Have the Old Physicists Become Cynical

Some interesting and relevant articles on the sci mags today:


Have the Old Physicists Become Cynical Was it Planck who said more or less that for a new physics to the accepted the old physicists have to die off? Yet in the global cycle of social climate however it accepts to measure the "lies, damn lies, and statistics" to quote Truman are there not solid workers and administrators who still care and wish well the young to solve problems even long after they personally are no longer around?

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/06/110609141537.htm

Those who think the return to classical physics is a waste of time might
wish to revisit Descartes in his general theory of vortices.

The breakthrough promised here (and to some extent a confirmation of
basing such things on Fermi statistics as an emphasis on particle theory)
should not be base on just our technical ability to model systems by
brute force methods when other computational programs can be envisioned.


http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/06/110610094513.htm

This seems to have led some to only concentrating on the idea that a
general concept of super-symmetry is a direct topological analog to the
viewpoint of reality from the more holographic descriptions.

But would a purely quantum world, beyond say Dirac and others now thought
historical in its application of "special relativity only with these questions of
hidden symmetries or not- ultimately not see the general relativity view of things
as mere artifacts of our notions?

There are other relevant articles of course, graphene in particular, this interplay of perception and light that from the discrete view might assert that the mind can also see in two directions of focus- a higher definition resolution. But in a unified new physics view we can wonder in retrospect why we are surprised to find resonances on different scales and only by experiment in our ideas of a relaxation of things in the power continua- the turtle holding up the world in infinite regress ascending and in proof of infinite descent- or that in this realm by itself we also can erect a physics view that concerns itself with shells and shells that can almost approach a focus in some depth of field.

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But is so much worse if the young true believers become cynical and not aware.

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More comment dialog with zone reflex blogspots:

http://zone-reflex.blogspot.com/2011/06/demetrios-christodoulou-richard.html



Ulla said...

There is so much in your comment that I prefer to just say something, not directly as an answer.

One big reason TGD has not been accepted is the 4-D and the p-adics and primes. Matti use 2x4D. Low dimensionality has no place in M-theory. And the loops and spheres are problematic. That's why he dislike Smolin, that use loops differently from Matti. Nor is Nima Arkani-Hamed's loops as Mattis'. The essence is that sympletic algebra can be used for them all. I would really not be surprised if Matti ends up with a kind of M-theory :)

This is just what they themselves write. Of course it is not TGD, but TGD can use this, which maybe M-theory cannot directly. It is linked to the Yang-Mills problem however.

Why I highlighted "(Hamilton proved that singularities do not arise in three dimensions when the Ricci curvature starts out positive.)"? Of course because it then starts NEGATIVE, and think of the ZEO as negative! This is the 'nothingness'.

Ulla,

That certainty was an informative reply, thanks.

I must admit my position on "nothingness" is more radical than such theories, Smolins baby universes is highly speculative if we ask for some mechanism not merely a default topology.

I still cannot read Pitkanen in detail nor would I want to discourage him. Surely Lubos objectively is a control or test case if not a reality check on speculations?

I imagine the preoccupation with compactification and sign changes and so on of six (but not 8 and above) is a rather narrow view of things.

Beyond this we still need useful theories that do the hard work of not only counting the universal numbers on a turtle's shell but
in the patterns read the cracks that the East divined when fire breaks it up- just as the bark of logs leads to binary or I Ching like theories.

But this is more or less issues as physics. What do you think of how I applied this to the gene code since 74? Can you grasp that and sympathize when those in the profession see such theories as crackpot even as the evidence mounts?

ThePeSla

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BTW, that was awhile ago- before all this string like awakening. In even this informal dialog we grow and if my initial ideas have had recent depths and breakthroughs certainly this could happen with other theorists for the much richer application to what now dawns on us as the much greater complexity of our genome than we thought we would find even after the great big science projects. Certainly that field has given us great results. Now while we find perhaps an M theory without strings as such, can we sustain an M theory without physics as such? It is an open question and one of levels or denial of metaphysics, of what is nothingness or no-thingness in particular. And why reject numbers by the existing physicists if they cannot see the higher complexity of numbers themselves?

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Some are trying to be older, then younger- at what peak does the change occur in the hiding of our true ages? When the signs change subjectively, when does the theoretician go from enthusiastic to cynical, give up or just fade away?

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BTW if as you describe it this is what they mean by LOW dimensions involved, from my view this is a Bogus and limiting distinction bases on faulty assumptions about how the continua are structured. Maybe it is better than assuming 3 and 4 are the only dimensions substantial but in a way that is a tenable position too.

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