The Jim Rutt Show with Lee Smolin (PDF)
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
Load more
Recommended publications
-
The Metaphysical Baggage of Physics Lee Smolin Argues That Life Is More
The Metaphysical Baggage of Physics Lee Smolin argues that life is more fundamental than physical laws. BY MICHAEL SEGAL ILLUSTRATION BY LOUISA BERTMAN JANUARY 30, 2014 An issue on tme would not be complete without a conversaton with Lee Smolin. High school dropout, theoretcal physicist, and founding member of the Perimeter Insttute for Theoretcal Physics in Waterloo, Canada, Smolin’s life and work refect many of the values of this magazine. Constantly probing the edges of physics, he has also pushed beyond them, into economics and the philosophy of science, and into popular writng. Not one to shy away from a confrontaton, his 2008 bookThe Trouble with Physicstook aim at string theory, calling one of the hotest developments in theoretcal physics of the past 50 years a dead end. In his thinking on tme too, he has taken a diferent tack from the mainstream, arguing that the fow of tme is not just real, but more fundamental than physical law. He spoke to me on the phone from his home in Toronto. How long have you been thinking about tme? The whole story starts back in the ’80s when I was puzzling over the failure of string theory to uniquely tell us the principles that determine what the laws of physics are. I challenged myself to invent a way that nature might select what the laws of physics turned out to be. I invented a hypothesis called Cosmological Natural Selecton, which was testable, which made explicit predictons. This wasn’t my main day job; my main day job was working on quantum gravity where it’s assumed that tme is unreal, that tme is an illusion, and I was working, like anybody else, on the assumpton that tme is an illusion for most of my career. -
A Singing, Dancing Universe Jon Butterworth Enjoys a Celebration of Mathematics-Led Theoretical Physics
SPRING BOOKS COMMENT under physicist and Nobel laureate William to the intensely scrutinized narrative on the discovery “may turn out to be the greatest Henry Bragg, studying small mol ecules such double helix itself, he clarifies key issues. He development in the field of molecular genet- as tartaric acid. Moving to the University points out that the infamous conflict between ics in recent years”. And, on occasion, the of Leeds, UK, in 1928, Astbury probed the Wilkins and chemist Rosalind Franklin arose scope is too broad. The tragic figure of Nikolai structure of biological fibres such as hair. His from actions of John Randall, head of the Vavilov, the great Soviet plant geneticist of the colleague Florence Bell took the first X-ray biophysics unit at King’s College London. He early twentieth century who perished in the diffraction photographs of DNA, leading to implied to Franklin that she would take over Gulag, features prominently, but I am not sure the “pile of pennies” model (W. T. Astbury Wilkins’ work on DNA, yet gave Wilkins the how relevant his research is here. Yet pulling and F. O. Bell Nature 141, 747–748; 1938). impression she would be his assistant. Wilkins such figures into the limelight is partly what Her photos, plagued by technical limitations, conceded the DNA work to Franklin, and distinguishes Williams’s book from others. were fuzzy. But in 1951, Astbury’s lab pro- PhD student Raymond Gosling became her What of those others? Franklin Portugal duced a gem, by the rarely mentioned Elwyn assistant. It was Gosling who, under Franklin’s and Jack Cohen covered much the same Beighton. -
BEYOND SPACE and TIME the Secret Network of the Universe: How Quantum Geometry Might Complete Einstein’S Dream
BEYOND SPACE AND TIME The secret network of the universe: How quantum geometry might complete Einstein’s dream By Rüdiger Vaas With the help of a few innocuous - albeit subtle and potent - equations, Abhay Ashtekar can escape the realm of ordinary space and time. The mathematics developed specifically for this purpose makes it possible to look behind the scenes of the apparent stage of all events - or better yet: to shed light on the very foundation of reality. What sounds like black magic, is actually incredibly hard physics. Were Albert Einstein alive today, it would have given him great pleasure. For the goal is to fulfil the big dream of a unified theory of gravity and the quantum world. With the new branch of science of quantum geometry, also called loop quantum gravity, Ashtekar has come close to fulfilling this dream - and tries thereby, in addition, to answer the ultimate questions of physics: the mysteries of the big bang and black holes. "On the Planck scale there is a precise, rich, and discrete structure,” says Ashtekar, professor of physics and Director of the Center for Gravitational Physics and Geometry at Pennsylvania State University. The Planck scale is the smallest possible length scale with units of the order of 10-33 centimeters. That is 20 orders of magnitude smaller than what the world’s best particle accelerators can detect. At this scale, Einstein’s theory of general relativity fails. Its subject is the connection between space, time, matter and energy. But on the Planck scale it gives unreasonable values - absurd infinities and singularities. -
Why Do We Remember? the Communicative Function of Episodic Memory
