter grows a pea, then only next week
another pea from the same pod; we assume that perfect correlations of
the colors are always observed, without any special influence of the
delay between the experiments. Just after completion of the first
experiment (observation of the first color), but still before the
second experiment, the result of that future experiment has a
perfectly determined value; therefore, there must already exist one
element of reality attached to the second pea that corresponds to this
fact - clearly, it can not be attached to any other object than the
pea, for instance one of the measurement apparatuses, since the
observation of perfect correlations only arises when making
measurements with peas taken from the same pod. Symmetrically, the
first pod also had an element of reality attached to it which ensured
that its measurement would always provide a result that coincides with
that of the future measurement. The simplest idea that comes to mind
is to assume that the elements of reality associated with both peas
are coded in some genetic information, and that the values of the
codes are exactly the same for all peas coming from the same pod; but
other possibilities exist and the precise nature and mechanism
involved in the elements of reality does not really matter here. The
important point is that, since these elements of reality can not
appear by any action at a distance, they necessarily also existed
before any measurement was performed - presumably even before the two
peas were separated.
Finally, let us consider any pair of peas, when they are already
spatially separated, but before the experimentalist decides what type
of measurements they will undergo (values of the parameters, delay or
not, etc.). We know that, if the decision turns out to favor time
separated measurements with exactly the same parameter, perfect
correlations will always be observed.
Since elements of reality can not appear, or change their values,
depending of experiments that are performed in a remote place, the two
peas necessarily carry some elements of reality with them which
completely determine the color of the flowers; any theory which
ignores these elements of reality is incomplete. This completes the
proof.
It seems difficult not to agree that the method which led to these
conclusions is indeed the scientific method; no tribunal or detective
would believe that, in any circumstance, perfect correlations could be
observed in remote
places without being the consequence of some common characteristics
shared by both objects. Such perfect correlations can then only reveal
the initial common value of some variable attached to them, which is
in turn a consequence of some fluctuating common cause in the past (a
random choice of pods in a bag for instance). To express things in
technical terms, let us for instance assume that we use the most
elaborate technology available to build elaborate automata, containing
powerful modern computers20 if necessary, for the purpose of
reproducing the results of the remote experiments: whatever we do, we
must ensure that, somehow, the memory of each computer contains the
encoded information concerning all the results that it might have to
provide in the future (for any type of measurement that might be
made).
To summarize this section, we have shown that each result of a
measurement may be a function of two kinds of variables21:
(i) intrinsic properties of the peas, which they carry along with
them.
(ii) the local setting of the experiment (temperature, humidity,
etc.);
clearly, a given pair that turned out to provide two blue flowers
could have provided red flowers in other experimental conditions.
We may also add that:
(iii) the results are well-defined functions, in other words that no
fundamentally
indeterministic process takes place in the experiments.
(iv) when taken from its pod, a pea cannot "know in advance" to which
sort of experiment it will be submitted, since the decision may not
yet have been made by the experimenters; when separated, the two peas
therefore have to take with them all the information necessary to
determine the color of flowers for any kind of experimental
conditions. What we have shown actually is that each pea carries with
it as many elements of reality as necessary to provide "the correct
answer" 22 to all possible questions it might be submitted to.
3.2.3 Transposition to physics
The starting point of EPR is to assume that quantum mechanics provides
correct predictions for all results of experiments; this is why we
have built the parable of the peas in a way that exactly mimics the
quantum predictions for measurements performed on two spin 1/2
particles for some initial quantum state: the red/blue color is
obviously the analogue to the result that can be obtained for a spin
in a Stern-Gerlach apparatus, the parameters (or settings) are the
analogous to the orientation of these apparatuses (rotation around the
axis of propagation of the particles). Quantum mechanics predicts that
the distance and times at which the spin measurements are performed is
completely irrelevant, so that the correlations will remain the same
if they take place in very remote places.
Another ingredient of the EPR reasoning is the notion of "elements of
reality"; EPR first remark that these elements cannot be found by a
priori philosophical considerations, but must be found by an appeal to
results of experiments and measurements. They then propose the
following criterion: "if, without in any way disturbing a system, we
can predict with certainty the value of a physical quantity, then
there exists an element of physical reality corresponding to this
physical quantity". In other words, certainty can not emerge from
nothing: an experimental result that is known in advance is
necessarily the consequence of some pre-existing physical property. In
our botanical analogy, we implicitly made use of this idea in the
reasoning of §3.2.2.
A last, but essential, ingredient of the EPR reasoning is the notion
of space-time and locality: the elements of reality in question are
attached to the region of space where the experiment takes place, and
they cannot vary suddenly (or even less appear) under the influence of
events taking place in very distant region of space. The peas of the
parable were in fact not so much the symbol of some microscopic
object, electrons or spin 1/2 atoms for instance. Rather, they
symbolize regions of space where we just know that "something is
propagating"; it can be a particle, a field, or anything else, with
absolutely no assumption on its structure or physical description.
Actually, in the EPR quotation of the preceding paragraph, one may
replace the word "system" by "region of space", without altering the
rest of the reasoning. One may summarize the situation by saying that
the basic belief of EPR is that regions of space can contain elements
of reality attached to them (attaching distinct elements of reality to
separate regions of space is sometimes called "separability") and that
they evolve locally. From these assumptions, EPR prove that the
results of the measurements are functions of:
(i) intrinsic properties of the spins that they carry with them (the
EPR elements of reality)
(ii) of course, also of the orientations of the Stern-Gerlach
analyzers In addition, they show that:
(iii) the functions giving the results are well-defined functions,
which implies that no indeterministic process is taking place; in
other words, a particle with spin carries along with it all the
information necessary to provide the result to any possible
measurement.
(iv) since it is possible to envisage future measurements of
observables that are called "incompatible" in quantum mechanics, as a
matter of fact, incompatible observables can simultaneously have a
perfectly well defined value.
Item (i) may be called the EPR-1 result: quantum mechanics is
incomplete (EPR require from a complete theory that "every element of
physical reality must have a counterpart in the physical theory"); in
other words, the state vector may be a sufficient description for a
statistical ensemble of pairs, but for one single pair of spins, it
should be completed by some additional information; in still other
words, inside the ensemble of all pairs, one can distinguish between
sub-ensembles with different physical properties. Item (iii) may be
called EPR-2, and establishes the validity of determinism from a
locality assumption. Item (iv), EPR-3 result, shows that the notion of
incompatible observables is not fundamental, but just a consequence of
the incomplete character of the theory; it actually provides a reason
to reject complementarity. Curiously, EPR-3 is often presented as the
major EPR result, sometimes even with no mention of the two others;
actually, the rejection of complementarity is almost marginal or, at
least, less important for EPR than the proof of incompleteness. In
fact, in all that follows in this article, we will only need EPR-1,2.
Niels Bohr, in his reply to the EPR article [43], stated that their
criterion for physical reality contains an essential ambiguity when it
is applied to quantum phenomena. A more extensive quotation of Bohr's
reply is the following:
"The wording of the above mentioned criterion (the EPR criterion for
elements of reality)... contains an ambiguity as regards the
expression 'without in any way disturbing a system'. Of course there
is in a case like that considered (by EPR) no question of a mechanical
disturbance of the system under investigation during the last critical
stage of the measuring procedure.
But even at this stage there is essentially the question of an
influence of the very conditions which define the possible types of
stage of the measuring procedure.
But even at this stage there is essentially the question of an
predictions regarding the future behavior of the system.... the
quantum description may be characterized as a rational utilization of
all possibilities of unambiguous interpretation of measurements,
compatible with the finite and uncontrollable interactions between the
objects and the measuring instruments in the field of quantum theory".
Indeed, in Bohr's view, physical reality cannot be properly defined
without reference to a complete and well-defined experiment. This
includes, not only the systems to be measured (the microscopic
particles), but also all the measurement apparatuses: "these
(experimental) conditions must be considered as an inherent element of
any phenomenon to which the term physical reality can be unambiguously
applied". Therefore EPR's attempt to assign elements of reality to one
of the spins only, or to a region of space containing it, is
incompatible with orthodox quantum mechanics 23 - even if the region
in question is very large and isolated from the rest of the world.
Expressed differently, a physical system that is extended over a large
region of space is to be considered as a single entity, within which
no attempt should be made to distinguish physical subsystems or any
substructure; trying to attach physical reality to regions of space is
then automatically bound to failure.
In terms of our Leitmotiv of § 1.1.3, the difference between ordinary
space and configuration space, we could say the following: the system
has a single wave function for both particles that propagates in a
configuration space with more than 3 dimensions, and this should be
taken very seriously; no attempt should be made to come back to three
dimensions and implement locality arguments in a smaller space.
Bohr's point of view is, of course, not contradictory with relativity,
but since it minimizes the impact of basic notions such as space-time,
or events (a measurement process in quantum mechanics is not local;
therefore it is not an event stricto sensu), it does not fit very well
with it. One could add that Bohr's article is difficult to understand;
many physicists admit that a precise characterization of his attitude,
in terms for instance of exactly what traditional principles of
physics should be given up, is delicate (see for example the
discussion of ref. [8]). In Pearle's words: "Bohr's rebuttal was
essentially that Einstein's opinion disagreed with his own" [46]. It
is true that, when scrutinizing Bohr's texts, one never gets
completely sure to what extent he fully realized all the consequences
of his position. Actually, in most of his reply to EPR [43] in
Physical Review, he just repeats the orthodox point of view in the
case of a single particle submitted to incompatible measurements, and
even goes through considerations that are not obviously related to the
EPR argument, as if he did not appreciate how interesting the
discussion becomes for two remote correlated particles; the relation
to locality is not explicitly discussed, as if this was an unimportant
issue (while it was the starting point of further important work, the
Bell theorem for instance24). The precise reply to EPR is actually
contained in only a short paragraph of this article, from which the
quotations given above have been taken. Even Bell confessed that he
had strong difficulties understanding Bohr ("I have very little idea
what this means.." - see the appendix of ref. [33])!
20 We are assuming here that the computers are not quantum computers
(if quantum computers can ever be built, which is another question).
21 In Bell's notation, the A functions depend on the settings a and b
as well as on .
22 Schrodinger used to remark that, if all students of a group always
give the right answer to a question chosen randomly by the professor
among two, they all necessarily knew the answer to both questions (and
not only the one they actually answer).
23 One could add that the EPR disproval of the notion of incompatible
observables implies that, at least, two different settings are
considered for one of the measurement apparatuses; this should
correspond, in Bohr's view, to two different physical realities (every
different couple a,b actually corresponds to a different physical
reality), and not to a single one as assumed in the EPR reasoning.
24 If Bohr had known the Bell theorem, he could merely have replied to
EPR that their
logical system was inconsistent (see § 4.1.3)!
25 In this reference, Wigner actually reasons explicitly in terms of
hidden variables; he
considers domains for these variables, which correspond to given
results for several possible
choices of the settings. But these domains also correspond to
categories of pairs of particles,
which is why, here, we use the notion of categories.
From
Do we really understand quantum mechanics?
http://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/0209123
JohnEB
Nov 15, 2010, 11:33:55 AM11/15/10
to Classical Physics
Einstein's view of our Universe was that it is fundamentally causal.
Bohr felt that the very nature of the Universe precludes causality.
Einstein could not agree with Bohr. In 1954, a year before his death,
he maintained:
"Like the moon has a definite position whether or not we look at the
moon, the same must also hold for the atomic objects, as there is no
sharp distinction possible between these and macroscopic objects.
Observation cannot CREATE an element of reality like a position, there
must be something contained in the complete description of physical
reality which corresponds to the possibility of observing a position,
already before the observation has been actually made." - Kennedy, P.
(1994) Preparing for the Twenty-Century (London Fontana Press)
Let's compare the usefulness of these two viewpoints:
It is positively hilarious. Dr. Mills is chastised daily because he
has spent 20 years on on his GUT-CP & many ideas for new products
involving new physics and chemistry. So, let's look at the competition
- the physics derived from quantum mechanics:
1. Quantum gravity has been an active area of study for about 60
years. That 60 years and a buck will get you a cup of coffee.
2. Quantum computing dates back to the 1970s and with a huge effort,
the number of useful products is zero.
3. Quantum entanglement has been around since about 1935; the number
of useful products is zero. Let's see, that is 75 years.
4. The Many Worlds concept has been around for about 40 years. The
number of useful products is zero.
5. The string theory concept has been around for about 40 years. The
number of useful products is zero.
The cost of this quantum fiasco must be measured by what might have
been if the thousands of physicists had been working on useful
physics. Can you imagine the revolution if all the physicists actually
started doing useful physics?
We see that one very useful product, the laser, was originally said to
be impossible by two of the fathers of quantum mechanics, Bohr and von
Neumann. Einstein did the theoretical work for the laser about 90
years ago. Bohr and von Neumann could not accept the concept of the
laser because it was based on Einstein's view of a causal Universe.
When Bohr and von Neumann finally saw a working laser, they agreed
that the laser was possible, but still did not change their thinking.
The Copenhagen interpretation suggests that observation constructs
reality. Bohr wrote of `fundamental limitations' within atomic
physics, in the `objective existence of phenomena independent of their
means of observation'.'' The reality envisaged by Bohr was not an
objective, but a phenomenal one. It did not exist in the absence of
observation. Bohr did not actually deny the existence of an objective
reality `out there'; but he thought it meaningless to ask any
questions about what this reality was. In Bohr's philosophy, the facts
of measurement and observation must suffice. There is no point in
asking what lies beyond the observation. Einstein could not agree with
Bohr.
I do not want to deal with the question of who was right. I want to
look at whose concept is more useful. It has become very clear that
biology is causal through the DNA, RNA, protein, and cell logical
chain. So we see that Bohr's viewpoint, which has given us quantum
gravity, quantum computing, quantum entanglement, the Many Worlds
concept, and string theory, has produced almost nothing useful.
Einstein's viewpont has given us the laser and the entire field of
medicine, even at the atomic and molecular level. Why would anyone go
to a doctor if they did not view biology as causal.
Bohr felt that the very nature of the Universe precludes causality.
Einstein could not agree with Bohr. In 1954, a year before his death,
he maintained:
"Like the moon has a definite position whether or not we look at the
moon, the same must also hold for the atomic objects, as there is no
sharp distinction possible between these and macroscopic objects.
Observation cannot CREATE an element of reality like a position, there
must be something contained in the complete description of physical
reality which corresponds to the possibility of observing a position,
already before the observation has been actually made." - Kennedy, P.
(1994) Preparing for the Twenty-Century (London Fontana Press)
Let's compare the usefulness of these two viewpoints:
It is positively hilarious. Dr. Mills is chastised daily because he
has spent 20 years on on his GUT-CP & many ideas for new products
involving new physics and chemistry. So, let's look at the competition
- the physics derived from quantum mechanics:
1. Quantum gravity has been an active area of study for about 60
years. That 60 years and a buck will get you a cup of coffee.
2. Quantum computing dates back to the 1970s and with a huge effort,
the number of useful products is zero.
3. Quantum entanglement has been around since about 1935; the number
of useful products is zero. Let's see, that is 75 years.
4. The Many Worlds concept has been around for about 40 years. The
number of useful products is zero.
5. The string theory concept has been around for about 40 years. The
number of useful products is zero.
The cost of this quantum fiasco must be measured by what might have
been if the thousands of physicists had been working on useful
physics. Can you imagine the revolution if all the physicists actually
started doing useful physics?
We see that one very useful product, the laser, was originally said to
be impossible by two of the fathers of quantum mechanics, Bohr and von
Neumann. Einstein did the theoretical work for the laser about 90
years ago. Bohr and von Neumann could not accept the concept of the
laser because it was based on Einstein's view of a causal Universe.
When Bohr and von Neumann finally saw a working laser, they agreed
that the laser was possible, but still did not change their thinking.
The Copenhagen interpretation suggests that observation constructs
reality. Bohr wrote of `fundamental limitations' within atomic
physics, in the `objective existence of phenomena independent of their
means of observation'.'' The reality envisaged by Bohr was not an
objective, but a phenomenal one. It did not exist in the absence of
observation. Bohr did not actually deny the existence of an objective
reality `out there'; but he thought it meaningless to ask any
questions about what this reality was. In Bohr's philosophy, the facts
of measurement and observation must suffice. There is no point in
asking what lies beyond the observation. Einstein could not agree with
Bohr.
I do not want to deal with the question of who was right. I want to
look at whose concept is more useful. It has become very clear that
biology is causal through the DNA, RNA, protein, and cell logical
chain. So we see that Bohr's viewpoint, which has given us quantum
gravity, quantum computing, quantum entanglement, the Many Worlds
concept, and string theory, has produced almost nothing useful.
Einstein's viewpont has given us the laser and the entire field of
medicine, even at the atomic and molecular level. Why would anyone go
to a doctor if they did not view biology as causal.
JohnEB
Nov 15, 2010, 12:44:33 PM11/15/10
to Classical Physics
The analysis of the human genome shows that my body is a causal
mechanism. The new field of genomics is based on the fact that biology
is a causal science. Volume 2 of the GUT-CP explains the causal basis
for biology. We have yet to discover all of the causes, but we have
started down the road to real understanding. Neils Bohr did not think
we need to understand anything.
The Updated BLP Business Presentation Oct 2010 immediately presents
Dr. Mills' causal theory
http://www.blacklightpower.com/presentations/businesspresentation-web.pdf
Review of Theory from page 7 of the Updated BLP Business Presentation
Oct 2010:
Founder, Dr. Randell Mills, proposed a new model of the electron that
was used to predict our novel energy technology
Assume physical laws apply on all scales including the atomic scale
Start with first principles
. Conservation of mass-energy
. Conservation of linear and angular momentum
. Maxwell's Equations
. Newton's Laws
. Special Relativity
Highly predictive— application of Maxwell's equations precisely
predicts hundreds of fundamental
spectral observations in exact equations with no adjustable parameters
(fundamental constants only).
Correctly predicts the fundamental observations of chemistry and
physics in exact equations over a scale (largest to smallest) of 1
followed by 85 zeros.
Comparison of Classical to Quantum Mechanical Performance from page 10
of the Updated BLP Business Presentation:
The total bond energies of exact classical solutions of 415 molecules
generated by Millsian 1.0 and those from a modern quantum mechanics-
based program, Spartan's pre-computed database using 6-31G* basis set
at the Hartree-Pock level of theory, were compared to experimental
values. (A) The Millsian results were consistently within an average
relative deviation of about 0.1% of the experimentally values. (B) In
contrast, the 6-31G* results deviated over a wide range of relative
error, typically being >30-150% with a large percentage of
catastrophic failures, depending on functional group type and basis
set.
R. L. Mills, B. Holverstott, W. Good, A. Makwana, J. Paulus, "Total
Bond Energies of Exact Classical Solutions of Molecules Generated by
Millsian 1.0 Compared to Those Computed Using Modern 3-21G and 6-31G*
Basis Sets," Phys. Essays 23, 153 (2010); doi: 10.4006/1.3310832
Note that the Millsian software is based on Volume 2 of the GUT-CP
which establishes the causal theory for our obviously causal universe.
The entire culture of this planet is based on causal thinking; law,
engineering, science (except for quantum mechanics), and day to day
living, 'It is Monday, so I must go to work.' Biology is a causal
science, as is proven by genomics, even though the controlling objects
are well within the "quantum" domain. But what is little realized is
that causal thinking in biology dates all the way back to prehistory.
Henry Gee has written a wonderful book called "Jacob's Ladder" that
explains the hundreds of years of causal thinking. "Jacob's Ladder"
is the most powerful argument for causality I have every seen.
The following is from Henry Gee's book "Jacob's Ladder":
Jacob's Ladder delivers a remarkably lucid explanation of what the
sequencing of the human genome really tells us. Knowing the sequence,
evolutionary biologist Henry Gee shows, is just the beginning: seeing
the letters and words. The next frontier is in understanding snatches
of conversation between genes–how they interact to direct the growth
of an organism. Gee takes us into the heart of that conversation,
illuminating how genes govern a single egg cell's miraculous
transformation into a human being, and how they continue to direct
that person's day-by-day development throughout a lifetime.
Gee tells the story of what we know about the genome today and what we
are likely to discover tomorrow. As our knowledge advances, we will be
able to direct with increasing authority the conversations between
genes—not only performing medical interventions but also creating
whole scripts directing birth, ancestry, and diversity in brave new
world.
HENRY GEE, former Regent professor at UCLA, is a science writer for
Nature. He lives in London.
And he dreamed, and behold a ladder set up on the earth, and the top
of it reached to heaven: and behold the angels of God ascending and
descending on it. And, behold, the Lord stood above it, and said, I
[i]am[/i] the Lord God of Abraham thy father, and the God of Isaac:
the land whereon thou liest, to thee will I give it, and to thy seed;
And thy seed shall be as the dust of the earth; and thou shalt spread
abroad to the west, and to the east, and to the north, and to the
south: and in thee and in thy seed shall all the families of the earth
be blessed.
. Genesis 28: 12-14
Wherein I spake of most disastrous chances,
Of moving accidents by flood and field,
Of hair-breadth 'scapes i' the imminent deadly breach,
Of being taken by the insolent foe
And sold to slavery, of my redemption thence
And portance in my travels' history;
Wherein of antres vast and deserts idle,
Rough quarries, rocks, and hills whose heads touch heaven,
It was my hint to speak – such was the process -
And of the Cannibals that each other eat,
The Anthropophagi, and men whose heads
Do grow beneath their shoulders.
. Shakespeare, Othello, I, iii, 134-45
Preface
On 12 February 2001, an international team of scientists announced
that they had substantially deciphered the human genome — the genetic
instructions for creating and maintaining a human being, and our
evolutionary birthright. The event was reported in the New York Times
as an achievement representing a pinnacle of human self-knowledge. The
effort to sequence the human genome has been compared with the Apollo
programme to put astronauts on the Moon, so the scientists were surely
entitled to a certain amount of self-congratulation.
To describe the sequencing of the genome as a technical feat —like
sending astronauts to the Moon, or even crossing the Himalayas on a
unicycle — is to miss the point. To be sure, it is fun to learn that
if each one of the three billion DNA bases that make up the genome
were magnified to the size of a letter on this page, the genome itself
would stretch across the continental United States and back again. But
such facts stupefy rather than edify. The genome is important not
because of what it is made of, but because of what it does: it is the
agency that creates and maintains an organism, urging an endless
variety of exquisite life forms from formless eggs. As such, it
transcends the particularities of its substance and becomes a motif
that has been central to biological thought since antiquity, making
the achievement of 2001 all the more profound and exciting.
If any discovery represents a pinnacle of human self-knowledge, it
does so only by virtue of the support of the mountain on which that
pinnacle is raised. For thousands of years, people have wondered about
the identity of the mysterious and marvellous entity that makes
babies, shapes our evolutionary history and populates the world with
living things of almost unimaginable variety – in short, the thing
that teases form from the void. The history of biology can be retold
as the story of the search for this agency, the genome. My aim in this
book is to tell that story. Or rather, three stories.
The first, and the most direct, is an account of the intricate
development of a human embryo from an egg. A pea-sized embryo
recognizable as human develops from a fertilized egg in just four
weeks, often before the mother even realizes she is pregnant. In this
first strand can be seen the initial impetus for this book, which grew
out of a desire to express the wonder that every new parent feels on
confronting birth, an event which is both intimate and timeless.
The development of a human embryo is at the same time an expression of
unique individuality and universal heritage. At this point the first
story gives way to the second: how the course of individual
development mirrors the history of human evolution itself, back to the
dawn of life. Put another way, the human genome directs the
development of every single embryo, but is itself a product of
evolution and a reservoir of evolutionary memory.
The third story – and the one around which the book as a whole has
been constructed – is the tale of discovery, of how people over many
centuries have come to understand the development of individuals in
terms of the variation, diversity and evolution of species.
As I researched the book, I found to my surprise that the story can be
traced back to antiquity and extends more or less seamlessly down to
the present. From a fully historical perspective, modern scientific
research shows clear evidence of its ancient roots. For example, every
scientist takes for granted that the genome in any particular
individual, while unique to that individual, is at the same time the
vehicle for our heritage. This is not a modern view, but stems
directly from a theory which is now all but forgotten — the theory of
`preformationism'. This idea, which formed the mainstream of
biological thought in the late seventeenth and for much of the
eighteenth century, holds that the germ of each individual is not made
anew with each conception, but was created in all its essentials at
the beginning of time. In other words, conception does not start a new
life from scratch, but simply activates a programme that was already
in existence, and which has existed since the beginning of time. The
modern idea of the genome as the eternal encapsulation of the
instructions to produce a human being owes much to preformationism.
Watson and Crick's classic paper from 1953 on the structure of DNA,
containing the now famous line 'It has not escaped our notice that the
specific pairing we have postulated immediately suggests a possible
copying mechanism for the genetic material' 1 is pure preformationism.
.
.
A slightly more recent and telling example of ancient roots traceable
in modern thinking concerns the founder of the science of genetics,
William Bateson. He realized, in the 1890s, that the nature of
genetic variation was completely unknown – a serious problem, given
that Darwin's theory of natural selection had been based on variation.
This, Bateson saw, was the source of the general dissatisfaction with
Darwinism being shown in the last decades of the nineteenth century.
His solution was to produce a catalogue of every case of biological
variation he could find, in the hope of discerning general laws. The
result, Materials _for the Study of Variation (1894), was fundamental,
and in more ways than one. As well as trying to address variation from
first principles, Materials harked back to an archaic tradition in
scientific thought, that of the `bestiary' – the medieval catalogue of
natural freaks and monsters, a genre which early scientists such as
Francis Bacon recommended as a useful exercise in understanding the
extent of natural variation. But Materials is far more than a dry
catalogue – it is a work wrought in passion by a scientist determined
to uncover the roots of variation and inheritance. Less than a decade
after Materials was published, Bateson coined the name for a new
science – genetics. Through him, therefore, the modern science of the
genome has deep connections with the earliest stirrings of biological
thought, if not the fumes and smoke of alchemy.
.
.
This somewhat cartoonish view of history engenders a similarly
simplistic view of the history of science more generally, in which we
are seen as progressing steadily, as if on a unified front from the
past into the future, forever shining brighter lights of discovery
into an ever-shrinking puddle of ignorance. As a consequence, if we
hear anything at all of biology before Darwin, it is brought up only
to be belittled. If the nature-philosophers are depicted as hopeless
romantics, the preformationists will be seen as periwigged buffoons
who drew little men in the heads of spermatozoa and believed it truth;
and the contributions of the alchemists, self-locked in crepuscular
dungeons of horror, are to be viewed as entirely undeserving of
serious consideration. One of my tasks in this book is to set Darwin
in context and show how these earlier sources influenced both Darwin
and later scientists, down to our own age. I feel very strongly that
this rehabilitation is not only desirable but necessary, as we shall
require the fullest and most dispassionate appreciation of the entire
historical perspective of biology if we are to face the coming
decades, in which our knowledge of the human genome might be applied
to alter the Earth – and human beings – beyond recognition.
That time has not yet come. It is evident, however, that the standard
of debate surrounding related issues of our own day –abortion, in
vitro fertilization, the genetic modification of crops, and so on – is
hardly adequate to address even these problems, and yet the prospect
of the modification of genomes makes those concerns trivial indeed.
The time has arrived when we must address – seriously – the
relationship between our biology and our humanity. But before we can
do that we must understand how we got to where we are now, and it is
to this end that I offer this modest contribution.
.
.
Henry Gee Ilford, September 2003
1 Watson, J. D. and Crick, F. H. C., 'A structure for deoxyribose
nucleic acids', Nature, vol. 171 (1953), pp. 737-8.
mechanism. The new field of genomics is based on the fact that biology
is a causal science. Volume 2 of the GUT-CP explains the causal basis
for biology. We have yet to discover all of the causes, but we have
started down the road to real understanding. Neils Bohr did not think
we need to understand anything.
The Updated BLP Business Presentation Oct 2010 immediately presents
Dr. Mills' causal theory
http://www.blacklightpower.com/presentations/businesspresentation-web.pdf
Review of Theory from page 7 of the Updated BLP Business Presentation
Oct 2010:
Founder, Dr. Randell Mills, proposed a new model of the electron that
was used to predict our novel energy technology
Assume physical laws apply on all scales including the atomic scale
Start with first principles
. Conservation of mass-energy
. Conservation of linear and angular momentum
. Maxwell's Equations
. Newton's Laws
. Special Relativity
Highly predictive— application of Maxwell's equations precisely
predicts hundreds of fundamental
spectral observations in exact equations with no adjustable parameters
(fundamental constants only).
Correctly predicts the fundamental observations of chemistry and
physics in exact equations over a scale (largest to smallest) of 1
followed by 85 zeros.
Comparison of Classical to Quantum Mechanical Performance from page 10
of the Updated BLP Business Presentation:
The total bond energies of exact classical solutions of 415 molecules
generated by Millsian 1.0 and those from a modern quantum mechanics-
based program, Spartan's pre-computed database using 6-31G* basis set
at the Hartree-Pock level of theory, were compared to experimental
values. (A) The Millsian results were consistently within an average
relative deviation of about 0.1% of the experimentally values. (B) In
contrast, the 6-31G* results deviated over a wide range of relative
error, typically being >30-150% with a large percentage of
catastrophic failures, depending on functional group type and basis
set.
R. L. Mills, B. Holverstott, W. Good, A. Makwana, J. Paulus, "Total
Bond Energies of Exact Classical Solutions of Molecules Generated by
Millsian 1.0 Compared to Those Computed Using Modern 3-21G and 6-31G*
Basis Sets," Phys. Essays 23, 153 (2010); doi: 10.4006/1.3310832
Note that the Millsian software is based on Volume 2 of the GUT-CP
which establishes the causal theory for our obviously causal universe.
The entire culture of this planet is based on causal thinking; law,
engineering, science (except for quantum mechanics), and day to day
living, 'It is Monday, so I must go to work.' Biology is a causal
science, as is proven by genomics, even though the controlling objects
are well within the "quantum" domain. But what is little realized is
that causal thinking in biology dates all the way back to prehistory.
Henry Gee has written a wonderful book called "Jacob's Ladder" that
explains the hundreds of years of causal thinking. "Jacob's Ladder"
is the most powerful argument for causality I have every seen.
The following is from Henry Gee's book "Jacob's Ladder":
Jacob's Ladder delivers a remarkably lucid explanation of what the
sequencing of the human genome really tells us. Knowing the sequence,
evolutionary biologist Henry Gee shows, is just the beginning: seeing
the letters and words. The next frontier is in understanding snatches
of conversation between genes–how they interact to direct the growth
of an organism. Gee takes us into the heart of that conversation,
illuminating how genes govern a single egg cell's miraculous
transformation into a human being, and how they continue to direct
that person's day-by-day development throughout a lifetime.
Gee tells the story of what we know about the genome today and what we
are likely to discover tomorrow. As our knowledge advances, we will be
able to direct with increasing authority the conversations between
genes—not only performing medical interventions but also creating
whole scripts directing birth, ancestry, and diversity in brave new
world.
HENRY GEE, former Regent professor at UCLA, is a science writer for
Nature. He lives in London.
And he dreamed, and behold a ladder set up on the earth, and the top
of it reached to heaven: and behold the angels of God ascending and
descending on it. And, behold, the Lord stood above it, and said, I
[i]am[/i] the Lord God of Abraham thy father, and the God of Isaac:
the land whereon thou liest, to thee will I give it, and to thy seed;
And thy seed shall be as the dust of the earth; and thou shalt spread
abroad to the west, and to the east, and to the north, and to the
south: and in thee and in thy seed shall all the families of the earth
be blessed.
. Genesis 28: 12-14
Wherein I spake of most disastrous chances,
Of moving accidents by flood and field,
Of hair-breadth 'scapes i' the imminent deadly breach,
Of being taken by the insolent foe
And sold to slavery, of my redemption thence
And portance in my travels' history;
Wherein of antres vast and deserts idle,
Rough quarries, rocks, and hills whose heads touch heaven,
It was my hint to speak – such was the process -
And of the Cannibals that each other eat,
The Anthropophagi, and men whose heads
Do grow beneath their shoulders.
. Shakespeare, Othello, I, iii, 134-45
Preface
On 12 February 2001, an international team of scientists announced
that they had substantially deciphered the human genome — the genetic
instructions for creating and maintaining a human being, and our
evolutionary birthright. The event was reported in the New York Times
as an achievement representing a pinnacle of human self-knowledge. The
effort to sequence the human genome has been compared with the Apollo
programme to put astronauts on the Moon, so the scientists were surely
entitled to a certain amount of self-congratulation.
To describe the sequencing of the genome as a technical feat —like
sending astronauts to the Moon, or even crossing the Himalayas on a
unicycle — is to miss the point. To be sure, it is fun to learn that
if each one of the three billion DNA bases that make up the genome
were magnified to the size of a letter on this page, the genome itself
would stretch across the continental United States and back again. But
such facts stupefy rather than edify. The genome is important not
because of what it is made of, but because of what it does: it is the
agency that creates and maintains an organism, urging an endless
variety of exquisite life forms from formless eggs. As such, it
transcends the particularities of its substance and becomes a motif
that has been central to biological thought since antiquity, making
the achievement of 2001 all the more profound and exciting.
If any discovery represents a pinnacle of human self-knowledge, it
does so only by virtue of the support of the mountain on which that
pinnacle is raised. For thousands of years, people have wondered about
the identity of the mysterious and marvellous entity that makes
babies, shapes our evolutionary history and populates the world with
living things of almost unimaginable variety – in short, the thing
that teases form from the void. The history of biology can be retold
as the story of the search for this agency, the genome. My aim in this
book is to tell that story. Or rather, three stories.
The first, and the most direct, is an account of the intricate
development of a human embryo from an egg. A pea-sized embryo
recognizable as human develops from a fertilized egg in just four
weeks, often before the mother even realizes she is pregnant. In this
first strand can be seen the initial impetus for this book, which grew
out of a desire to express the wonder that every new parent feels on
confronting birth, an event which is both intimate and timeless.
The development of a human embryo is at the same time an expression of
unique individuality and universal heritage. At this point the first
story gives way to the second: how the course of individual
development mirrors the history of human evolution itself, back to the
dawn of life. Put another way, the human genome directs the
development of every single embryo, but is itself a product of
evolution and a reservoir of evolutionary memory.
The third story – and the one around which the book as a whole has
been constructed – is the tale of discovery, of how people over many
centuries have come to understand the development of individuals in
terms of the variation, diversity and evolution of species.
As I researched the book, I found to my surprise that the story can be
traced back to antiquity and extends more or less seamlessly down to
the present. From a fully historical perspective, modern scientific
research shows clear evidence of its ancient roots. For example, every
scientist takes for granted that the genome in any particular
individual, while unique to that individual, is at the same time the
vehicle for our heritage. This is not a modern view, but stems
directly from a theory which is now all but forgotten — the theory of
`preformationism'. This idea, which formed the mainstream of
biological thought in the late seventeenth and for much of the
eighteenth century, holds that the germ of each individual is not made
anew with each conception, but was created in all its essentials at
the beginning of time. In other words, conception does not start a new
life from scratch, but simply activates a programme that was already
in existence, and which has existed since the beginning of time. The
modern idea of the genome as the eternal encapsulation of the
instructions to produce a human being owes much to preformationism.
