Subject: Re: When will the U.S. finally go metric?
From: prasad@watson.ibm.com (V. Guruprasad)
Date: 11 Nov 1996 18:49:39 GMT
In article <328632B5.154F@cs.purdue.edu>, Markus Kuhn writes:
|> ...
|> The main design goal of the SI was that there are no conversion units
|> necessary when you calculate with SI base and derived units, which is
|> VERY convenient when you do physics and engineering calculations. You
|> just convert everything into Si base and derived units without prefixes
|> and then drop all units, insert the value into the formula and get the
|> result again in an SI unit.
|>
|> This allows you to write down formulas without having to think about
|> which units have to be used, i.e. you write "F = m*a" instead of
|> "F [in N] = m [in kg] * a [in m/s^2]". I am always amazed how
|> often I see the second form of formula, which is given together with the
|> units that have to be used, in U.S. engineering text books. Writing down
|> a formula in a way that depends on the units that are used is a somewhat
|> ridiculous concept for someone like me who has learned very early in
|> highschool how elegant work with a congruent system of Units like SI is
|> (or even like cgs, another coherent system of units, that isn't used
|> today any more, except in U.S. physics textbooks, where the authors
|> still think for some strange reasons that you can't explain
|> electro-magnetic fields nicely in SI units). May be, the advantage of a
|> coherent system of units is just difficult to grasp for authors who have
|> grown up in the inch-pound world, where you always have to worry about
|> lots of conversion factors and can't simply look at a formula without
|> considerung the units that have to be used.
|>
|> Markus
|>
|> --
|> Markus Kuhn, Computer Science grad student, Purdue
|> University, Indiana, US, email: kuhn@cs.purdue.edu
Well said. Maybe you also need to explain "coherent units".
Here, they sell cars, and boats, by number of horses (wait till they change to
mules :), jet and space shuttle engines by the thousand pounds of thrust,
air conditioning by the ton, heating by the BTU, and the cooking range
by the kw-hr. They took so long to figure out how much cooling my
computers needed (and I kept telling them, 1.5 kW, can't you see the power
rating??) to decide on the a.c.!
========
#include
Subject: This Week's Finds in Mathematical Physics (Week 94)
From: baez@math.ucr.edu (John Baez)
Date: 11 Nov 1996 14:13:22 -0800
This Week's Finds in Mathematical Physics - Week 94
John Baez
Today I want to talk a bit about asymptotic freedom.
First of all, remember that in quantum field theory, studying
very small things is the same as studying things at very high
energies. The reason is that in quantum mechanics you need to
collide two particles at a large relative momentum p to make sure
the distance x between them gets small, thanks to the uncertainty
principle. But in special relativity the energy E and momentum p
of a particle of mass m are related by
E^2 = p^2 + m^2,
in God's units, where the speed of light is 1. So small x also
corresponds to large E.
"Asymptotic freedom" refers to the fact that the fact that some forces
become very weak at high energy scales, or equivalently, at very short
distances. The most interesting example of this is the so-called
"strong force", which holds the quarks together in a hadron, like a
proton or neutron. True to its name, it is very strong at distances
comparable to the radius of proton, or at energies comparable to the
mass of the proton (where if we don't use God's units, we have to use
E = mc^2 to convert units of mass to units of energy). But if we smash
protons at each other at much higher energies, the constituent quarks act
almost as free particles, indicating that the strong force gets weak when
the quarks get really close to each other.
Now in "week76" I talked about another phenomenon, called
"confinement". This simply means that at lower energies, or larger
distance scales, the strong force becomes so strong that it is
*impossible* to pull a quark out of a hadron. Asymptotic freedom and
confinement are two aspects of the same thing: the dependence of
the strength of the strong force on the energy scale. Asymptotic
freedom is better understood, though, because the weaker a force is,
the better we can apply the methods of perturbation theory --- a widely
used approach where we try to calculate everything as a Taylor series in
the "coupling constant" measuring the strength of the force in question.
This is often successful when the coupling constant is small, but not
when it's big.
The interesting thing is that in quantum field theory the coupling
constants "run". This is particle physics slang for the fact that
they depend on the energy scale at which we measure them. "Asymptotic
freedom" happens when the coupling constant runs down to zero as we
move up to higher and higher energy scales. If you want to impress
someone about your knowledge of this, just mutter something about
the "beta function" being negative --- this is a fancy way of saying
the coupling constant decreases as you go to higher energies. You'll
sound like a real expert.