BEHAVIORAL AND BRAIN SCIENCES (2018), Page 1 of 63 doi:10.1017/S0140525X17000012,e1 Why do we remember? The communicative function of episodic memory Johannes B. Mahr Department of Cognitive Science, Cognitive Development Center, Central European University, 1051 Budapest, Hungary [email protected] https://cognitivescience.ceu.edu/people/johannes-mahr Gergely Csibra Department of Cognitive Science, Cognitive Development Center, Central European University, 1051 Budapest, Hungary [email protected] https://cognitivescience.ceu.edu/people/gergely-csibra Abstract: Episodic memory has been analyzed in a number of different ways in both philosophy and psychology, and most controversy has centered on its self-referential, autonoetic character. Here, we offer a comprehensive characterization of episodic memory in representational terms and propose a novel functional account on this basis. We argue that episodic memory should be understood as a distinctive epistemic attitude taken toward an event simulation. In this view, episodic memory has a metarepresentational format and should not be equated with beliefs about the past. Instead, empirical findings suggest that the contents of human episodic memory are often constructed in the service of the explicit justification of such beliefs. Existing accounts of episodic memory function that have focused on explaining its constructive character through its role in future-oriented mental time travel do justice neither to its capacity to ground veridical beliefs about the past nor to its representational format. We provide an account of the metarepresentational structure of episodic memory in terms of its role in communicative interaction. The generative nature of recollection allows us to represent and communicate the reasons why we hold certain beliefs about the past. -
A Realist Vision of the Quantum World
A realist's vision of the quantum world Kragh, Helge Stjernholm Published in: American Scientist Publication date: 2019 Document version Publisher's PDF, also known as Version of record Document license: Unspecified Citation for published version (APA): Kragh, H. S. (2019). A realist's vision of the quantum world. American Scientist, 107, 374-376. https://www.americanscientist.org/article/a-realist-vision-of-the-quantum-world Download date: 24. sep.. 2021 A reprint from American Scientist the magazine of Sigma Xi, The Scientific Research Honor Society This reprint is provided for personal and noncommercial use. For any other use, please send a request to Permissions, American Scientist, P.O. Box 13975, Research Triangle Park, NC, 27709, U.S.A., or by electronic mail to [email protected]. ©Sigma Xi, The Scientific Research Hornor Society and other rightsholders Scientists’ Nightstand has been the most successful theory of nature, and quantum mechanics The Scientists’ Nightstand, A Realist Vision precludes the sort of realism to which American Scientist’s books of the Quantum Smolin aspires. He describes three dif- section, offers reviews, review ferent kinds of anti-realists: The radical essays, brief excerpts, and more. World anti-realists, such as Niels Bohr, who For additional books coverage, believe that the properties we ascribe please see our Science Culture Helge Kragh to atoms and elementary particles are blog channel, which explores EINSTEIN’S UNFINISHED REVOLUTION: not inherent in them but are created by how science intersects with other The Search for What Lies Beyond the our interactions with them and exist areas of knowledge, entertain- Quantum. -
Peircean Cosmogony's Symbolic Agapistic Self-Organization As an Example of the Influence of Eastern Philosophy on Western Thinking
Peircean Cosmogony's Symbolic Agapistic Self-organization as an Example of the Influence of Eastern Philosophy on Western Thinking Brier, Søren Document Version Accepted author manuscript Published in: Progress in Biophysics & Molecular Biology DOI: 10.1016/j.pbiomolbio.2017.09.010 Publication date: 2017 License CC BY-NC-ND Citation for published version (APA): Brier, S. (2017). Peircean Cosmogony's Symbolic Agapistic Self-organization as an Example of the Influence of Eastern Philosophy on Western Thinking. Progress in Biophysics & Molecular Biology, (131), 92-107. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pbiomolbio.2017.09.010 Link to publication in CBS Research Portal General rights Copyright and moral rights for the publications made accessible in the public portal are retained by the authors and/or other copyright owners and it is a condition of accessing publications that users recognise and abide by the legal requirements associated with these rights. Take down policy If you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact us ([email protected]) providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately and investigate your claim. Download date: 02. Oct. 2021 Peircean Cosmogony's Symbolic Agapistic Self-organization as an Example of the Influence of Eastern Philosophy on Western Thinking Søren Brier Journal article (Accepted manuscript) CITE: Brier, S. (2017). Peircean Cosmogony's Symbolic Agapistic Self-organization as an Example of the Influence of Eastern Philosophy on Western Thinking. Progress in Biophysics & Molecular -
The Matter of Time
