On the Developmental Schizophrenia of Seemingly Complete Physics Theories

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/02/090223221439.htm


http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/02/100217131125.htm


http://www.philosophychatforum.com/viewtopic.php?f=108&t=15041


http://www.philosophychatforum.com/viewtopic.php?f=108&t=15021


I think it actually matters---it is significant---that the authors framed the experiment that way. There is a major controversy about whether or not gravity is really dynamic geometry. Maybe there is really a fixed flat spacetime geometry in which gravity (mediated by gravitons) operates like any other force. Steven Weinberg toyed with that idea. Is gravity really geometrical? Could Einstein 1915 GR just be an effective theory that happens to work very well by pretending that spacetime has undulating curvature?

Or should we take GR seriously and assume that gravity = geometry? In that case quantum field theory must ultimately be based on no-fixed-background-geometry. In particular quantum gravity must be constructed without fixed background geometry. This is at the heart of the conflict between string (which typically assumes a fixed geometric framework of some number of dimensions) and non-string approaches like loop (which assume no fixed geometry).

So there is this conflict between different research communities. A deep disagreement. And these people, eg. Chu who has great prestige and respectability, are saying our experiment is aimed at helping settle this disagreement.

Privately I suspect it is another nail in the String coffin.
Quoted from Marshall

On the Developmental Schizophrenia of Seemingly Complete Physics Theories L. Otto 02-26-10

This afternoon I came across some interesting science news articles on the philosophychatforum.

Our expert Lincoln, and our moderator Marshall dedicated to discussing these issues have an interesting dialog. These issues pertain to the subjects I have brought up here with a fresh outsider's view of the issue of physics unification as quantum gravity or not. I am not sure that my insights are followed so I elect to point them out.

First of all it is indeed an epiphany to understand that there are human scale experiments that tend to support the ideas of Einstein. But it is not clear to me at all that these ideas are connected on the physics and deeper mathematical level of our methods of explanation of the realities.

In a sense the positions are "complete" or appear so. For a long time now the compatibility of the quantum and general relativistic views invoke a sort of muddled mental perception of which we may indeed find some overview from an outside objective stance that does not resolve to a sort of schizophrenia of our reasoning. The article on the spinning black hole as related to the Newtonian dynamics in the sense that two ideal points and some minimum distance between them for the macrocosm of black hole dynamics is the description. Is this not a statement of the pixel idea of holograms from the recent Fermi lab result? Is it not an advance calculus at the extreme points of vanishing infinitesimals or deeper than that the Euler constant which approached one way does not vanish for all practical purposes. Moreover, would not two points in such space idealizations in at least a finite system, rotating ones ideal as that is after all the interpretation of Lorentz shrinkage and dilation be the same description on general scales?

Yes the 40 year article on spinning black holes on the surface approaching a flat geometry shows a couple of generations before my modest speculations- but in the natural development of the cortex of the body of human knowledge the math was generations before that. I am asking why those in the field cannot make the intuitive links I have made in all this.

Marshall, which model is it of which you speak- certainly the geometric view, mass or not that changes the understanding of gravity- De Sitter or Einstein without his cosmological constant?
De Sitter's is the purely geometric view one that does not in the extreme have to assume that two spheres or points in space are only finite regions even if they expand?

As far as the genes with non-linear effects in the brain's development- do we reduce things to some sort of machine to explain them and does it explain these more general ideas of consciousness- of any theory which may evoke some principles as if an idea of consciousness?
Or is this just a dogmatic trap of completion which if not accepted gives us a sense of incoherence chaos of the miraculously intelligible- a schizoid stance to make us dizzy?

Without better underlying (quasic?) principles the research we have gained will not be likely to result in say a cure for something we regard as a disease of development no matter how materially sound.

So what is it to be? The Riemannian curvature of space as a product of matter only or matter as a result itself of such intrinsic curvature? Can a massless photon not interact as energy with the gravitational field- a problem not yet solved in theory? Again in related articles why do the neutrinos change flavor and so on...

Alas, Marshall, (btw we have the utmost respect for you and the why you treated the issues themselves and not just presumed the alternative scientists were crackpots!) What is a string really after it developed from some sort of field idea inside the nucleus to something more universal and fundamental- a resolution of this in my opinion will support the higher dimensional string theories. I have ideas here that do solve some of these major issues if one cares to dig them out. Two ends of a sting and asymptotic freedom- what could me more fundamental physics and geometry?

Of course two clocks can pinpoint the time in their shifting- as perhaps two of anything can by virtue of design be a computational interactive structure- an idea I understood working with the accurate clocks at the time in 1964 and an idea that in our thinking we do not just arbritary relate in something like a mental field by merely ad hoc asserting time as linear and space as finite that at the compromise special relativity and the quantum theory are just deterministic and classical but removed to but a higher natural dimension.

The mathematics is there and yes one can study them- but for the armchair philosophers and working stiffs among us who have to finance the enterprise if this math were expertly generally known what would be the point of a forum that has the avowed purpose of general education- perhaps it should be accessible to all and would be anyway if it were not rationed out by membership in some lobbying group.