Watson and Crick's classic paper from 1953 on the structure of DNA,
containing the now famous line 'It has not escaped our notice that the
specific pairing we have postulated immediately suggests a possible
copying mechanism for the genetic material' 1 is pure preformationism.
.
.
A slightly more recent and telling example of ancient roots traceable
in modern thinking concerns the founder of the science of genetics,
William Bateson. He realized, in the 1890s, that the nature of
genetic variation was completely unknown – a serious problem, given
that Darwin's theory of natural selection had been based on variation.
This, Bateson saw, was the source of the general dissatisfaction with
Darwinism being shown in the last decades of the nineteenth century.
His solution was to produce a catalogue of every case of biological
variation he could find, in the hope of discerning general laws. The
result, Materials _for the Study of Variation (1894), was fundamental,
and in more ways than one. As well as trying to address variation from
first principles, Materials harked back to an archaic tradition in
scientific thought, that of the `bestiary' – the medieval catalogue of
natural freaks and monsters, a genre which early scientists such as
Francis Bacon recommended as a useful exercise in understanding the
extent of natural variation. But Materials is far more than a dry
catalogue – it is a work wrought in passion by a scientist determined
to uncover the roots of variation and inheritance. Less than a decade
after Materials was published, Bateson coined the name for a new
science – genetics. Through him, therefore, the modern science of the
genome has deep connections with the earliest stirrings of biological
thought, if not the fumes and smoke of alchemy.
.
.
This somewhat cartoonish view of history engenders a similarly
simplistic view of the history of science more generally, in which we
are seen as progressing steadily, as if on a unified front from the
past into the future, forever shining brighter lights of discovery
into an ever-shrinking puddle of ignorance. As a consequence, if we
hear anything at all of biology before Darwin, it is brought up only
to be belittled. If the nature-philosophers are depicted as hopeless
romantics, the preformationists will be seen as periwigged buffoons
who drew little men in the heads of spermatozoa and believed it truth;
and the contributions of the alchemists, self-locked in crepuscular
dungeons of horror, are to be viewed as entirely undeserving of
serious consideration. One of my tasks in this book is to set Darwin
in context and show how these earlier sources influenced both Darwin
and later scientists, down to our own age. I feel very strongly that
this rehabilitation is not only desirable but necessary, as we shall
require the fullest and most dispassionate appreciation of the entire
historical perspective of biology if we are to face the coming
decades, in which our knowledge of the human genome might be applied
to alter the Earth – and human beings – beyond recognition.
That time has not yet come. It is evident, however, that the standard
of debate surrounding related issues of our own day –abortion, in
vitro fertilization, the genetic modification of crops, and so on – is
hardly adequate to address even these problems, and yet the prospect
of the modification of genomes makes those concerns trivial indeed.
The time has arrived when we must address – seriously – the
relationship between our biology and our humanity. But before we can
do that we must understand how we got to where we are now, and it is
to this end that I offer this modest contribution.
.
.
Henry Gee Ilford, September 2003
1 Watson, J. D. and Crick, F. H. C., 'A structure for deoxyribose
nucleic acids', Nature, vol. 171 (1953), pp. 737-8.
JohnEB
Nov 17, 2010, 7:49:46 AM11/17/10
to Classical Physics
The analysis of the human genome shows that my body is a causal
mechanism. The new field of genomics is based on the fact that biology
is a causal science. Volume 2 of the GUT-CP explains the causal basis
for biology. We have yet to discover all of the causes, but we have
started down the road to real understanding. Neils Bohr did not think
we need to understand anything.
mechanism. The new field of genomics is based on the fact that biology
is a causal science. Volume 2 of the GUT-CP explains the causal basis
for biology. We have yet to discover all of the causes, but we have
started down the road to real understanding. Neils Bohr did not think
we need to understand anything.
The following is from Henry Gee's book "Jacob's Ladder":
Chapter 1
Birth
A little girl is about to be born. Just 200 days ago she was a single
cell, a mote quickened into new life, yet made from the salvage of the
inaccessibly old; a new combination of genes, passed down like
heirlooms from the first men and women; the first fishes that ever
crawled from the sea, the first things that were ever alive. Her genes
are at the same time a treasury which belongs to her alone, and the
heritage that belongs to all of us.
In 200 days she has grown from the edge of invisibility until she is
bursting to get out. Her growth has been more than mere inflation. The
single cell of a few months earlier has divided and multiplied to
become trillions strong, with each cell in its own place in relation
to all the others. There is a direction to her organization almost too
intricate to follow: the child I shall soon see in all her wholeness
is ordered on every level. She will have organs; a heart, arms and
legs, brain and skin. Her organs will, in turn, be made of tissues,
carefully assembled —ranks of muscles; a frame of cartilage, soon to
become bone; neurones wiring themselves together.
.
.
My daughter's voyage began thirty-seven weeks before her birth, when
one of many thousands of sperm met a single, receptive egg shed by one
of the two ovaries of the motherto-be.1 The sperm penetrates the egg,
disappearing into its gelatinous confines. The egg responds by
expanding outwards, offering a distended envelope as an obstacle to
any other approaching sperm. The successful sperm is like millions of
others, a package of genetic material propelled by a lashing tail,
distinguished only by its luck in having got there first. But in
victory lies annihilation. The tail and all the other parts of the
sperm are dismembered by the egg; the genetic material, packed into
the head, sinks downwards to the nucleus of the bloated egg and merges
with it.
A fertilized egg is called a zygote. Its genome is unique –the germ of
a new individual – but not new, being made of equal contributions from
each parent. Within twenty-four hours, the zygote divides into two
identical cells, lying within a common fertilization membrane. Just
four days after conception, the embryo has become a ball of thirty-two
cells straining at the confines of this same fertilization membrane.
At this stage the embryo looks like a berry – in fact it is known as a
morula, after the Latin for mulberry. After another day, a small pool
of fluid starts to form in the middle of the morula, pressing the
cramped cells up against the inside of the membrane. When this
happens, the morula crosses the line to become a new stage, the
blastocyst.
As these events unfold within the fertilization membrane, the germ of
new life floats down the fallopian tube, from the site of
fertilization and into the uterus. This is when the embryo performs
its first act of defiance: the blastocyst bores a hole through the
fertilization membrane and emerges, rather like a butterfly from a
chrysalis, to become a free agent. This freedom is temporary, for the
naked blastocyst immediately burrows its way into the spongy lining of
the uterus, an event known as implantation.
.
.
The layer of cells in which the primitive streak forms is the ectoderm
– the tissue that will eventually become the skin, nervous system, and
much else. The lower layer of cells, or endoderm, continuous with the
yolk sac, is the future digestive tract. At the beginning of the third
week, cells from all over the ectoderm flow towards the primitive
streak like water drawn by a weir, pouring over its edges, cascading
downwards to collect between the ectoderm and endoderm.
This distinctive process, called gastrulation, creates a third, middle
layer of cells, the mesoderm, between the ectoderm and the endoderm.
This new layer of cells will become the muscle, skeleton and internal
organs of the new human being. As this process continues during the
third week, the primitive streak starts to shorten, leaving a trail in
the underlying mesoderm in the form of a tube of tissue. This tube is
the notochord, a stiffening rod that will become the backbone.
Towards the end of the third week from fertilization, after the
primitive streak has disappeared, another furrow starts to form in the
ectoderm, immediately above the notochord. Indeed, this new groove
cannot form unless the notochord exists, because chemical signals
secreted by the notochord cells are partly responsible for engendering
this new structure. This is the neural groove, which will eventually
become the spinal cord and the central nervous system.
.
.
By the end of the fourth week a human embryo is about the size of a
garden pea, and has acquired the rudiments of limbs, kidneys, and
eyes, and the very first outlines of a face. It still has much to
achieve, but subsequent events are essentially elaboration on a
pattern laid down in the first four weeks after conception. Directing
this fervid activity is the genome, the agent that creates form from
the formless. That the genome sets in train events which create a
recognizably human embryo from a single zygote in less than a month is
indeed remarkable — yet many questions remain to be asked.
For example, if speed is of the essence, why is the process of human
development quite so complicated? Would it not be more efficient to
grow a baby from a ball of cells directly, without first flattening a
spherical blastocyst into a germinal disc, only to roll it all up
again later? Might there not be simpler ways to make an embryo?
Possibly, but that isn't the point: the genome has a history, and
embryos are not created anew each time, as if from scratch. The genome
is inherited, passed down through a chain of ancestors unbroken since
the dawn of life, more than 3 billion years ago. So, as well as
creating each new human, the activities of the genome reflect the
evolutionary history of the human species as a whole. In the dance of
its formation, an embryo is paying homage to the deeds of its
ancestors. And some of those deeds were done an extremely long time
ago.
More than 300 million years ago, our fishy and amphibian ancestors
were creatures whose eggs, laid in water, were small and contained
little yolk. That is true of the embryos of modern frogs, for example,
and the yolk is entirely subsumed within the embryo. Because of this,
frog embryos develop more or less directly from a ball of cells: at no
stage is the ball rolled out flat to create a germinal disc which must
be rolled up again later. Nevertheless, the presence of yolk – which,
as in human embryos, is associated with the endoderm – makes the
animal's endoderm much slower to develop than the ectoderm.
When our remote ancestors, the earliest reptiles, started laying eggs
with hard shells, on land, the embryos had to be supplied with enough
yolk to feed them through a long period of incubation. In the egg of
any reptile or bird, the volume of yolk is so great that the embryo is
tiny by comparison, a flat disc of cells pressed up against the yolk
like a lentil stuck to a watermelon. So it was with our egg-laying,
reptilian ancestors. One lineage of reptiles evolved into mammals
which nurtured their young in a womb. This event happened perhaps 100
million years ago, when our ancestors were small, rat-like creatures
scuttling around in the shadows of the dinosaurs.
The yolk sac of a human embryo is a vestigial structure, nothing like
the enormous yolks of birds or reptiles. At a very early stage in its
development, the human embryo becomes implanted in the lining of the
womb, where it produces blood vessels which tap into the maternal
circulation, allowing it to feed directly from the mother. Yolk is
therefore unnecessary –and neither, therefore, is the requirement that
human embryos should be flattened into a disc, to make the most of the
space between a large yolk and a hard shell, because neither yolk nor
shell have existed in the human lineage for millions of generations.
And yet, even now, each human embryo is rolled out to form a germinal
disc, reptile-fashion, before rolling up again. There is no greater
argument for the gradual evolution of humans than the continued
existence of these ancient vestiges.
.
.
Within the headlong rush of the first few weeks of the development of
a single human embryo, it is possible to make out still fainter echoes
of the story of human evolution. In the fourth and fifth week after
fertilization, the neck and lower facial region of the newly folded
embryo start to pucker into a series of folds and ridges – the
pharyngeal arches. There are five pairs of these ridges, one member of
each pair on each side of the embryo. The fates of the pharyngeal
arches are many and varied. Tissues from the first arch — nearest the
head end of the embryo — become the jawbone, the muscles concerned
with chewing, and the hammer and anvil bones of the middle ear; the
second arch gives rise to the stirrup bone in the middle ear, the
hyoid bone, parts of the tongue, the muscles of facial expression, and
so on. Tissues from successive pharyngeal arches contribute to the
thyroid cartilage (`Adam's apple'), the larynx and part of the aorta —
a major blood vessel that emerges from the heart.
The pharyngeal arches form anew in each human embryo. At the same
time, they are of great antiquity, dating from a time when our remote
ancestors were simple sea creatures that fed by straining particles of
food carried in sea water. They sucked water in through their mouths
and expelled it through a series of clefts in the pharynx, retaining
any particles with sieve-like organs which covered the clefts. This
mode of feeding can be seen today among sea squirts and lancelets. The
young of primitive, jawless fishes called lampreys are also filter
feeders, even though adult lampreys have abandoned this peaceable
habit for a life of parasitic predation. The habits of young lampreys
represent a memory of a time when, between 400 and 500 million years
ago, the extinct relatives of lampreys were filter feeders even as
adults.
.
.
It is a source of wonder that the attributes that define and justify
our everyday humanity – our faces, our expressions, our voices, even
the beating of our hearts – all stem from the feeding gear of some
emotionless, expressionless animal which dwelt in a rock pool more
than half a billion years ago. Such is the depth of our heritage. Even
so, it is important to remember that the pharyngeal clefts in human
embryos resemble the gills of a larval lamprey only inasmuch as a
caricature resembles the real thing. The pharyngeal arches in human
embryos are never used in feeding. (Indeed, they are never even
perforated.)
All these vestiges do is remind us that individual development has an
evolutionary history, too. The genome, which is ultimately responsible
for this development, cannot produce a human being in what would seem
to us a simple and direct way, without reference to the passage of its
own evolutionary adventures over billions of years. The germinal disc
thus represents not just a stage in the development of an individual
human, but a stage in the evolution of humanity and of life as a whole
over more than 3 billion years.
Passed down from generation to generation, the genome is the common
thread that runs through all the organisms that have ever existed on
our planet. But the passage of the genome from parent to offspring is
not so assured that mistakes cannot be made. Sometimes these mistakes
lead to stillbirths, or to monsters. Not all mistakes are so
destructive, and their accumulation over countless generations leads
to variation: variation between individuals, and between different
species. Variation is the staff and life of evolution. Without
variation, change cannot happen, and it is in the heritable genome
that any change is cemented and memorialized. Because the genome has
been evolving for such a long time – about a quarter of the age of the
Universe – the accumulation of variation has led not only to the
otherwise inexplicable richness of the development of individuals, but
to an amazing abundance of different species.
.
.
.
The collection is so rich and so diverse that first-time visitors to
Rothschild's museum are overwhelmed. Even seasoned visitors come away
having seen something new in the seemingly unchanging cabinets. The
collections may contain animals that visitors will never have dreamed
existed. Rothschild clearly spent a lot of time making his collection
comprehensive. For example, you might be unfamiliar with the pangolin
— an animal armoured with triangular, overlapping scales, so that it
looks like a gigantic pine cone. well, the museum has a whole case of
them, showing pangolin species large and small. You come away from the
building with the impression that evolution has produced this
cornucopia of diversity with a degree of insouciance that borders on
effrontery.
The scale of the diversity of nature, especially in the tropics, had a
lasting impact on another Victorian collector, the young Charles
Darwin, whose five-year voyage on the Beagle instilled in him the germ
of what was to become his theory of evolution by natural selection.
Before Darwin, the variation of nature was held to be the visible sign
of a fallen world. His great insight was to see that variation was not
an irritating consequence of imperfection, but the very engine of
change and the ultimate source of the diversity that confronted him.
Although Darwin had little clear idea about precisely how animals and
plants passed on their traits to their descendants, he grasped an
essential quality of the genome – its continuity between past and
future, with diversity a simple consequence of the genome's antiquity.
It is no coincidence that the only illustration in the Origin of
Species depicts evolution as a tree, with a root and stock giving rise
to ever-bifurcating branches and twigs.
.
.
Such themes of continuity with the past and future make it very hard
to point to any event in the career of an embryo and declare that it
marks the origin of new life. Does life begin at conception, with the
germinal disc, or at birth? In this light, it could be argued that the
life of any individual begins not with the creation of their unique
genome at the point of fertilization, but with the conceptions of its
parents, or of any of its progenitors to an arbitrarily remote degree.
The debate is fuelled by the misconception that there is a clear
dividing line between the lives of individuals, when what actually
exists is a strand of continuity which runs back to the beginning,
and, by extension, into the future. Our parents give us all the faults
they had, but we see in the development of individuals more than the
likenesses of our parents: for in such development we can hear the
echoes of our evolutionary past.
JohnEB
Nov 17, 2010, 8:07:49 AM11/17/10
to Classical Physics
Dr. Mills Extends Einstein's Causal Universe
For Einstein, the Universe is causal. Einstein, though seriously ill
in 1948 with an aneurysm, which eventually killed him, he managed to
finish an article for the "Library of Living Philosophers," satisfied
to have defended "the good Lord against the suggestion that he
continually rolls dice."
OUTLINE OF THE RESULTS OF THE UNIFIED THEORY DERIVED FROM FIRST
PRINCIPLES
To overcome the limitations of quantum mechanics (QM), physical laws
that are exact on all scales are sought. Rather than engendering the
electron with a wave nature, as suggested by the Davisson Germer
experiment and fabricating a set of associated postulates and
mathematical rules for wave operators, a new theory is derived from
first principles.
FOUNDATIONS
Start with first principles
Conservation of mass energy
–
Maxwell’s Equations
–
Newton’s Laws
–
Lorentz transforms of Special Relativity
Highly predictive– application of Maxwell’s equations precisely
predicts hundreds of fundamental spectral observations in exact
equations with no adjustable parameters (fundamental constants only).
In addition to first principles, the only assumptions needed to
predict the Universe over 85 orders of magnitude of scale (Quarks to
Cosmos):
Four dimensional spacetime
–
The fundamental constants that comprise the fine structure constant
–
Fundamental particles including the photon have h-bar of angular
momentum
–
The Newtonian gravitational constant G
–
The spin of the electron neutrino
Classical Physics (CP) now comprises the unified Maxwell’s Equations,
Newton’s Laws, and General and Special Relativity. The closed form
calculations of a broad spectrum of fundamental phenomena containing
fundamental constants only are given in subsequent sections. CP gives
closed form solutions for the atom that give four quantum numbers, the
Rydberg constant, the stability of the n = 1 state and the instability
of the excited states, relativistic invariance of the wave equation,
the equations of the photon and electron in excited states, the
equations of the free electron, and photon which predict the wave
particle duality behavior of particles and light. The current and
charge density functions of the electron may be directly physically
interpreted. For example, spin angular momentum results from the
motion of negatively charged mass moving systematically, and the
equation for angular momentum, r x p = h-bar, can be applied directly
to the wave function (a current density function) that describes the
electron. The following observables are derived in closed form
equations based on Maxwell’s equations: the magnetic moment of a Bohr
magneton, Stern Gerlach experiment, electron and muon g factors, fine
structure splitting, Lamb shift, hyperfine structure, muonium
hyperfine structure interval, resonant line width and shape, selection
rules, correspondence principle, wave particle duality, excited
states, reduced mass, rotational energies and momenta, spin orbit
coupling, Knight shift and spin nuclear coupling, closed form
solutions for multielectron atoms, excited states of the helium atom,
elastic electron scattering from helium atoms, proton scattering from
atomic hydrogen, the nature of the chemical bond, bond energies,
vibrational energies, rotational energies, and bond distances of
hydrogen type molecules and molecular ions, the solutions for all
major functional groups that give the exact solutions of an infinite
number of molecules, solutions to the bonding in the major classes of
materials, Davisson Germer experiment, Aspect experiment, Durr
experiment on the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, Penning trap
experiments on single ions, hyperfine structure interval of
positronium, magnetic moments of the nucleons, beta decay energy of
the neutron, the binding energy of deuterium, and alpha decay. The
theory, of collective phenomena including statistical mechanics,
superconductivity and Josephson junction experiments, integral and
fractional quantum Hall effects, and the Aharonov Bohm effect, is
given. The calculations agree with experimental observations. From the
closed form solution of the helium atom, the predicted electron
scattering intensity is derived. The closed form scattering equation
matches the experimental data; whereas, calculations based on the Born
model of the atom utterly fail at small scattering angles. The
implications for the invalidity of the Schrödinger and Born models of
the atom and the dependent Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle are
discussed.
For any kind of wave advancing with limiting velocity and capable of
transmitting signals, the equation of front propagation is the same as
the equation for the front of a light wave. By applying this condition
to electromagnetic and gravitational fields at particle production,
the Schwarzschild metric (SM) is derived from the classical wave
equation, which modifies general relativity to include conservation of
spacetime, in addition to momentum and matter/energy and identifies
absolute space. The result gives a natural relationship between
Maxwell’s equations, special relativity, and general relativity. It
gives gravitation from the atom to the cosmos. The gravitational
equations with the equivalence of the particle production
energies permit the equivalence of mass energy and the spacetime that
determine the nature of absolute space wherein a “clock” is defined
that measures “clicks” on an observable in one aspect, and in another,
it is the ruler of spacetime of the universe with the implicit
dependence of spacetime on matter energy conversion. The masses of the
leptons, the quarks, and nucleons are derived from this metric of
spacetime that gives the equivalence of the gravitational and inertial
masses. The universe is time harmonically oscillatory in matter,
energy, and spacetime expansion and contraction with a minimum radius
that is the gravitational radius. In closed form equations with
fundamental constants only, CP gives the basis of the atomic,
thermodynamic, and cosmological arrows of time, the deflection of
light by stars, the precession of the perihelion of Mercury, the
Hubble constant, the age of the universe, the observed acceleration of
the expansion, the power of the universe, the power spectrum of the
universe, the microwave background temperature, the primary uniformity
of the microwave background radiation, the polarization and
microkelvin temperature spatial variation of the microwave background
radiation measured by DASI, the observed violation of the GZK cutoff,
the mass density of the universe, the large scale structure of the
universe, and the identity of dark matter which matches the criteria
for the structure of galaxies and emission from interstellar medium
and the Sun which have been observed in the laboratory [26-27]. In a
special case wherein the gravitational potential energy density of a
blackhole equals that of the Planck mass, matter converts to energy
and spacetime expands with the release of a gamma ray burst. The
singularity in the SM is eliminated. The basis of the
antigravitational force is presented with supporting experimental
evidence.
In addition to the above known phenomena and characteristics of
fundamental particles and forces, the theory predicts the existence of
a previously unknown form of matter—hydrogen atoms and molecules
having electrons of lower energy than the conventional “ground” state
called hydrinos and molecular hydrinos, respectively, where each
energy level corresponds to a fractional quantum number. The existence
of hydrinos has been confirmed experimentally proving GUT CP, and this
identity additionally resolves many celestial mysteries [26-27]. It
provides resolution to many otherwise inexplicable celestial
observations with (a) the identity of dark matter being hydrinos, (b)
the hydrino transition radiation being the radiation source heating
the warm hot interstellar medium (WHIM) and behind the observation
that diffuse H alpha emission is ubiquitous throughout the Galaxy
requiring widespread sources of flux shortward of 912 Å , and (c) the
energy and radiation from the hydrino transitions being the source of
extraordinary temperatures and power regarding the solar corona
problem, the cause of sunspots and other solar activity, and why the
Sun emits X rays [26-27].
PHYSICAL CONCEPTS THAT ARISE FROM CP DERIVATIONS ON THE SCALE
RANGE OF 85 ORDERS OF MAGNITUDE
Starting from the simple observation that the bound electron of the
hydrogen atom is experimentally observed to be stable to radiation,
the classical electromagnetic wave equation is used to solve the
electron source current by matching it to emitted electromagnetic
waves with the constraint that a bound electron in the n = 1 state
cannot radiate energy. The solution is based on Maxwell’s equations
and other experimentally confirmed physical laws. The resulting CP
gives predictions that are unprecedented in success, achieving highly
accurate agreement with observations over 85 orders of magnitude from
the scale of fundamental particles to that of the cosmos. A summary of
some of the salient features of the theory derived in subsequent
sections follows:
* Bound electrons are described by a charge density (mass density)
function which is the product of a radial delta function (f (r) =
delta( r - r(sub(n)))), angular functions, and a time function. The
latter comprise a constant angular function, a time and spherically
harmonic function, and linear combinations of these functions. Thus, a
bound electron is a constant two dimensional spherical surface of
charge (zero thickness and total charge of -e ), called an electron
orbitsphere that can exist in a bound state at only specified
distances from the nucleus determined by the force balance between the
electric fields of the electron and proton plus any resonantly
absorbed photons.
* The uniform current density function (Eqs. (I.62 I.63)) that gives
rise to the spin of the electron is generated from two current vector
fields (CVFs). Each CVF comprises a continuum of correlated orthogonal
great circle current density elements (one dimensional "current
loops"). The current pattern comprising each CVF is generated over a
half sphere surface by a set of rotations of two orthogonal great
circle current loops that serve as basis elements. Then, the two CVFs
are convoluted, and the result is normalized to exactly generate the
continuous uniform electron current density function (Eqs. (I.62 I.
63)) covering a spherical shell and having three angular momentum
components.
* Then, the total function that describes the spinning motion of each
electron orbitsphere is composed of two functions. One function, the
spin function, is spatially uniform over the orbitsphere, where each
point moves on the surface with the same quantized angular and linear
velocity, and gives rise to spin angular momentum. The other function,
the modulation function, can be spatially uniform—in which case there
is no orbital angular momentum and the magnetic moment of the electron
orbitsphere is one Bohr magneton—or not spatially uniform—in which
case there is orbital angular momentum. The modulation function moves
harmonically on the surface as a charge density wave with a quantized
angular velocity about a specific (by convention) z axis. Numerical
values for the angular velocity, radii of allowed orbitspheres,
energies, and associated quantities are calculated.
* Orbitsphere radii are calculated by setting the centripetal force
equal to the electric and magnetic forces.
* The orbitsphere is a resonator cavity which traps photons of
discrete frequencies. The radius of an orbitsphere increases with the
absorption of electromagnetic energy. The solutions to Maxwell’s
equations for modes that can be excited in the orbitsphere resonator
cavity give rise to four quantum numbers, and the energies of the
modes are the experimentally known hydrogen spectrum. The spectrum of
helium is the solution of Maxwell’s equations for the energies of
modes of this resonator cavity with a contribution from electron
electron spin and orbital interactions.
* Excited states are unstable because the charge density function of
the electron plus photon have a radial doublet function component
which corresponds to an electric dipole. The doublet possesses
spacetime Fourier components synchronous with waves traveling at the
speed of light; thus it is radiative. The charge density function of
the electron plus photon for the n = 1 principal quantum state of the
hydrogen atom as well as for each of the 1 / integer states
mathematically is purely a radial delta function. The delta function
does not possess spacetime Fourier components synchronous with waves
traveling at the speed of light; thus, each is nonradiative.
* The spectroscopic line width arises from the classical rise time
band width relationship, and the Lamb Shift is due to conservation of
energy and linear momentum and arises from the radiation reaction
force between the electron and the photon.
* The photon is an orbitsphere with electric and magnetic field lines
along orthogonal great circles. Upon ionization, the orbitsphere
radius goes to infinity and the electron becomes a plane wave
(consistent with double slit experiments) with the de Broglie
wavelength, lambda = h / p.
* The energy of atoms is stored in their electric and magnetic fields.
Chemical bonding occurs when the total energy of the participant atoms
can be lowered with the formation of two dimensional equipotential
energy surfaces (molecular orbitals (MO)) where the current motion in
the case of Hsub(2) is along orbits, each comprising an elliptic plane
cross section of a spheroidal MO through the foci, and a general form
of the nonradiative boundary condition is met.
* Certain atoms and ions serve as catalysts to release energy from
hydrogen to produce an increased binding energy hydrogen atom having a
binding energy of 13.6 eV / ( 1 / p )^2 where p is an integer greater
than 1. Increased binding energy hydrogen atoms called hydrinos are
predicted to form by reacting an ordinary hydrogen atom with a
catalyst having a net enthalpy of reaction of about the potential
energy of hydrogen in its first nonradiative state, m 27.2 eV , where
m is an integer. This catalysis releases energy from the hydrogen atom
with a commensurate decrease in size of the hydrogen atom. For
example, the
catalysis of H(n = 1) to H(n = 1/2) releases 40.8 eV , and the
hydrogen radius decreases from a(sub(H)) to (1/2)a(sub(H)). One such
atomic catalytic system involves helium ions. The second ionization
energy of helium is 54.4 eV ; thus, the ionization reaction of He+ to
He2+ has a net enthalpy of reaction of 54.4 eV which is equivalent to
(2) 27.2 eV. The process is hereafter referred to as the Atomic
BlackLight Process.
* The existence of fractional quantum energy levels of hydrogen atoms,
hydride ions, and molecules as the product of the BlackLight Process—a
new energy source—has been confirmed experimentally.
* For any kind of wave advancing with limiting velocity and capable of
transmitting signals, the equation of front propagation is the same as
the equation for the front of a light wave. By applying the condition
to electromagnetic and gravitational fields at particle production,
the Schwarzschild metric (SM) is derived from the classical wave
equation, which modifies general relativity to include conservation of
spacetime, in addition to momentum and matter/energy. The result gives
a natural relationship between Maxwell’s equations, special
relativity, and general relativity, and defines absolute space that
rescues Newton’s Second law, resolves the twin paradox, and preserves
the energy inventory of the universe. It gives gravitation from the
atom to the cosmos.
* The Schwarzschild metric gives the relationship whereby matter
causes relativistic corrections to spacetime that determines the
curvature of spacetime and is the origin of gravity. The correction is
based on the boundary conditions that no signal can travel faster that
the speed of light including the gravitational field that propagates
following particle production from a photon wherein the particle has a
finite gravitational velocity given by Newton’s Law of Gravitation.
* The limiting velocity c results in the contraction of spacetime due
to particle production. The contraction is given by 2(pi)r(sub(g))
where r(sub(g)) is the gravitational radius of the particle. This has
implications for the expansion of spacetime when matter converts to
energy.
* The spacetime contraction during particle production is analogous to
Lorentz length contraction and time dilation of an object in one
inertial frame relative to another moving at constant relative
velocity. In the former case, the corresponding correction is a
function of the square of the ratio of the gravitational velocity to
the speed of light. In the latter case, the corresponding correction
is a function of the square of the ratio of the relative velocity of
two inertial frames to the speed of light.
* Fundamental particle production occurs when the energy of the
particle given by the Planck equation, Maxwell’s Equations, and
Special Relativity is equal to mc^2, and the proper time is equal to
the coordinate time according to the Schwarzschild metric. The
gravitational equations with the equivalence of the particle
production energies permit the equivalence of mass energy and the
absolute spacetime wherein a “clock” is defined which measures
“clicks” on an observable in one aspect, and in another, it is the
ruler of spacetime of the universe with the implicit dependence of
spacetime on matter energy conversion. The masses of the leptons, the
quarks, and nucleons are derived from this metric of spacetime.
* The gravitational equations with the equivalence of the particle
production energies require the conservation relationship of mass
energy, E = mc^2, and spacetime. Spacetime expands as mass is released
as energy which provides the basis of absolute space and the atomic,
thermodynamic, and cosmological arrows of time. Entropy and the
expansion of the universe are large scale consequences. The universe
is closed independently of the total mass of the universe, and
different regions of space are isothermal even though they are
separated by greater distances than that over which light could travel
during the time of the expansion of the universe. The universe is
oscillatory in matter/energy and spacetime with a finite minimum
radius, the gravitational radius; thus, the gravitational force causes
celestial structures to evolve on a time scale corresponding to the
period of oscillation. Presently, stars and large scale structures
exist that are older than the elapsed time of the present expansion,
as stellar and celestial evolution occurred during the contraction
phase.
* The relationship between inertial and gravitational mass is based on
the result that only fundamental particles having an equivalence of
the inertial and gravitational masses at particle production are
permitted to exist since only in these cases are Maxwell’s equations
and the conditions inherent in the Schwarzschild metric of spacetime
satisfied simultaneously wherein space must be absolute. The
equivalence is maintained for any velocity thereafter due to the
absolute nature of space and the absolute speed of light. The
invariant speed, c , is set by the permittivity and permeability of
absolute space, which determines the relativity principle based on
propagation of fields and signals as light wave fronts.
* In addition to the propagation velocity, the intrinsic velocity of
the particle and the geometry of this 2 dimensional velocity surface
with respect to the limiting speed of light determine that the
particle such as an electron may have gravitational mass different
from its inertial mass. A constant velocity confined to a spherical
surface corresponds to a positive gravitational mass equal to the
inertial mass (e.g. particle production or a bound electron). A
constant angular velocity function confined to a flat surface
corresponds to a gravitational mass less than the inertial mass, which
is zero in the limit of an absolutely unbound particle (e.g.
absolutely free electron). A hyperbolic velocity function confined to
a spherical surface corresponds to a negative gravitational mass (e.g.
hyperbolic electron).
* Superconductivity arises when electron plane waves extend throughout
the lattice, and the lattice is a band pass for the magnetic field of
an array of magnetic dipoles; so, no energy is dissipated with current
flow.
* The Quantum Hall Effect arises when the forces of crossed electric
and magnetic fields balance, and the lattice is a band pass for the
magnetic field of an array of magnetic dipoles.
* The vector potential component of the electron’s angular momentum
gives rise to the Aharonov Bohm Effect.
* Alpha decay occurs as a transmission of a plane wave through a
potential barrier.
* The proton and neutron functions each comprise a linear combination
of a constant function and three orthogonal spherical harmonic
functions resulting in three quark/gluon functions per nucleon. The
nucleons are locally two dimensional.
SUMMARY OF FOUNDATIONS AND PHYSICAL PHENOMENA SOLVED BY CLASSICAL
PHYSICS
The electron current density functions are solved to match time
harmonic multipole source currents of time varying electromagnetic
fields during transitions with the constraint that a bound electron in
the n = 1 state cannot radiate energy. The mathematical formulation
for zero radiation based on Maxwell’s equations follows from a
derivation by Haus [49]. The function that describes the motion of the
electron corresponding to a potentially emitted photon must not
possess spacetime Fourier components that are synchronous with waves
traveling at the speed of light. Classical physics gives closed form
solutions for the atom including the stability of the n = 1 state and
the instability of the excited states, relativistic invariance of the
wave equation, the equations of the photon and electron in excited
states, and the equations of the free electron and photon which also
predict the wave particle duality behavior of particles and light. The
current and charge density functions of the electron may be directly
physically interpreted. For example, spin angular momentum results
from the motion of negatively charged mass moving systematically, and
the equation for angular momentum, r x p = h-bar, can be applied
directly to the wave function (a current density function) that
describes the electron. A partial listing of well known and documented
phenomena,
which are derivable in closed form from classical physics, especially
Maxwell’s equations are given below. The calculations agree with
experimental observations.