Now, Frank Wilczek is one of the original discoverers of asymptotic
freedom. He *is* a real expert. He recently won a prize for this work,
and he gave a nice talk which he made into a paper:
1) Frank Wilczek, Asymptotic freedom, preprint available as
hep-th/9609099.
Among other things, he gives a nice summary of the work of Nielsen
and Hughes, which gave the first really easy to understand explanation
of asymptotic confinement. For the original work, try:
2) N. K. Nielsen, Am. J. Phys. 49, 1171 (1981).
3) R. J. Hughes, Nucl. Phys. B186, 376 (1981).
Why would a force get weak at short distance scales? Actually it's
easier to imagine why it would get *strong* --- and sometimes that is
what happens. Of course there are lots of forces that decrease with
distance like 1/r^2, but I'm talking about something more drastic: I'm
talking about "screening".
For example, say you have an electron in some water. It'll make an
electric field, but this will push all the other negatively charged
particles little bit *away* from your electron and pull all the
positively charged ones a little bit *towards* your electron:
-
+
your electron: - +-
+
-
In other words, it will "polarize" all the neighboring water molecules.
But this will create a counteracting sort of electric field, since it
means that if you draw any sphere around your electron, there will be a
bit more *positively* charged other stuff in that sphere than negatively
charged other stuff. The bigger the sphere is, the more this effect
occurs --- though there is a limit to how much it occurs. We say that
the further you go from your electron, the more its electric charge is
"screened", or hidden, behind the effect of the polarization.
This effect is very common in materials that don't conduct electricity,
like water or plastics or glass. They're called "dielectrics", and the
dielectric constant, epsilon, measures the strength of this screening
effect. Unlike in math, this epsilon is typically bigger than 1. If
you apply an electric field to a dielectric material, the electric field
inside the material is only 1/epsilon as big as you'd expect if this
polarization wasn't happening.
What's cool is that according to quantum field theory, screening occurs
even in the vacuum, thanks to "vacuum polarization". One can visualize
it rather vaguely as due to a constant buzz of virtual particle-antiparticle
pairs getting created and then annihilating --- called "vacuum bubbles"
in the charming language of Feynman diagrams, because you can draw them
like this:
/\
e+/ \e-
/ \
\ /
\ /
\/
Here I've drawn a positron-electron pair getting created and then
annihilating as time passes --- unfortunately, this bubble is square,
thanks to the wonders of ASCII art.
There is a lot I should say about virtual particles, and how despite
the fact that they aren't "real" they can produce very real effects
like vacuum polarization. A strong enough electric field will even
"spark the vacuum" and make the virtual particles *become* real! But
discussing this would be too big of a digression. Suffice it to say
that you have to learn quantum field theory to see how something that
starts out as a kind of mathematical book-keeping device --- a line in a
Feynman diagram --- winds up acting a bit like a real honest particle.
It's a case of a metaphor gone berserk, but in an exceedingly useful way.
Anyway, so much for screening. Asymptotic freedom requires something
opposite, called "anti-screening"! That's why it's harder to understand.
Nielsen and Hughes realized that anti-screening is easier to understand
using magnetism than electricity. In analogy to dielectrics, there
are some materials that screen magnetic fields, and these are called
"diamagnetic" --- for example, one of the strongest diamagnets is bismuth.
But in addition, there are materials that "anti-screen" magnetic fields ---
the magnetic field inside them is stronger than the externally applied
magnetic field --- and these are called "paramagnetic". For example,
aluminum is paramagnetic. People keep track of paramagnetism using
a constant called the magnetic permeability, mu. Just to confuse you,
this works the opposite way from the dielectric constant. If you
apply a magnetic field to some material, the magnetic field inside it is
mu times as big as you'd expect if there were no magnetic effects going
on.
The nice thing is that there are lots of examples of paramagnetism
and we can sort of understand it if we think about it. It turns
out that paramagnetism in ordinary matter is due to the spin of the
electrons in it. The electrons are like little magnets --- they
have a little "magnetic moment" pointing along the axis of their spin.