Preprints (www.preprints.org) | NOT PEER-REVIEWED | Posted: 15 June 2021 doi:10.20944/preprints202106.0417.v1 Article The matter of time Arto Annila 1,* 1 Department of Physics, University of Helsinki; [email protected] * Correspondence: [email protected]; Tel.: (+358 44 204 7324) Abstract: About a century ago, in the spirit of ancient atomism, the quantum of light was renamed the photon to suggest its primacy as the fundamental element of everything. Since the photon carries energy in its period of time, a flux of photons inexorably embodies a flow of time. Time comprises periods as a trek comprises legs. The flows of quanta naturally select optimal paths, i.e., geodesics, to level out energy differences in the least time. While the flow equation can be written, it cannot be solved because the flows affect their driving forces, affecting the flows, and so on. As the forces, i.e., causes, and changes in motions, i.e., consequences, cannot be separated, the future remains unpre- dictable, however not all arbitrary but bounded by free energy. Eventually, when the system has attained a stationary state, where forces tally, there are no causes and no consequences. Then time does not advance as the quanta only orbit on and on. Keywords: arrow of time; causality; change; force; free energy; natural selection; nondeterminism; quantum; period; photon 1. Introduction We experience time passing, but the experience itself lacks a theoretical formulation. Thus, time is a big problem for physicists [1-3]. Although every process involves a passage of time, the laws of physics for particles, as we know them today, do not make a difference whether time flows from the past to the future or from the future to the past. -
Philosophical Reflections on Modern Quantum Gravity Research
Stringed along or caught in a loop? Stringed along or caught in a loop? Philosophical reflections on modern quantum gravity research Keizo Matsubara Dissertation presented at Uppsala University to be publicly examined in Geijersalen, Building 6, (Eng 6-1023), English Park Campus, Thunbergsvägen 3P, Uppsala, Friday, January 18, 2013 at 10:15 for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. The examination will be conducted in English. Abstract Matsubara, K. 2013. Stringed along or caught in a loop?: Philosophical reflections on modern quantum gravity research. Filosofiska Institutionen. 139 pp. Uppsala. ISBN 978-91-506-2324-6. A number of philosophical questions, all connected to modern research in quantum gravity, are discussed in this dissertation. The goal of research in quantum gravity is to find a quantum theory for gravitation; the ot- her fundamental forces are already understood in terms of quantum physics. Quantum gravity is studied within a number of different research programmes. The most popular are string theory and loop quantum gravity; besides these a number of other approaches are pursued. Due to the lack of empirical support, it is relevant to assess the scientific status of this rese- arch. This is done from four different points of view, namely the ones held by: logical positi- vists, Popper, Kuhn and Lakatos. It is then argued that research in quantum gravity may be considered scientific, conditional on scientists being open with the tentative and speculative nature of their pursuits. Given the lack of empirical progress, in all approaches to quantum gravity, a pluralistic strategy is advised. In string theory there are different theoretical formulations, or dualities, which are physi- cally equivalent. -
Is There a Darwinian Evolution of the Cosmos?
Is there a Darwinian Evolution of the Cosmos? Some Comments on Lee Smolinüs Theory of the Origin of Universes by Means of Natural Selection Ru diger Vaas Zentrum fu r Philosophie und Grundlagen der Wissenschaft Justus-Liebig-Universitat Gie%en, Germany [email protected] “Many worlds might have been botched and bungled, throughout an eternity, üere this system was struck out. Much labour lost: Many fruitless trials made: And a slow, but continued improvement carried out during infinite ages in the art of world-making.– David Hume (1779) 1 Abstract and Introduction For Lee Smolin [54-58], our universe is only one in a much larger cosmos (the Multiverse) è a member of a growing community of universes, each one being born in a bounce following the formation of a black hole. In the course of this, the values of the free parameters of the physical laws are reprocessed and slightly changed. This leads to an evolutionary picture of the Multiverse, where universes with more black holes have more descendants. Smolin concludes, that due to this kind of Cosmological Natural Selection our own universe is the way it is. The hospitality for life of our universe is seen as an offshot of this self-organized process. This paper outlines Smolinüs hypothesis, its strength, weakness and limits, and comments on the hypothesis from different points of view: physics, biology, philosophy of science, philosophy of nature, and metaphysics. __________________________________________________________________ This paper is the extended version of a contribution to the MicroCosmos è MacroCosmos conference in Aachen, Germany, September 2-5 1998. -
Quantum Gravity: a Primer for Philosophers∗