* Stability of the atom to radiation
* angular momentum of ¥ , and the electron magnetic
* moment of Bo from the spin angular momentum
* De Broglie relationship
* Stern Gerlach experiment
* Electron and muon g factors
* Rotational energies and momenta
* Reduced electron mass
* Ionization energies of one electron atoms
* Special relativistic effects
* Excited states
* Resonant line width and shape
* Selection rules
* State Lifetimes and line intensities
* Correspondence principle
* Orbital and spin splitting
* Stark effect
* Lamb Shift
* Knight shift
* Spin orbit coupling (fine structure)
* Spin nuclear coupling (hyperfine structure)
* Hyperfine structure interval of muonium
* Nature of the free electron
* Nature of the photon
* Photoelectric effect
* Compton effect
* Wave particle duality
* Double slit experiment for photons and electrons
* Davisson Germer experiment
* Elastic electron scattering from helium atoms
* Ionization energies of multielectron atoms
* Hydride ion binding energy and absolute NMR shift
* Hydride lattice parameters and energies
* Excited states of the helium atom with singlet and triplet vector
diagrams
* Proton scattering from atomic hydrogen
* Nature of the chemical bond
* Bond energies, vibrational energies, rotational energies, bond
distances, magnetic moment and fields of hydrogen type molecules and
molecular ions, absolute NMR shift
* Parameters of polyatomic molecules
* Superconductivity and Josephson junction experiments
* Integral and fractional quantum Hall effects
* Aharonov Bohm effect
* Aspect experiment
* Durr experiment on the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle
* Penning trap experiments on single ions
* Mobility of free electrons in superfluid helium
* Gravitational behavior of neutrons
* Hyperfine structure interval of positronium
* Structure of nucleons
* Magnetic moments of the nucleons
* Beta decay energy of the neutron
* Binding energy of deuterium
* Alpha decay
* Nature of neutrinos
For Einstein, the Universe is causal. Einstein, though seriously ill
in 1948 with an aneurysm, which eventually killed him, he managed to
finish an article for the "Library of Living Philosophers," satisfied
to have defended "the good Lord against the suggestion that he
continually rolls dice."
OUTLINE OF THE RESULTS OF THE UNIFIED THEORY DERIVED FROM FIRST
PRINCIPLES
To overcome the limitations of quantum mechanics (QM), physical laws
that are exact on all scales are sought. Rather than engendering the
electron with a wave nature, as suggested by the Davisson Germer
experiment and fabricating a set of associated postulates and
mathematical rules for wave operators, a new theory is derived from
first principles.
FOUNDATIONS
Start with first principles
Conservation of mass energy
–
Conservation of linear and angular momentum
–
Maxwell’s Equations
–
Newton’s Laws
–
Lorentz transforms of Special Relativity
Highly predictive– application of Maxwell’s equations precisely
predicts hundreds of fundamental spectral observations in exact
equations with no adjustable parameters (fundamental constants only).
predict the Universe over 85 orders of magnitude of scale (Quarks to
Cosmos):
Four dimensional spacetime
–
The fundamental constants that comprise the fine structure constant
–
Fundamental particles including the photon have h-bar of angular
momentum
–
The Newtonian gravitational constant G
–
The spin of the electron neutrino
Classical Physics (CP) now comprises the unified Maxwell’s Equations,
Newton’s Laws, and General and Special Relativity. The closed form
calculations of a broad spectrum of fundamental phenomena containing
fundamental constants only are given in subsequent sections. CP gives
closed form solutions for the atom that give four quantum numbers, the
Rydberg constant, the stability of the n = 1 state and the instability
of the excited states, relativistic invariance of the wave equation,
the equations of the photon and electron in excited states, the
equations of the free electron, and photon which predict the wave
particle duality behavior of particles and light. The current and
charge density functions of the electron may be directly physically
interpreted. For example, spin angular momentum results from the
motion of negatively charged mass moving systematically, and the
equation for angular momentum, r x p = h-bar, can be applied directly
to the wave function (a current density function) that describes the
electron. The following observables are derived in closed form
equations based on Maxwell’s equations: the magnetic moment of a Bohr
magneton, Stern Gerlach experiment, electron and muon g factors, fine
structure splitting, Lamb shift, hyperfine structure, muonium
hyperfine structure interval, resonant line width and shape, selection
rules, correspondence principle, wave particle duality, excited
states, reduced mass, rotational energies and momenta, spin orbit
coupling, Knight shift and spin nuclear coupling, closed form
solutions for multielectron atoms, excited states of the helium atom,
elastic electron scattering from helium atoms, proton scattering from
atomic hydrogen, the nature of the chemical bond, bond energies,
vibrational energies, rotational energies, and bond distances of
hydrogen type molecules and molecular ions, the solutions for all
major functional groups that give the exact solutions of an infinite
number of molecules, solutions to the bonding in the major classes of
materials, Davisson Germer experiment, Aspect experiment, Durr
experiment on the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, Penning trap
experiments on single ions, hyperfine structure interval of
positronium, magnetic moments of the nucleons, beta decay energy of
the neutron, the binding energy of deuterium, and alpha decay. The
theory, of collective phenomena including statistical mechanics,
superconductivity and Josephson junction experiments, integral and
fractional quantum Hall effects, and the Aharonov Bohm effect, is
given. The calculations agree with experimental observations. From the
closed form solution of the helium atom, the predicted electron
scattering intensity is derived. The closed form scattering equation
matches the experimental data; whereas, calculations based on the Born
model of the atom utterly fail at small scattering angles. The
implications for the invalidity of the Schrödinger and Born models of
the atom and the dependent Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle are
discussed.
For any kind of wave advancing with limiting velocity and capable of
transmitting signals, the equation of front propagation is the same as
the equation for the front of a light wave. By applying this condition
to electromagnetic and gravitational fields at particle production,
the Schwarzschild metric (SM) is derived from the classical wave
equation, which modifies general relativity to include conservation of
spacetime, in addition to momentum and matter/energy and identifies
absolute space. The result gives a natural relationship between
Maxwell’s equations, special relativity, and general relativity. It
gives gravitation from the atom to the cosmos. The gravitational
equations with the equivalence of the particle production
energies permit the equivalence of mass energy and the spacetime that
determine the nature of absolute space wherein a “clock” is defined
that measures “clicks” on an observable in one aspect, and in another,
it is the ruler of spacetime of the universe with the implicit
dependence of spacetime on matter energy conversion. The masses of the
leptons, the quarks, and nucleons are derived from this metric of
spacetime that gives the equivalence of the gravitational and inertial
masses. The universe is time harmonically oscillatory in matter,
energy, and spacetime expansion and contraction with a minimum radius
that is the gravitational radius. In closed form equations with
fundamental constants only, CP gives the basis of the atomic,
thermodynamic, and cosmological arrows of time, the deflection of
light by stars, the precession of the perihelion of Mercury, the
Hubble constant, the age of the universe, the observed acceleration of
the expansion, the power of the universe, the power spectrum of the
universe, the microwave background temperature, the primary uniformity
of the microwave background radiation, the polarization and
microkelvin temperature spatial variation of the microwave background
radiation measured by DASI, the observed violation of the GZK cutoff,
the mass density of the universe, the large scale structure of the
universe, and the identity of dark matter which matches the criteria
for the structure of galaxies and emission from interstellar medium
and the Sun which have been observed in the laboratory [26-27]. In a
special case wherein the gravitational potential energy density of a
blackhole equals that of the Planck mass, matter converts to energy
and spacetime expands with the release of a gamma ray burst. The
singularity in the SM is eliminated. The basis of the
antigravitational force is presented with supporting experimental
evidence.
In addition to the above known phenomena and characteristics of
fundamental particles and forces, the theory predicts the existence of
a previously unknown form of matter—hydrogen atoms and molecules
having electrons of lower energy than the conventional “ground” state
called hydrinos and molecular hydrinos, respectively, where each
energy level corresponds to a fractional quantum number. The existence
of hydrinos has been confirmed experimentally proving GUT CP, and this
identity additionally resolves many celestial mysteries [26-27]. It
provides resolution to many otherwise inexplicable celestial
observations with (a) the identity of dark matter being hydrinos, (b)
the hydrino transition radiation being the radiation source heating
the warm hot interstellar medium (WHIM) and behind the observation
that diffuse H alpha emission is ubiquitous throughout the Galaxy
requiring widespread sources of flux shortward of 912 Å , and (c) the
energy and radiation from the hydrino transitions being the source of
extraordinary temperatures and power regarding the solar corona
problem, the cause of sunspots and other solar activity, and why the
Sun emits X rays [26-27].
PHYSICAL CONCEPTS THAT ARISE FROM CP DERIVATIONS ON THE SCALE
RANGE OF 85 ORDERS OF MAGNITUDE
Starting from the simple observation that the bound electron of the
hydrogen atom is experimentally observed to be stable to radiation,
the classical electromagnetic wave equation is used to solve the
electron source current by matching it to emitted electromagnetic
waves with the constraint that a bound electron in the n = 1 state
cannot radiate energy. The solution is based on Maxwell’s equations
and other experimentally confirmed physical laws. The resulting CP
gives predictions that are unprecedented in success, achieving highly
accurate agreement with observations over 85 orders of magnitude from
the scale of fundamental particles to that of the cosmos. A summary of
some of the salient features of the theory derived in subsequent
sections follows:
* Bound electrons are described by a charge density (mass density)
function which is the product of a radial delta function (f (r) =
delta( r - r(sub(n)))), angular functions, and a time function. The
latter comprise a constant angular function, a time and spherically
harmonic function, and linear combinations of these functions. Thus, a
bound electron is a constant two dimensional spherical surface of
charge (zero thickness and total charge of -e ), called an electron
orbitsphere that can exist in a bound state at only specified
distances from the nucleus determined by the force balance between the
electric fields of the electron and proton plus any resonantly
absorbed photons.
* The uniform current density function (Eqs. (I.62 I.63)) that gives
rise to the spin of the electron is generated from two current vector
fields (CVFs). Each CVF comprises a continuum of correlated orthogonal
great circle current density elements (one dimensional "current
loops"). The current pattern comprising each CVF is generated over a
half sphere surface by a set of rotations of two orthogonal great
circle current loops that serve as basis elements. Then, the two CVFs
are convoluted, and the result is normalized to exactly generate the
continuous uniform electron current density function (Eqs. (I.62 I.
63)) covering a spherical shell and having three angular momentum
components.
* Then, the total function that describes the spinning motion of each
electron orbitsphere is composed of two functions. One function, the
spin function, is spatially uniform over the orbitsphere, where each
point moves on the surface with the same quantized angular and linear
velocity, and gives rise to spin angular momentum. The other function,
the modulation function, can be spatially uniform—in which case there
is no orbital angular momentum and the magnetic moment of the electron
orbitsphere is one Bohr magneton—or not spatially uniform—in which
case there is orbital angular momentum. The modulation function moves
harmonically on the surface as a charge density wave with a quantized
angular velocity about a specific (by convention) z axis. Numerical
values for the angular velocity, radii of allowed orbitspheres,
energies, and associated quantities are calculated.
* Orbitsphere radii are calculated by setting the centripetal force
equal to the electric and magnetic forces.
* The orbitsphere is a resonator cavity which traps photons of
discrete frequencies. The radius of an orbitsphere increases with the
absorption of electromagnetic energy. The solutions to Maxwell’s
equations for modes that can be excited in the orbitsphere resonator
cavity give rise to four quantum numbers, and the energies of the
modes are the experimentally known hydrogen spectrum. The spectrum of
helium is the solution of Maxwell’s equations for the energies of
modes of this resonator cavity with a contribution from electron
electron spin and orbital interactions.
* Excited states are unstable because the charge density function of
the electron plus photon have a radial doublet function component
which corresponds to an electric dipole. The doublet possesses
spacetime Fourier components synchronous with waves traveling at the
speed of light; thus it is radiative. The charge density function of
the electron plus photon for the n = 1 principal quantum state of the
hydrogen atom as well as for each of the 1 / integer states
mathematically is purely a radial delta function. The delta function
does not possess spacetime Fourier components synchronous with waves
traveling at the speed of light; thus, each is nonradiative.
* The spectroscopic line width arises from the classical rise time
band width relationship, and the Lamb Shift is due to conservation of
energy and linear momentum and arises from the radiation reaction
force between the electron and the photon.
* The photon is an orbitsphere with electric and magnetic field lines
along orthogonal great circles. Upon ionization, the orbitsphere
radius goes to infinity and the electron becomes a plane wave
(consistent with double slit experiments) with the de Broglie
wavelength, lambda = h / p.
* The energy of atoms is stored in their electric and magnetic fields.
Chemical bonding occurs when the total energy of the participant atoms
can be lowered with the formation of two dimensional equipotential
energy surfaces (molecular orbitals (MO)) where the current motion in
the case of Hsub(2) is along orbits, each comprising an elliptic plane
cross section of a spheroidal MO through the foci, and a general form
of the nonradiative boundary condition is met.
* Certain atoms and ions serve as catalysts to release energy from
hydrogen to produce an increased binding energy hydrogen atom having a
binding energy of 13.6 eV / ( 1 / p )^2 where p is an integer greater
than 1. Increased binding energy hydrogen atoms called hydrinos are
predicted to form by reacting an ordinary hydrogen atom with a
catalyst having a net enthalpy of reaction of about the potential
energy of hydrogen in its first nonradiative state, m 27.2 eV , where
m is an integer. This catalysis releases energy from the hydrogen atom
with a commensurate decrease in size of the hydrogen atom. For
example, the
catalysis of H(n = 1) to H(n = 1/2) releases 40.8 eV , and the
hydrogen radius decreases from a(sub(H)) to (1/2)a(sub(H)). One such
atomic catalytic system involves helium ions. The second ionization
energy of helium is 54.4 eV ; thus, the ionization reaction of He+ to
He2+ has a net enthalpy of reaction of 54.4 eV which is equivalent to
(2) 27.2 eV. The process is hereafter referred to as the Atomic
BlackLight Process.
* The existence of fractional quantum energy levels of hydrogen atoms,
hydride ions, and molecules as the product of the BlackLight Process—a
new energy source—has been confirmed experimentally.
* For any kind of wave advancing with limiting velocity and capable of
transmitting signals, the equation of front propagation is the same as
the equation for the front of a light wave. By applying the condition
to electromagnetic and gravitational fields at particle production,
the Schwarzschild metric (SM) is derived from the classical wave
equation, which modifies general relativity to include conservation of
spacetime, in addition to momentum and matter/energy. The result gives
a natural relationship between Maxwell’s equations, special
relativity, and general relativity, and defines absolute space that
rescues Newton’s Second law, resolves the twin paradox, and preserves
the energy inventory of the universe. It gives gravitation from the
atom to the cosmos.
* The Schwarzschild metric gives the relationship whereby matter
causes relativistic corrections to spacetime that determines the
curvature of spacetime and is the origin of gravity. The correction is
based on the boundary conditions that no signal can travel faster that
the speed of light including the gravitational field that propagates
following particle production from a photon wherein the particle has a
finite gravitational velocity given by Newton’s Law of Gravitation.
* The limiting velocity c results in the contraction of spacetime due
to particle production. The contraction is given by 2(pi)r(sub(g))
where r(sub(g)) is the gravitational radius of the particle. This has
implications for the expansion of spacetime when matter converts to
energy.
* The spacetime contraction during particle production is analogous to
Lorentz length contraction and time dilation of an object in one
inertial frame relative to another moving at constant relative
velocity. In the former case, the corresponding correction is a
function of the square of the ratio of the gravitational velocity to
the speed of light. In the latter case, the corresponding correction
is a function of the square of the ratio of the relative velocity of
two inertial frames to the speed of light.
* Fundamental particle production occurs when the energy of the
particle given by the Planck equation, Maxwell’s Equations, and
Special Relativity is equal to mc^2, and the proper time is equal to
the coordinate time according to the Schwarzschild metric. The
gravitational equations with the equivalence of the particle
production energies permit the equivalence of mass energy and the
absolute spacetime wherein a “clock” is defined which measures
“clicks” on an observable in one aspect, and in another, it is the
ruler of spacetime of the universe with the implicit dependence of
spacetime on matter energy conversion. The masses of the leptons, the
quarks, and nucleons are derived from this metric of spacetime.
* The gravitational equations with the equivalence of the particle
production energies require the conservation relationship of mass
energy, E = mc^2, and spacetime. Spacetime expands as mass is released
as energy which provides the basis of absolute space and the atomic,
thermodynamic, and cosmological arrows of time. Entropy and the
expansion of the universe are large scale consequences. The universe
is closed independently of the total mass of the universe, and
different regions of space are isothermal even though they are
separated by greater distances than that over which light could travel
during the time of the expansion of the universe. The universe is
oscillatory in matter/energy and spacetime with a finite minimum
radius, the gravitational radius; thus, the gravitational force causes
celestial structures to evolve on a time scale corresponding to the
period of oscillation. Presently, stars and large scale structures
exist that are older than the elapsed time of the present expansion,
as stellar and celestial evolution occurred during the contraction
phase.
* The relationship between inertial and gravitational mass is based on
the result that only fundamental particles having an equivalence of
the inertial and gravitational masses at particle production are
permitted to exist since only in these cases are Maxwell’s equations
and the conditions inherent in the Schwarzschild metric of spacetime
satisfied simultaneously wherein space must be absolute. The
equivalence is maintained for any velocity thereafter due to the
absolute nature of space and the absolute speed of light. The
invariant speed, c , is set by the permittivity and permeability of
absolute space, which determines the relativity principle based on
propagation of fields and signals as light wave fronts.
* In addition to the propagation velocity, the intrinsic velocity of
the particle and the geometry of this 2 dimensional velocity surface
with respect to the limiting speed of light determine that the
particle such as an electron may have gravitational mass different
from its inertial mass. A constant velocity confined to a spherical
surface corresponds to a positive gravitational mass equal to the
inertial mass (e.g. particle production or a bound electron). A
constant angular velocity function confined to a flat surface
corresponds to a gravitational mass less than the inertial mass, which
is zero in the limit of an absolutely unbound particle (e.g.
absolutely free electron). A hyperbolic velocity function confined to
a spherical surface corresponds to a negative gravitational mass (e.g.
hyperbolic electron).
* Superconductivity arises when electron plane waves extend throughout
the lattice, and the lattice is a band pass for the magnetic field of
an array of magnetic dipoles; so, no energy is dissipated with current
flow.
* The Quantum Hall Effect arises when the forces of crossed electric
and magnetic fields balance, and the lattice is a band pass for the
magnetic field of an array of magnetic dipoles.
* The vector potential component of the electron’s angular momentum
gives rise to the Aharonov Bohm Effect.
* Alpha decay occurs as a transmission of a plane wave through a
potential barrier.
* The proton and neutron functions each comprise a linear combination
of a constant function and three orthogonal spherical harmonic
functions resulting in three quark/gluon functions per nucleon. The
nucleons are locally two dimensional.
SUMMARY OF FOUNDATIONS AND PHYSICAL PHENOMENA SOLVED BY CLASSICAL
PHYSICS
The electron current density functions are solved to match time
harmonic multipole source currents of time varying electromagnetic
fields during transitions with the constraint that a bound electron in
the n = 1 state cannot radiate energy. The mathematical formulation
for zero radiation based on Maxwell’s equations follows from a
derivation by Haus [49]. The function that describes the motion of the
electron corresponding to a potentially emitted photon must not
possess spacetime Fourier components that are synchronous with waves
traveling at the speed of light. Classical physics gives closed form
solutions for the atom including the stability of the n = 1 state and
the instability of the excited states, relativistic invariance of the
wave equation, the equations of the photon and electron in excited
states, and the equations of the free electron and photon which also
predict the wave particle duality behavior of particles and light. The
current and charge density functions of the electron may be directly
physically interpreted. For example, spin angular momentum results
from the motion of negatively charged mass moving systematically, and
the equation for angular momentum, r x p = h-bar, can be applied
directly to the wave function (a current density function) that
describes the electron. A partial listing of well known and documented
phenomena,
which are derivable in closed form from classical physics, especially
Maxwell’s equations are given below. The calculations agree with
experimental observations.
* Stability of the atom to radiation
* angular momentum of ¥ , and the electron magnetic
* moment of Bo from the spin angular momentum
* De Broglie relationship
* Stern Gerlach experiment
* Electron and muon g factors
* Rotational energies and momenta
* Reduced electron mass
* Ionization energies of one electron atoms
* Special relativistic effects
* Excited states
* Resonant line width and shape
* Selection rules
* State Lifetimes and line intensities
* Correspondence principle
* Orbital and spin splitting
* Stark effect
* Lamb Shift
* Knight shift
* Spin orbit coupling (fine structure)
* Spin nuclear coupling (hyperfine structure)
* Hyperfine structure interval of muonium
* Nature of the free electron
* Nature of the photon
* Photoelectric effect
* Compton effect
* Wave particle duality
* Double slit experiment for photons and electrons
* Davisson Germer experiment
* Elastic electron scattering from helium atoms
* Ionization energies of multielectron atoms
* Hydride ion binding energy and absolute NMR shift
* Hydride lattice parameters and energies
* Excited states of the helium atom with singlet and triplet vector
diagrams
* Proton scattering from atomic hydrogen
* Nature of the chemical bond
* Bond energies, vibrational energies, rotational energies, bond
distances, magnetic moment and fields of hydrogen type molecules and
molecular ions, absolute NMR shift
* Parameters of polyatomic molecules
* Superconductivity and Josephson junction experiments
* Integral and fractional quantum Hall effects
* Aharonov Bohm effect
* Aspect experiment
* Durr experiment on the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle
* Penning trap experiments on single ions
* Mobility of free electrons in superfluid helium
* Gravitational behavior of neutrons
* Hyperfine structure interval of positronium
* Structure of nucleons
* Magnetic moments of the nucleons
* Beta decay energy of the neutron
* Binding energy of deuterium
* Alpha decay
* Nature of neutrinos
JohnEB
Nov 17, 2010, 8:43:26 AM11/17/10
to Classical Physics
Did Einstein Believe in God?
It is clear that Einstein is the greatest physicist ever to walk the
planet, especially given that the quantum juggernaut tried to crush
him (and is still trying) with absolutely no success. Einstein made
many references to God and many assume that he was a religious man. I
think this is true, but you must understand that his religion was
understanding the Universe. This caused a lot of confusion. In his
book The Unexpected Einstein, Denis Brian tries to explain Einstein's
religion:
Did Einstein Believe in God?
At seventy-six Albert Einstein faced his death head-on, telling
friends who came to visit him in the Princeton Hospital not to look so
upset, that everyone had to die someday. He had started to write a
tribute for Israel's Independence day that began: "What I seek to
accomplish is simply to serve with my feeble capacity truth and
justice at the risk of pleasing no one." He had also been working on
equations with a pad and pencil, even while in great pain, encouraged
by the thought that he was close to succeeding with his unified field
theory.
.
.
In an interview with Einstein in 1920, Alexander Moszkowski brought up
astronomer Camille Flammarion's science fiction story "Lumen" in which
the hero moves faster than light, achieves time reversal, and sees the
Battle of Waterloo before it starts, watching cannonballs fly back
into cannon barrels and dead soldiers come back to life and resume
fighting. "Simply impossible," Einstein said.
"Of course, we can imagine events which contradict our daily
experiences without taking them seriously. Relativity shows that
nothing can exceed the speed of light. Assuming that Lumen [the hero]
is human, with a body and sense organs, at the speed of light his
body's mass would become infinitely great." Einstein had concluded at
twenty-six that his youthful thought of riding on a light beam had
been an impossible dream, and that as mass increases with speed, in an
attempt to get aboard the light beam his body's mass—like Lumen's—
would have become infinite. Had he been "an oversized quantum," Dr.
Robert Schulmann suggests, he would have turned "into pure energy, but
certainly nothing at the mesoscopic level could even approach this
[speed of light] limit."
Equally astonishing and even more momentous on that fateful morning
was the clue, now in his hands, to the simple equation involving the
speed of light: E = mc^2. The potential energy in anything equals its
mass times the speed of light squared. This aspect of the special
theory of relativity meant, explained Einstein's colleague and
biographer Banesh Hoffmann, that "every clod of earth, every feather,
every speck of dust is a prodigious reservoir of untapped energy."
Another great—and awesome—secret of the universe explained.
But it seemed too good to be true. Einstein wasn't absolutely sure he
was right, telling a friend, Conrad Habicht, that relativity required
the mass to be a direct measure of the energy contained in bodies.
And, because light transfers mass, in the case of radium it should
result in a remarkable decrease in its mass. Einstein found the idea
amusing and enticing, but he still wondered if the "Almighty is
laughing at it and leading me up the garden path."
Instead, the Almighty metaphorically patted him on the back for having
discovered the incredible fact that all energy has mass, and sometime
later, that mass and energy are interchangeable.
In Cambridge, England, in 1932, John Cockroft and E. T. S. Walton
experimentally demonstrated the conversion of mass into energy by
splitting an atom. The following year, the Curies' daughter and son-in-
law, Irene and Frederic Joliot-Curie, took a photo in Paris showing
the conversion of energy into mass.
Einstein's new ideas now replaced the old assumptions that saw mass as
never changing and having nothing to do with energy, and saw time as
flowing in the same way for everyone.
Banesh Hoffmann confirmed Einstein's modus operandi, in which he put
questions to God. Once when they were working on a problem together,
Einstein said to him, "Can we get another idea that will solve this
problem? Ideas come from God.' Now he didn't believe in a personal God
or anything like that. This was his metaphorical way of speaking.
You cannot command the idea to come, it will come when it is good and
ready. He put it in those terms, `Ideas come from God.'"
Although Einstein didn't always attribute his discoveries to a
supernatural source, when interviewed by Robert Shankland, a Case
Institute of Technology physics professor, in 1950, he was more
cautious, saying that in physics the solution often comes by indirect
means.
Throughout his adult life, in his conversations and writings, Einstein
constantly used God's name to explain the universe. Yet he didn't
believe in the popular concept of God as the Supreme Being. This
confused people almost as much as his theories did. He didn't believe
in angels, either, or devils, ghosts, hell, or heaven, nor in the
theory that one's fate is written in the stars, nor that prayers can
move mountains. All ancient superstitions, he would say, echoing his
father.
According to Jamie Sayen, another Einstein biographer, "He believed it
was a fatal mistake of the ethical religions, in an effort to educate
and indoctrinate their followers, to have tied their moral and ethical
precepts to epics and myths which, although beautiful from a poetic
point of view, are not essential to the truth of the moral teachings."
And that by dogmatically insisting on the validity of the creation
myth, for instance, which science had repudiated, creationists and
others who took the Bible literally had both undermined the truth of
the moral codes and weakened all aspects of religion.
.
.
.
Yet he continued to refer to a metaphorical God in describing his
reservations about quantum theory, writing to his physicist friend Max
Born, in 1916: "An inner voice tells me that this will not be the true
Jacob. The theory accomplishes a lot, but it scarcely brings us closer
to the secret of the Old One."
Three years later, after the war, the forty-year-old Einstein showed a
student, Ilse Rosenthal-Schneider, a telegram he had just received
saying that Sir Arthur Eddington had confirmed one aspect of his
theory of general relativity—that the sun caused light to bend. What
would you have done, she asked, if he hadn't confirmed it? Again
Einstein spoke metaphorically, replying that he would have pitied "the
dear Lord" because the theory was correct.
.
.
Einstein's view of his metaphorical God's creation meant that he could
never accept Werner Heisenberg's Uncertainty, or Indeterminacy,
Principle, which held that it was impossible to determine, at the same
time, a particle's precise position and velocity, suggesting that the
subatomic world resembled a crapshoot in which no one could predict
the outcome. Or as Wolfgang Pauli described it: "One can view the
world with the p eye and one can view it with the q eye, but if one
tries to open both eyes together, one gets confused."
Einstein's friend and future biographer Philipp Frank was surprised
that he resisted "the new fashion" in physics, reminding him that he
himself had invented quantum theory in 1905. "A good joke should not
be repeated," Einstein replied. "I shall never believe that God plays
dice with the world."
In his long-running argument with Niels Bohr over some aspects of
quantum mechanics and Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle, which
implied that the subatomic world, at least, was unpredictable,
Einstein insisted that God was not a gambler, saving that "God does
not play dice with the cosmos," and that quantum theory represented "a
blind man's bluff with the idea of reality."
Responding to someone who spoke favorably of astrology during a Berlin
dinner party in 1927, Einstein scornfully rejected the pseudoscience
as disproved by "the Copernican system," which, he asserted,
"conclusively made a clean sweep of the anthropocentric view which
thought of the entire firmament as revolving around the earth and
humanity. That was probably the severest shock man's interpretation of
the cosmos every received. It reduced the world to a mere province, so
to speak, instead of its being the capital and center." When, despite
this declaration, another guest asked Einstein if he was deeply
religious, he replied: "Yes, vou can call it that. Try and penetrate
with our limited means the secrets of nature and you will find that,
behind all the discernible concatenations, there remains something
subtle, intangible and inexplicable. Veneration for this force beyond
anything that We can comprehend is my religion. To that extent I am,
in point of fact, religious."
Interviewed by George Sylvester Viereck for the Saturday Evening Post,
Einstein had a chance to explain himself in more detail. He didn't
believe in immortality, and one life, he said, was enough for him. He
continued, "I realize that every individual is the product of the
conjunction of two individuals. I don't see where and at what moment
the new being is endowed with a soul." He couldn't say if he believed
in the God of Spinoza with a simple yes or no. I'm not an atheist and
I don't think I can call myself a pantheist. [Pantheists believe that
God is not a personality but that all the laws and manifestations of
the universe are God. Put another way: God is everything and
everything is God.] Though Einstein admitted that he was "fascinated
by Spinoza's pantheism .. . the first philosopher to deal with the
soul and body as one, not two separate things."
When asked how he would explain his own view of God, Einstein replied:
"We are in the position of a little child entering ahuge library
filled with books in many different languages. The child knows someone
must have written the books. It does not know how. It does not
understand the language in which they are written. The child dimly
suspects a mysterious order in the arrangement of the books but
doesn't know what it is. That, it seems to me, is the attitude of even
the most intelligent human being toward God."
Viereck was curious to know if Einstein had been at all influenced by
Christianity. Einstein said, "As a child I received instruction both
in the Bible [New and Old Testaments] and the Talmud. I am a Jew, but
I am enthralled by the luminous figure of the Nazarene."
He had read Emil Ludwig's recent biography of Jesus Christ and thought
it "shallow. Jesus is too colossal for the pen of phrasemongers,
however artful. No man can dispose of Christianity with a bon mot." He
accepted the historical existence of Jesus "unquestionably," adding,
"No one can read the Gospels without feeling the actual presence of
Jesus. His personality pulsates in every word. No myth is filled with
such life."
Yet in a conversation with a friend, W. I. Hermann, Einstein said: "It
is quite possible that we can do greater things than Jesus, for what
is written in the Bible about him is poetically embellished."
In 1929 Einstein wrote that physicists not only sought to know how
Nature works, "but also to reach as far as possible the perhaps
utopian and seemingly arrogant aim of knowing why Nature is thus and
not otherwise. Here lies the highest satisfaction of a scientific
person. [One feels], so to speak, that God himself could not have
arranged these connection in any other way than that which factually
exists, any more than it would be in His power to make the number 4
into a prime number. This is the promethean element of the scientific
experience.... Here has always been for me the particular magic of
scientific considerations, that is, as it were, thr religious basis of
scientific effort."
That same year, interviewed by a Daily Chronicle reporter, Einstein
explained his general theory of relativity as reducing "to one formula
all laws which govern space, time and gravitation, and thus it
corresponded to the demand for simplification of our physical
concepts. The purpose of my work is to further the simplification, and
particularly to reduce to one formula the explanation of the field of
gravity and of the field of electromagnetism. For this reason I call
it a contribution to `a unified field theory.' ...Now, but only now,
we know that the force which moved electrons in their ellipses about
the nuclei of atoms is the same force which moved our earth in its
annual course about the sun, and is the same force which brings to us
the rays of light and heat which make life possible on this planet."
Disappointed that Einstein had omitted God from the equation, Boston's
Cardinal O'Connell attacked general relativity as a cloak "for the
ghastly apparition of atheism," and "befogged speculation, producing
universal doubt about God and His creation." Anxious to defend
Einstein, New York rabbi Herbert Goldstein cabled him: "Do you believe
in God?" Einstein replied that he believed "in Spinoza's God who
reveals Himself in the orderly harmony of what exists, not in a God
who concerns Himself with fates and actions of human beings." This
delighted the rabbi, who tried to educate the cardinal, by explaining:
"Spinoza, who is called the God-intoxicated man, and who saw God
manifest in all nature, certainly could not be called an atheist.
Furthermore, Einstein points to a unity. Einstein's theory if carried
out toits logical conclusion would bring to mankind a scientific
formula for monotheism. He does away with the thought of dualism or
pluralism. There can be no room for any aspect of polytheism."
.
.
Einstein gave a detailed account of his credo in a remarkable speech
to the German League of Human Rights in Berlin in 1932. Then he said:
"Every one of us appears here [on Earth] involuntarily and uninvited
for a short stay, without knowing the whys and wherefores.... Although
I am a typical loner in daily life, my consciousness of belonging to
the invisible community of those who strive for truth, beauty, and
justice has preserved me from feeling isolated. The most beautiful and
deepest experience a man can have is the sense of the mysterious. It
is the underlying principle of religion as well as all serious
endeavor in art and science. He who hasnever had this experience seems
to me, if not dead at least blind. To sense that behind anything that
can be experienced there is something that our mind cannot grasp and
whose beauty and sublimity reaches us only indirectly and as a feeble
reflection, that is religiousness. In this sense I am religious. To me
it suffices to wonder at these secrets and to attempt humbly to grasp
with my mind a mere image of the lofty structure of all that is
there."
Though he did not believe in the supernatural, his novelist friend
Upton Sinclair persuaded Einstein to try to make contact with the
other world at a seance in California. Einstein was as skeptical as a
person could be, once saying that even if he saw a ghost he wouldn't
believe it. The trance medium, Roman Ostoja, a self-proclaimed Polish
count, had a glowing reputation, but with Einstein in the circle he
could only gasp and grunt incoherently. The seance was a bust, and a
counterinfluence in the room was blamed for it—a nonbeliever. It isn't
hard to guess who that was.
Einstein attributed the interest in spiritualism and the belief in
ghosts to weak, confused people. After all, he wrote, "since our inner
experiences consist of reproductions, and combinations of sensory
impressions, the concept of a soul without a body seems to me to be
empty and devoid of meaning."
Later, having left Germany permanently and settled in Princeton,
Einstein's second wife, Elsa, was conversing with a neighbor, Carolyn
Blackwood, a Presbyterian minister's wife. Elsa said that she and
Albert believed in the creative force, but not in a personal God who
took an interest in people on Earth, that he read the Old and New
Testaments regularly, for the literary value and stories, not for the
specifically religious message. The Einsteins had lost their Bible in
moving to the United States from Berlin, and when Carolyn gave Elsa
her Luther's translation, she hugged it to her heart and said, "I wish
I had more faith."
When Carolyn mentioned that she and her husband hoped to meet Zionists
during their imminent journey to Palestine, Elsa said, "My darling, I
did not know you were Jews." And Carolyn replied, "We are not. We are
Christians and Presbyterians on top of that." Elsa was dumbfounded
that anyone other than Jews would associate with, even seek out, the
Jewish community in Palestine. So Carolyn explained that there were
close bonds between the Jewish heritage and the Christian faith. "And
besides," she said, "Jesus was a Jew." Elsa, amazed, replied, "No
Christian has ever said that to me in my life!" and hugged Carolyn
affectionately.