Actually, purely by convention it points in the direction opposite
their spin, since for some stupid reason Benjamin Franklin decided
to decree that electrons were *negative*. But don't worry about this ---
it doesn't really matter. The point is that when you put electrons in a
magnetic field, their spins like to line up in such a way that
their magnetic field points the same way as the externally applied
magnetic field, just like a compass needle does in the Earth's magnetic
field. So they *add* to the magnetic field. Ergo, paramagnetism.
Now, spin is a form of angular momentum intrinsic to the electron,
but there is another kind of angular momentum, namely orbital angular
momentum, caused by how the electron (or whatever particle) is moving
around in space. It turns out that orbital angular momentum also
has magnetic effects, but only causes diamagnetism. The idea
that when you apply a magnetic field to some material, it can also make
the electrons in it tend to move in orbits perpendicular to the
magnetic field, and the resulting current creates a magnetic field.
But this magnetic field must *oppose* the external magnetic field.
Ergo, diamagnetism.
Why does orbital angular momentum work one way, while spin works
the other way? I'll say a bit more about that later. Now let
me get back to confinement.
I've talked about screening and antiscreening for both electric
and magnetic fields now. But say the "substance" we're studying
is the *vacuum*. Unlike most substances, the vacuum doesn't look
different when we look at it from a moving frame of reference. We
say it's "Lorentz-invariant". But if we look at an electric field
in a moving frame of reference, we see a bit of magnetic field
added on, and vice versa. We say that the electric and magnetic
fields transform into each other... they are two aspects of single
thing, the electromagnetic field. So the amount of *electric* screening
or antiscreening in the vacuum has to equal the amount of the
*magnetic* screening or antiscreening. In other words, thanks to
the silly way we defined epsilon differently from mu, we must have
epsilon = 1/mu
in the vacuum.
Now the cool thing is that the Yang-Mills equations, which describe
the strong force, are very similar to Maxwell's equations. In
particular, the strong force, also known as the "color" force,
consists of two aspects, the "chromoelectric" field and "chromomagnetic"
field. Moreover, the same argument above applies here: the vacuum
must give the same antiscreening for the chromoelectric field as
it does for the chromomagnetic field, so epsilon = 1/mu here too.
So to understand asymptotic freedom it is sufficient to see why the
vacuum acts like a paramagnet for the strong force! This depends
on a big difference between the strong force and electromagnetism.
Just as the electromagnetic field is carried by photons, which are
spin-1 particles, the strong force is carried by "gluons", which
are also spin-1 particles. But while the photon is electrically
uncharged, the gluon is charged as far as the strong force goes: we
say it has "color".
The vacuum is bustling with virtual gluons. When we apply a chromomagnetic
field to the vacuum, we get two competing effects: paramagnetism thanks
to the *spin* of the gluons, and diamagnetism due to their *orbital
angular momentum*. But --- the spin effect is stronger. The vacuum
acts like a paramagnet for the strong force. So we get asymptotic
freedom!
That's the basic idea. Of course, there are some loose ends.
To see why the spin effect is stronger, you have to calculate a bit.
At least I don't know how to see it without calculating --- but Wilczek
sketches the calculation, and it doesn't look too bad. It's also true
in most metals that the spin effect wins, so they are paramagnetic.
You might also wonder why spin and orbital angular momentum work
oppositely as far as magnetism goes. Unfortunately I don't have any
really simple slick answer. One thing is that it seems any answer
must involve quantum mechanics. In volume II of his magnificent
series:
4) Richard Feynman, Robert Leighton, and Matthew Sands, "The
Feynman Lectures on Physics", Addison-Wesley, Reading, Mass., 1964.
Feynman notes: "It is a consequence of classical mechanics that
if you have any kind of system - a gas with electrons, protons, and
whatever - kept in a box so that the whole thing can't turn, there
will be no magnetic effect. [....] The theorem then says that if
you turn on a magnetic field and wait for the system to get into
thermal equilibrium, there will be no paramagnetism or diamagnetism -
there will be no induced magnetic moment. Proof: According to statistical
mechanics, the probability that a system will have any given state
of motion is proportional to exp(-U/kT), where U is the energy of
that motion. Now what is the energy of motion. For a particle moving
in a constant magnetic field, the energy is the ordinary potential energy
plus mv^2/2, with nothing additional for the magnetic field. (You
know that the forces from electromagnetic fields are q(E + v x B),
and that the rate of work F.v is just qE.v, which is not affected by
the magnetic field.) So the energy of a system, whether it is in
a magnetic field or not, is always given by the kinetic energy plus
the potential energy. Since the probability of any motion depends only
on the energy - that is, on the velocity and position - it is the same
whether or not there is a magnetic field. For *thermal* equilibrium,
therefore, the magnetic field has no effect."