Quantum Gravity: A Primer for Philosophers∗ Dean Rickles ‘Quantum Gravity’ does not denote any existing theory: the field of quantum gravity is very much a ‘work in progress’. As you will see in this chapter, there are multiple lines of attack each with the same core goal: to find a theory that unifies, in some sense, general relativity (Einstein’s classical field theory of gravitation) and quantum field theory (the theoretical framework through which we understand the behaviour of particles in non-gravitational fields). Quantum field theory and general relativity seem to be like oil and water, they don’t like to mix—it is fair to say that combining them to produce a theory of quantum gravity constitutes the greatest unresolved puzzle in physics. Our goal in this chapter is to give the reader an impression of what the problem of quantum gravity is; why it is an important problem; the ways that have been suggested to resolve it; and what philosophical issues these approaches, and the problem itself, generate. This review is extremely selective, as it has to be to remain a manageable size: generally, rather than going into great detail in some area, we highlight the key features and the options, in the hope that readers may take up the problem for themselves—however, some of the basic formalism will be introduced so that the reader is able to enter the physics and (what little there is of) the philosophy of physics literature prepared.1 I have also supplied references for those cases where I have omitted some important facts. -
The Quantum Mechanics of the Present
The quantum mechanics of the present Lee Smolina and Clelia Verdeb a Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, 31 Caroline Street North, Waterloo, Ontario N2J 2Y5, Canada and Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Waterloo and Department of Philosophy, University of Toronto bCorso Concordia, 20129 - Milano April 21, 2021 Abstract We propose a reformulation of quantum mechanics in which the distinction be- tween definite and indefinite becomes the fundamental primitive. Inspired by suggestions of Heisenberg, Schrodinger and Dyson that the past can’t be described in terms of wavefunctions and operators, so that the uncertainty prin- ciple does not apply to past events, we propose that the distinction between past, present and future is derivative of the fundamental distinction between indefinite and definite. arXiv:2104.09945v1 [quant-ph] 20 Apr 2021 We then outline a novel form of presentism based on a phenomonology of events, where an event is defined as an instance of transition between indefinite and definite. Neither the past nor the future fully exist, but for different reasons. We finally suggest reformulating physics in terms of a new class of time coordinates in which the present time of a future event measures a countdown to the present moment in which that event will happen. 1 Contents 1 Introduction 2 2 Constructions of space and time 3 3 A phenomonology of present events 4 3.1 Thedefiniteandtheindefinite. .... 5 3.2 Thepast ....................................... 6 3.3 Thefuture ...................................... 6 3.4 Causalitywithoutdeterminism . ..... 7 4 Thequantummechanicsofdefiniteandindefinite 7 5 Theframeofreferenceforanobserverinapresentmoment 10 6 Closing remarks 11 1 Introduction The idea we will discuss here has arisin from time to time since the invention of quan- tum mechanics. -
Subjectifying Objectivity: Delineating Tastes in Theoretical Quantum Gravity Research
SSS0010.1177/0306312720949691Social Studies of ScienceGilbert and Loveridge 949691research-article2020 Article Social Studies of Science 1 –27 Subjectifying objectivity: © The Author(s) 2020 Article reuse guidelines: Delineating tastes in sagepub.com/journals-permissions https://doi.org/10.1177/0306312720949691DOI: 10.1177/0306312720949691 theoretical quantum gravity journals.sagepub.com/home/sss research Thomas Krendl Gilbert1 and Andrew Loveridge2 Abstract Research in theoretical quantum gravity has continued expansively even as it has become detached from classic arbiters of research such as direct empirical falsification. This makes it an interesting test case for theories of what motivates and mediates contemporary scientific research and of the nature of scientific objectivity. We conducted 50 semi-structured interviews with researchers in the rival camps of string theory and loop quantum gravity, coded a subset for reoccurring themes, and subjected the resulting data to statistical analysis. To delineate the subjective tastes and the related process of collective consensus-making in contemporary quantum gravity research, we mobilize aspects of Daston and Galison’s depiction of the scientific self and its relation to epistemic virtues, Bourdieu’s field-centered account of social space, and Kantian notions of aesthetics. We make two key contributions. First, our analysis sheds light on the inner workings of the field by connecting its internal epistemic struggles with approaches to understanding scientific fields. Second, our application of theories of social reproduction to the substance of scientific inquiry allows some substantive generalizations of Daston and Galison’s framework. Keywords objectivity, scientific self, social fields, Kantian aesthetics, quantum gravity, high energy physics 1University of California, Berkeley, USA 2University of Texas at Austin, USA Correspondence to: Thomas Krendl Gilbert, UC Berkeley Graduate Division, Berkeley, CA 94720-5900, USA.