Einstein spelled out his religious views again in 1936, when a young
girl wrote to ask him if most scientists prayed and, if so, what for.
He replied that a scientist is unlikely to believe that prayers can
influence events—as naive religious people do. But serious scientific
study makes a scientist conclude that "the Laws of Nature manifest a
spirit which is vastly superior to Man, and before which, with our
modest strength, must humbly bow."
He characterized those who clung to a belief in life after death as
feeble, frightened, egotistical individuals.
After visiting a local art gallery, where a stranger had insisted on
shaking his hand, Caroline Blackwood asked Einstein, "Does it ever get
monotonous being the greatest living scientist?" "I'm not great," he
replied. "Anyone could have done what I did. Besides, what I have is a
gift." "A gift from God?" asked the minister's wife. "I express it
differently," he said. "I believe down here"—he put his hand on his
heart—"what I cannot explain up here"—he put his hand on his head.
`But I believe it all. I believe it all." Blackwood's son, James,
said: "What I think Einstein meant by that is that he had a religious
dimension to his thinking. He read both of the Testaments regularly,
and his early training was in both."
Einstein speculated that the genesis of the various religions arose
from fear by primitive people—of hunger, wild animals,pain, sickness,
and death. They may have imagined that powerful beings not unlike
themselves could protect them from such terrors when offered gifts or
sacrifices.
In the spring of 1937, a few months after the death of Einstein's
second wife, Elsa, his friend, author Max Eastman, a disillusioned
Communist, called on him at Princeton. They sat chatting in armchairs
on the small sunny lawn in the back of the house. Eastman mentioned
how Einstein had often been quoted as not believing in an
anthropomorphic God, yet considered himself religious, and that the
scientists' striving toward rational knowledge of the universe was
"religion in the highest sense." But "I don't think you are really
religious," Eastman said. "And it's a mistake for you to use the term.
For the sake of clear thinking the word religion ought to be used only
to mean a faith that something in the external world is sympathetic to
man's interests."
Einstein conceded that was true of religion in its origin and early
development, the primitive religion of fear, and the social and moral
religion which grew out of it In both of those phases, he agreed that
religion assumed that a force or forces in the external world were
sympathetic to man's interests. But he thought that "there is a higher
religion which is free from fear and has nothing to do with morality.
This higher religion is an attitude of humility toward universal
being."
Eastman gathered from their conversation that Einstein regarded human
aims and wishes as insignificant compared to the grandeur of a
rationally ordered universe. And that Einstein believed that this
religious feeling sustained such scientists as Newton and Kepler, as
well as himself "in their arduous efforts to understand the universe."
Speaking at the Princeton Theological Seminary in May 1939, Einstein
said: "Scientific method can teach us nothing else beyond how facts
are related to, and conditioned by each other. The aspiration toward
such objective knowledge belongs to the highest of which man is
capable.... Yet it is equally clear that knowledge of what is does not
open the door directly to what should be. One can have the clearest
and most complete knowledge of what is and yet not be ably to deduce
from that what should be the goal of human aspirations.... The
ultimate goal itself and the longing to reach it must come from
another source.... Here we face, therefore, the limits of purely
rational conception of our existence.... It is the mythical, or rather
the symbolic, content of the religious traditions which is likely to
come into conflict with science. This occurs whenever this religious
stock of ideas contains dogmatically fixed statements on subjects
which belong to the domain of science. Thus, it is of vital importance
for the preservation of true religion that such conflicts be avoided
when they arise from subjects which, in fact, are not really essential
for the pursuance of the religious aims."
The theologian Thomas Torrance believes that the Christian church's
opposition to Hitler and the Holocaust drew Einstein into closer
relations with his Jewish friends Max and Hedi Born, who had become
Quakers, and with the Ross Stevensons and the Andrew Blackwoods of
Princeton Theological Seminary. This seems credible, based on a letter
Einstein sent to an American Episcopal bishop saying that as a lover
of freedom, he had expected the universities and the great newspaper
editors to be among its defenders, but, to his despair, it only took a
few weeks for the Nazis to silence them. "Only the church stood
squarely across the path of Hitler's campaign for suppressing the
truth," he wrote. "I never had any special interest in the church
before, but now I feel a great affection and admiration because the
church alone has had the courage and persistence to stand for
intellectual truth and moral freedom. I am forced to confess that what
I once despised I now praise unreservedly."
A Princeton friend of theologian Torrance told him that during World
War II when Einstein heard that a group of Christians were at a prayer
meeting nearby to make intercessions for Jews in Germany, Einstein
went there with his violin and asked if he could join in. "Chet'
welcomed him warmly, and as they prayed, he gave there music. He was
not "praying" for the Jews, which as a scientist he thought could have
no effect, but thanking those who were concerned enough to pray to
their God to help Jews.
As Torrance points out, "In relation to petitionary prayer, Einstein
not infrequently reacted against `the tact that men appeal to the
Divine Being in prayers and plead for the fulfillment of their
wishes,' for that implied to him a selfish `anthropomorphic' idea of
God which he rejected."
Ensign Guy Raner, serving in the Pacific during World War II, wrote to
Einstein that he had met a Jesuit priest who claimed to have converted
Einstein from atheism. Was it true? Einstein replied that he had never
talked to a Jesuit priest and was "astonished by the audacity to tell
lies about me. From the viewpoint of a Jesuit priest I am, of course,
and have always been an atheist," because, he said, he had repeatedly
expressed his disbelief in a personal God. "It is always misleading to
use anthropomorphic concepts in dealing with things outside the human
sphere—childish analogies." But he was not an atheist, because he did
"not share the crusading spirit of the professional atheist whose
fervor is mostly due to a painful act of liberation from the fetters
of religious indoctrination received in youth. I prefer an attitude of
humility corresponding to the weakness of our intellectual
understanding of nature and of our being. We lave to admire in
humility the beautiful harmony of the structure of this world—as far
as we can grasp it. And that is all."
Though seriously ill in 1948 with an aneurysm, which eventually killed
connect gravity and electricity, what really interested him, he said,
was "whether God could have made the world differently; in other
words, whether the demand for logical simplicity leaves any freedom at
all."
In 1950, some American scientists decided it was time to come up with
a new definition of God that would be acceptable to fellow scientists.
A reporter asked Einstein about it, and he said that it was
ridiculous. When the reporter suggested there was a public yearning
for science to provide the spiritual help organized religion seemed
unable to give, he replied: "Speaking of the spirit that informs
modern scientific investigation, I think that all the finer
speculations in the realm of science spring from a deep religious
feeling, and that without such feeling they would not be fruitful. I
also believe that this kind of religiousness which makes itself felt
today in scientific investigation is the only creative religious
activity of our time.... But the content of scientific theory itself
offers no moral foundation for the personal conduct of life."
.
.
Einstein once said that a person who regards his life and the lives of
others as meaningless is not only unhappy but hardly fit for life.
Yet, a year before his death, when George Wald visited the seventy-
five-year-old scientist in his Princeton office at the Institute for
Advanced Study, he said, "People keep writing to me asking, `What is
the meaning of life?' And what am I to tell them?" Wald, his fellow
Nobelist, was equally perplexed. That same year Einstein was laughing
with his friend Gillett Griffin, an art historian at Princeton's
Firestone Library, over a letter he had received from .. Catholic
priest who wrote that he prayed for him daily through the Virgin Mary,
and that Einstein shouldn't mind because Mary was a nice Jewish girl.
Max Jammer, an Israeli physicist and former Einstein colleague at
Princeton, believed that Einstein's understanding of physics and
religion were profoundly bound together. And Swiss playwright
Friedrich Durrenmatt wrote that Einstein used to speak of God so often
that he almost regarded him as a disguised theologian.
.
.
No organized religion can claim Einstein as one of its own. He once
remarked that not believing in a personal God was no philosophy, and a
year before his death in 1955 he quipped that he was a member of a
somewhat new kind of religion, being a religious nonbeliever.
For Einstein, God remained the big mystery with which he wrestled all
his life.
It is clear that Einstein is the greatest physicist ever to walk the
planet, especially given that the quantum juggernaut tried to crush
him (and is still trying) with absolutely no success. Einstein made
many references to God and many assume that he was a religious man. I
think this is true, but you must understand that his religion was
understanding the Universe. This caused a lot of confusion. In his
book The Unexpected Einstein, Denis Brian tries to explain Einstein's
religion:
Did Einstein Believe in God?
At seventy-six Albert Einstein faced his death head-on, telling
friends who came to visit him in the Princeton Hospital not to look so
upset, that everyone had to die someday. He had started to write a
tribute for Israel's Independence day that began: "What I seek to
accomplish is simply to serve with my feeble capacity truth and
justice at the risk of pleasing no one." He had also been working on
equations with a pad and pencil, even while in great pain, encouraged
by the thought that he was close to succeeding with his unified field
theory.
.
.
In an interview with Einstein in 1920, Alexander Moszkowski brought up
astronomer Camille Flammarion's science fiction story "Lumen" in which
the hero moves faster than light, achieves time reversal, and sees the
Battle of Waterloo before it starts, watching cannonballs fly back
into cannon barrels and dead soldiers come back to life and resume
fighting. "Simply impossible," Einstein said.
"Of course, we can imagine events which contradict our daily
experiences without taking them seriously. Relativity shows that
nothing can exceed the speed of light. Assuming that Lumen [the hero]
is human, with a body and sense organs, at the speed of light his
body's mass would become infinitely great." Einstein had concluded at
twenty-six that his youthful thought of riding on a light beam had
been an impossible dream, and that as mass increases with speed, in an
attempt to get aboard the light beam his body's mass—like Lumen's—
would have become infinite. Had he been "an oversized quantum," Dr.
Robert Schulmann suggests, he would have turned "into pure energy, but
certainly nothing at the mesoscopic level could even approach this
[speed of light] limit."
Equally astonishing and even more momentous on that fateful morning
was the clue, now in his hands, to the simple equation involving the
speed of light: E = mc^2. The potential energy in anything equals its
mass times the speed of light squared. This aspect of the special
theory of relativity meant, explained Einstein's colleague and
biographer Banesh Hoffmann, that "every clod of earth, every feather,
every speck of dust is a prodigious reservoir of untapped energy."
Another great—and awesome—secret of the universe explained.
But it seemed too good to be true. Einstein wasn't absolutely sure he
was right, telling a friend, Conrad Habicht, that relativity required
the mass to be a direct measure of the energy contained in bodies.
And, because light transfers mass, in the case of radium it should
result in a remarkable decrease in its mass. Einstein found the idea
amusing and enticing, but he still wondered if the "Almighty is
laughing at it and leading me up the garden path."
Instead, the Almighty metaphorically patted him on the back for having
discovered the incredible fact that all energy has mass, and sometime
later, that mass and energy are interchangeable.
In Cambridge, England, in 1932, John Cockroft and E. T. S. Walton
experimentally demonstrated the conversion of mass into energy by
splitting an atom. The following year, the Curies' daughter and son-in-
law, Irene and Frederic Joliot-Curie, took a photo in Paris showing
the conversion of energy into mass.
Einstein's new ideas now replaced the old assumptions that saw mass as
never changing and having nothing to do with energy, and saw time as
flowing in the same way for everyone.
Banesh Hoffmann confirmed Einstein's modus operandi, in which he put
questions to God. Once when they were working on a problem together,
Einstein said to him, "Can we get another idea that will solve this
problem? Ideas come from God.' Now he didn't believe in a personal God
or anything like that. This was his metaphorical way of speaking.
You cannot command the idea to come, it will come when it is good and
ready. He put it in those terms, `Ideas come from God.'"
Although Einstein didn't always attribute his discoveries to a
supernatural source, when interviewed by Robert Shankland, a Case
Institute of Technology physics professor, in 1950, he was more
cautious, saying that in physics the solution often comes by indirect
means.
Throughout his adult life, in his conversations and writings, Einstein
constantly used God's name to explain the universe. Yet he didn't
believe in the popular concept of God as the Supreme Being. This
confused people almost as much as his theories did. He didn't believe
in angels, either, or devils, ghosts, hell, or heaven, nor in the
theory that one's fate is written in the stars, nor that prayers can
move mountains. All ancient superstitions, he would say, echoing his
father.
According to Jamie Sayen, another Einstein biographer, "He believed it
was a fatal mistake of the ethical religions, in an effort to educate
and indoctrinate their followers, to have tied their moral and ethical
precepts to epics and myths which, although beautiful from a poetic
point of view, are not essential to the truth of the moral teachings."
And that by dogmatically insisting on the validity of the creation
myth, for instance, which science had repudiated, creationists and
others who took the Bible literally had both undermined the truth of
the moral codes and weakened all aspects of religion.
.
.
.
Yet he continued to refer to a metaphorical God in describing his
reservations about quantum theory, writing to his physicist friend Max
Born, in 1916: "An inner voice tells me that this will not be the true
Jacob. The theory accomplishes a lot, but it scarcely brings us closer
to the secret of the Old One."
Three years later, after the war, the forty-year-old Einstein showed a
student, Ilse Rosenthal-Schneider, a telegram he had just received
saying that Sir Arthur Eddington had confirmed one aspect of his
theory of general relativity—that the sun caused light to bend. What
would you have done, she asked, if he hadn't confirmed it? Again
Einstein spoke metaphorically, replying that he would have pitied "the
dear Lord" because the theory was correct.
.
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Einstein's view of his metaphorical God's creation meant that he could
never accept Werner Heisenberg's Uncertainty, or Indeterminacy,
Principle, which held that it was impossible to determine, at the same
time, a particle's precise position and velocity, suggesting that the
subatomic world resembled a crapshoot in which no one could predict
the outcome. Or as Wolfgang Pauli described it: "One can view the
world with the p eye and one can view it with the q eye, but if one
tries to open both eyes together, one gets confused."
Einstein's friend and future biographer Philipp Frank was surprised
that he resisted "the new fashion" in physics, reminding him that he
himself had invented quantum theory in 1905. "A good joke should not
be repeated," Einstein replied. "I shall never believe that God plays
dice with the world."
In his long-running argument with Niels Bohr over some aspects of
quantum mechanics and Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle, which
implied that the subatomic world, at least, was unpredictable,
Einstein insisted that God was not a gambler, saving that "God does
not play dice with the cosmos," and that quantum theory represented "a
blind man's bluff with the idea of reality."
Responding to someone who spoke favorably of astrology during a Berlin
dinner party in 1927, Einstein scornfully rejected the pseudoscience
as disproved by "the Copernican system," which, he asserted,
"conclusively made a clean sweep of the anthropocentric view which
thought of the entire firmament as revolving around the earth and
humanity. That was probably the severest shock man's interpretation of
the cosmos every received. It reduced the world to a mere province, so
to speak, instead of its being the capital and center." When, despite
this declaration, another guest asked Einstein if he was deeply
religious, he replied: "Yes, vou can call it that. Try and penetrate
with our limited means the secrets of nature and you will find that,
behind all the discernible concatenations, there remains something
subtle, intangible and inexplicable. Veneration for this force beyond
anything that We can comprehend is my religion. To that extent I am,
in point of fact, religious."
Interviewed by George Sylvester Viereck for the Saturday Evening Post,
Einstein had a chance to explain himself in more detail. He didn't
believe in immortality, and one life, he said, was enough for him. He
continued, "I realize that every individual is the product of the
conjunction of two individuals. I don't see where and at what moment
the new being is endowed with a soul." He couldn't say if he believed
in the God of Spinoza with a simple yes or no. I'm not an atheist and
I don't think I can call myself a pantheist. [Pantheists believe that
God is not a personality but that all the laws and manifestations of
the universe are God. Put another way: God is everything and
everything is God.] Though Einstein admitted that he was "fascinated
by Spinoza's pantheism .. . the first philosopher to deal with the
soul and body as one, not two separate things."
When asked how he would explain his own view of God, Einstein replied:
"We are in the position of a little child entering ahuge library
filled with books in many different languages. The child knows someone
must have written the books. It does not know how. It does not
understand the language in which they are written. The child dimly
suspects a mysterious order in the arrangement of the books but
doesn't know what it is. That, it seems to me, is the attitude of even
the most intelligent human being toward God."
Viereck was curious to know if Einstein had been at all influenced by
Christianity. Einstein said, "As a child I received instruction both
in the Bible [New and Old Testaments] and the Talmud. I am a Jew, but
I am enthralled by the luminous figure of the Nazarene."
He had read Emil Ludwig's recent biography of Jesus Christ and thought
it "shallow. Jesus is too colossal for the pen of phrasemongers,
however artful. No man can dispose of Christianity with a bon mot." He
accepted the historical existence of Jesus "unquestionably," adding,
"No one can read the Gospels without feeling the actual presence of
Jesus. His personality pulsates in every word. No myth is filled with
such life."
Yet in a conversation with a friend, W. I. Hermann, Einstein said: "It
is quite possible that we can do greater things than Jesus, for what
is written in the Bible about him is poetically embellished."
In 1929 Einstein wrote that physicists not only sought to know how
Nature works, "but also to reach as far as possible the perhaps
utopian and seemingly arrogant aim of knowing why Nature is thus and
not otherwise. Here lies the highest satisfaction of a scientific
person. [One feels], so to speak, that God himself could not have
arranged these connection in any other way than that which factually
exists, any more than it would be in His power to make the number 4
into a prime number. This is the promethean element of the scientific
experience.... Here has always been for me the particular magic of
scientific considerations, that is, as it were, thr religious basis of
scientific effort."
That same year, interviewed by a Daily Chronicle reporter, Einstein
explained his general theory of relativity as reducing "to one formula
all laws which govern space, time and gravitation, and thus it
corresponded to the demand for simplification of our physical
concepts. The purpose of my work is to further the simplification, and
particularly to reduce to one formula the explanation of the field of
gravity and of the field of electromagnetism. For this reason I call
it a contribution to `a unified field theory.' ...Now, but only now,
we know that the force which moved electrons in their ellipses about
the nuclei of atoms is the same force which moved our earth in its
annual course about the sun, and is the same force which brings to us
the rays of light and heat which make life possible on this planet."
Disappointed that Einstein had omitted God from the equation, Boston's
Cardinal O'Connell attacked general relativity as a cloak "for the
ghastly apparition of atheism," and "befogged speculation, producing
universal doubt about God and His creation." Anxious to defend
Einstein, New York rabbi Herbert Goldstein cabled him: "Do you believe
in God?" Einstein replied that he believed "in Spinoza's God who
reveals Himself in the orderly harmony of what exists, not in a God
who concerns Himself with fates and actions of human beings." This
delighted the rabbi, who tried to educate the cardinal, by explaining:
"Spinoza, who is called the God-intoxicated man, and who saw God
manifest in all nature, certainly could not be called an atheist.
Furthermore, Einstein points to a unity. Einstein's theory if carried
out toits logical conclusion would bring to mankind a scientific
formula for monotheism. He does away with the thought of dualism or
pluralism. There can be no room for any aspect of polytheism."
.
.
Einstein gave a detailed account of his credo in a remarkable speech
to the German League of Human Rights in Berlin in 1932. Then he said:
"Every one of us appears here [on Earth] involuntarily and uninvited
for a short stay, without knowing the whys and wherefores.... Although
I am a typical loner in daily life, my consciousness of belonging to
the invisible community of those who strive for truth, beauty, and
justice has preserved me from feeling isolated. The most beautiful and
deepest experience a man can have is the sense of the mysterious. It
is the underlying principle of religion as well as all serious
endeavor in art and science. He who hasnever had this experience seems
to me, if not dead at least blind. To sense that behind anything that
can be experienced there is something that our mind cannot grasp and
whose beauty and sublimity reaches us only indirectly and as a feeble
reflection, that is religiousness. In this sense I am religious. To me
it suffices to wonder at these secrets and to attempt humbly to grasp
with my mind a mere image of the lofty structure of all that is
there."
Though he did not believe in the supernatural, his novelist friend
Upton Sinclair persuaded Einstein to try to make contact with the
other world at a seance in California. Einstein was as skeptical as a
person could be, once saying that even if he saw a ghost he wouldn't
believe it. The trance medium, Roman Ostoja, a self-proclaimed Polish
count, had a glowing reputation, but with Einstein in the circle he
could only gasp and grunt incoherently. The seance was a bust, and a
counterinfluence in the room was blamed for it—a nonbeliever. It isn't
hard to guess who that was.
Einstein attributed the interest in spiritualism and the belief in
ghosts to weak, confused people. After all, he wrote, "since our inner
experiences consist of reproductions, and combinations of sensory
impressions, the concept of a soul without a body seems to me to be
empty and devoid of meaning."
Later, having left Germany permanently and settled in Princeton,
Einstein's second wife, Elsa, was conversing with a neighbor, Carolyn
Blackwood, a Presbyterian minister's wife. Elsa said that she and
Albert believed in the creative force, but not in a personal God who
took an interest in people on Earth, that he read the Old and New
Testaments regularly, for the literary value and stories, not for the
specifically religious message. The Einsteins had lost their Bible in
moving to the United States from Berlin, and when Carolyn gave Elsa
her Luther's translation, she hugged it to her heart and said, "I wish
I had more faith."
When Carolyn mentioned that she and her husband hoped to meet Zionists
during their imminent journey to Palestine, Elsa said, "My darling, I
did not know you were Jews." And Carolyn replied, "We are not. We are
Christians and Presbyterians on top of that." Elsa was dumbfounded
that anyone other than Jews would associate with, even seek out, the
Jewish community in Palestine. So Carolyn explained that there were
close bonds between the Jewish heritage and the Christian faith. "And
besides," she said, "Jesus was a Jew." Elsa, amazed, replied, "No
Christian has ever said that to me in my life!" and hugged Carolyn
affectionately.
Einstein spelled out his religious views again in 1936, when a young
girl wrote to ask him if most scientists prayed and, if so, what for.
He replied that a scientist is unlikely to believe that prayers can
influence events—as naive religious people do. But serious scientific
study makes a scientist conclude that "the Laws of Nature manifest a
spirit which is vastly superior to Man, and before which, with our
modest strength, must humbly bow."
He characterized those who clung to a belief in life after death as
feeble, frightened, egotistical individuals.
After visiting a local art gallery, where a stranger had insisted on
shaking his hand, Caroline Blackwood asked Einstein, "Does it ever get
monotonous being the greatest living scientist?" "I'm not great," he
replied. "Anyone could have done what I did. Besides, what I have is a
gift." "A gift from God?" asked the minister's wife. "I express it
differently," he said. "I believe down here"—he put his hand on his
heart—"what I cannot explain up here"—he put his hand on his head.
`But I believe it all. I believe it all." Blackwood's son, James,
said: "What I think Einstein meant by that is that he had a religious
dimension to his thinking. He read both of the Testaments regularly,
and his early training was in both."
Einstein speculated that the genesis of the various religions arose
from fear by primitive people—of hunger, wild animals,pain, sickness,
and death. They may have imagined that powerful beings not unlike
themselves could protect them from such terrors when offered gifts or
sacrifices.
In the spring of 1937, a few months after the death of Einstein's
second wife, Elsa, his friend, author Max Eastman, a disillusioned
Communist, called on him at Princeton. They sat chatting in armchairs
on the small sunny lawn in the back of the house. Eastman mentioned
how Einstein had often been quoted as not believing in an
anthropomorphic God, yet considered himself religious, and that the
scientists' striving toward rational knowledge of the universe was
"religion in the highest sense." But "I don't think you are really
religious," Eastman said. "And it's a mistake for you to use the term.
For the sake of clear thinking the word religion ought to be used only
to mean a faith that something in the external world is sympathetic to
man's interests."
Einstein conceded that was true of religion in its origin and early
development, the primitive religion of fear, and the social and moral
religion which grew out of it In both of those phases, he agreed that
religion assumed that a force or forces in the external world were
sympathetic to man's interests. But he thought that "there is a higher
religion which is free from fear and has nothing to do with morality.
This higher religion is an attitude of humility toward universal
being."
Eastman gathered from their conversation that Einstein regarded human
aims and wishes as insignificant compared to the grandeur of a
rationally ordered universe. And that Einstein believed that this
religious feeling sustained such scientists as Newton and Kepler, as
well as himself "in their arduous efforts to understand the universe."
Speaking at the Princeton Theological Seminary in May 1939, Einstein
said: "Scientific method can teach us nothing else beyond how facts
are related to, and conditioned by each other. The aspiration toward
such objective knowledge belongs to the highest of which man is
capable.... Yet it is equally clear that knowledge of what is does not
open the door directly to what should be. One can have the clearest
and most complete knowledge of what is and yet not be ably to deduce
from that what should be the goal of human aspirations.... The
ultimate goal itself and the longing to reach it must come from
another source.... Here we face, therefore, the limits of purely
rational conception of our existence.... It is the mythical, or rather
the symbolic, content of the religious traditions which is likely to
come into conflict with science. This occurs whenever this religious
stock of ideas contains dogmatically fixed statements on subjects
which belong to the domain of science. Thus, it is of vital importance
for the preservation of true religion that such conflicts be avoided
when they arise from subjects which, in fact, are not really essential
for the pursuance of the religious aims."
The theologian Thomas Torrance believes that the Christian church's
opposition to Hitler and the Holocaust drew Einstein into closer
relations with his Jewish friends Max and Hedi Born, who had become
Quakers, and with the Ross Stevensons and the Andrew Blackwoods of
Princeton Theological Seminary. This seems credible, based on a letter
Einstein sent to an American Episcopal bishop saying that as a lover
of freedom, he had expected the universities and the great newspaper
editors to be among its defenders, but, to his despair, it only took a
few weeks for the Nazis to silence them. "Only the church stood
squarely across the path of Hitler's campaign for suppressing the
truth," he wrote. "I never had any special interest in the church
before, but now I feel a great affection and admiration because the
church alone has had the courage and persistence to stand for
intellectual truth and moral freedom. I am forced to confess that what
I once despised I now praise unreservedly."
A Princeton friend of theologian Torrance told him that during World
War II when Einstein heard that a group of Christians were at a prayer
meeting nearby to make intercessions for Jews in Germany, Einstein
went there with his violin and asked if he could join in. "Chet'
welcomed him warmly, and as they prayed, he gave there music. He was
not "praying" for the Jews, which as a scientist he thought could have
no effect, but thanking those who were concerned enough to pray to
their God to help Jews.
As Torrance points out, "In relation to petitionary prayer, Einstein
not infrequently reacted against `the tact that men appeal to the
Divine Being in prayers and plead for the fulfillment of their
wishes,' for that implied to him a selfish `anthropomorphic' idea of
God which he rejected."
Ensign Guy Raner, serving in the Pacific during World War II, wrote to
Einstein that he had met a Jesuit priest who claimed to have converted
Einstein from atheism. Was it true? Einstein replied that he had never
talked to a Jesuit priest and was "astonished by the audacity to tell
lies about me. From the viewpoint of a Jesuit priest I am, of course,
and have always been an atheist," because, he said, he had repeatedly
expressed his disbelief in a personal God. "It is always misleading to
use anthropomorphic concepts in dealing with things outside the human
sphere—childish analogies." But he was not an atheist, because he did
"not share the crusading spirit of the professional atheist whose
fervor is mostly due to a painful act of liberation from the fetters
of religious indoctrination received in youth. I prefer an attitude of
humility corresponding to the weakness of our intellectual
understanding of nature and of our being. We lave to admire in
humility the beautiful harmony of the structure of this world—as far
as we can grasp it. And that is all."
Though seriously ill in 1948 with an aneurysm, which eventually killed
him, he managed to finish an article for the Library of Living
Philosophers, satisfied to have defended "the good Lord against the
suggestion that he continually rolls dice."
In his last few years, apart from his unified field theory, hoping to
Philosophers, satisfied to have defended "the good Lord against the
suggestion that he continually rolls dice."
connect gravity and electricity, what really interested him, he said,
was "whether God could have made the world differently; in other
words, whether the demand for logical simplicity leaves any freedom at
all."
In 1950, some American scientists decided it was time to come up with
a new definition of God that would be acceptable to fellow scientists.
A reporter asked Einstein about it, and he said that it was
ridiculous. When the reporter suggested there was a public yearning
for science to provide the spiritual help organized religion seemed
unable to give, he replied: "Speaking of the spirit that informs
modern scientific investigation, I think that all the finer
speculations in the realm of science spring from a deep religious
feeling, and that without such feeling they would not be fruitful. I
also believe that this kind of religiousness which makes itself felt
today in scientific investigation is the only creative religious
activity of our time.... But the content of scientific theory itself
offers no moral foundation for the personal conduct of life."
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Einstein once said that a person who regards his life and the lives of
others as meaningless is not only unhappy but hardly fit for life.
Yet, a year before his death, when George Wald visited the seventy-
five-year-old scientist in his Princeton office at the Institute for
Advanced Study, he said, "People keep writing to me asking, `What is
the meaning of life?' And what am I to tell them?" Wald, his fellow
Nobelist, was equally perplexed. That same year Einstein was laughing
with his friend Gillett Griffin, an art historian at Princeton's
Firestone Library, over a letter he had received from .. Catholic
priest who wrote that he prayed for him daily through the Virgin Mary,
and that Einstein shouldn't mind because Mary was a nice Jewish girl.
Max Jammer, an Israeli physicist and former Einstein colleague at
Princeton, believed that Einstein's understanding of physics and
religion were profoundly bound together. And Swiss playwright
Friedrich Durrenmatt wrote that Einstein used to speak of God so often
that he almost regarded him as a disguised theologian.
.
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No organized religion can claim Einstein as one of its own. He once
remarked that not believing in a personal God was no philosophy, and a
year before his death in 1955 he quipped that he was a member of a
somewhat new kind of religion, being a religious nonbeliever.
For Einstein, God remained the big mystery with which he wrestled all
his life.
JohnEB
Nov 17, 2010, 8:51:52 AM11/17/10
to Classical Physics
The analysis of the human genome shows that my body is a causal
mechanism. The new field of genomics is based on the fact that biology
is a causal science. Volume 2 of the GUT-CP explains the causal basis
for biology. We have yet to discover all of the causes, but we have
started down the road to real understanding. Neils Bohr did not think
we need to understand anything.
The following is from Henry Gee's book "Jacob's Ladder":
Chapter 2
mechanism. The new field of genomics is based on the fact that biology
is a causal science. Volume 2 of the GUT-CP explains the causal basis
for biology. We have yet to discover all of the causes, but we have
started down the road to real understanding. Neils Bohr did not think
we need to understand anything.
The following is from Henry Gee's book "Jacob's Ladder":
Ex Ovo, Omnia
The question of what it is that produces form from the formless has
captivated and fascinated people since antiquity. 1 Even today, the
arrival of a newborn baby confronts us with the marvellous, made all
the more so by the fact that birth follows a routine which verges on
the casual. It is only natural that human beings should have wondered
at the unseen and miraculous forces of reproduction since time
immemorial: each and every creation myth is an expression of this
wonder.
The earliest attempts to answer the question of the origin of form
centred on the egg. From apparently formless eggs come a multitude of
different creatures, but the origin of these creatures from within an
apparently homogeneous medium, the contents of an egg, were quite
mysterious. This mystery has attracted a wealth of mythic and cultural
associations. Gods and demons in myths the world over are seen to
hatch from eggs. Even modern physicists – of all scientists, the most
sensitive to the power of myth – talk of the Universe hatching from a
`cosmic egg', when they freely admit that the first instants following
the Big Bang are perhaps forever inaccessible to theory or
observation.
The first-century Roman scholar Pliny the Elder was entirely seduced
by the pervasive mythology of eggs, as he was by every other facet of
the natural world, no matter how dangerous the observation (he died
from the effects of smoke inhalation while making notes on the same
eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 CE that buried Pompeii and
Herculaneum). Pliny blithely mixed fact and fancy to such a degree
that he was described by one later scholar as that `voluminous,
industrious, unphilosophical, gullible, unsystematic old gossip'. 2 In
his Natural History, Pliny gives an account of a magical egg laid by
serpents. Every summer, he wrote, it is possible to witness an egg
formed from the saliva and sweat of a writhing bundle of snakes. The
egg squirts out of the knot like a champagne cork – `the serpents when
they have thus engendered this egg do cast it up on high into the
afire by the force of their hissing, which being observed, there must
be one ready to catch and receive it in the fall again'. 3
The catcher must then leave the scene as quickly as possible,
preferably on horseback, for fear of pursuit by the angry snakes, who
can only be stopped by a body of water. But the egg, if dropped, `will
swim aloft above the water even against the stream, yea though it were
bound and enchased with a plate of gold'. 4 The historian of science
Joseph Needham, who quoted this passage in his History of Embryology
(1934), suggests that whereas the writings of Pliny (in the
seventeenth-century translation by one Philemon Holland) are deficient
in accuracy, their entertainment value is sufficient compensation.
.
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Harvey could have regarded the absence of semen as vindicating the
views of his old mentor, Fabricius – that semen does not play a direct
role in generation. But there was something else amiss. Fabricius had
studied the reproductive tract of hens, which – even without semen –
are visibly busy with the creation of eggs, plainly visible to the
naked eye. The reproductive tracts of deer made as stark a contrast as
might be imagined. In contrast to the insides of hens, the
reproductive tracts of does, even recently mated ones, were barren and
bare. Not only could no semen be found, but there was no sign of
anything else that might betray the origin of new lives.
Inasmuch as Harvey found no trace of embryos being formed out of
blood, Aristotle's centuries-old view was plainly wrong –but Harvey
could offer nothing that might stand in its place. He confessed
himself stumped, and a brave and honest confession it must have been,
given his distinguished past. But he was as honest an observer as
Aristotle had been, and believed the evidence of his own eyes, even
though he could not account for this evidence. His contemporaries
(including the gamekeepers who tended the deer in the royal parks)
swore by Aristotle's ideas and insisted that Harvey must be mistaken.
Still puzzled, Harvey embarked on a further series of investigations
of the reproductive tracts of does that had been mated days or weeks
before, long after the influence of semen must have worn off (if semen
had had any effect at all) . He discovered, within the wombs of the
deer, formless, water-filled sacs that were not present in unmated
deer, but whose exact origin was a mystery – presumably the
consequences of phenomena too small to see. It is now thought that the
sacs observed by Harvey were the very early embryos of deer, implanted
into the uterus wall and each surrounded by a translucent membrane, or
amnion, but within which no distinct form could easily be discerned.
Significantly, although Harvey was unable to establish a direct,
causal link between the fact of mating and the origin of these
objects, he made the bold, intuitive leap that these featureless sacs
were in fact eggs, in every way equivalent to the externally laid eggs
of hens. Aristotle's inferred fundamental difference between egg-
laying and live-bearing creatures was, therefore, spurious. Harvey
came up with the concept of the egg, or ovum, as an example of a
primordium, a more general concept that encompassed the eggs of hens
as well as the fluid-filled sacs inside dissected does. Both were
destined to grow into adults, nourished by the mother – whether
directly, in the uterus, or remotely, by the yolk of a new-laid egg.