So to understand magnetism we really need to work quantum-mechanically.
Laurence Yaffe has brought to my attention a nice path-integral argument
as to why orbital angular momentum can only yield diamagnetism; this
can be found in his charming book:
5) Barry Simon, "Functional Integration and Quantum Physics", Academic
Press, 1979.
This argument is very simple if you know about path integrals, but
I think there should be some more lowbrow way to see it, too. I think
it's good to make all this stuff as simple as possible, because
the phenomena of asympotic freedom and confinement are very important
and shouldn't only be accessible to experts.
I'd like to thank Douglas Singleton, Matt McIrvin, Mike Kelsey, and
Laurence Yaffe for some remarks on sci.physics.research that helped
me understand this stuff.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
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at
http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/twf.html
but if you are cursed with a slow connection and just want a jumping-off
place to the olds issues, go to
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For the latest issue, go to
http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/this.week.html
Subject: Bohm, Penrose, Stapp and all that.
From: "Jack Sarfatti, Ph.D."
Date: Mon, 11 Nov 1996 15:12:40 -0800
Good show Barron!
Barron Burrow wrote:
>
> David Bohm, one of the chief originators of our current interest in cs.
> studies, points out that the principal feature of the generally accepted
> mechanistic order in physics is that:
>
> "... the world is regarded as constituted of entities which are *outside of
> each other*, in the sense that they exist independently in different regions
> of space (and time) and interact through forces that do not bring about any
> changes in their essential natures. The machine gives a typical
> illustration .... Each part is formed ... and interacts with the other parts
> only through some kind of external contact. By contrast, in a living
> organism, for example, each part grows in the context of the whole, so that
> it does not exist independently, nor can it be said that it merely
> 'interacts' with the others, without itself being essentially affected in
> this relationship.
Yes. In terms of orthodox quantum theory, i.e., no back-action, the
nonlocal connections in the quantum potential Q will synchronize the
motions of widely separated parts of the brain substrate, but there will
not be any direct transfer of locally decodable messages via nonlocality
between these parts because of Eberhard's theorem. Stapp thinks ordinary
consciousness can be explained in the absence of back-action. This is
our main point of disagreement. I think Stapp agrees that something like
back-action is required for the explanation of paranormal phenomena
assuming that they are not completely bogus.
The next issue is whether Penrose's "orch-OR" requires the equivalent of
back-action for the "orch O" part. Bohm's linking of back-action to the
GRW "OR" theory seems to suggest so.
Within Bohm's hidden-variable ontology, we picture the motion of the
entire brain-material substrate as a single point in a higher
dimensional 3-n classical configuration space resembling the "state
space" of classical mechanical chaos theory as pictured in several pop
physics books by Davies et-al.
In purely classical mechanics this brain system point moves in a
landscape of basins of attraction determined by the classical gauge
forces i.e., electromnetism and gravitation. The latter is a gauge
theory based on the Poincare group inside spacetime, the former is based
on the circle U(1) internal group outside of spacetime.
Quantum mechanics adds the quantum potential Q(1,2, ... n) for the n
separate parts of the brain-substrate "beable" or "hidden variable"
which is not really hidden since it is the top of the quantum iceberg on
the classical limit. To use Bohr's words, the brain substrate can be
directly described in classical language the way Penrose describes the
structure of the microtubules in Shadows of The Mind, for example. Q
provides the new organic interconnectedness beyond the classical
coupling of sources to forces.