It is important to remember that Harvey, looking at the eggs of hens
or the early embryos of deer, could have made no distinction between
them inasmuch as he would have regarded both as primordial – members
of the same category. This is in marked contrast to what we now think
of as eggs and embryos, which are quite different. Eggs are single
cells whose activities are determined by the genome of one individual,
the mother. Embryos are more complex objects, usually made of many
cells, whose state is determined by the fusion of two genomes, each
parent having made its contribution. Harvey could have known nothing
of this: in his time, there was no distinction between single and
multicellular organisms, because cells were not yet recognized as the
fundamental building blocks of organic life that we understand today.
5 Fertilization – the fusion of egg and sperm – was also not
understood. In the 1650s, sperm had yet to be discovered. In any case,
Harvey had learned from his mentor, Fabricius, that semen played an
indirect role in the process of generation, spurring the egg into life
by a process generally termed fecundation, without direct contact
between egg and sperm.
Although Harvey could not distinguish between ova and embryos –
regarding both as the same kind of object – the fact that he was
seeing not the actual ova of deer but early embryos probably in the
germinal-disc stage, not long after implantation, does not detract
from the importance of his insight that all life came from the egg.
The title pages of the first two editions of Exercitationes showed the
enthroned Zeus holding an egg at the point of hatching, an egg from
which a parade of beasts is about to emerge. The egg is inscribed Ex
Ovo, Omnia – Everything Comes from the Egg." 6
.
.
Malpighi looked at blood and found it to be made of particles we would
nowadays recognize as cells. He studied the seemingly formless tissues
of lung and spleen and found in them a wealth of detail. Swammerdam
revealed the complexity of the silkworm just before it emerged from
the chrysalis. And then a microscopist in the Netherlands turned his
microscope on semen, that fluid whose role in generation seemed so
ambiguous. The results would come as something of a shock – semen was
full of tiny, writhing worms.
1. The background to the early history of embryology- as described in
this and the next chapter, including preformationism and much else of
interest, can be found in Early Theories of Sexual Generation by F. J.
Cole (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1930), A History of Embryology by
Joseph Needham (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1934),
Investigations into Generation 1651-1828 by Elizabeth B. Gasking
(London: Hutchinson, 1967) and a sparkling recent book, The Ovary of
Eve, by the biologist, poet and novelist Clara Pinto-Correia (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1997).
2. Quoted in Needham, op. cit., p. 48, and attributed to Charles
Singer.
3. Ibid., p. 49.
4. Ibid., p. 50.
5. `Cell theory' as we know it today was a product of the nineteenth
century, but its first stirrings – in the idea that organisms were
divisible into small units called `cells' – lay the other side of the
Restoration, with the publication in 1665 of Micrographia by the
English microscopist Robert Hooke (1635-1703), who described the
cells of cork wood.
6. For more on Harvey's insight see the essay `Where do babies come
from?' by R. V. Short, Nature, vol. 403, 2000, p. 705.
7. Gasking, op. cit., p. 43.
JohnEB
Nov 17, 2010, 10:27:05 AM11/17/10
to Classical Physics
Causal Quantum Mechanics
James T. Cushing wrote a book in 1994 that proposes that a causal
quantum mechanics may be as valid as the current non-causal quantum
mechanics, if not more valid:
The central theme of this book is that historical contingency plays an
essential and ineliminable role in the construction and selection of a
successful scientific theory from among its observationally equivalent
and unrefuted competitors.
.
.
Even if some future development were to tell decisively against, say,
Bohm's program, there would still remain the question (with which this
book is largely concerned) of just what were the nonevidential grounds
on the basis of which causal interpretations were shunted aside in the
early days of quantum mechanics.
The following is from Quantum Mechanics - Historical Contingency and
the Copenhagen Hegemony by James T. Cushing:
PREFACE
The central theme of this book is that historical contingency plays an
essential and ineliminable role in the construction and selection of a
successful scientific theory from among its observationally equivalent
and unrefuted competitors. 1 I argue that historical contingency, in
the sense of the order in which events take place, can be an essential
factor in determining which of two empirically adequate and fruitful,
but observationally equivalent, scientific theories is accepted by the
scientific community. This type of actual underdetermination poses
questions for scientific realism and for rational reconstruction in
theory evaluation. To illustrate this, I examine the possible
observational equivalence of two radically different, conceptually
incompatible interpretations of quantum mechanics (both based on a
common mathematical structure) and contend that an entirely plausible
reordering of historical factors could reasonably have resulted in the
causal program having been chosen over the Copenhagen one.
My purpose is to foster discussion of the issues raised, not to make
pronouncements on them. To pose a series of questions and to discuss a
set of possibilities in a fairly focused and concrete form, I do
present a point of view and I am certain that dissenting responses
will follow. I do not claim to know the answer to several of these
questions (e.g., whether or not there is actual underdetermination
between the two theories featured in this book). I have no final word
to offer on Bohm's program, since many aspects of it remain to be
developed. It is precisely for these reasons that I find the topic
interesting. While I do attempt to give some reasonable background to
and representation of the standard, or Copenhagen, version of quantum
mechanics, I do not devote as much space to it as to Bohm's
alternative theory. One reason for this is that standard quantum
mechanics has been well represented, both in the technical and in the
philosophical literature, as well as in science textbooks, while the
causal quantum theory program either is entirely unknown to most
scientists and philosophers concerned with foundational problems in
quantum mechanics or has been badly presented to them. 2 Parity of
space and of analysis of the two hardly seems warranted under the
circumstances. It is astounding that there is a formulation of quantum
mechanics that has no measurement problem and no difficulty with a
classical limit, yet is so little known. One might suspect that it is
a historical problem to explain its marginal status. 3
Let me enter a few caveats at the outset. I do not claim that the
radical type of underdetermination present in the episode studied here
obtains in practice in all cases of theory selection.4 Moreover, I am
not concerned with the rather trivial and philosophically
uninteresting historical contingency of who did what when. For
example, in response to Napoleon's fishing for a favorable comparison
between himself and Newton, Lagrange is said to have lamented: "Newton
was the greatest genius that ever existed, and the most fortunate, for
we cannot find more than once a system of the world to establish." 5
Newton had discovered the fundamental laws of mechanics and of
gravitation, and there was nothing of comparable significance left for
anyone else to accomplish in that area. So, good show for Newton and
hard luck for Lagrange. Of course, someone else might have discovered
these same laws. Then, the laws would bear another's name, but they
would be the same laws. This is surely historical contingency, but of
a benign and philosophically uninteresting variety. Another type of
contingency that is important, especially in the "historical" sciences
such as evolutionary biology, concerns the profound, long-term, and
really irreversible effects on, say, the future and the very existence
of a species that essentially random events produce.6 Even if we were
to accept as unproblematic certain laws or generalizations of science
(e.g., a "theory" or concept of evolution via natural selection),
contingent factors (such as a chance occurrence that annihilates one
species) may remain of overwhelming importance for the subsequent
evolution of some species. Again, though, this is not the type of
contingency I study in this book. Nor is `contingency' in the sense of
(other) possible worlds having a fundamentally different objective
structure of interest to me here. Rather, I discuss the acceptance and
rejection of observationally equivalent, alternative, and, indeed,
incompatible descriptions or theories of our actual world. For this
purpose, I need not enter into the argument about the existence of
necessary laws, as opposed to mere descriptions of contingent
regularities.? After all, there are laws and theories (whatever their
metalevel epistemic status may be) that are accepted by the scientific
community, and I focus on how successful scientific theories come to
be accepted.
Specifically, if certain equally plausible conditions, rather than the
actually occurring and highly contingent historical ones, had
prevailed and the interpretation of quantum mechanics had initially
taken a very different route from the Copenhagen one around 1925-1927,
would our worldview of fundamental microprocesses necessarily have
been brought back, by the "internal" logic of science, to our
currently accepted picture of an inherently and irreducibly
indeterministic nature?' Could our present understanding of the
behavior of the fundamental laws of nature in terms of an inherently
indeterministic physics have been replaced by the apparently
diametrically opposed view of absolute determinism? This book argues
that the answer to the first question is no and to the second an
emphatic yes. This is not to deny that there were already serious
conceptual problems for classical physics, even in its own domain of
applicability, or to imply that the scientific community did not have
good reasons (although not uniquely compelling ones) for making the
choices it did during the quantum revolution. I do not charge that
scientists acted irrationally in selecting one theory over another.
Nor do I believe that an alternative choice would have left us without
foundational problems to resolve. The set would be different, though,
and a choice between them is up to the reader.
My presentation does not proceed in strict historical sequence. In a
sense, I back into my story. I first review the present situation with
regard to rival versions of quantum mechanics and show that today the
standard (or Copenhagen) and the causal (or Bohm) theories of quantum
phenomena are both viable, being observationally equivalent (whenever
both see a well-formulated question) and logically consistent, even
though they are conceptually incompatible with each other. Such
considerations are necessary to block any claim that a causal
interpretation is incoherent so that the (clever) founders of quantum
mechanics would (surely) have spotted that flaw and hence not bothered
pursuing such an interpretation. Therefore, the argument will go, the
choice in favor of Copenhagen and indeterminism circa 1927 could not
have been uniquely demanded by logic and by evidential criteria alone.
So, how did we arrive at the nearly universally held position that the
Copenhagen interpretation—or something fairly close to it—is the only
acceptable possibility? If one discusses just the present situation as
it now stands without asking how we arrived there, a charge of ad
hocness is too easily (even if invalidly) raised by an opponent
wishing to reject out of hand any interpretation alternative to the
accepted, "correct" Copenhagen one. Once I have exposed the essential
role of the determinative contingencies that charted our course to the
current hegemony, I ask how plausible it is that we might have been
brought to a very different position had there been a reordering in
the temporal sequence of a few key historical events. 9 This book is
not intended primarily as an argument in favor of any particular
causal interpretation of quantum mechanics over the standard
Copenhagen one, but rather one for parity in the consideration of both
views. Even if some future development were to tell decisively
against, say, Bohm's program, there would still remain the question
(with which this book is largely concerned) of just what were the
nonevidential grounds on the basis of which causal interpretations
were shunted aside in the early days of quantum mechanics.
This is not intended to be a technical treatise on David Bohm's
theory. Such details can be found elsewhere» Nevertheless, there are
several somewhat technical developments presented here since certain
claims, such as observational equivalence, do rest on specific
mathematical arguments. Enough details are given to indicate how those
assertions can be substantiated. I hope that the examples treated at
length in some of the appendices will make the book more accessible to
students. The reader interested mainly in the historical background
and philosophical implications of this case study can simply pass over
the equations and the accompanying technical discussions (nearly all
of which are confined to appendices and to footnotes) and still see
what the overall argument is. The upshot of these mathematical
derivations and results is always stated verbally, if often
informally, in the text proper. The first two chapters summarize my
own views on the epistemic status of our scientific theories and
provide, at least for me, a motivation for examining Bohm's
alternative to standard quantum mechanics. Many will disagree with my
position there and the reader concerned only with the case study
itself can simply begin with chapter 3.
Like my previous book on theory construction and selection, this one
is intended both for historians and philosophers of science and for
scientists interested in foundational issues in quantum mechanics. 11
I have attempted to keep the text accessible to the general reader in
any of those areas. Since history, philosophy, and technical physics
( but of a fairly elementary variety) are all present, specialists in
one or another of these fields will find some of the material quite
familiar and elementary. Historians will no doubt judge the history
superficial, philosophers the philosophy shallow, and physicists the
physics incomplete. My one hope is that the value of the sum may
exceed the sum of the values of the parts. At a minimum, there may be
something new and interesting, or at least meaningfully controversial,
for all readers.
James T. Cushing wrote a book in 1994 that proposes that a causal
quantum mechanics may be as valid as the current non-causal quantum
mechanics, if not more valid:
The central theme of this book is that historical contingency plays an
essential and ineliminable role in the construction and selection of a
successful scientific theory from among its observationally equivalent
and unrefuted competitors.
.
.
Even if some future development were to tell decisively against, say,
Bohm's program, there would still remain the question (with which this
book is largely concerned) of just what were the nonevidential grounds
on the basis of which causal interpretations were shunted aside in the
early days of quantum mechanics.
The following is from Quantum Mechanics - Historical Contingency and
the Copenhagen Hegemony by James T. Cushing:
PREFACE
The central theme of this book is that historical contingency plays an
essential and ineliminable role in the construction and selection of a
successful scientific theory from among its observationally equivalent
and unrefuted competitors. 1 I argue that historical contingency, in
the sense of the order in which events take place, can be an essential
factor in determining which of two empirically adequate and fruitful,
but observationally equivalent, scientific theories is accepted by the
scientific community. This type of actual underdetermination poses
questions for scientific realism and for rational reconstruction in
theory evaluation. To illustrate this, I examine the possible
observational equivalence of two radically different, conceptually
incompatible interpretations of quantum mechanics (both based on a
common mathematical structure) and contend that an entirely plausible
reordering of historical factors could reasonably have resulted in the
causal program having been chosen over the Copenhagen one.
My purpose is to foster discussion of the issues raised, not to make
pronouncements on them. To pose a series of questions and to discuss a
set of possibilities in a fairly focused and concrete form, I do
present a point of view and I am certain that dissenting responses
will follow. I do not claim to know the answer to several of these
questions (e.g., whether or not there is actual underdetermination
between the two theories featured in this book). I have no final word
to offer on Bohm's program, since many aspects of it remain to be
developed. It is precisely for these reasons that I find the topic
interesting. While I do attempt to give some reasonable background to
and representation of the standard, or Copenhagen, version of quantum
mechanics, I do not devote as much space to it as to Bohm's
alternative theory. One reason for this is that standard quantum
mechanics has been well represented, both in the technical and in the
philosophical literature, as well as in science textbooks, while the
causal quantum theory program either is entirely unknown to most
scientists and philosophers concerned with foundational problems in
quantum mechanics or has been badly presented to them. 2 Parity of
space and of analysis of the two hardly seems warranted under the
circumstances. It is astounding that there is a formulation of quantum
mechanics that has no measurement problem and no difficulty with a
classical limit, yet is so little known. One might suspect that it is
a historical problem to explain its marginal status. 3
Let me enter a few caveats at the outset. I do not claim that the
radical type of underdetermination present in the episode studied here
obtains in practice in all cases of theory selection.4 Moreover, I am
not concerned with the rather trivial and philosophically
uninteresting historical contingency of who did what when. For
example, in response to Napoleon's fishing for a favorable comparison
between himself and Newton, Lagrange is said to have lamented: "Newton
was the greatest genius that ever existed, and the most fortunate, for
we cannot find more than once a system of the world to establish." 5
Newton had discovered the fundamental laws of mechanics and of
gravitation, and there was nothing of comparable significance left for
anyone else to accomplish in that area. So, good show for Newton and
hard luck for Lagrange. Of course, someone else might have discovered
these same laws. Then, the laws would bear another's name, but they
would be the same laws. This is surely historical contingency, but of
a benign and philosophically uninteresting variety. Another type of
contingency that is important, especially in the "historical" sciences
such as evolutionary biology, concerns the profound, long-term, and
really irreversible effects on, say, the future and the very existence
of a species that essentially random events produce.6 Even if we were
to accept as unproblematic certain laws or generalizations of science
(e.g., a "theory" or concept of evolution via natural selection),
contingent factors (such as a chance occurrence that annihilates one
species) may remain of overwhelming importance for the subsequent
evolution of some species. Again, though, this is not the type of
contingency I study in this book. Nor is `contingency' in the sense of
(other) possible worlds having a fundamentally different objective
structure of interest to me here. Rather, I discuss the acceptance and
rejection of observationally equivalent, alternative, and, indeed,
incompatible descriptions or theories of our actual world. For this
purpose, I need not enter into the argument about the existence of
necessary laws, as opposed to mere descriptions of contingent
regularities.? After all, there are laws and theories (whatever their
metalevel epistemic status may be) that are accepted by the scientific
community, and I focus on how successful scientific theories come to
be accepted.
Specifically, if certain equally plausible conditions, rather than the
actually occurring and highly contingent historical ones, had
prevailed and the interpretation of quantum mechanics had initially
taken a very different route from the Copenhagen one around 1925-1927,
would our worldview of fundamental microprocesses necessarily have
been brought back, by the "internal" logic of science, to our
currently accepted picture of an inherently and irreducibly
indeterministic nature?' Could our present understanding of the
behavior of the fundamental laws of nature in terms of an inherently
indeterministic physics have been replaced by the apparently
diametrically opposed view of absolute determinism? This book argues
that the answer to the first question is no and to the second an
emphatic yes. This is not to deny that there were already serious
conceptual problems for classical physics, even in its own domain of
applicability, or to imply that the scientific community did not have
good reasons (although not uniquely compelling ones) for making the
choices it did during the quantum revolution. I do not charge that
scientists acted irrationally in selecting one theory over another.
Nor do I believe that an alternative choice would have left us without
foundational problems to resolve. The set would be different, though,
and a choice between them is up to the reader.
My presentation does not proceed in strict historical sequence. In a
sense, I back into my story. I first review the present situation with
regard to rival versions of quantum mechanics and show that today the
standard (or Copenhagen) and the causal (or Bohm) theories of quantum
phenomena are both viable, being observationally equivalent (whenever
both see a well-formulated question) and logically consistent, even
though they are conceptually incompatible with each other. Such
considerations are necessary to block any claim that a causal
interpretation is incoherent so that the (clever) founders of quantum
mechanics would (surely) have spotted that flaw and hence not bothered
pursuing such an interpretation. Therefore, the argument will go, the
choice in favor of Copenhagen and indeterminism circa 1927 could not
have been uniquely demanded by logic and by evidential criteria alone.
So, how did we arrive at the nearly universally held position that the
Copenhagen interpretation—or something fairly close to it—is the only
acceptable possibility? If one discusses just the present situation as
it now stands without asking how we arrived there, a charge of ad
hocness is too easily (even if invalidly) raised by an opponent
wishing to reject out of hand any interpretation alternative to the
accepted, "correct" Copenhagen one. Once I have exposed the essential
role of the determinative contingencies that charted our course to the
current hegemony, I ask how plausible it is that we might have been
brought to a very different position had there been a reordering in
the temporal sequence of a few key historical events. 9 This book is
not intended primarily as an argument in favor of any particular
causal interpretation of quantum mechanics over the standard
Copenhagen one, but rather one for parity in the consideration of both
views. Even if some future development were to tell decisively
against, say, Bohm's program, there would still remain the question
(with which this book is largely concerned) of just what were the
nonevidential grounds on the basis of which causal interpretations
were shunted aside in the early days of quantum mechanics.
This is not intended to be a technical treatise on David Bohm's
theory. Such details can be found elsewhere» Nevertheless, there are
several somewhat technical developments presented here since certain
claims, such as observational equivalence, do rest on specific
mathematical arguments. Enough details are given to indicate how those
assertions can be substantiated. I hope that the examples treated at
length in some of the appendices will make the book more accessible to
students. The reader interested mainly in the historical background
and philosophical implications of this case study can simply pass over
the equations and the accompanying technical discussions (nearly all
of which are confined to appendices and to footnotes) and still see
what the overall argument is. The upshot of these mathematical
derivations and results is always stated verbally, if often
informally, in the text proper. The first two chapters summarize my
own views on the epistemic status of our scientific theories and
provide, at least for me, a motivation for examining Bohm's
alternative to standard quantum mechanics. Many will disagree with my
position there and the reader concerned only with the case study
itself can simply begin with chapter 3.
Like my previous book on theory construction and selection, this one
is intended both for historians and philosophers of science and for
scientists interested in foundational issues in quantum mechanics. 11
I have attempted to keep the text accessible to the general reader in
any of those areas. Since history, philosophy, and technical physics
( but of a fairly elementary variety) are all present, specialists in
one or another of these fields will find some of the material quite
familiar and elementary. Historians will no doubt judge the history
superficial, philosophers the philosophy shallow, and physicists the
physics incomplete. My one hope is that the value of the sum may
exceed the sum of the values of the parts. At a minimum, there may be
something new and interesting, or at least meaningfully controversial,
for all readers.
JohnEB
Nov 17, 2010, 2:34:58 PM11/17/10
to Classical Physics
The analysis of the human genome shows that my body is a causal
mechanism. The new field of genomics is based on the fact that biology
is a causal science. Volume 2 of the GUT-CP explains the causal basis
for biology. We have yet to discover all of the causes, but we have
started down the road to real understanding. Neils Bohr did not think
we need to understand anything.
The following is from Henry Gee's book "Jacob's Ladder":
Chapter 3
mechanism. The new field of genomics is based on the fact that biology
is a causal science. Volume 2 of the GUT-CP explains the causal basis
for biology. We have yet to discover all of the causes, but we have
started down the road to real understanding. Neils Bohr did not think
we need to understand anything.
The following is from Henry Gee's book "Jacob's Ladder":
Unfolding
The identity of the first person to see sperm through a microscope has
been a matter of dispute. A strong claim lies with that pioneer of the
microscope, the Dutch scientist Antony van Leeuwenhoek (1632-1723),
although it was fiercely contested at the time by another
microscopist, Nicolas Hartsoeker (1656-1725). Either way, it seems
certain that sperm were first seen through a microscope in the early
or mid-1670s. Leeuwenhoek did not help his case by announcing his many
findings in letters to his friends, who would broadcast the news
without necessarily acknowledging their source. This seems to have
been the case with sperm. It appears that Leeuwenhoek described sperm
in a letter to a friend, the distinguished poet and polymath
Constantijn Huygens (1596-1687), who passed the letter on to his
equally distinguished but more technologically minded son, Christiaan
(1629-95), who would have had more of an idea of what to make of new
discoveries made with the aid of the microscope.
Seventeenth-century Holland was synonymous with fine optics in the
same way that modern Switzerland is associated with expensive watches.
The first telescopes were probably made in Holland, and Galileo used a
Dutch telescope – or at least one of Dutch design to discern the moons
of Jupiter in 1610. Less well known is that Galileo may have had a
simple microscope at about the same period. The word `microscope' was
coined in 1625, and microscopy became the fashion that no well-
connected Dutchman could afford not to follow. Christiaan Huygens was
as well acquainted with microscopes as were Malpighi or Highmore,
although his fame lay in the discoveries he made with his telescope.
By the time he received Leeuwenhoek's letter from his father,
Christiaan could claim several important astronomical discoveries,
including that of Titan, the largest moon of the planet Saturn.
Christiaan announced the discovery of sperm in 1678, without any
attribution to Leeuwenhoek, in a discussion of animals said to arise
spontaneously, from putrefaction. In his report, Christiaan describes
animals found in semen that are formed of a transparent substance,
their movements are very brisk, and their shape is similar to that of
frogs before their limbs are formed. This discovery, which was made in
Holland for the first time, seems very important, and should give
employment to those interested in the generation of animals. l
The closer you read this important-sounding announcement, the less it
seems to say. On the one hand, it suggests that sperm are complete yet
very small animals, no different from the other small animals that
microscopists were discovering, in pond water, for example. At the
same time, the announcement suggests that sperm might be of interest
to those studying generation – or, then again, they might not. The
role of sperm in generation was still not as clear cut as the role of
the egg.
Many of the early microscopists were physicians or anatomtists. For a
doctor, at a time when infestations and infectious diseases were
common and the importance of sanitation was unsuspected, it would have
been quite natural to look at sperm and think they were no more than
another case of worms. That flies, worms, and so on were spontaneously
generated from diseased or putrefying matter was a seemingly obvious
deduction in a world in which the stench of decomposition was familiar
to everyone, and was assumed to be true by such authorities as
Christiaan Huygens. No wonder then, that when sperm were first
discovered, they were almost automatically assumed to have been
interlopers – parasites – with, perhaps, no direct relevance to
generation.
This is why the first impulse of many of sperm's earliest observers
was to classify them in their own right, as something quite other than
the animals they appeared to inhabit. In 1700, the French physician
Nicolas Andry de Bois-Regard published a large work entitled De la
generation des vers dans le corps de l'homme (`An Account of the
Breeding of Worms in Human Bodies'), which became a standard work on
medical parasitology. One kind of worm had a special place in Andry's
affection – the so-called spermatic worm. Andry's views exemplify a
general ambiguity about the role of sperm which persisted for more
than a century: he was quite prepared to believe that sperm played a
dual role, as free-living parasites and as carriers of the preformed
embryos of organisms. In The Ovary of Eve: Egg and Sperm and
Preformation (1997), her sparkling reassessment of preformation,
biologist and historian Clara Pinto-Correia suggests that the close
association drawn by Andry between infestation and generation would
have damaged the prevailing concept of sperm as agents for the spark
of human life, and this association would have acted as a strong
disincentive to scientists who might have sought in sperm the answers
to the great questions of generation.
However, it was clear to Andry and to other observers that sperm were
found only in male animals of reproductive capacity and in good
health, and that each species had its own variety of sperm. Given this
coincidence, some did begin to wonder whether sperm might not be
parasites after all, but particles directly concerned with generation.
But it was not a simple matter to rule out other possibilities. As
early as 1679, Robert Hooke reported the presence of sperm in the
testes of a horse, and had failed to find them in immature males; yet
he could not discount the idea that sperm were parasites specifically
found in the testes of mature males. Because of the ambiguity about
the role and nature of sperm – as parasites, as agents of generation,
or both – the idea that sperm were organisms in their own right proved
an enduring one. As late as 1835, zoologist Richard Owen (1804-92)
classified spermatozoa as a distinct order of animal life; the term
`spermatozoa' was coined as late as 1827, by the zoologist Karl Ernst
von Baer (1792-1876).
The problems of defining the place of sperm in nature dogged the wider
acceptance of what came to be called spermism –the sperm-based idea of
preformation – that, whatever else they did, sperm acted as the
vehicles for the transmission of inheritance, and that all human
generations would have been present in the testes of Adam, and not in
the ovaries of Eve. These problems were deepened by several issues
that had more to do with the image of spermism than its substance.
The idea that sperm, not eggs, might contain the germs of all future
generations was taken up by Nicolas Hartsoeker. In a throwaway remark
in a 1694 book mostly about optics, he suggested that were we to have
microscopes powerful enough, we might find embryos rolled up inside
the heads of sperm. Pictures made subsequently of little foetuses
rolled up inside sperm heads were only cartoons lampooning this idea –
and yet gave rise to the seemingly unshakeable conclusion that
Hartsoeker and others had actually made and reported such
observations, a legend that has since been perpetuated down the ages —
by its own memetic regeneration — as an example of how daft and
deluded our ancestors must have been to subscribe to preformationism
of any kind, whether based on sperm or eggs. To make matters worse,
Hartsoeker's apocryphal rolled-up foetus was referred to as a
homunculus. This word may seem innocuous enough (after all, it only
means `little man' in Latin), but it had already been appropriated in
the literature of medieval alchemy for a person created artificially,
by occult recipes or magic. For example, the famous Swiss alchemist
Theophrastus von Hohenheim (1493-1541), usually known as Paracelsus,
reported a recipe for making homunculi that required a mixture of
human semen, human blood and horse dung to be left to putrefy for more
than a month, after which the blind stirrings of the homunculi might
be observed. No true science of the Enlightenment could retain any
shred of credibility if forced to bear the embarrassment of such
medieval stenches.
The final knell for spermism was based more on ethics than on science,
in particular the propriety of working with human semen as a
biological material. Given that masturbation was proscribed by
scripture, early microscopists were sometimes less than clear about
whose semen they had used for their observations. This reticence
became near-total silence after 1715, when an anonymous pamphlet
entitled Onania, detailing the evils of masturbation and its fearful
consequences, achieved wide currency in Europe. After that, no serious
discussion of sperm-ism was possible. In 1722, even such a leading
exponent of spermism as Hartsoeker publicly renounced this view.
The fading of sperm-based preformationism after 1715 left the field
clear for a resurgence of the older idea that preformed embryos were
to be found in eggs. This ovism — which ran counter to spermism and in
parallel with it — was to become the predominant theory of generation
for the rest of the eighteenth century, thanks to three colossal yet
complementary talents: a dour Protestant physician named Albrecht von
Haller (1708-77); the precocious French entomologist Charles Bonnet
(1720-93), discoverer of the phenomenon of parthenogenesis, who went
on to become the leading theorist of preformationism; and Lazzaro
Spallanzani (1729-99), an urbane Italian priest, arguably one of the
finest experimental scientists who ever lived. They were a band
disparate in background, temperament and talent, yet their work turned
preformationism into a mature discipline, grounded in well-honed
theory, supported by rigorous experiment, and unassailable except by
developments in experimental science as opposed to changes in
theological dogma or ethical outlook.
Haller, the eldest of the three, was widely admired as a physician,
although he wasted much energy in fruitless worry – about money,
social status, and trying to reconcile his findings with his strict
Swiss Protestant outlook. Haller had been a student of the Dutch
physician Hermann Boerhaave (1668-1738), who favoured spermism but was
sufficiently broadminded to consider all views. This generous spirit
made Boerhaave both popular and respected, and his mildly spermist
views were initially adopted by his adoring student, Haller, who might
have persisted in this view but for the biological bombshell of the
1740s – the discovery of the phenomenon of regeneration.
.
.
The theory of cells as fundamental units of life put paid to the
stupefying infinities of preformation by establishing a lower bound on
organic smallness, but it did not in itself solve the problem of the
origin of form. Cell theory still left unbridged a great divide
between the simplest cell and the most complex non-living matter, to
the extent that protoplasm was thought to be a distinct and special
substance, containing a vital spark unseen in the world of the
inanimate. Nevertheless, cell theory advanced biology by finally
opening the way to a theory of generation which did not sidestep the
issue by booting it back to the Creation, as Bonnet and Spallanzani
had done. If plants and animals are made of collections of cells, each
kind more or less specialized for a certain function, could there not
be cells that were specialized for generation? Once this realization
dawned, spermatozoa were seen in an entirely new light, as cells of
the host body, specialized for the task of generation.
As the single-celled representative of a multicellular male, it made
sense that the sperm should have a unicellular, female counterpart. In
one sense, Harvey, Swammerdam and Malpighi had been right all along in
their insistence on ova as the primary seat of generation. But the
absence of cell theory, and of microscopes consistently powerful
enough to resolve animal cells with clarity, left them without the
tools necessary to draw a distinction between unicellular eggs on one
side, and multicellular embryos on the other, and without which both
were regarded as indefinite `primordia' .
The decisive result came in 1828, when von Baer, a year after he
coined the term `spermatozoa', described the human ovum as a single
cell, an austere room in which no space could be found for preformed
germs – neither physically nor conceptually. It became clear that all
ova are single, indivisible cells, whether they are very small, like
the ova of human beings or of the deer studied by Harvey; or very
large, like the eggs of hens studied by practically everyone since
antiquity. Once that was realized, the search for nested generations
of preformed embryos was finally exposed as futile. Harvey was right –
form emerges from nothing, and everything comes from the egg.
JohnEB
Nov 17, 2010, 2:44:19 PM11/17/10
to Classical Physics
Physics and Reality
by JohnEB on October 30th, 2010, 10:50 am
The following is from the book Einstein by Walter Isaacson:
"Physics and Reality"
Einstein's fundamental dispute with the Bohr-Heisenberg crowd over
quantum mechanics was not merely about whether God rolled dice or left
cats half dead. Nor was it just about causality, locality, or even
completeness. It was about reality. 36 Does it exist? More
specifically, is it meaningful to speak about a physical reality that
exists independently of whatever observations we can make? "At the
heart of the problem," Einstein said of quantum mechanics, "is not so
much the question of causality but the question of realism." 37
Bohr and his adherents scoffed at the idea that it made sense to talk
about what might be beneath the veil of what we can observe. All we
can know are the results of our experiments and observations, not some
ultimate reality that lies beyond our perceptions.
Einstein had displayed some elements of this attitude in 1905, back
when he was reading Hume and Mach while rejecting such unobservable
concepts as absolute space and time. "At that time my mode of thinking
was much nearer positivism than it was later on," he recalled.
My departure from positivism came only when I worked out the general
theory of relativity." 38
From then on, Einstein increasingly adhered to the belief that there
is an objective classical reality. And though there are some
consistencies between his early and late thinking, he admitted freely
that, at least in his own mind, his realism represented a move away
from his earlier Machian empiricism. "This credo," he said, "does not
correspond with the of view I held in younger years." 39 As the
historian Gerald Holton notes, "For a scientist to change his
philosophical beliefs so fundamentally is rare." 40
Einstein's concept of realism had three main components:
1. His belief that a reality exists independent of our ability to
observe it. As he put it in his autobiographical notes: "Physics is an
attempt conceptually to grasp reality as it is thought independently
of its being observed. In this sense one speaks of `physical
reality.'" 41
2. His belief in separability and locality. In other words, objects
are located at certain points in spacetime, and this separability is
part of what defines them. "If one abandons the assumption that what
exists in different parts of space has its own independent, real
existence, then I simply cannot see what it is that physics is
supposed to describe," he declared to Max Born. 42
3. His belief in strict causality, which implies certainty and
classical determinism. The idea that probabilities play a role in
reality was as disconcerting to him as the idea that our observations
might play a role in collapsing those probabilities. "Some physicists,
among them myself, cannot believe," he said, "that we must accept the
view that events in nature are analogous to a game of chance." 43
It.is possible to imagine a realism that has only two, or even just
one of these three attributes, and on occasion Einstein pondered such
a possibility.
Scholars have debated which of these three was most fundamental to his
thinking. 44 But Einstein kept coming back to the hope, and faith,
that all three attributes go together. As he said in a speech to a
doctors convention in Cleveland near the end of his life, "Everthing
should lead back to conceptual objects in the realm of space and time
and to lawlike relations that obtain for these objects." 45
At the heart of this realism was an almost religious, or perhaps
childlike, awe at the way all of our sense perceptions—the random
sights and sounds that we experience every minute—fit into patterns,
follow rules, and make sense. We take it for granted when these
perceptions piece together to represent what seem to be external
objects, and it does not amaze us when laws seem to govern the
behavior of these objects.
But just as he felt awe when first pondering a compass as a child,
Einstein was able to feel awe that there are rules ordering our
perceptions, rather than pure randomness. Reverence for this
astonishing and unexpected comprehensibility of the universe was the
foundation for his realism as well as the defining character of what
he called his religious faith.
He expressed this in a 1936 essay, "Physics and Reality,"written on
the heels of his defense of realism in the debates over quantum
mechanics. "The very fact that the totality of our sense experiences
is such that, by means of thinking, it can be put in order, this fact
is one that leaves us in awe," he wrote. "The eternal mystery of the
world is its comprehensibility ... The fact that it is comprehensible
is a miracle." 46
His friend Maurice Solovine, with whom he had read Hume and Mach in
the days of the Olympia Academy, told Einstein that he found it
"strange" that he considered the comprehensibility of the world to be
"a miracle or an eternal mystery." Einstein countered that it would be
logical to assume that the opposite was the case. "Well, a priori, one
should expect a chaotic world which cannot be grasped by the mind in
any way," he wrote. "There lies the weakness of positivists and
professional atheists." 47 Einstein was neither.
To Einstein, this belief in the existence of an underlying reality had
a religious aura to it. That dismayed Solovine, who wrote to say that
he had an "aversion" to such language. Einstein disagreed. "I have no
better expression than `religious' for this confidence in the rational
nature of reality and in its being accessible, to some degree, to
human reason. When this feeling is missing, science degenerates into
mindless empiricism." 48
Einstein knew that the new generation viewed him as an out-of touch
conservative clinging to the old certainties of classical physics, and
that amused him. "Even the great initial success of the quantum theory
does not make me believe in a fundamental dice-game," he told his
friend Max Born, "although I am well aware that our younger colleagues
interpret this as a consequence of senility." 49
Born, who loved Einstein dearly, agreed with the Young Turks that
Einstein had become as "conservative" as the physicists of a
generation earlier who had balked at his relativity theory. "He could
no longer take in certain new ideas in physics which contradicted his
own firmly held philosophical convictions." 50
But Einstein preferred to think of himself not as a conservative but
as (again) a rebel, a nonconformist, one with the curiosity and
stubbornness to buck prevailing fads. "The necessity of conceiving of
nature as an objective reality is said to be obsolete prejudice while
the quantum theoreticians are vaunted," he told Solovine in 1938.
"Each period is dominated by a mood, with the result that most men
fail to see the tyrant who rules over them." 51
Einstein pushed his realist approach in a textbook on the history of
physics that he coauthored in 1938, "The Evolution of Physics."
Belief in an "objective reality," the book argued, had led to great
scientific advances throughout the ages, thus proving that it was a
useful concept even if not provable. "Without the belief that it is
possible to grasp reality with our theoretical constructions, without
the belief in the inner harmony of our world, there could be no
science," the book declared. "This belief is and always will remain
the fundamental motive for all scientific creation." 52
In addition, Einstein used the text to defend the utility of field
theories amid the advances of quantum mechanics. The best way to do
that was to view particles not as independent objects but as a special
manifestation of the field itself:
There is no sense in regarding matter and field as two qualities quite
different from each other ... Could we not reject the concept of
matter and build a pure field physics? We could regard matter as the
regions in space where the field is extremely strong. A thrown stone
is, from this point of view, a changing field in which the states of
the greatest field intensity travel through space with the velocity of
the stone."
There was a third reason that Einstein helped to write this textbook,
a more personal one. He wanted to help Leopold Infeld, a Jew who had
fled Poland, collaborated briefly in Cambridge with Born, and then
moved to Princeton. 54 Infeld began working on relativity with Banesh
Hoffmann, and he proposed that they offer themselves to Einstein.
"Let's see if he'd like us to work with him," Infeld suggested.
by JohnEB on October 30th, 2010, 10:50 am
The following is from the book Einstein by Walter Isaacson:
"Physics and Reality"
Einstein's fundamental dispute with the Bohr-Heisenberg crowd over
quantum mechanics was not merely about whether God rolled dice or left
cats half dead. Nor was it just about causality, locality, or even
completeness. It was about reality. 36 Does it exist? More
specifically, is it meaningful to speak about a physical reality that
exists independently of whatever observations we can make? "At the
heart of the problem," Einstein said of quantum mechanics, "is not so
much the question of causality but the question of realism." 37
Bohr and his adherents scoffed at the idea that it made sense to talk
about what might be beneath the veil of what we can observe. All we
can know are the results of our experiments and observations, not some
ultimate reality that lies beyond our perceptions.
Einstein had displayed some elements of this attitude in 1905, back
when he was reading Hume and Mach while rejecting such unobservable
concepts as absolute space and time. "At that time my mode of thinking
was much nearer positivism than it was later on," he recalled.
My departure from positivism came only when I worked out the general
theory of relativity." 38
From then on, Einstein increasingly adhered to the belief that there
is an objective classical reality. And though there are some
consistencies between his early and late thinking, he admitted freely
that, at least in his own mind, his realism represented a move away
from his earlier Machian empiricism. "This credo," he said, "does not
correspond with the of view I held in younger years." 39 As the
historian Gerald Holton notes, "For a scientist to change his
philosophical beliefs so fundamentally is rare." 40
Einstein's concept of realism had three main components:
1. His belief that a reality exists independent of our ability to
observe it. As he put it in his autobiographical notes: "Physics is an
attempt conceptually to grasp reality as it is thought independently
of its being observed. In this sense one speaks of `physical
reality.'" 41
2. His belief in separability and locality. In other words, objects
are located at certain points in spacetime, and this separability is
part of what defines them. "If one abandons the assumption that what
exists in different parts of space has its own independent, real
existence, then I simply cannot see what it is that physics is
supposed to describe," he declared to Max Born. 42
3. His belief in strict causality, which implies certainty and
classical determinism. The idea that probabilities play a role in
reality was as disconcerting to him as the idea that our observations
might play a role in collapsing those probabilities. "Some physicists,
among them myself, cannot believe," he said, "that we must accept the
view that events in nature are analogous to a game of chance." 43
It.is possible to imagine a realism that has only two, or even just
one of these three attributes, and on occasion Einstein pondered such
a possibility.
Scholars have debated which of these three was most fundamental to his
thinking. 44 But Einstein kept coming back to the hope, and faith,
that all three attributes go together. As he said in a speech to a
doctors convention in Cleveland near the end of his life, "Everthing
should lead back to conceptual objects in the realm of space and time
and to lawlike relations that obtain for these objects." 45
At the heart of this realism was an almost religious, or perhaps
childlike, awe at the way all of our sense perceptions—the random
sights and sounds that we experience every minute—fit into patterns,
follow rules, and make sense. We take it for granted when these
perceptions piece together to represent what seem to be external
objects, and it does not amaze us when laws seem to govern the
behavior of these objects.
But just as he felt awe when first pondering a compass as a child,
Einstein was able to feel awe that there are rules ordering our
perceptions, rather than pure randomness. Reverence for this
astonishing and unexpected comprehensibility of the universe was the
foundation for his realism as well as the defining character of what
he called his religious faith.
He expressed this in a 1936 essay, "Physics and Reality,"written on
the heels of his defense of realism in the debates over quantum
mechanics. "The very fact that the totality of our sense experiences
is such that, by means of thinking, it can be put in order, this fact
is one that leaves us in awe," he wrote. "The eternal mystery of the
world is its comprehensibility ... The fact that it is comprehensible
is a miracle." 46
His friend Maurice Solovine, with whom he had read Hume and Mach in
the days of the Olympia Academy, told Einstein that he found it
"strange" that he considered the comprehensibility of the world to be
"a miracle or an eternal mystery." Einstein countered that it would be
logical to assume that the opposite was the case. "Well, a priori, one
should expect a chaotic world which cannot be grasped by the mind in
any way," he wrote. "There lies the weakness of positivists and
professional atheists." 47 Einstein was neither.
To Einstein, this belief in the existence of an underlying reality had
a religious aura to it. That dismayed Solovine, who wrote to say that
he had an "aversion" to such language. Einstein disagreed. "I have no
better expression than `religious' for this confidence in the rational
nature of reality and in its being accessible, to some degree, to
human reason. When this feeling is missing, science degenerates into
mindless empiricism." 48
Einstein knew that the new generation viewed him as an out-of touch
conservative clinging to the old certainties of classical physics, and
that amused him. "Even the great initial success of the quantum theory
does not make me believe in a fundamental dice-game," he told his
friend Max Born, "although I am well aware that our younger colleagues
interpret this as a consequence of senility." 49
Born, who loved Einstein dearly, agreed with the Young Turks that
Einstein had become as "conservative" as the physicists of a
generation earlier who had balked at his relativity theory. "He could
no longer take in certain new ideas in physics which contradicted his
own firmly held philosophical convictions." 50
But Einstein preferred to think of himself not as a conservative but
as (again) a rebel, a nonconformist, one with the curiosity and
stubbornness to buck prevailing fads. "The necessity of conceiving of
nature as an objective reality is said to be obsolete prejudice while
the quantum theoreticians are vaunted," he told Solovine in 1938.
"Each period is dominated by a mood, with the result that most men
fail to see the tyrant who rules over them." 51
Einstein pushed his realist approach in a textbook on the history of
physics that he coauthored in 1938, "The Evolution of Physics."
Belief in an "objective reality," the book argued, had led to great
scientific advances throughout the ages, thus proving that it was a
useful concept even if not provable. "Without the belief that it is
possible to grasp reality with our theoretical constructions, without
the belief in the inner harmony of our world, there could be no
science," the book declared. "This belief is and always will remain
the fundamental motive for all scientific creation." 52
In addition, Einstein used the text to defend the utility of field
theories amid the advances of quantum mechanics. The best way to do
that was to view particles not as independent objects but as a special
manifestation of the field itself:
There is no sense in regarding matter and field as two qualities quite
different from each other ... Could we not reject the concept of
matter and build a pure field physics? We could regard matter as the
regions in space where the field is extremely strong. A thrown stone
is, from this point of view, a changing field in which the states of
the greatest field intensity travel through space with the velocity of
the stone."
There was a third reason that Einstein helped to write this textbook,
a more personal one. He wanted to help Leopold Infeld, a Jew who had
fled Poland, collaborated briefly in Cambridge with Born, and then
moved to Princeton. 54 Infeld began working on relativity with Banesh
Hoffmann, and he proposed that they offer themselves to Einstein.
"Let's see if he'd like us to work with him," Infeld suggested.
JohnEB
Nov 17, 2010, 2:51:26 PM11/17/10
to Classical Physics
David Bohm proved that one of the many excesses of the Copenhagen
clan, the claim that an atomic theory could not possibly be based on
the causal evolution of atomic and corpuscular phenomena, was total
nonsense. He did this by producing an atomic theory based on the
causal evolution of atomic and corpuscular phenomena. Louis de Broglie
wrote the forward to Bohm's book 'Causality and Chance in Modern
Physics.' This book is a major classic.
FOREWARD
By Louis de Broglie
THOSE who have studied the development of modern physics know that the
progress of our knowledge of microphysical phenomena has led them to
adopt in their theoretical interpretation of these phenomena an
entirely different attitude to that of classical physics. Whereas with
the latter, it was possible to describe the course of natural events
as evolving in accordance with causality in the framework of space and
time (or relativistic space-time), and thus to present clear and
precise models to the physicist's imagination, quantum physics at
present prevents any representations of this type and makes them quite
impossible. It allows no more than theories based on purely abstract
formula, discrediting the idea of a causal evolution of atomic and
corpuscular phenomena; it provides no more than laws of probability:
it considers these laws of probability as having a primary character
and constituting the ultimate knowable reality: it does not permit
them to be explained as resulting from a causal evolution which works
at a still deeper level in the physical world.
We can reasonably accept that the attitude adopted for nearly 30 years
by theoretical quantum physicists is, at least in appearance, the
exact counterpart of information which experiment has given us of the
atomic world. At the level now reached by research in micro-physics it
is certain that the methods of measurement do not allow us to
determine simultaneously all the magnitudes which would be necessary
to obtain a picture of the classical type of corpuscles (this can be
deduced from Heisenberg's uncertainty principle), and that the
perturbations introduced by the measurement, which are impossible to
eliminate, prevent us in general from predicting precisely the result
which it will produce and allow only statistical predictions. The
construction of purely probablistic formula that all theoreticians use
today was thus completely justified. However, the majority of them,
often under the influence of preconceived ideas derived from
positivist doctrine, have thought that they could go further and
assert that the uncertain and incomplete character of the knowledge
that experiment at its present stage gives us about what really
happens in microphysics is the result of a real indeterminacy of the
physical states and of their evolution. Such an extrapolation does not
appear in any way to be justified. It is possible that looking into
the future to a deeper level of physical reality we will be able to
interpret the laws of probability and quantum physics as being the
statistical results of the development of completely determined values
of variables which are at present hidden from us. It may be that the
powerful means we are beginning to use to break up the structure of
the nucleus and to make new particles appear will give us one day a
direct knowledge which we do not now have of this deeper level. To try
to stop all attempts to pass beyond the present viewpoint of quantum
physics could be very dangerous for the progress of science and would
furthermore be contrary to the lessons we may learn from the history
of science. This teaches us, in effect, that the actual state of our
knowledge is always provisional and that there must be, beyond what is
actually known, immense new regions to discover. Besides, quantum
physics has found itself for several years tackling problems which it
has not been able to solve and seems to have arrived at a dead end.
This situation suggests strongly that an effort to modify the
framework of ideas in which quantum physics has voluntarily wrapped
itself would be valuable.
One is glad to see that in the last few years there has been a
development towards re-examining the basis of the present
interpretation of microphysics. The starting point of this movement
was two articles published at the beginning of 1952 by David Bohm in
the Physical Review. A long time ago in an article in the Journal de
Physique of May 1927 I put forward a causal interpretation of wave
mechanics which I called the "theory of double solutions" but I
abandoned it, discouraged by criticisms which this attempt roused. In
his 1952 paper Professor Bohm has taken up certain ideas from this
article and commenting and enlarging on them in a most interesting way
he has successfully developed important arguments in favour of a
causal reinterpretation of quantum physics. Professor Bohm's paper has
led me to take my old concepts up again, and with my young colleagues
at the Institute, Henri Poincare, and in particular M. Jean-Pierre
Vigier, we have been able to obtain certain encouraging results. M.
Vigier working with Professor Bohm himself has developed an
interesting interpretation of the statistical significance of |phi|^2
in wave mechanics. It seems desirable that in the next few years
efforts should continue to be made in this direction. One can, it
seems to me, hope that these efforts will be fruitful and will help to
rescue quantum physics from the cul-de-sac where it is at the moment.
In order to show the legitimacy and also the necessity of such
attempts, Professor Bohm has thought that the moment had come to take
up again in his researches the critical examination of the nature of
physical theories and of interpretations which are susceptible to
explaining natural phenomena as fast as science progresses. He has
compared the development of classical physics, where in succession the
viewpoint of universal mechanism, and then of the general theory of
fields, and then of statistical theories have appeared, one after the
other, with the introduction by quantum physics of its own new
conceptions. He has shrewdly and carefully analysed the idea of chance
and has shown that it comes in at each stage in the progress of our
knowledge, when we are not aware that we are at the brink of a deeper
level of reality, which still eludes us. Convinced that theoretical
physics has always led, and will always lead, to the discovery of
deeper and deeper levels of the physical world, and that this process
will continue without any limit, he has concluded that quantum physics
has no right to consider its present concepts definitive, and that it
cannot stop researchers imagining deeper domains of reality than those
which it has already explored.
I cannot give here a complete account of the thorough and fascinating
study which Professor Bohm has made. The reader will find a very
elegant and suggestive analysis which will instruct him and make him
think. No one is better qualified than Professor Bohm to write such a
book, and it comes exactly at the right time.
clan, the claim that an atomic theory could not possibly be based on
the causal evolution of atomic and corpuscular phenomena, was total
nonsense. He did this by producing an atomic theory based on the
causal evolution of atomic and corpuscular phenomena. Louis de Broglie
wrote the forward to Bohm's book 'Causality and Chance in Modern
Physics.' This book is a major classic.
FOREWARD
By Louis de Broglie
THOSE who have studied the development of modern physics know that the
progress of our knowledge of microphysical phenomena has led them to
adopt in their theoretical interpretation of these phenomena an
entirely different attitude to that of classical physics. Whereas with
the latter, it was possible to describe the course of natural events
as evolving in accordance with causality in the framework of space and
time (or relativistic space-time), and thus to present clear and
precise models to the physicist's imagination, quantum physics at
present prevents any representations of this type and makes them quite
impossible. It allows no more than theories based on purely abstract
formula, discrediting the idea of a causal evolution of atomic and
corpuscular phenomena; it provides no more than laws of probability:
it considers these laws of probability as having a primary character
and constituting the ultimate knowable reality: it does not permit
them to be explained as resulting from a causal evolution which works
at a still deeper level in the physical world.
We can reasonably accept that the attitude adopted for nearly 30 years
by theoretical quantum physicists is, at least in appearance, the
exact counterpart of information which experiment has given us of the
atomic world. At the level now reached by research in micro-physics it
is certain that the methods of measurement do not allow us to
determine simultaneously all the magnitudes which would be necessary
to obtain a picture of the classical type of corpuscles (this can be
deduced from Heisenberg's uncertainty principle), and that the
perturbations introduced by the measurement, which are impossible to
eliminate, prevent us in general from predicting precisely the result
which it will produce and allow only statistical predictions. The
construction of purely probablistic formula that all theoreticians use
today was thus completely justified. However, the majority of them,
often under the influence of preconceived ideas derived from
positivist doctrine, have thought that they could go further and
assert that the uncertain and incomplete character of the knowledge
that experiment at its present stage gives us about what really
happens in microphysics is the result of a real indeterminacy of the
physical states and of their evolution. Such an extrapolation does not
appear in any way to be justified. It is possible that looking into
the future to a deeper level of physical reality we will be able to
interpret the laws of probability and quantum physics as being the
statistical results of the development of completely determined values
of variables which are at present hidden from us. It may be that the
powerful means we are beginning to use to break up the structure of
the nucleus and to make new particles appear will give us one day a
direct knowledge which we do not now have of this deeper level. To try
to stop all attempts to pass beyond the present viewpoint of quantum
physics could be very dangerous for the progress of science and would
furthermore be contrary to the lessons we may learn from the history
of science. This teaches us, in effect, that the actual state of our
knowledge is always provisional and that there must be, beyond what is
actually known, immense new regions to discover. Besides, quantum
physics has found itself for several years tackling problems which it
has not been able to solve and seems to have arrived at a dead end.
This situation suggests strongly that an effort to modify the
framework of ideas in which quantum physics has voluntarily wrapped
itself would be valuable.
One is glad to see that in the last few years there has been a
development towards re-examining the basis of the present
interpretation of microphysics. The starting point of this movement
was two articles published at the beginning of 1952 by David Bohm in
the Physical Review. A long time ago in an article in the Journal de
Physique of May 1927 I put forward a causal interpretation of wave
mechanics which I called the "theory of double solutions" but I
abandoned it, discouraged by criticisms which this attempt roused. In
his 1952 paper Professor Bohm has taken up certain ideas from this
article and commenting and enlarging on them in a most interesting way
he has successfully developed important arguments in favour of a
causal reinterpretation of quantum physics. Professor Bohm's paper has
led me to take my old concepts up again, and with my young colleagues
at the Institute, Henri Poincare, and in particular M. Jean-Pierre
Vigier, we have been able to obtain certain encouraging results. M.
Vigier working with Professor Bohm himself has developed an
interesting interpretation of the statistical significance of |phi|^2
in wave mechanics. It seems desirable that in the next few years
efforts should continue to be made in this direction. One can, it
seems to me, hope that these efforts will be fruitful and will help to
rescue quantum physics from the cul-de-sac where it is at the moment.
In order to show the legitimacy and also the necessity of such
attempts, Professor Bohm has thought that the moment had come to take
up again in his researches the critical examination of the nature of
physical theories and of interpretations which are susceptible to
explaining natural phenomena as fast as science progresses. He has
compared the development of classical physics, where in succession the
viewpoint of universal mechanism, and then of the general theory of
fields, and then of statistical theories have appeared, one after the
other, with the introduction by quantum physics of its own new
conceptions. He has shrewdly and carefully analysed the idea of chance
and has shown that it comes in at each stage in the progress of our
knowledge, when we are not aware that we are at the brink of a deeper
level of reality, which still eludes us. Convinced that theoretical
physics has always led, and will always lead, to the discovery of
deeper and deeper levels of the physical world, and that this process
will continue without any limit, he has concluded that quantum physics
has no right to consider its present concepts definitive, and that it
cannot stop researchers imagining deeper domains of reality than those
which it has already explored.
I cannot give here a complete account of the thorough and fascinating
study which Professor Bohm has made. The reader will find a very
elegant and suggestive analysis which will instruct him and make him
think. No one is better qualified than Professor Bohm to write such a
book, and it comes exactly at the right time.
JohnEB
Nov 17, 2010, 3:21:20 PM11/17/10
to Classical Physics
Causality and Chance in Natural Law
"Niels Bohr brainwashed a whole generation of physicists into
believing that the problem (of the interpretation of quantum
mechanics) had been solved fifty years ago." - Murray Gell-Mann, Noble
Prize acceptance speech, 1976
The last 85 years in physics has been an absolute disaster. Among the
few people who kept their head screwed on were Einstein, Shroedinger,
deBroglie, Dr. Mills, Planck, Jaynes, Fuchs, and Mead. But a key
player who resisted the brainwashing was Bohm. The amazing thing about
the disaster that is today's physics is that both Einstein and Bohm
saw it coming.
The following is from the book "Causality and Chance in Physics" by
David Bohm:
CHAPTER ONE
Causality and Chance in Natural Law
1. INTRODUCTION
IN nature nothing remains constant. Everything is in a perpetual state
of transformation, motion, and change. However, we discover that
nothing simply surges up out of nothing without having antecedents
that existed before. Likewise, nothing ever disappears without atrace,
in the sense that it gives rise to absolutely nothing existing at
later times. This general characteristic of the world can be expressed
in terms of a principle which summarizes an enormous domain of
different kinds of experience and which has never yet been
contradicted in any observation or experiment, scientific or
otherwise; namely, everything comes from other things and gives rise
to other things.
This principle is not yet a statement of the existence of causality in
nature. Indeed, it is even more fundamental than is causality, for it
is at the foundation of the possibility of our understanding nature in
a rational way.
To come to causality, the next step is then to note that as we study
processes taking place under a wide range of conditions, we discover
that inside of all of the complexity of change and transformation
there are relationships that remain effectively constant. Thus,
objects released in mid-air under a wide range of conditions quite
consistently fall to the ground. A closer study of the rate of fall
shows that in so far as air resistance can be neglected, the
acceleration is constant; while still more general relationships can
be found that hold when air resistance has to be taken into account.
Similarly, water put into a container quite invariably "seeks its own
level" in a wide range of conditions. Examples of this kind can be
multiplied without limit. From the extreme generality of this type of
behaviour, one begins to consider the possibility that in the
processes by which one thing comes out of others, the constancy of
certain relationships inside a wide variety of transformations and
changes is no coincidence. Rather, we interpret this constancy as
signifying that such relationships are necessary, in the sense that
they could not be otherwise, because they are inherent and essential
aspects of what things are. The necessary relationships between
objects, events, conditions, or other things at a given time and those
at later times are then termed causal laws.
.
.
In sum, then, we may say that the processes taking place in
nature ,have been found to satisfy laws that are more general than
those of causality. For these processes may also satisfy laws of
chance (which we shall discuss in more detail in Sections 8 and 9),
and also laws which deal with the relationships between causality and
chance. The general category of law, which includes the causal laws,
the laws of chance, and the laws relating these two classes of law, we
shall call by the name of laws of nature.
2. CAUSALITY IN NATURAL PROCESSES
The causal laws in a specific problem cannot be known a priori; they
must be found in nature. However, in response to scientific experience
over many generations along with a general background of common human
experience over countless centuries, there have evolved fairly well-
defined methods for finding these causal laws. The first thing that
suggests causal laws is, of course, the existence of a regular
relationship that holds within a wide range of variations of
conditions. When we find such regularities, we do not suppose that
they have arisen in an arbitrary, capricious, or coincidental fashion,
but, as pointed out in the previous section, we assume, at least
provisionally, that they are the result of necessary causal
relationships. And even with regard to the irregularities, which
always exist along with the regularities, one is led on the basis of
general scientific experience to expect that phenomena that may seem
completely irregular to us in the context of a particular stage of
development of our understanding will later be seen to contain more
subtle types of regularity, which will in turn suggest the existence
of still deeper causal relationships.
.
.
It is necessary, however, to make the presentation of causality given
in this section more precise. This we shall now proceed to do with the
aid of a wide range of examples, which show how various aspects of
causal relationships actually manifest themselves in specific cases.
3. ASSOCIATION V. CAUSAL CONNECTION
The first problem that we shall consider is to analyse more carefully
the relationship between causality and a regular association of
conditions or events. For a regular association between a given set,
A, of events or conditions in the past, and another set, B, in the
future does not necessarily imply that A is the cause of B. Instead,
it may imply that A and B are associated merely because they are both
the result of some common set of causes, C, which is anterior to both
A and B. For example, before winter the leaves generally fall off the
trees. Yet the loss of the leaves by the trees is not the cause of
winter, but is instead the effect of the general process of lowering
of temperature which first leads to the loss of leaves by the trees
and later to the coming of winter. Clearly, then, the concept of a
causal relationship implies more than just regular association, in
which one set of events precedes another in the time. What is implied
in addition is that (abstracted from contingencies, of course) the
future effects come out of past causes through a process satisfying
necessary relationships. And, as is evident, mere association is not
enough to prove this kind of connection.
.
.
This example shows the value of controlled experiments in
distinguishing a true cause from an irrelevant association. It also
shows how a search for an improved explanation of the facts will often
help disclose some of the true causes. Finally, it shows the
importance of discovering such a cause; for this discovery made
possible the control of malaria, as well as aiding in the search for
remedies which would kill the malaria-producing bacterium.
4. SIGNIFICANT CAUSES IN A GIVEN CONTEXT
We have simplified the problem considerably in the previous example,
by supposing that there is only one cause of malaria. In reality, the
problem is much more complex than has been indicated. For not
everybody who is bitten by an infected mosquito gets sick. This fact
is explained by a more detailed understanding of the processes
involved in getting sick. Thus, the bacteria produce substances that
interfere with the functioning of the body and tend to make a person
sick. But the body can produce substances which interfere with the
functioning of the bacteria. Thus, two opposing tendencies are set up.
Which one will win depends on complex factors concerning the
functioning of microbes and of the body, which are not yet fully
understood. But we see that it is too simple to think of the microbe
as the only cause of malaria. Actually, it merely tends to initiate
the processes which lead to sickness, and thus merely contributes to
the production of malaria.
.
.
In order to deal with the problems raised by our inability to know all
of the significant causal factors that may contribute to a given
effect, there has evolved a distinction between immediate causes and
conditions (or background causes). The immediate causes may be defined
as those which, when subjected to the changes that take place in a
given context, will produce a significant change in the effects. The
conditions may be defined as those factors which are necessary for the
production of the results in question, but which do not change
sufficiently in the context of interest to produce an appreciable
change in the effects. For example, one might say that fertile soil
plus plenty of rainfall provides the general conditions (or
background) needed for the growth of good crops. But the immediate
cause would be the planting of the appropriate seeds.
The distinction between immediate causes and conditions is, however,
an abstraction, useful for analysis but not strictly correct. For the
background can always be changed, provided that conditions are altered
sufficiently. We have seen, for example, in the case of the
investigation of the cause of beri-beri, the origin of this disease
had been confused by the existence of a general background in which
most foods had enough vitamins for an adequate diet. But later
investigations disclosed conditions in which this background did not
exist.
Not only can background conditions be changed by external factors, but
very often they can be changed significantly, after enough time, by
the processes taking place in the background itself. For example, the
cutting down of forests followed by the planting of crops may exhaust
the fertility of the soil, and may even change the climate and the
annual rainfall appreciably. In physics, the influence of any process
on its "background" is even more strikingly brought out by Newton's
Law that action and reaction are equal. From this law, it follows that
it is impossible for any one body to affect another without itself
being affected in some measure. Thus, in reality, no perfectly
constant background can exist. Nevertheless, in any given problem a
large number of factors may remain constant enough to permit them to
be regarded, to an adequate degree of approximation, as forming a
constant background. Thus, the distinction between immediate causes
and conditions, or background causes, is relative and dependent on the
conditions. Yet, because we can never be sure that we have included
all of the significant causes in our theory, all causal laws must
always be completed by specifying the conditions or background in
which we have found that they are applicable.
5. MORE GENERAL CRITERIA FOR CAUSAL RELATIONSHIPS
Even when reproducible and controlled experiments are not possible,
and even when the conditions of the problem cannot be defined with
precision, it is still often possible to find at least some (and in
principle an arbitrarily large number) of the significant causes of a
given set of phenomena. This can be done by trying to find out what
past processes could have been responsible for the observed
relationships that now exist among these phenomena.
A very well-known example of a science in which reproducible and
controlled experiments are impossible (at least with methods available
at present), and in which the conditions of the problem cannot be
defined very well, is geology. In this science, the most important
method of formulating theories is to try to reconstruct the past
history of the earth on the basis of observations of existing
structures of rocks, mountains, seas, etc. We then ask, "What could
have caused these present structures to be what they are?" We may see,
for example, a set of layers of rock folded diagonally. The existence
of such a structure suggests that the layers were deposited
horizontally, when the region was at the bottom of a sea or a lake.
The layers were then pushed up and folded over by the movements of the
earth.
.
.
In the last analysis, then, the problem of finding the causal laws
that apply in a given field reduces to finding an answer to the
question, "Where do the relationships among the phenomena that we are
studying come from?" If reproducible controlled experiments or
observations carried out under specified conditions are possible,
these make available an important and very effective tool for
verifying our hypotheses concerning the causal relationships. Whether
such experiments are available or not, hypotheses can always be
verified by seeing the extent to which they explain correctly the
relevant facts that are known in the field in question, and the extent
to which they permit correct predictions when the theory is applied to
new phenomena. And as long as these possibilities exist, progress can
always be made in any science towards obtaining a progressively better
understanding of the causal laws that apply in the field under
investigation in the science in question.
6. CAUSAL LAWS AND THE PROPERTIES OF THINGS
Thus far, we have been tending to centre our attention on the aspect
of the prediction of the course of events by means of causal laws; for
example, the appearance of disease upon exposure to germs, the growth
of seeds in proper soils, the improvement of health with changes in
nutrition, the development of geological formations, eta. We shall now
consider another equally important and indeed very closely related
side of causality, namely, the predictions of the properties of
things, both qualitative and quantitative.
.
.
In order to understand just why and how the causal laws are so closely
bound up with the definition of what things are, we must consider the
processes in which things have become what they are, starting out from
what they once were and in which they continue to change and to become
something else again in the future. Generally speaking, such processes
are studied in detail in a particular science only after it has
reached a fairly advanced stage of development, while in the earlier
stages the basic qualities and properties that define the modes of
being of the things treated in that science are usually simply assumed
without further analysis. Thus, in the earlier stages of the
development of biology, the various classifications of living beings
according to their basic properties and modes of life were simply
accepted as eternal and inevitable categories, the reasons for the
existence of which did not have to be studied any further. Later,
however, there developed the theory of evolution, which explained many
of the fundamental traits that define the mole of being of each
species in terms of the process of transformation limited by "natural
selection", a process in which each species has come to obtain its
present character and which is presumably continuing, so that new
species may appear in the future. Likewise in physics, the earliest
steps involved the simple acceptance of certain characteristic
properties of matter (e.g. density, pressure, electrical resistance,
etc.), without further analysis, while later there came theories which
explained and predicted these properties approximately in terms of
processes taking place at the atomic level and at other deeper levels.
As examples we may consider the prediction of the different rates of
diffusion of different isotopes and the prediction of the properties
of the new element, plutonium, both of which have already been cited
in this section. Until recently, in physics, such explanations of
properties and qualities have tended to be mainly in terms of inner
processes of the types described above, i.e. processes which take
place within matter, at deeper levels. However, lately there has
developed a tendency to introduce evolutionary theories into physics,
especially in connection with the efforts in the science of cosmology
to explain how the particular segment of the universe that is at
present accessible to our observations came to have its particular
properties. These theories aim at the explanation of the formation of
galaxies, stars, and planets, the explanation of the distribution of
chemical elements in various parts of space, etc., in terms of an
historical and evolutionary process, in which matter starting out in
an earlier state gives rise to the cosmological order that we are now
studying. Vice versa, in biology there has developed a growing
tendency to explain various specific properties of living being in
terms of processes (chemical, physical, etc.) taking place within the
living organism. Similar trends are to be found in other sciences,
such as chemistry, geology, etc. Thus, with the further development of
the various sciences, we are obtaining a progressively better
understanding of how the causal laws governing the various processes
that take place in nature become indissolubly linked with the
characteristic properties of things, which help define their modes of
being.
7. ONE-TO-MANY AND MANY-TO-ONE CAUSAL RELATIONSHIPS
It is now necessary to consider more general types of causal
relationships that do not determine the effect uniquely. In real
problems, it is very rarely possible to deal with all the causes that
are significant, even in awell-defined context, in which conditions
(or the background) do not change appreciably. Usually we are able to
treat only some of the significant causes. Naturally, as we have seen
in Section 3, the effects are not completely reproducible and
therefore not completely predictable. Nevertheless, just because we do
not have at our disposal all the significant causes in a given
problem, it does not mean that no predictions at all can be made. For,
in such cases, it is generally possible to predict effects
approximately, in the sense that they will be within a certain
possible range. For example, if a gun is aimed at a certain point, the
projectile does not land precisely at the place predicted by Newton's
laws of motion (which are the causal laws that are pertinent in this
problem). It is found, however, in a long series of similar shots,
that the results cluster in a small region near the point that was
calculated. A similar pattern of behaviour is demonstrated very
generally in all fields in which causal laws are used for making
predictions. For in every such prediction there is always a certain
range of error, which may vary in a way that depends on the conditions
of the problem, but which can never be eliminated completely. Thus, it
is a general feature of causal relationships that they do not in
reality determine future effects uniquely. Rather, they make possible
only aone-to-many correspondence between cause and effect, in the
sense that a specification of certain causes will in general limit the
effect to a certain range of possibilities.
.
.
The existence of one-to-many and many-to-one causal relationships is a
very important characteristic of causal laws in general. To see one
reason why this characteristic is so important, let us recall that
incomplete precision in causal predictions/comes from the fact that a
given result depends on a great many factors that lie outside the
context treated in a given problem. From a purely logical point of
view, it would always be c'bnceivable that these unknown, or at best
poorly known, factors could produce variations in the effects of
interest that went beyond any specified limits. Because, in such a
wide range of fields, these factors do produce effects that stay
within bounds, and which thus give rise to the one-to-many causal
relationships, it is possible to study a given problem, in some degree
of approximation, without first taking into account the infinity of
factors that are needed for a perfectly precise prediction of any
given result. The existence of many-to-one causal relationships
evidently also contributes towards this possibility; since this means
that many results can be studied independently of a very wide range of
complicated details unknown to us or for other reasons too difficult
to be studied under present conditions. We see, then, that the
objectively one-to-many and many-to-one character of the causal
relationships help to make it possible for us to have approximate
knowledge about certain limited aspects of the world, without our
first having to know everything about everything in the whole
universe. And thus these causal relationships also help to make
possible the characteristic scientific procedure of studying a problem
step by step, each step laying the foundation for making the deeper,
more detailed, or more extensive study that leads to the next.*
* A well-known example of this procedure occurs in physics. Thus, the
first laws of physics to be discovered were those of macroscopic
physics. Then, with the aid of these laws, the next step was to the
laws of atomic physics. As we shall show in more detail in Chapter II,
Section 10, the possibility of studying the laws of macroscopic
physics without first knowing those of atomic physics comes from the
many-to-one character of the statistical aspects of the laws of atomic
physics, which permits a certain approximate autonomy of the laws of
the higher level. The next step was to go, in a similar way, from the
atomic level to the level of the nucleus, and now we shall see in
later chapters (especially IV and V), physics seems ready to penetrate
once again in a similar way to a still deeper level.