Stapp showed how, under conditions of a good Von Neumann measurement,
only the eigenfunction of the brain substrate "observable" that is
"actualized" in the "actual Heisenberg event" is "active" in determining
the structure of the basin of attraction that the brain system point
finds itself. From Stapp's postulate, that this actualization has a
funda-MENTAL subjective "felt" conscious (i.e. "quale") aspect to it
that is dual to the objective material particle-field motions,
immediately leads to the 1-1 correspondence between the basin of
attraction in 3n space that the brain system point is in and the
felt-conscious inner experience. Although Stapp's Heisenberg ontology
does not have the "beable" directly as Bohm's does, Stapp regains it as
the classical state that is actualized in the objective i.e., "OR"
collapse of the coherent superposition of classically distinct
alternative possibilities or "potentia".
So far, there is zero back-action. One problem is solved. It is clear
how the widely separated parts of the brain are coherently coordinated
at a distance above and beyond the classical source-force local
couplings. This is because of the Q(1,2, ... n) dependence of the force
-gradQ on any one part on the simultaneous positions, spin orientations
etc of all the other distant parts of the brain with which it is EPR
entangled.
But there are serious incompletenesses in this Stapp picture. The
portrait of basins of attractors is fixed independent of the actual
history of the brain. The basins will adjust to changes in the classical
force configurations and to changes in the boundary constraints on the
quantum wavefunctions. Stapp wrongly thinks IMHO that this suffices to
explain the imprinting of environmental information by the senses on the
mind. The mind is encoded in the portrait of basins of attraction of the
brain in 3n space. Both Stapp and I agree on that general idea.
But the really missing link in Stapp's argument is HOW the brain
eigenfunction-basis set is actually determined. This is where the
self-measurement provided by back-action comes in. The brain/mind system
does not become a Gell-Mann/Hartle "IGUS" until back-action emerges
naturally by the "ordered water" etc shielding of Q against the thermal
disruptions of the environment. The organism is able to self-organize
and adapt to the changing environmental coherent signals because the
random noise of the environment is filtered out. The brain/mind is
self-determining it's momentary landscape of basins of attraction
because of the memory of its past (and possibly future) motion that the
back-action allows. That is, the brain-measurement observable is
continually reconstructing itself from finite moment to moment because
of its direct dependence of its pilot wave structure in quantum Hilbert
space on its classical path in classical 3n "state space". This
feedback-control circuit in which the downward Bohm force -gradQ is
compensated by the upward back-action force is how the strange creative
loop of self-determination i.e., free will happens. This loop opposes
the purely Darwinian natural selection of the changes in the Hamiltonian
and the boundary conditions of the orthodox quantum theory.
That is, back-action is needed to "self-elect" the "present"
brain-observable, i.e., to construct freshly in each here-now present
moment of process time what the spectrum of possibilities are in terms
of both past actual occasions and future "anticipations" or precogntive
remote viewings by advanced "star waves" moving backward in time as in
John Cramer's transactional "handshake" based on the onld
Wheeler-Feynman action-at-a-distance classical electrodynamics. The
total absorber final condition is strongly violated in our actual
expanding universe as was shown by Hoyle and Narlikar in Jan 1995
Reviews of Modern Physics. Furthermore, the breakdown of Eberhard's
theorem by back-action allows for the precognitive remote viewing, or
local decoding, of messages from the timelike future which is the
mechanism for intuition, inspiration, hunches, and all high-level
problem solving in ordinary conscious and sub-conscious processing by
the quantum biocomputer. Aharonov's multiple-time extension of quantum
theory and his quantum time machine effect is relevant here. Back-action
should enhance the probability of success of the quantum time machine
performance. Aharonov's theory does not have back-action.
>
> ".... The three key features of the quantum theory ... clearly show the
> inadequacy of mechanistic notions. Thus, if all actions are in the form of
> discretre quanta, the interactions between different entities (e.g.
> electrons) constitute a single structure of indivisible links so that the
> entire universe has to be thought of as an unbroken whole. In this whole,
> each element that we can abstract in thought shows basic properties (wave or
> particle, etc.) that depend on its overall environment, in a way that is
> much more reminiscent of how the organs constituting living beings are
> related, than it is of how parts of a machine interact. Further, the
> non-local, non-causal nature of the relationships of elements distinct from
> each other evidently violates the requirements of separateness and
> independence of fundamental constituents that is basic to any mechanistic
> approach" (Wholeness & the Implicate Order, Ark/Routledge, 1980, pp 172-76).
>
> "Evidently this leads to a fundamentally new notion of the meaning of time.