Within the general framework of one-to-many and many-to-one causal
relationships, the one-to-one relationship is then an idealization
which is never realized perfectly. Under certain limited conditions it
may be approached so closely that, as far as what is essential in the
context of interest is concerned, we may consider the causal
relationship as being approximately one-to-one. The nearest case known
to a set of one-to-one causal relationships arises in connection with
an isolated mechanical system, which can be treated in terms of
Newton's laws of motion. These laws give a one-to-one connection
between the positions and velocities of all the parts of the system at
a given instant of time and their positions and velocities at any
other instant of time.* This one-to-one connection is an idealization
for several reasons. First of all, no mechanical system is ever
completely isolated. Disturbances arising outside the system will
destroy the perfect one-to-one character of the connection. Secondly,
even if we could isolate the system completely, there would still
exist disturbances coming from motions at the molecular level. Of
course, one could in principle try to take these into account by
applying the laws of motion to the molecules themselves, but then one
would discover still further disturbances coming from the quantum-
mechanical and other deeper-lying properties of matter.** Thus, there
is no real case known of a set of perfect one-to-one causal
relationships that could in principle make possible predictions of
unlimited precision, without the need to take into account
qualitatively new sets of causal factors existing outside the system
of interest or at other levels.***
* These laws will be discussed in more detail in Chapter II.
** These will be discussed in Chapters III, N, and V.
*** In Chapter V we shall discuss the question of whether such
relationships are in principle even possible.
8. CONTINGENCY, CHANCE, AND STATISTICAL LAW
Now contingencies are, as we have pointed out in Section 1,
possibilities existing outside the context under discussion. The
essential characteristic of contingencies is that their nature cannot
be defined or inferred solely in terms of the properties of things
within thecontext in question. In other words, they have a certain
relative independence of what is inside this context. However, as we
have seen, our general experience shows that all things are
interconnected in some way and to some degree. Hence we never expect
to find complete independence. But to the extent that the
interconnection is negligible, we may abstract out from the real
process and its inter-connections the notion of chance contingencies,
which are idealized, as completely independent of the context under
discussion. Thus, like the notion of necessary causal connections, the
notion of chance contingencies is seen to be an approximation, which
gives a partial treatment of certain aspects of the real process, but
which eventually has to be corrected and completed by a consideration
of the causal interconnections that always exist between the processes
taking place in different contexts.
.
.
We see, then, that it is appropriate to speak about objectively valid
laws of chance, which tell us about a side of nature that is not
treated completely by the causal laws alone. Indeed, the laws of
chance are just as necessary as the causal laws themselves.*
* Thus, necessity is not to be identified with causality, but is
instead a wider category.
For example, the random character of chance fluctuations is, in a wide
variety of situations, made inevitable by the extremely complex and
manifold character of the external contingencies on which the
fluctuations depend. (Thus random errors in measurement arise, as we
have seen, in a practically unlimited number of different kinds of
factors that are essentially independent of the quantity that is being
measured.) Moreover, this random character of the fluctuations is
quite often an inherent and indispensable part of the normal
functioning of many kinds of things, and of their modes of being.
Thus, it would be impossible for a modern city to continue to exist in
its normal condition unless there were a tendency towards the
cancellation of chance fluctuations in traffic, in the demand for
various kinds of food, clothing, etc., in the times at which various
individuals get sick or die, etc. In all kinds of fields we find a
similar dependence on the characteristic effects of chance. Thus, when
sand and cement are mixed, one does not carefully distribute each
individual grain of sand and cement so as to obtain a uniform mixture,
but rather one stirs the sand and cement together and depends on
chance to produce a uniform mixture. In Chapter II, Section 14, we
shall consider more complex examples connected with the motions of
atoms to produce, partly with the aid of the cancellation of chance
fluctuations,
uniform and predictable properties at the macroscopic domain (e.g.
pressure, temperature, etc.). Here we shall see that the mode of being
of matter in the macroscopic domain depends on the cancellation of
chance fluctuations arising in the microscopic domain.
Not only are the regular relationships which come out of the tendency
towards cancellation in a large number of chance fluctuations
important, but under certain conditions even the fact that the chance
fluctuations cover a wide range of possibilities in a complicated way
may be extremely important. For one of the most characteristic
features of chance fluctuations is that in a long enough time or in a
large enough aggregate, every possible combination of events or
objects will eventually occur, even combinations which would at first
sight seem very unlikely to be produced. In such a situation, those
combinations which result in some irreversible change or in some
qualitatively new line of development are particularly significant,
because once they occur, then the chance process comes to an end, and
the system is irrevocably launched on its new path. As a result, given
enough "mixing" or "shuffling" of the type connected with chance
fluctuations, we can in such situations predict the ultimate result,
often with impressive certainty.
A very interesting example of the property of chance described above
occurs in connection with z current theory of the origin of life,
suggested by Opharin. This theory is based on the hypothesis that
perhaps a billion years ago or more, the atmosphere of the earth
contained a high concentration of hydrocarbons, ammonia, and various
simple organic compounds that would result from the combinations of
these substances. Under the action of ultraviolet light, high
temperature, electrical discharges, and the catalytic action of
various minerals, these compounds would have tended to associate and
to form ever more complex molecules. As the seas and the atmosphere
were stirred up by storms and in other ways, all sorts of chance
combinations of these compounds would have been produced. Eventually,
after enough hundreds of millions of years, it would have been
possible for just those combinations to occur which corresponded to
the simplest possible forms of living matter. This point would,
however, have been marked by a qualitative change that did not
reverse; for the living matter would begin to reproduce at the expense
of the surrounding organic material (since this is one of the basic
characteristics that distinguishes living from non-living organic
matter). From here on, the process would have been removed from the
domain of pure chance. Moreover, as conditions changed, the living
matter would start to evolve in accordance with the laws of
transformation that have already been studied in considerable detail
in biology; and eventually it would give rise to the manifold forms of
life that exist today.
We see, then, the important role of chance. For given enough time, it
makes possible, and indeed even inevitable, all kinds of combinations
of things. One of those combinations which set in motion irreversible
processes or lines of development that remove the system from the
influence of the chance fluctuations is then eventually certain to
occur. Thus, one of the effects of chance is to help "stir things up"
in such a way as to permit the initiation of qualitatively new lines
of development.
9. THE THEORY OF PROBABILITY
Just as the causal laws came to be expressed more precisely with the
aid of certain kinds of mathematical formalisms (for example, the
differential calculus), a characteristic mathematical instrument,
known as the theory of probability, evolved for the expression of the
laws of chance. In this section, we shall sketch briefly how this form
of mathematics arose and what it means.
Historically, the notion of probability was first given a precise form
in connection with gambling games. A good example is furnished by the
game of dice. If we follow the results of each individual throw of the
dice, we discover that they fluctuate irregularly from one throw to
the next, in the way that is characteristic of chance events, as
described in the previous section. As a result, we cannot predict what
will be obtained in any given throw, either on the basis of the
results of earlier throws, or on the basis of anything else that can
be specified within the context of the game. Despite the unpredictable
variations in the results of individual throws described above,
however, gamblers have developed the custom of betting on a given
combination, and of giving certain odds that depend on the combination
in question. Experience has demonstrated that corresponding to each
possible combination, there seems to exist a set of appropriate "fair
odds", such that if these odds are offered, then in the long run the
gambler will neither win nor lose systematically.
.
.
Evidently, then, the applicability of the theory of probability to
scientific and other statistical problems has no essential
relationship either to our knowledge or to our ignorance. Rather, it
depends only on the objective existence of certain regularities that
are characteristic of the systems and processes under discussion,
regularities which imply that the long run or average behaviour in a
large aggregate of objects or events is approximately independent of
the precise details that determine exactly what will happen in each
individual case.
On the basis of the above considerations, we are then led to interpret
the probability of, for example, a given result in the game of dice as
an objective property associated with the dice that are being used and
with the process by which they are thrown, a property that can be
defined independently of the question of whether or not we know enough
to predict what will happen in each individual throw. The significance
of this property is that in the long run, and on the average, the
relative frequency with which a given result will be obtained will
fluctuate near a value that tends to come closer and closer to its
probability. This, then, is the conception of probability that is
relevant in statistical problems that arise in scientific research and
in other fields. Of course, the word "probability" as commonly used
also has the subjective meaning of describing how likely we think a
given inference or conclusion drawn on the basis of incomplete
knowledge may be. This meaning has, however, no essential relationship
to the procedure by which we use the theory of probability in science
and in other fields to make approximate predictions concerning
relative frequencies of the various combinations of objects and events
that occur in statistical aggregates, without the need to take into
account precisely what each member of the aggregate is doing.
"Niels Bohr brainwashed a whole generation of physicists into
believing that the problem (of the interpretation of quantum
mechanics) had been solved fifty years ago." - Murray Gell-Mann, Noble
Prize acceptance speech, 1976
The last 85 years in physics has been an absolute disaster. Among the
few people who kept their head screwed on were Einstein, Shroedinger,
deBroglie, Dr. Mills, Planck, Jaynes, Fuchs, and Mead. But a key
player who resisted the brainwashing was Bohm. The amazing thing about
the disaster that is today's physics is that both Einstein and Bohm
saw it coming.
The following is from the book "Causality and Chance in Physics" by
David Bohm:
CHAPTER ONE
Causality and Chance in Natural Law
1. INTRODUCTION
IN nature nothing remains constant. Everything is in a perpetual state
of transformation, motion, and change. However, we discover that
nothing simply surges up out of nothing without having antecedents
that existed before. Likewise, nothing ever disappears without atrace,
in the sense that it gives rise to absolutely nothing existing at
later times. This general characteristic of the world can be expressed
in terms of a principle which summarizes an enormous domain of
different kinds of experience and which has never yet been
contradicted in any observation or experiment, scientific or
otherwise; namely, everything comes from other things and gives rise
to other things.
This principle is not yet a statement of the existence of causality in
nature. Indeed, it is even more fundamental than is causality, for it
is at the foundation of the possibility of our understanding nature in
a rational way.
To come to causality, the next step is then to note that as we study
processes taking place under a wide range of conditions, we discover
that inside of all of the complexity of change and transformation
there are relationships that remain effectively constant. Thus,
objects released in mid-air under a wide range of conditions quite
consistently fall to the ground. A closer study of the rate of fall
shows that in so far as air resistance can be neglected, the
acceleration is constant; while still more general relationships can
be found that hold when air resistance has to be taken into account.
Similarly, water put into a container quite invariably "seeks its own
level" in a wide range of conditions. Examples of this kind can be
multiplied without limit. From the extreme generality of this type of
behaviour, one begins to consider the possibility that in the
processes by which one thing comes out of others, the constancy of
certain relationships inside a wide variety of transformations and
changes is no coincidence. Rather, we interpret this constancy as
signifying that such relationships are necessary, in the sense that
they could not be otherwise, because they are inherent and essential
aspects of what things are. The necessary relationships between
objects, events, conditions, or other things at a given time and those
at later times are then termed causal laws.
.
.
In sum, then, we may say that the processes taking place in
nature ,have been found to satisfy laws that are more general than
those of causality. For these processes may also satisfy laws of
chance (which we shall discuss in more detail in Sections 8 and 9),
and also laws which deal with the relationships between causality and
chance. The general category of law, which includes the causal laws,
the laws of chance, and the laws relating these two classes of law, we
shall call by the name of laws of nature.
2. CAUSALITY IN NATURAL PROCESSES
The causal laws in a specific problem cannot be known a priori; they
must be found in nature. However, in response to scientific experience
over many generations along with a general background of common human
experience over countless centuries, there have evolved fairly well-
defined methods for finding these causal laws. The first thing that
suggests causal laws is, of course, the existence of a regular
relationship that holds within a wide range of variations of
conditions. When we find such regularities, we do not suppose that
they have arisen in an arbitrary, capricious, or coincidental fashion,
but, as pointed out in the previous section, we assume, at least
provisionally, that they are the result of necessary causal
relationships. And even with regard to the irregularities, which
always exist along with the regularities, one is led on the basis of
general scientific experience to expect that phenomena that may seem
completely irregular to us in the context of a particular stage of
development of our understanding will later be seen to contain more
subtle types of regularity, which will in turn suggest the existence
of still deeper causal relationships.
.
.
It is necessary, however, to make the presentation of causality given
in this section more precise. This we shall now proceed to do with the
aid of a wide range of examples, which show how various aspects of
causal relationships actually manifest themselves in specific cases.
3. ASSOCIATION V. CAUSAL CONNECTION
The first problem that we shall consider is to analyse more carefully
the relationship between causality and a regular association of
conditions or events. For a regular association between a given set,
A, of events or conditions in the past, and another set, B, in the
future does not necessarily imply that A is the cause of B. Instead,
it may imply that A and B are associated merely because they are both
the result of some common set of causes, C, which is anterior to both
A and B. For example, before winter the leaves generally fall off the
trees. Yet the loss of the leaves by the trees is not the cause of
winter, but is instead the effect of the general process of lowering
of temperature which first leads to the loss of leaves by the trees
and later to the coming of winter. Clearly, then, the concept of a
causal relationship implies more than just regular association, in
which one set of events precedes another in the time. What is implied
in addition is that (abstracted from contingencies, of course) the
future effects come out of past causes through a process satisfying
necessary relationships. And, as is evident, mere association is not
enough to prove this kind of connection.
.
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This example shows the value of controlled experiments in
distinguishing a true cause from an irrelevant association. It also
shows how a search for an improved explanation of the facts will often
help disclose some of the true causes. Finally, it shows the
importance of discovering such a cause; for this discovery made
possible the control of malaria, as well as aiding in the search for
remedies which would kill the malaria-producing bacterium.
4. SIGNIFICANT CAUSES IN A GIVEN CONTEXT
We have simplified the problem considerably in the previous example,
by supposing that there is only one cause of malaria. In reality, the
problem is much more complex than has been indicated. For not
everybody who is bitten by an infected mosquito gets sick. This fact
is explained by a more detailed understanding of the processes
involved in getting sick. Thus, the bacteria produce substances that
interfere with the functioning of the body and tend to make a person
sick. But the body can produce substances which interfere with the
functioning of the bacteria. Thus, two opposing tendencies are set up.
Which one will win depends on complex factors concerning the
functioning of microbes and of the body, which are not yet fully
understood. But we see that it is too simple to think of the microbe
as the only cause of malaria. Actually, it merely tends to initiate
the processes which lead to sickness, and thus merely contributes to
the production of malaria.
.
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In order to deal with the problems raised by our inability to know all
of the significant causal factors that may contribute to a given
effect, there has evolved a distinction between immediate causes and
conditions (or background causes). The immediate causes may be defined
as those which, when subjected to the changes that take place in a
given context, will produce a significant change in the effects. The
conditions may be defined as those factors which are necessary for the
production of the results in question, but which do not change
sufficiently in the context of interest to produce an appreciable
change in the effects. For example, one might say that fertile soil
plus plenty of rainfall provides the general conditions (or
background) needed for the growth of good crops. But the immediate
cause would be the planting of the appropriate seeds.
The distinction between immediate causes and conditions is, however,
an abstraction, useful for analysis but not strictly correct. For the
background can always be changed, provided that conditions are altered
sufficiently. We have seen, for example, in the case of the
investigation of the cause of beri-beri, the origin of this disease
had been confused by the existence of a general background in which
most foods had enough vitamins for an adequate diet. But later
investigations disclosed conditions in which this background did not
exist.
Not only can background conditions be changed by external factors, but
very often they can be changed significantly, after enough time, by
the processes taking place in the background itself. For example, the
cutting down of forests followed by the planting of crops may exhaust
the fertility of the soil, and may even change the climate and the
annual rainfall appreciably. In physics, the influence of any process
on its "background" is even more strikingly brought out by Newton's
Law that action and reaction are equal. From this law, it follows that
it is impossible for any one body to affect another without itself
being affected in some measure. Thus, in reality, no perfectly
constant background can exist. Nevertheless, in any given problem a
large number of factors may remain constant enough to permit them to
be regarded, to an adequate degree of approximation, as forming a
constant background. Thus, the distinction between immediate causes
and conditions, or background causes, is relative and dependent on the
conditions. Yet, because we can never be sure that we have included
all of the significant causes in our theory, all causal laws must
always be completed by specifying the conditions or background in
which we have found that they are applicable.
5. MORE GENERAL CRITERIA FOR CAUSAL RELATIONSHIPS
Even when reproducible and controlled experiments are not possible,
and even when the conditions of the problem cannot be defined with
precision, it is still often possible to find at least some (and in
principle an arbitrarily large number) of the significant causes of a
given set of phenomena. This can be done by trying to find out what
past processes could have been responsible for the observed
relationships that now exist among these phenomena.
A very well-known example of a science in which reproducible and
controlled experiments are impossible (at least with methods available
at present), and in which the conditions of the problem cannot be
defined very well, is geology. In this science, the most important
method of formulating theories is to try to reconstruct the past
history of the earth on the basis of observations of existing
structures of rocks, mountains, seas, etc. We then ask, "What could
have caused these present structures to be what they are?" We may see,
for example, a set of layers of rock folded diagonally. The existence
of such a structure suggests that the layers were deposited
horizontally, when the region was at the bottom of a sea or a lake.
The layers were then pushed up and folded over by the movements of the
earth.
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.
In the last analysis, then, the problem of finding the causal laws
that apply in a given field reduces to finding an answer to the
question, "Where do the relationships among the phenomena that we are
studying come from?" If reproducible controlled experiments or
observations carried out under specified conditions are possible,
these make available an important and very effective tool for
verifying our hypotheses concerning the causal relationships. Whether
such experiments are available or not, hypotheses can always be
verified by seeing the extent to which they explain correctly the
relevant facts that are known in the field in question, and the extent
to which they permit correct predictions when the theory is applied to
new phenomena. And as long as these possibilities exist, progress can
always be made in any science towards obtaining a progressively better
understanding of the causal laws that apply in the field under
investigation in the science in question.
6. CAUSAL LAWS AND THE PROPERTIES OF THINGS
Thus far, we have been tending to centre our attention on the aspect
of the prediction of the course of events by means of causal laws; for
example, the appearance of disease upon exposure to germs, the growth
of seeds in proper soils, the improvement of health with changes in
nutrition, the development of geological formations, eta. We shall now
consider another equally important and indeed very closely related
side of causality, namely, the predictions of the properties of
things, both qualitative and quantitative.
.
.
In order to understand just why and how the causal laws are so closely
bound up with the definition of what things are, we must consider the
processes in which things have become what they are, starting out from
what they once were and in which they continue to change and to become
something else again in the future. Generally speaking, such processes
are studied in detail in a particular science only after it has
reached a fairly advanced stage of development, while in the earlier
stages the basic qualities and properties that define the modes of
being of the things treated in that science are usually simply assumed
without further analysis. Thus, in the earlier stages of the
development of biology, the various classifications of living beings
according to their basic properties and modes of life were simply
accepted as eternal and inevitable categories, the reasons for the
existence of which did not have to be studied any further. Later,
however, there developed the theory of evolution, which explained many
of the fundamental traits that define the mole of being of each
species in terms of the process of transformation limited by "natural
selection", a process in which each species has come to obtain its
present character and which is presumably continuing, so that new
species may appear in the future. Likewise in physics, the earliest
steps involved the simple acceptance of certain characteristic
properties of matter (e.g. density, pressure, electrical resistance,
etc.), without further analysis, while later there came theories which
explained and predicted these properties approximately in terms of
processes taking place at the atomic level and at other deeper levels.
As examples we may consider the prediction of the different rates of
diffusion of different isotopes and the prediction of the properties
of the new element, plutonium, both of which have already been cited
in this section. Until recently, in physics, such explanations of
properties and qualities have tended to be mainly in terms of inner
processes of the types described above, i.e. processes which take
place within matter, at deeper levels. However, lately there has
developed a tendency to introduce evolutionary theories into physics,
especially in connection with the efforts in the science of cosmology
to explain how the particular segment of the universe that is at
present accessible to our observations came to have its particular
properties. These theories aim at the explanation of the formation of
galaxies, stars, and planets, the explanation of the distribution of
chemical elements in various parts of space, etc., in terms of an
historical and evolutionary process, in which matter starting out in
an earlier state gives rise to the cosmological order that we are now
studying. Vice versa, in biology there has developed a growing
tendency to explain various specific properties of living being in
terms of processes (chemical, physical, etc.) taking place within the
living organism. Similar trends are to be found in other sciences,
such as chemistry, geology, etc. Thus, with the further development of
the various sciences, we are obtaining a progressively better
understanding of how the causal laws governing the various processes
that take place in nature become indissolubly linked with the
characteristic properties of things, which help define their modes of
being.
7. ONE-TO-MANY AND MANY-TO-ONE CAUSAL RELATIONSHIPS
It is now necessary to consider more general types of causal
relationships that do not determine the effect uniquely. In real
problems, it is very rarely possible to deal with all the causes that
are significant, even in awell-defined context, in which conditions
(or the background) do not change appreciably. Usually we are able to
treat only some of the significant causes. Naturally, as we have seen
in Section 3, the effects are not completely reproducible and
therefore not completely predictable. Nevertheless, just because we do
not have at our disposal all the significant causes in a given
problem, it does not mean that no predictions at all can be made. For,
in such cases, it is generally possible to predict effects
approximately, in the sense that they will be within a certain
possible range. For example, if a gun is aimed at a certain point, the
projectile does not land precisely at the place predicted by Newton's
laws of motion (which are the causal laws that are pertinent in this
problem). It is found, however, in a long series of similar shots,
that the results cluster in a small region near the point that was
calculated. A similar pattern of behaviour is demonstrated very
generally in all fields in which causal laws are used for making
predictions. For in every such prediction there is always a certain
range of error, which may vary in a way that depends on the conditions
of the problem, but which can never be eliminated completely. Thus, it
is a general feature of causal relationships that they do not in
reality determine future effects uniquely. Rather, they make possible
only aone-to-many correspondence between cause and effect, in the
sense that a specification of certain causes will in general limit the
effect to a certain range of possibilities.
.
.
The existence of one-to-many and many-to-one causal relationships is a
very important characteristic of causal laws in general. To see one
reason why this characteristic is so important, let us recall that
incomplete precision in causal predictions/comes from the fact that a
given result depends on a great many factors that lie outside the
context treated in a given problem. From a purely logical point of
view, it would always be c'bnceivable that these unknown, or at best
poorly known, factors could produce variations in the effects of
interest that went beyond any specified limits. Because, in such a
wide range of fields, these factors do produce effects that stay
within bounds, and which thus give rise to the one-to-many causal
relationships, it is possible to study a given problem, in some degree
of approximation, without first taking into account the infinity of
factors that are needed for a perfectly precise prediction of any
given result. The existence of many-to-one causal relationships
evidently also contributes towards this possibility; since this means
that many results can be studied independently of a very wide range of
complicated details unknown to us or for other reasons too difficult
to be studied under present conditions. We see, then, that the
objectively one-to-many and many-to-one character of the causal
relationships help to make it possible for us to have approximate
knowledge about certain limited aspects of the world, without our
first having to know everything about everything in the whole
universe. And thus these causal relationships also help to make
possible the characteristic scientific procedure of studying a problem
step by step, each step laying the foundation for making the deeper,
more detailed, or more extensive study that leads to the next.*
* A well-known example of this procedure occurs in physics. Thus, the
first laws of physics to be discovered were those of macroscopic
physics. Then, with the aid of these laws, the next step was to the
laws of atomic physics. As we shall show in more detail in Chapter II,
Section 10, the possibility of studying the laws of macroscopic
physics without first knowing those of atomic physics comes from the
many-to-one character of the statistical aspects of the laws of atomic
physics, which permits a certain approximate autonomy of the laws of
the higher level. The next step was to go, in a similar way, from the
atomic level to the level of the nucleus, and now we shall see in
later chapters (especially IV and V), physics seems ready to penetrate
once again in a similar way to a still deeper level.
Within the general framework of one-to-many and many-to-one causal
relationships, the one-to-one relationship is then an idealization
which is never realized perfectly. Under certain limited conditions it
may be approached so closely that, as far as what is essential in the
context of interest is concerned, we may consider the causal
relationship as being approximately one-to-one. The nearest case known
to a set of one-to-one causal relationships arises in connection with
an isolated mechanical system, which can be treated in terms of
Newton's laws of motion. These laws give a one-to-one connection
between the positions and velocities of all the parts of the system at
a given instant of time and their positions and velocities at any
other instant of time.* This one-to-one connection is an idealization
for several reasons. First of all, no mechanical system is ever
completely isolated. Disturbances arising outside the system will
destroy the perfect one-to-one character of the connection. Secondly,
even if we could isolate the system completely, there would still
exist disturbances coming from motions at the molecular level. Of
course, one could in principle try to take these into account by
applying the laws of motion to the molecules themselves, but then one
would discover still further disturbances coming from the quantum-
mechanical and other deeper-lying properties of matter.** Thus, there
is no real case known of a set of perfect one-to-one causal
relationships that could in principle make possible predictions of
unlimited precision, without the need to take into account
qualitatively new sets of causal factors existing outside the system
of interest or at other levels.***
* These laws will be discussed in more detail in Chapter II.
** These will be discussed in Chapters III, N, and V.
*** In Chapter V we shall discuss the question of whether such
relationships are in principle even possible.
8. CONTINGENCY, CHANCE, AND STATISTICAL LAW
Now contingencies are, as we have pointed out in Section 1,
possibilities existing outside the context under discussion. The
essential characteristic of contingencies is that their nature cannot
be defined or inferred solely in terms of the properties of things
within thecontext in question. In other words, they have a certain
relative independence of what is inside this context. However, as we
have seen, our general experience shows that all things are
interconnected in some way and to some degree. Hence we never expect
to find complete independence. But to the extent that the
interconnection is negligible, we may abstract out from the real
process and its inter-connections the notion of chance contingencies,
which are idealized, as completely independent of the context under
discussion. Thus, like the notion of necessary causal connections, the
notion of chance contingencies is seen to be an approximation, which
gives a partial treatment of certain aspects of the real process, but
which eventually has to be corrected and completed by a consideration
of the causal interconnections that always exist between the processes
taking place in different contexts.
.
.
We see, then, that it is appropriate to speak about objectively valid
laws of chance, which tell us about a side of nature that is not
treated completely by the causal laws alone. Indeed, the laws of
chance are just as necessary as the causal laws themselves.*
* Thus, necessity is not to be identified with causality, but is
instead a wider category.
For example, the random character of chance fluctuations is, in a wide
variety of situations, made inevitable by the extremely complex and
manifold character of the external contingencies on which the
fluctuations depend. (Thus random errors in measurement arise, as we
have seen, in a practically unlimited number of different kinds of
factors that are essentially independent of the quantity that is being
measured.) Moreover, this random character of the fluctuations is
quite often an inherent and indispensable part of the normal
functioning of many kinds of things, and of their modes of being.
Thus, it would be impossible for a modern city to continue to exist in
its normal condition unless there were a tendency towards the
cancellation of chance fluctuations in traffic, in the demand for
various kinds of food, clothing, etc., in the times at which various
individuals get sick or die, etc. In all kinds of fields we find a
similar dependence on the characteristic effects of chance. Thus, when
sand and cement are mixed, one does not carefully distribute each
individual grain of sand and cement so as to obtain a uniform mixture,
but rather one stirs the sand and cement together and depends on
chance to produce a uniform mixture. In Chapter II, Section 14, we
shall consider more complex examples connected with the motions of
atoms to produce, partly with the aid of the cancellation of chance
fluctuations,
uniform and predictable properties at the macroscopic domain (e.g.
pressure, temperature, etc.). Here we shall see that the mode of being
of matter in the macroscopic domain depends on the cancellation of
chance fluctuations arising in the microscopic domain.
Not only are the regular relationships which come out of the tendency
towards cancellation in a large number of chance fluctuations
important, but under certain conditions even the fact that the chance
fluctuations cover a wide range of possibilities in a complicated way
may be extremely important. For one of the most characteristic
features of chance fluctuations is that in a long enough time or in a
large enough aggregate, every possible combination of events or
objects will eventually occur, even combinations which would at first
sight seem very unlikely to be produced. In such a situation, those
combinations which result in some irreversible change or in some
qualitatively new line of development are particularly significant,
because once they occur, then the chance process comes to an end, and
the system is irrevocably launched on its new path. As a result, given
enough "mixing" or "shuffling" of the type connected with chance
fluctuations, we can in such situations predict the ultimate result,
often with impressive certainty.
A very interesting example of the property of chance described above
occurs in connection with z current theory of the origin of life,
suggested by Opharin. This theory is based on the hypothesis that
perhaps a billion years ago or more, the atmosphere of the earth
contained a high concentration of hydrocarbons, ammonia, and various
simple organic compounds that would result from the combinations of
these substances. Under the action of ultraviolet light, high
temperature, electrical discharges, and the catalytic action of
various minerals, these compounds would have tended to associate and
to form ever more complex molecules. As the seas and the atmosphere
were stirred up by storms and in other ways, all sorts of chance
combinations of these compounds would have been produced. Eventually,
after enough hundreds of millions of years, it would have been
possible for just those combinations to occur which corresponded to
the simplest possible forms of living matter. This point would,
however, have been marked by a qualitative change that did not
reverse; for the living matter would begin to reproduce at the expense
of the surrounding organic material (since this is one of the basic
characteristics that distinguishes living from non-living organic
matter). From here on, the process would have been removed from the
domain of pure chance. Moreover, as conditions changed, the living
matter would start to evolve in accordance with the laws of
transformation that have already been studied in considerable detail
in biology; and eventually it would give rise to the manifold forms of
life that exist today.
We see, then, the important role of chance. For given enough time, it
makes possible, and indeed even inevitable, all kinds of combinations
of things. One of those combinations which set in motion irreversible
processes or lines of development that remove the system from the
influence of the chance fluctuations is then eventually certain to
occur. Thus, one of the effects of chance is to help "stir things up"
in such a way as to permit the initiation of qualitatively new lines
of development.
9. THE THEORY OF PROBABILITY
Just as the causal laws came to be expressed more precisely with the
aid of certain kinds of mathematical formalisms (for example, the
differential calculus), a characteristic mathematical instrument,
known as the theory of probability, evolved for the expression of the
laws of chance. In this section, we shall sketch briefly how this form
of mathematics arose and what it means.
Historically, the notion of probability was first given a precise form
in connection with gambling games. A good example is furnished by the
game of dice. If we follow the results of each individual throw of the
dice, we discover that they fluctuate irregularly from one throw to
the next, in the way that is characteristic of chance events, as
described in the previous section. As a result, we cannot predict what
will be obtained in any given throw, either on the basis of the
results of earlier throws, or on the basis of anything else that can
be specified within the context of the game. Despite the unpredictable
variations in the results of individual throws described above,
however, gamblers have developed the custom of betting on a given
combination, and of giving certain odds that depend on the combination
in question. Experience has demonstrated that corresponding to each
possible combination, there seems to exist a set of appropriate "fair
odds", such that if these odds are offered, then in the long run the
gambler will neither win nor lose systematically.
.
.
Evidently, then, the applicability of the theory of probability to
scientific and other statistical problems has no essential
relationship either to our knowledge or to our ignorance. Rather, it
depends only on the objective existence of certain regularities that
are characteristic of the systems and processes under discussion,
regularities which imply that the long run or average behaviour in a
large aggregate of objects or events is approximately independent of
the precise details that determine exactly what will happen in each
individual case.
On the basis of the above considerations, we are then led to interpret
the probability of, for example, a given result in the game of dice as
an objective property associated with the dice that are being used and
with the process by which they are thrown, a property that can be
defined independently of the question of whether or not we know enough
to predict what will happen in each individual throw. The significance
of this property is that in the long run, and on the average, the
relative frequency with which a given result will be obtained will
fluctuate near a value that tends to come closer and closer to its
probability. This, then, is the conception of probability that is
relevant in statistical problems that arise in scientific research and
in other fields. Of course, the word "probability" as commonly used
also has the subjective meaning of describing how likely we think a
given inference or conclusion drawn on the basis of incomplete
knowledge may be. This meaning has, however, no essential relationship
to the procedure by which we use the theory of probability in science
and in other fields to make approximate predictions concerning
relative frequencies of the various combinations of objects and events
that occur in statistical aggregates, without the need to take into
account precisely what each member of the aggregate is doing.
JohnEB
Dec 20, 2010, 4:19:26 PM12/20/10
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Here is very strong evidence that our universe is causal. As far as cancer, Type 2 diabetics have the best chance of survival by far:
Metformin and reduced risk of cancer in diabetic patients April, 2005
http://www.bmj.com/content/330/7503/1304.full
Metformin and Cancer Aug, 2009
http://www.healthyfellow.com/308/metformin-and-cancer/
Diabetes drug can reduce risk of cancer, researchers find Sept, 2010
http://articles.latimes.com/2010/sep/01/science/la-sci-metformin-cancer-20100902
JohnEB
Dec 25, 2010, 7:35:36 AM12/25/10
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Directing Our Own Fate
The analysis of the human genome shows that my body is a causal mechanism. The new field of genomics is based on the fact that biology is a causal science. Volume 2 of the GUT-CP explains the causal basis for biology. We have yet to discover all of the causes, but we have started down the road to real understanding. Neils Bohr did not think we need to understand anything.
We are almost half way to PREVENTING cancer. It should be clear that the question is no longer: 'Is the Universe causal?' but is 'What part will mankind play in directing his own fate?'
The following is from the final chapter of Henry Gee's book "Jacob's Ladder":
"As we learn how to design, create and modify humans, we will do the same for many animals, plants and microorganisms, changing the world around us irrevocably, for good or ill. New lives, new organisms will be created to cater for our slightest whim, our every convenience. Solving the ethical questions posed by the potential to exercise this kind of power and control on the world around us will require a degree of detachment and maturity not evident in current debates about genetic modification or assisted reproduction. Genetic modification (GM) of crops is equivalent to gene therapy in humans, but the debate on the desirability of GM tends to entrench positions conditioned by, or in opposition to, business or political interests, rather than making progress through a detached consideration of the advantages or disadvantages of the technology to economies and markets. Reaction to any kind of assisted reproduction, conception or cloning reflects either parental selfishness or desperation, or the will of opponents to impose a narrow ethical view on others, whether or not this advice is welcome.
But GM and IVF are as nothing compared with the effects of the genomic network modification that is to come, and the standard of ethical debate must rise to meet it. A novel problem raised specifically by genomic network modification – not evident in gene therapy, GM, IVE or cloning – is that we could be able to modify human networks in such a way that we might lose the indefinable quality of humanity that makes us special: that same edifice upon which our ethical, legal and moral codes all stand, and on which our lives and loves are based. To what extent will the products of modified networks be new species, inhuman, or even `posthuman'?' What will their relationships with unmodified humans be like? Will they be our servants, our masters, both – or neither?"