> Both in common experience and in physics, time has generally been considered
> to be a primary, independent and universally applicable order, perhaps the
> most fundamental one known to us. Now we have been led to propose that it
> is secondary, and that, like space, it is to be derived from a
> higher-dimensional ground, as a particular order. Indeed, one can further
> say that many such particular interrelated time orders can be derived from
> different sets of sequences of moments, corresponding to material systems
> that travel at different speeds. However, these are all dependent on a
> multidimensional reality that cannot be comprehended fully in terms of any
> time order, or set of such orders ....
>
> "The fundamental law, then, is that of the immense multidimensional ground;
> and the projections from this ground determine whatever time orders there
> may be" (Ibid, p. 211).
>
It is the back-action extension of orthodox quantum theory to
post-quantum mechanics which fulfills Bohm's Vision. It was Bohm, after
all, who discovered back-action in 1951 directly under Einstein's
influence at Princeton. Einstein, of course, did not like Bohm's choice
of nonlocality over incompleteness. But that is beside the point.
Subject: Re: Hermeneutics and the difficulty to count to three...
From: caj@baker.math.niu.edu (Xcott Craver)
Date: 11 Nov 1996 22:18:13 GMT
Gregory Dandulakis wrote:
>In article Xcott Craver wrote:
>>
>> Perhaps you meant "topological homeomorphism?"
>>It doesn't matter: I'm not sure how you consider "a family/
>>group of theories" to be homeomorphic or anything-morphic.
>>Perhaps you can elaborate on your usage?
>
>Yes, it was meant "homeomorphism".
Okay! Now the hard part:
>As far as my understanding of classifying scientific theories,
>I have as a "hint" in my mind the concept of _normal forms_. If
>two scientific theories generate types of qualitative dynamics
>which can be reduced into the same exactly set of normal forms,
>then these two theories are called "exact homeomorphic". If two
>theories differ by a "dense" number of generated normal forms,
>then they constitute different "paradigmes".
Okay, let's stop here. "Normal forms?" How are the
... erm, what you call "types of qualitative dynamics" ... of two
different scientific theories reduced to the same set of things
you call "normal forms?" Can you provide an example, where you
take two separate scientific theories, *explicitly* identify
these "qualitative dynamics," and show this reduction? I'm
quite afraid I still have no idea what you're talking about.
Oh, and ... um ... a "dense" number?
>As an example, I would refer to Archimedes theory of buoyancy
>or theory of levers as "fixed-point theories", the Newtonian
>theories (including Relativity) as "first-order chaos theories",
>and the Quantum Mechanical theories as "second-order chaos the-
>ries".
Okay, but what specifically is the basis for these
classifications? See, you're using mathematical terminology
to describe your, um, theory of theories. Scientific and
mathematical language was designed for speaking of things
exactly and carefully. If you continue to use mathy language,
people will expect you to live up to mathy standards, and be
able to describe explicitly what you're talking about.
And let's not lose my original question: how do you
go about considering sets of theories to be "topologically
homeoporphic?" If you just mean "the same in spirit," you
should just say that, even if it isn't as impressive to others.
"Topologically homeomorphic" is a very specific kind of sameness,
applying to similarity between spaces. Again, you are probably
using all these terms loosely, but even then I don't see why
you're using them! Please explain how topology has anything
at all, explicitly or just in spirit, with any of this.
>Gregory
,oooooooo8 o ooooo@math.niu.edu -- http://www.math.niu.edu/~caj/
o888' `88 ,888. 888
888 ,8'`88. 888 Dr. Leonard: Let (X,T) be a space.
888o. ,oo ,8oooo88. 888 (X,T): Huh? Wha?
`888oooo88 o88o o888o 888
____________________8o888'_________________________________________________
Subject: Re: Our current education system (was Re: How Much Math? (not enough))
From: gonser@eawag.ch (-Tom-)
Date: Sun, 10 Nov 1996 20:33:28 -0800
> gonser@eawag.ch (-Tom-):
> | > | That's quite possibly true. Instead a large portion of them seems to
> | > | prefer handing control to demagogues, preachers, blind faith, and
> | > | a media concerned more with holding short attention spans than
> | > | providing information in the warranted complexity.
>
> +@+.+ (G*rd*n) wrote:
> | > Exactly. Lunatics on stumps. But the lunatics don't look
> | > down on them, even though they're up on stumps.... They're
> | > scanning the heavens for a sign. Remember our ancestors:
> | > religious fanatics, [..........], huddled masses yearning to
> | > breathe free. We are sensitive to being looked down upon.
>
> gonser@eawag.ch (-Tom-):
> | Although I can follow your historical reasoning, doesn't the cat somehow
> | bite its tail?: It is this very act of elevating ignorance, adhering to
> | lunatics and worshipping the heavens and "scripture" that induces the
> | being-looked-down-upon.
+@+.+ (G*rd*n) wrote:
> You can't avoid being looked down upon by buying into the
> system of looking-down-upon. You have to reject the system.
But that's not at all what their doing. They're buying into the
tutti-frutti religious supermarket and supporting its telegenetic
advertisers propagating the look-down-on-everyone-else mentality of divine
redemption. Especially the fundamentalist Christian folks (who are a
characteristic feature in the American landscape) are, if anything,
supporters of closed systems of thought and have erected rigid systems of
mandatory adherence.
> gonser@eawag.ch (-Tom-):
> | Actually, the point I was trying to make above is that the association
> | intelectual=enemy is a matter of faith in its own right. Ignorance as
> | creed. Educatedness as embodying demonic evil. ...
+@+.+ (G*rd*n) wrote:
> I think it makes sense, historically speaking. Remember
> that education does not equal intelligence or information.
> Actually, I would define _education_ as the training of the
> young to serve the purposes of the ruling class, which in
> many cases will mean keeping them in ignorance.
Well, I would say that's a rather narrow definition, and a narrow
perspective too. I think education also contains the training of critical
thought, the honing of logical skills, the offering of intellectual
stimulus and challenge, the nurturing of intelligence, the knowledge of
how to seek and access information, presentations of frameworks of
knowledge that order and contribute to retaining information, contact with
differing modes of thought, the inspiration conveyed by the experience of
others' creative genius, the helping hand of a caring person. I view
education from a practical perspective of offering kids the best possible
access to information and training of their skills and not so much as an
issue of the Klassenkampf.
+@+.+ (G*rd*n) wrote:
> Similarly, a professional intellectual usually has to fit
> into a system of bourgeois institutions, or she or he is
> simply not going to have a job.
I don' think this is a specific fate of intellectuals, but rather the fate
of most ordinary humans. And from my experience in the real world many of
those "bourgeois institutions" usually offer more intellectual freedom
than most other crannies of society.
+@+.+ (G*rd*n) wrote:
> If the common folk find
> themselves at odds with their rulers, it makes sense for
> them to suspect the agents of their rulers. This is not to
> say that some intellectuals can't be virtuously subversive,
> but it's hard for outsiders to tell them from the others.
Maybe. But aren't they also those with the most virtuously subversive
impact for all to see....... Charles Darwin, Albert Einstein, Mahatma Gandhi,
Martin Luther King. Isn't it the new and subversive ideas and the
intellectual capacity to forward them against the opposition of the
establishment, that, more than anything, brings about change?
Tom.
Subject: Re: Hermeneutics and the difficulty to count to three...
From: mturton@stsvr.showtower.com.tw (Michael Turton)
Date: 11 Nov 1996 23:50:10 GMT
In article ,
gd8f@watt.seas.Virginia.EDU (Gregory Dandulakis) wrote:
>In article Patrick Juola wrote:
>....
>>Well, no. It wouldn't have. Making up (incorrect) terminology on
>>the fly does not lucidity create. All that your terminological
>>games really demonstrated is that you don't understand data compression
>>as well as you think. For one thing, there's a strong distinction in
>>science between cataloguing events and explaining them, one that
>>your "everything is compression" metaphor not only fails to capture,
>>but completely destroys. Your topological metaphors don't even achieve
>>the status of being incorrect, as your compression theory metaphor
>>does.
>
>
>Well, I would say that you don't know well what science is about.
>You need heavy reading in philosophy of science, from Kant to Popper
>and Carnap, to see that science can never make _ontological_ state-
>ments. It is all _phenomenology_, that is, relations (pattern) search
>and not substance identification. And there is nothing "erroneous"
>or "on the fly" about identifying science with "compression algo-
>rithms"; it is an exact (modern) equivalent term to phenomenology;
>no metaphors involved. Take an infinitely large file and try dif-
>ferent algorithms to see which one compresses it better, or best
>compresses certain specific sections of the file; that _is_ what
>science does _exactly_.