JohnEB
Dec 27, 2010, 4:03:32 AM12/27/10
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Gene codes cracked for strawberries and chocolate
LONDON (Reuters) – Teams of scientists have cracked the genetic codes of the wild strawberry and a certain type of cacao used to make fine chocolate, work that should help breeders develop better varieties of more mainstream crops.
The wild strawberry is closely related to important food crops such as apples, peaches, pears and raspberries, as well as cultivated strawberries, so its gene map will help breeders of these plants to produce new varieties, the researchers said.
"Because farmers have been cross-breeding and hybridizing food crops for centuries to improve traits, they tend to have large complicated genomes but the wild strawberry's is relatively small so we can get access to all of these useful genes comparatively easily," said Dan Sargent of Britain's Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) Crop Science Initiative, who worked on the project.
JohnEB
Dec 27, 2010, 7:54:48 AM12/27/10
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Genome Code Cracked For Most Common Form Of Pediatric Brain Cancer
Scientists at the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center have deciphered the genetic code for medulloblastoma, the most common pediatric brain cancer and a leading killer of children with cancer. The genetic "map" is believed to be the first reported of a pediatric cancer genome and is published online in the December 16 issue of Science Express.
Notably, the findings show that children with medulloblastoma have five- to tenfold fewer cancer-linked alterations in their genomes compared with their adult counterparts, the scientists say.
"These analyses clearly show that genetic changes in pediatric cancers are remarkably different from adult tumors. With fewer alterations, the hope is that it may be easier to use the information to develop new therapies for them," says Victor Velculescu, M.D., Ph.D., associate professor of oncology at the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center.
Notably, the findings show that children with medulloblastoma have five- to tenfold fewer cancer-linked alterations in their genomes compared with their adult counterparts, the scientists say.
"These analyses clearly show that genetic changes in pediatric cancers are remarkably different from adult tumors. With fewer alterations, the hope is that it may be easier to use the information to develop new therapies for them," says Victor Velculescu, M.D., Ph.D., associate professor of oncology at the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center.
JohnEB
Dec 28, 2010, 4:55:00 AM12/28/10
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Ion Channel Responsible For Pain Identified By UB Neuroscientists
University at Buffalo neuroscience researchers conducting basic research on ion channels have demonstrated a process that could have a profound therapeutic impact on pain.
Targeting these ion channels pharmacologically would offer effective pain relief without generating the side effects of typical painkilling drugs, according to their paper, published in a recent issue of The Journal of Neuroscience.
JohnEB
Jan 1, 2011, 6:49:05 AM1/1/11
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Overwhelming Evidence
There is now overwhelming evidence from biology, medicine, and genomics that our Universe is causal. But there is also overwhelming evidence from cosmology that our Universe is causal:
Einstein's Cosmic Speed Limit
http://www.nasa.gov/mp4/399027main_Einsteins_Cosmic_Speed_Limit_320x240.mp4
NASA Goddard said:
"Because Fermi saw no delay in the arrival time of the two photons, it confirms that space and time is smooth and continuous as Einstein had predicted. "
http://www.nasa.gov/mp4/399027main_Einsteins_Cosmic_Speed_Limit_320x240.mp4
NASA Goddard said:
"Because Fermi saw no delay in the arrival time of the two photons, it confirms that space and time is smooth and continuous as Einstein had predicted. "
Einstein has been right all along. Dr. Mills' Classical Physics extends Einstein's causal physics down to the atomic and molecular level - see Volume 2 of the GUT-CP.
JohnEB
Jan 3, 2011, 2:23:26 PM1/3/11
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One in a billion - now that is causal!:
Blood test to spot cancer gets big boost from J&J
BOSTON – A blood test so sensitive that it can spot a single cancer cell lurking among a billion healthy ones is moving one step closer to being available at your doctor's office.
Boston scientists who invented the test and health care giant Johnson & Johnson will announce Monday that they are joining forces to bring it to market. Four big cancer centers also will start studies using the experimental test this year.
Stray cancer cells in the blood mean that a tumor has spread or is likely to, many doctors believe. A test that can capture such cells has the potential to transform care for many types of cancer, especially breast, prostate, colon and lung.
JohnEB
Jan 5, 2011, 9:29:24 AM1/5/11
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More evidence of Einstein's causal Universe from:
EINSTEIN MAKES EXTRA DIMENSIONS TOE THE LINE
http://www.nasa.gov/centers/goddard/news/topstory/2003/1212einstein.html
"Stecker's work involves concepts called the uncertainty principle
and Lorentz invariance. The uncertainty principle, derived from
quantum mechanics, implies that at the subatomic level virtual
particles, also called quantum fluctuations, pop in and out of
existence. Many scientists say that spacetime itself is made up of
quantum fluctuations which, when viewed up close, resemble a froth
or "quantum foam." Some scientists think a quantum foam of spacetime
can slow the passage of light -- much as light travels at a maximum
speed in a vacuum but at slower speeds through air or water.
The foam would slow higher-energy electromagnetic particles, or
photons -- such as X rays and gamma rays -- more than lower energy
photons of visible light or radio waves. Such a fundamental
variation in the speed of light, different for photons of different
energies, would violate Lorentz invariance, the basic principle of
the special theory of relativity. Such a violation could be a clue
that would help point us on the road to unification theories.
Scientists have hoped to find such Lorentz invariance violations by
studying gamma rays coming from far outside the Galaxy. A gamma-ray
burst, for example, is at such a great distance that the differences
in the speeds of photons in the burst, depending on their energy,
might be measurable -- as the quantum foam of space may act to slow
light which has been traveling to us for billions of years.
Stecker looked much closer to home to find that Lorentz invariance
is not being violated. He analyzed gamma rays from two relatively
nearby galaxies about half a billion light years away with
supermassive black holes at their centers, named Markarian (Mkn) 421
and Mkn 501. These black holes generate intense beams of gamma-ray
photons that are aimed directly at the Earth. Such galaxies are
called blazars. (Refer to Image 4 for a picture of Mkn 421. Images
1 - 3 are artist's concepts of supermassive black holes powering
quasars which, when pointed directly at Earth, are called blazars.
Image 5 is a Hubble Space Telescope photo of a blazar.)
Some of the gamma rays from Mkn 421 and Mkn 501 collide with
infrared photons in the Universe. These collisions result in the
destruction of the gamma rays and infrared photons as their energy
is converted into mass in the form of electrons and positively
charged antimatter-electrons (called positrons), according to
Einstein's famous formula E=mc^2. Stecker and Glashow have pointed
out that evidence of the annihilation of the highest-energy gamma
rays from Mkn 421 and Mkn 501, obtained from direct observations of
these objects, demonstrates clearly that Lorentz invariance is alive
and well and not being violated. If Lorentz invariance were
violated, the gamma rays would pass right through the extragalactic
infrared fog without being annihilated.
This is because annihilation requires a certain amount of energy in
order to create the electrons and positrons. This energy budget is
satisfied for the highest-energy gamma rays from Mkn 501 and Mkn 421
in interacting with infrared photons if both are moving at the well-
known speed of light according to the special theory of relativity.
However, if the gamma rays in particular were moving at a slower
velocity because of Lorentz invariance violation, the total energy
available would be inadequate and the annihilation reaction would be
a 'no go.'"
EINSTEIN MAKES EXTRA DIMENSIONS TOE THE LINE
http://www.nasa.gov/centers/goddard/news/topstory/2003/1212einstein.html
"Stecker's work involves concepts called the uncertainty principle
and Lorentz invariance. The uncertainty principle, derived from
quantum mechanics, implies that at the subatomic level virtual
particles, also called quantum fluctuations, pop in and out of
existence. Many scientists say that spacetime itself is made up of
quantum fluctuations which, when viewed up close, resemble a froth
or "quantum foam." Some scientists think a quantum foam of spacetime
can slow the passage of light -- much as light travels at a maximum
speed in a vacuum but at slower speeds through air or water.
The foam would slow higher-energy electromagnetic particles, or
photons -- such as X rays and gamma rays -- more than lower energy
photons of visible light or radio waves. Such a fundamental
variation in the speed of light, different for photons of different
energies, would violate Lorentz invariance, the basic principle of
the special theory of relativity. Such a violation could be a clue
that would help point us on the road to unification theories.
Scientists have hoped to find such Lorentz invariance violations by
studying gamma rays coming from far outside the Galaxy. A gamma-ray
burst, for example, is at such a great distance that the differences
in the speeds of photons in the burst, depending on their energy,
might be measurable -- as the quantum foam of space may act to slow
light which has been traveling to us for billions of years.
Stecker looked much closer to home to find that Lorentz invariance
is not being violated. He analyzed gamma rays from two relatively
nearby galaxies about half a billion light years away with
supermassive black holes at their centers, named Markarian (Mkn) 421
and Mkn 501. These black holes generate intense beams of gamma-ray
photons that are aimed directly at the Earth. Such galaxies are
called blazars. (Refer to Image 4 for a picture of Mkn 421. Images
1 - 3 are artist's concepts of supermassive black holes powering
quasars which, when pointed directly at Earth, are called blazars.
Image 5 is a Hubble Space Telescope photo of a blazar.)
Some of the gamma rays from Mkn 421 and Mkn 501 collide with
infrared photons in the Universe. These collisions result in the
destruction of the gamma rays and infrared photons as their energy
is converted into mass in the form of electrons and positively
charged antimatter-electrons (called positrons), according to
Einstein's famous formula E=mc^2. Stecker and Glashow have pointed
out that evidence of the annihilation of the highest-energy gamma
rays from Mkn 421 and Mkn 501, obtained from direct observations of
these objects, demonstrates clearly that Lorentz invariance is alive
and well and not being violated. If Lorentz invariance were
violated, the gamma rays would pass right through the extragalactic
infrared fog without being annihilated.
This is because annihilation requires a certain amount of energy in
order to create the electrons and positrons. This energy budget is
satisfied for the highest-energy gamma rays from Mkn 501 and Mkn 421
in interacting with infrared photons if both are moving at the well-
known speed of light according to the special theory of relativity.
However, if the gamma rays in particular were moving at a slower
velocity because of Lorentz invariance violation, the total energy
available would be inadequate and the annihilation reaction would be
a 'no go.'"
JohnEB
Jan 6, 2011, 7:34:46 AM1/6/11
to classica...@googlegroups.com
Massive evidence that our Universe is causal:
The Human Genome Project Video - 3D Animation Introduction
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XuUpnAz5y1g&NR=1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XuUpnAz5y1g&NR=1
1000 Genomes: A new foundation for genetic research | A film by the Wellcome Trust
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=owJ5MJAXMLI&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=owJ5MJAXMLI&feature=related
1000 Genomes Project Tutorial Videos
The 1000 Genomes Project has released the data sets for the pilot projects and for more than 1000 samples for the full-scale project. A tutorial for how to use the data was held at the 2010 American Society of Human Genetics (ASHG) annual convention on November 3.
The 1000 Genomes Project has released the data sets for the pilot projects and for more than 1000 samples for the full-scale project. A tutorial for how to use the data was held at the 2010 American Society of Human Genetics (ASHG) annual convention on November 3.
Videos for each of the tutorial sessions are now available. The tutorial describes 1000 Genomes Project data, how to access it and how to use it. Each of the speakers and their topics are listed below along with their tutorial videos.
http://genome.gov/27542240
JohnEB
Jan 10, 2011, 1:19:20 PM1/10/11
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More cosmological evidence that our Universe is causal:
The fluctuating vacuum field should have an enormous effect on the propagation of light through the universe:
"Using existing theories, the team led by Dr. Roberto Ragazzoni from the Astrophysical Observatory of Arcetri, Italy, and the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Heidelberg, Germany, calculated that infinitesimally small quantum-scale variations in space time would blur images of galaxies seen from vast distances across the universe.
Instead, when they looked at both diffraction patterns from a supernova and the raw image of a second galaxy more than five billion light years from Earth, they saw images much sharper than should be possible if quantum-scale phenomenon operated as previously supposed."
Astronomers Deal Blow To Quantum Theories Of Time, Space, Gravity
http://www.spacedaily.com/news/cosmology-03i.html
JohnEB
Jan 23, 2011, 2:07:32 PM1/23/11
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It should now be quite clear that our Universe is causal. This is contrary to the current thinking in physics (per quantum mechanics) that our Universe is not causal. Einstein believed that our Universe is causal while Bohr felt that the very nature of the Universe precludes causality. Many people recognize Einstein's aphorism "God does not play dice" and even know that he aimed it at quantum theory. So, for more than eighty years, mainline physics has been totally wrong.
In 1995, David Wick came out with his great book "The Infamous Boundary" which describes the more than eighty years and is quiet prophetic since it seems to predict the arrival of Dr. Mills:
The Infamous Boundary by David Wick
Introduction
On an October morning in 1927, most of the world's atomic experts had gathered at the Hotel Metropole in Brussels for a conference. Among the senior physicists present were Niels Bohr of Denmark, Max Born and Albert Einstein of Germany, and Erwin Schrodinger of Austria; the younger scientists included Louis de Broglie of France and Werner Heisenberg of Germany. The conference topic was an atomic theory that had been invented independently, and in very different guises, by Heisenberg and Schrodinger a little over a year before. Many conference participants hoped it would resolve the "wave-particle paradox" that had haunted physics since the turn of the century--but the proper interpretation of the new theory was far from obvious.
De Broglie spoke first, outlining a simple, realistic scheme based on a wave picture of Schrodinger's, meant to banish the paradox. The younger theorists derided this proposal, although Einstein said he thought de Broglie was on the right track. Then Heisenberg and Born (Heisenberg's colleague and mentor in Gottingen) gave a joint talk in which they advocated a radically different interpretation and at one point declared: "... quantum mechanics is a complete theory; its basic physical and mathematical hypotheses are not further susceptible to modification."
In the terminology of the Gottingen physicists, a "quantum mechanics" meant any new theory of particles (electrons and protons) that would explain the peculiarly discrete or "quantal" properties observed on the atomic scale. Thus everyone understood Born and Heisenberg's statement to be, besides a repudiation of de Broglie's proposal, a declaration of victory over the unruly atom—a triumphant cry after 20 years of mostly disappointing efforts by such preeminent theorists as Bohr and Einstein.
It was the climactic moment of a scientific revolution—yet the paradox remained. In the afternoon Niels Bohr advanced a new scientific philosophy embracing contradictory pictures of a single phenomenon as a virtue. Einstein objected, and a debate ensued. It continued the next day at breakfast and lasted into the evening. At subsequent meetings it broke out again and then led to clashes in the scientific journals. The mealtime dialogue had developed into a grand intellectual contest, which lasted nearly three decades. Although the establishment awarded the decision to Bohr (and Einstein's followers became increasingly isolated and marginalized), Einstein insisted until his death in 1955 that quantum mechanics gave a useful but fundamentally incomplete account of the physical world.
Today most physicists accept quantum mechanics as the basis of their discipline. And as physics lays claim to the foundation stones, it may be the ultimate basis of all the sciences. Yet, strangely, the controversy that started in a hotel lobby six decades ago is no mere historical footnote.
Consider the views of the late Irish physicist John Bell. In a speech before a professional audience in 1989, Bell charged that physicists had divided the world into two realms—a "classical" one and a "quantum" one—with no intention of explaining what happens at the boundary between them. (Bell gave his talk the provocative title "Against `measurement'," the meaning of which will become clear in Chapter 18, "Principles.") Bell's opinion carried special weight, since in 1964 he proved a theorem about quantum mechanics that has been called the most surprising discovery made by a physicist in this century. (See Chapter 11, "Bell's Theorem.") But Bell (who died prematurely in 1990) was not alone in his critique. Many others in the quantum-orthodoxy-doubting subculture, from the founders Einstein and Schrodinger to the American theorist David Bohm (a contemporary and rival of Richard Feynman, see Chapter 10, "The Post-War Heresies") and the American experimentalist John Clauser (Chapter 13, "Testing Bell"), spoke out about the ruling paradigm.
These physicists did not claim that the emperor has no clothes. Indeed, they acknowledged that in its physical predictions quantum theory has been a great success. Quantum mechanics correctly described the color of gases, the heat capacity of solids, and the nature of the chemical bond; it explained the periods in the chemists' Periodic Table of the Elements; it calculated the electrical properties of conductors, semiconductors, and insulators; it provided a theoretical foundation for lasers and masers, superfluids and superconductors; it presaged electron imaging and neutron diffraction, by which the structure of a host of materials was discovered; it established many properties of radioactivity and of the elementary particles; and there were other successes. Nevertheless, argued these physicists, certain vital areas of the royal anatomy were covered, not by a stout weave of convincing computations, but by a transparent tissue of ideology.
The monarch's courtiers, of course, have not been silent; their voices are frequently heard decrying these heretical views. The ongoing debate is rancorous and voluminous. Hundreds of journal articles, many texts, monographs, conference proceedings, and even popular books are devoted to the controversy every year. New solutions to the quantum paradoxes, some barely this side of lunacy, appear with regularity. Apologies for Bohr's dualistic philosophy can be read side by side with encomiums on Einstein's realism. When Bell's remarks were reprinted in the British trade journal Physics World in 1990, three separate and lengthy replies from establishment physicists were printed in subsequent issues. (See Chapter 18, "Principles." Similar outbreaks occur regularly on this side of the Atlantic, in Physics Today and other journals; see Chapters 14, "Loopholes," and 20, "Speculations.")
For outsiders, especially scientists who rely on physicist's theories in their own fields, this situation is disquieting. Moreover, many recall their introduction to quantum mechanics as a startling, if not shocking, experience.
A molecular biologist related how he had started in theoretical physics but, after hearing the ideology of quantum mechanics, marched straight to the Registrar's office and switched fields. A colleague recalled how her undergraduate chemistry professor religiously entertained queries from the class—until one day he began with the words: "No questions will be permitted on today's lecture." The topic, of course, was quantum mechanics. My father, an organic chemist at a Midwesternuniversity, also had to give that dreaded annual lecture. Around age 16,1 picked up a little book he used to prepare and was perplexed by the author's tone, which seemed apologetic to the point of pleading. It was my first brush with the quantum theory.
Eventually, I went to graduate school in physics (but switched quickly to mathematics, albeit to a branch called "mathematical physics"; the interesting ideological distinction is drawn in Chapter 1, "Prologue I: Atoms"). By then I had acquired a historical bent, which developed out of an episode in my freshman year in college. To relieve the tedium of the introductory physics course, I set out to understand Einstein's theory of relativity (the so-called Special Theory of 1905, not the later and more difficult General Theory of 1915). This went badly at first. The textbooks all began with some seemingly preposterous proposition such as the universe having a speed limit, or a light wave's apparent velocity not changing if the observer goes into motion. Had Einstein never passed a boat's wake while sailing on that pond in Princeton? I felt like Alice advised by the White Queen to practice her credulity: "Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast" Like Alice, I couldn't manage it.
Prozac being unavailable at the time, I was saved from depression by a little book I found at a Hyde Park bookstore containing translations of the original articles by Einstein, Minkowski, and others. Here were the arguments that had convinced physicists to abandon the world view of the great Isaac Newton for that of a patent clerk. Over Christmas break I read Einstein's first paper, and light instantly banished the fog of incomprehension. (See Chapter 18, "Principles," for Einstein's simple axioms, which had become garbled in the minds of textbook writers.)
Four years later and bewildered again, this time by quantum theory, I seized upon a translation of an early monograph by one of the theory's founders, hoping for a similar epiphany. But, to my amazement, modern textbooks had reproduced the original arguments. As I manipulated the infinite matrices and imaginary quantities of the quantum theory, I could be heard muttering: "Someday I am going to understand this crazy business."
I retreated to a related field (statistical mechanics, in which probabilistic and mechanical arguments are combined to describe the various states of matter; see Chapter 1, "Prologue I: Atoms") but spent many hours (usually after midnight) absorbing the quantum mechanics literature. At Princeton and elsewhere I sought out heretics as well as establishment figures, and I asked their views. Many opinions that I heard in those years—especially from orthodox physicists—were strange indeed. Twenty years passed. Some paradoxes were resolved (while others increased in importance), and experimentalists attained remarkable powers over elementary particles. (Among other accomplishments, a scientist became the first in human history to glimpse a solitary atom with the naked eye; see Chapter 15, "The Impossible Observed.") But the counterrevolution did not come. Declining to wait for that event, I decided to commit what I had learned to paper (or, more accurately these days, to disk).
In this book I have tried to give almost equal time to orthodox physicists and to heretics—to the believers and to the skeptics. Thus it is primarily the history of an intellectual struggle. Because a comprehensive treatment would have run to many volumes, I was forced to be ruthless in selecting topics. References to more detailed histories or biographies, where available, are found in the Notes and in the Bibliography. The book is arranged chronologically, beginning with the battle over the reality of atoms that preoccupied physicists at the end of the last century.
I address this book to scientists—at least those who can tolerate the lack of technical jargon and equations—and to interested laypersons. For the most part, I stick to the science. I abhor the tendency, so evident recently, to relate every difficulty scientists are experiencing to Buddhism, Christianity, the occult, or other mystical traditions—as if modern science, after a mere four centuries, had attained its final limits and therefore any remaining mysteries must relate to Something Outside. (For example, a man recently packed a theater in my town by announcing a lecture on "Quantum Mechanics and God.") Einstein, Bohr, Heisenberg, Schrodinger, and Bell all regarded the dispute as primarily a professional matter, and I see it the same way. (Niels Bohr did think the quantum paradoxes reflected a more general limitation on scientific thought, but even he did not link them directly to mysticism.)
This said, I hasten to remark that scientists do have philosophies, and they can make a difference. Indeed, the quantum controversy is a contemporary expression of a philosophical dispute that occasionally has divided scientists into hostile camps. The currently accepted labels for the opposed positions are "realism" (often modified by "critical" or "naive," depending on the writer's persuasion), describing Einstein's, Schrodinger's, and Bell's views; and "positivism," for Bohr's, Heisenberg's, and that of the majority of physicists today. Many people recognize Einstein's aphorism "God does not play dice" and even know that he aimed it at quantum theory. He did say that, but it was not his primary objection. What truly riled him was that physicists had adopted an antirealistic world view based on subjectivism and "complementary thought." In a more revealing moment, Einstein once turned to the physicist Abraham Pais during a walk in Princeton and asked, "Do you really think the moon is only there when you look at it?" Philosophy mattered to these scientists, and so it must concern us as well. (To satisfy the demands of openness and intellectual honesty, I admit here to being a naive realist, as defined in Chapter 17, "Philosophies." I expound my own views in the final chapters.)
Since I am not a professional philosopher but a practicing scientist, I make no pretense of having discovered the proper context in which to discuss these philosophies. Those interested in locating, for example, Bohr's antirealism in a philosophical tradition going back to Hegel, Kant, or (perhaps) Plato will be disappointed. Such treatises can be found in the literature; a few are listed in the Bibliography.
Of the great scientific controversies of this century, the battle over quantum mechanics involved the widest span of scientific issues, as well as the subtlest arguments. I will try to smooth out the rough parts where I can, but, unavoidably, some topics will tax the reader's intuition, just as they did the author's (not to mention the thousands of investigators who preceded us). As to technical matters, equations other than innocent proportionalities will be eschewed in favor of prose summaries, except occasionally in the Notes. (I make one exception in Chapter 4, "Revolution, Part II: Schrodinger's Waves," for an equation whose bizarre typography, like the arrangement of the saints in medieval paintings, embodies part of the mystery.) However, Professor William Faris of the University of Arizona, an expert on the mathematics of quantum mechanics, has written a brief introduction to the theory which requires no matrix algebra or even calculus to understand. It is included as an appendix and will be referred to occasionally in the text; I recommend it highly to anyone who does not experience palpatations at the sight of a solitary Greek letter.
Ninety years ago, one young scientist's questioning of the foundations of his field lead to the formula E = mc^2; the false dawn at Alamogordo and the nuclear power industry were eventual consequences. Could today's battle over principles in quantum physics have a similar impact? Most physicists regard quantum mechanics as the fundamental theory of matter and subscribe to the founders' view that it is a complete theory of physical reality. (How they are able to do this while ignoring gravity will be the subject of some comments in the last chapter, "Speculations.") But they may be wrong. Perhaps even as I write, some young scientist has found a radically new way to describe the microworld inhabited by elementary particles, a way that will extend easily and without paradox to the macroworld inhabited by human beings. Who can guess what might then become possible?
JohnEB
Jan 26, 2011, 2:15:44 PM1/26/11
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You don't get more causal than this:
Scientists ID Gene Behind Cancer's Spread
Scientists in England say they have identified the gene that is responsible for cancer's spread through the body - raising the possibility of a "one-size-fits-all" cure for the disease by developing a drug that switches off the gene.
JohnEB
Mar 26, 2011, 9:34:55 PM3/26/11
to Classical Physics
Just compare - while the current paradigm in physics is one of
unbounded silliness, Dr. Mills paradigm is that of a single, rational,
consistent, and causal universe.
unbounded silliness, Dr. Mills paradigm is that of a single, rational,
consistent, and causal universe.
JohnEB
Aug 11, 2011, 9:26:11 AM8/11/11
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Given a choice of living in Bohr's bizzaro non-causal world or living in Dr. Mills' causal world, I don't have to think very long:
Genetically Modified 'Serial Killer' T Cells Obliterate Tumors In Leukemia Patients
Gene therapy approach provides tumor-attack roadmap for other cancers
Gene therapy approach provides tumor-attack roadmap for other cancers
In a cancer treatment breakthrough 20 years in the making, researchers from the University of Pennsylvania's
Abramson Cancer Center and Perelman School of Medicine have shown sustained remissions of up to a year among
a small group of advanced chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) patients treated with genetically engineered
versions of their own T cells. The protocol, which involves removing patients' cells and modifying them in
Penn's vaccine production facility, then infusing the new cells back into the patient's body following chemotherapy,
provides a tumor-attack roadmap for the treatment of other cancers including those of the lung and ovaries and
myeloma and melanoma. The findings, published simultaneously today in the New England Journal of Medicine and
Science Translational Medicine, are the first demonstration of the use of gene transfer therapy to create "serial killer"
T cells aimed at cancerous tumors.
JohnEB
Aug 26, 2011, 3:38:36 AM8/26/11
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Astronomers discover planet made of diamond
LONDON (Reuters) - Astronomers have spotted an exotic planet that seems to be made of diamond racing around a tiny star in our galactic backyard.
The new planet is far denser than any other known so far and consists largely of carbon. Because it is so dense, scientists calculate the carbon must be crystalline, so a large part of this strange world will effectively be diamond.
"The evolutionary history and amazing density of the planet all suggest it is comprised of carbon -- i.e. a massive diamond orbiting a neutron star every two hours in an orbit so tight it would fit inside our own Sun," said Matthew Bailes of Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne.
JohnEB
Sep 2, 2011, 6:03:50 AM9/2/11
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It should be very clear that our universe is causal. It should also be very clear that we have the wrong physics:
Scientists: New Virus Hunts, Kills Cancer Cells
JohnEB
Sep 7, 2011, 9:17:03 AM9/7/11
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Imagine There’s No God Particle
It’s easy if you try (as John Lennon would say).
The LHC is back in business after a technical stop, getting ready to collide protons for the next couple months, perhaps reaching an integrated luminosity of about 5 inverse femtobarns. This is a factor of four higher than the luminosity used in most analyses that have been made public so far, and the latest projections are that this should allow an exclusion of a Higgs over the entire expected mass range at 95% confidence level, if such a particle really doesn’t exist.
JohnEB
Oct 3, 2011, 3:06:08 PM10/3/11
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The fact that our universe is causal gives man great power in determining his own destiny, both on an individual
basis, and as an organism on planet Earth. The Nobel committee has recognized this power:
Nobel winner died days before award announced
(CNN) -- One of the recipients of this year's Nobel Prize in medicine died just days before the winners were
announced -- after extending his own life using a kind of therapy he designed. Ralph Steinman, a biologist
with Rockefeller University, "discovered the immune system's sentinel dendritic cells and demonstrated that
science can fruitfully harness the power of these cells and other components of the immune system to curb
infections and other communicable diseases," the university said in a statement Monday. Steinman died Friday
at the age of 68. "He was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer four years ago, and his life was extended using a
dendritic-cell based immunotherapy of his own design," the university said.
http://www.cnn.com/2011/10/03/health/nobel-prize/index.html?hpt=hp_c2
JohnEB
Oct 4, 2011, 7:22:44 AM10/4/11
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Studies of universe's expansion win physics Nobel
STOCKHOLM (AP) — Three U.S.-born scientists won the Nobel Prize in physics on Tuesday for their studies of exploding stars that revealed that the expansion of the universe is accelerating.
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said American Saul Perlmutter would share the 10 million kronor ($1.5 million) award with U.S.-Australian Brian Schmidt and U.S. scientist Adam Riess. Working in two separate research teams during the 1990s — Perlmutter in one and Schmidt and Riess in the other — the scientists raced to map the universe's expansion by analyzing a particular type of supernovas, or exploding stars.
JohnEB
Oct 10, 2011, 4:44:27 AM10/10/11
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Dr. Mills was the first to predict that the expansion of the universe is accelerating:
Dark energy, science's biggest mystery
New Haven, Connecticut (CNN) -- On Tuesday, three U.S.-trained scientists won the Nobel prize in physics, for finding definitive evidence that the expansion of the universe is accelerating.
Their discovery did not fit any existing theory, so it had mind-blowing implications for our understanding of the physical world. At the same time, it's relatively easy to explain to nonspecialists. So fasten your seat belts for a quick tour of this frontier of knowledge: What was the actual discovery, why is it important, and what does it mean for our world?
JohnEB
Oct 10, 2011, 5:04:11 AM10/10/11
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Recent cold winters that brought chaos to the UK and other places in northern Europe may have their roots in the Sun's varying ultraviolet emissions.
Could this be related to the Sun's hydrino activity?
Ultraviolet light shone on cold winter conundrum
JohnEB
Oct 11, 2011, 7:29:28 AM10/11/11
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Dr. Mills on
Ultraviolet light shone on cold winter conundrum:
JohnEB
Dec 1, 2011, 12:05:16 AM12/1/11
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Single Systems
In 1936, Einstein published "Physics and Reality" in the "Journal of the Franklin Institute". After discussing how QM physics fails at the
task of describing individual systems, he continues:
"But now I ask: Is there really any physicist who believes that weshall never get any inside view of these ... single systems, in theirstructure and their causal connections, and this regardless of thefact that these singular happenings have been brought so close to us,thanks to the marvelous inventions of the Wilson chamber and theGeiger counter? To believe this is logically possible, but it is sovery contrary to my scientific instincts that I cannot forego thesearch for a more complete conception."
Bohr did not believe in Einstein's vision of the causal view of "single systems". I doubt that either Bohr or Einstein could
envision Dehmelt's experiments where the precise motion of single electrons, positrons, and ions is known, and Astrid the ion which
stood still to have its picture taken, or Bennet's, Brassard's and Ekert's cryptosystem where pairs of single photons are examined in a
totally causal way. Today, we have the realization of Einstein's vision - day by day, more and more single systems, "in their
structure and their causal connections." Today we have femto-second timers with .01 femto-second timers under development that offer the
promise of causal examination of complex energy exchange between individual atoms and molecules. And, we have Carver Mead's simple
description of the the coherent action of millions of particles that has generally been ignored by QM/QED. Frosting on the cake is
nanotube technology where specific atoms occupy specific locations in the structure. But also today, it is generally accepted that the
universe is a stochastic process. The proof of this by von Neumann is, according to Bell, "silly". The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle (HUP)
is now the proof that the world is a stochastic process, even though HUP has never been proven.
Einstein spent years in developing his definition of an "element of physical reality". Here we have the ERP criteria for an element of physical reality
(Note the capitalized words):
"If, without in any way disturbing the system, we can predict withCERTAINTY (i.e. with probability equal to UNITY) the value of aphysical quantity, then there exists an element of physical realitycorresponding to this physical quantity."
If Einstein had not meant "UNITY", I do not think that he would have used "UNITY".
In the Oct 1992 issue of Scientific American, the article "Quantum Cryptography", Charles Bennet, Gilles Brassard and Artur Ekert say
(Note the capitalized word):
"For example, if Alice and Bob both measure rectilinearpolarizations, they are each equally likely to record either a 0(horizontal polarization) or a 1 (vertical), but if Alice obtains a0, Bob will CERTAINLY obtain a 1, and vice versa."
Note that they said "CERTAINLY", and did not say "obtain a 1 subject to HUP".
Bennet's, Brassard's and Ekert's cryptosystem meets all of Einstein/Bohm's four criteria for "element of physical reality". It
is Bennet, Brassard and Ekert that say that their cryptosystem is an example of classical EPR and that the measurement of one photon's
polarization determines the other. It is clear that all four EPR observables can be known in the crytosystem. If the EPR issues were
not relevant, then why did they bring up EPR. The whole EPR debate was this question: Is the universe a stochastic process or is it
deterministic? The cryptosystem gives an answer of "deterministic".
This cryptosystem has no uncertainty at all - how can anyone say that it is proof that the world is not deterministic.
JohnEB
Jan 19, 2012, 10:59:41 PM1/19/12
to classica...@googlegroups.com
There is something wrong:
Do Invisible Galaxies Swirl Around the Milky Way?
JohnEB
Feb 1, 2012, 12:06:34 AM2/1/12
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| Response to Comment by J. E. Lawler and C. J. Goebel on “Time-Resolved Hydrino Continuum Transitions with Cutoffs at 22.8 nm and 10.1 nm,” Eur. Phys. J. D, 64, (2011), 65-72. | 1/31/12 |
Luke Setzer
Feb 2, 2012, 8:12:53 AM2/2/12
to Classical Physics
On Feb 1, 12:06 am, JohnEB <johnbarc...@frontier.com> wrote:
> Response to Comment by J. E. Lawler and C. J. Goebel on “*Time-Resolved
> Hydrino Continuum Transitions with Cutoffs at 22.8 nm and 10.1 nm*<http://www.blacklightpower.com/papers/Mills%20Lu%20Reply%20to%20Comme...>,”
commentary fell short of compellingly convincing rigor.
> Response to Comment by J. E. Lawler and C. J. Goebel on “*Time-Resolved
> Hydrino Continuum Transitions with Cutoffs at 22.8 nm and 10.1 nm*<http://www.blacklightpower.com/papers/Mills%20Lu%20Reply%20to%20Comme...>,”
> Eur. Phys. J. D, 64, (2011), 65-72. 1/31/12
Even JEC conceded on the "other" list that the Lawler-Goebel
commentary fell short of compellingly convincing rigor.
JohnEB
Feb 23, 2012, 2:46:40 PM2/23/12
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Oops -- Einstein was right afterall
JohnEB
Feb 28, 2012, 11:02:41 AM2/28/12
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Charge distribution within a single molecule
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