>
>
>Gregory
Sorry Greg, but Pat is correct. Your analogy won't fly. Modern
science compiles data, to be sure, but it uses models to organize,
understand and manipulate data. The process is not the same as a compression
and your analogy is most inexact. In a compression program all the data
is compressed, but that is not true of a scientific model or formula,
scientific data often being incomplete, unclear or apparently contradictory.
Data in a computer is never unclear, incomplete or contradictory. Moreover,
computer data remains the same regardless of the nature of compression
program, but scientific data often changes depending on which theoretical
position is taken. Scientific models represent compressions not of data
but of a historical process of understanding, a totally different thing.
And no, it is not all phenomenology; something is said about ontology as
well, though often it fuzzy and tentative. Is the difference between
the way mass is treated in Newtonian and Einsteinian frameworks only
phenomological? Do Marxist and Neo-classical economists really regard
cyclical downturns as ontologically equivalent?
Mike
Subject: Re: Autodynamics
From: dean@psy.uq.oz.au (Dean Povey)
Date: 12 Nov 1996 00:31:56 GMT
"Michael D. Painter" writes:
>Dean Povey wrote in article
><565oud$95r@bunyip.cc.uq.oz.au>...
[Stuff
>The equations box on the AD web page has
>m = m1/sqrt(1 - v^2/c^2) for relativaty and works for Mercury.
>and
>m = m1*sqrt(1 - v^2/c^2) for AD and does NOT work for Mercury?
>Why are these equations shown if they are not intended to be compared?
Umm, AD uses a different theory for gravity. My knowledge about GR and
gravity is limited I must admit, but I think you will find that the
find that a GR equation, not the SR equation you have quoted is used as
the motion of planets is more complex. Someone more knowledgable might
recommend a good reference on GR which explains this.
As for AD it uses an entirely different theory of Gravity, I post (without
permission, I hope you don't mind Lucy!) a brief explanation of the AD
theory of Gravity. I think you can find more on the web page.
==========>>>>>>>
NOTES ON AUTODYNAMICS AND GRAVITATION
AD adopts the hypotheses of classical relativity as is.
AD revolutionizes only the practical application of these hypotheses.
In AD, all frames are equivalent when observing a phenomenon. For
each "observer," his "frame" is equivalent to all other "frames".
The revolution is that a "frame" is not only a system of coordinates:
it is the "observer" and the "observed", combined in an interdependent
way. The observer and observed (i.e., the phenomenon) form a single
frame. To each observer, this relation between himself and the phenomenon
is a "relativistic" issue; it is a relativistic mutual interaction, because
the light velocity used to transmit the information is constant,
independent of the motion of the observer and the observed. To him,
the phenomenon is relative by the laws of Nature, but if you want to say
that he is observing a phenomenon in an "absolute" system, nothing
changes. All other observers, whatever their motion, will
observe the phenomenon identically, after taking distance into account.
Also, the interconnection between the observers changes nothing, because
the constancy of light velocity applies to both of them.
Please study carefully the Galilean Simplification file, at
So, AD and relativity are based on identical hypotheses.
THE APPLICATION OF THESE LAWS IS DIFFERENT: THAT IS
AUTODYNAMICS.
The AD theory of Gravitation eliminates the concept of ATTRACTION!
1.) All the "particles" (matter) in the Universe interact with the Pico-
Graviton. This is "gravitation." The Pico-Graviton density is constant
and Universal.
2.) The Pico-Graviton is not "attracted" by matter. "Attraction" no
longer exists! Rather, there is a process of motion. Pico-Gravitons
move in all directions in the Universe, and their interaction with
matter creates the "gravitational force." This "gravitational force"
is not a real force. There is no "attraction", and there is no
attraction between gravitons. There exist only simple energy absorption
and momentum transfer. The gravitational law is reduced completely to
MECHANICS. This is Newton's dream! And we again employ Kepler's laws.
3-1) The mass increment CREATES MOTION. THIS IS A SECOND
REVOLUTION of AD!
The graviton idea has existed more than 200 years! The French Physicist,
de Broglie championed the graviton at the beginning of this century.
But Carezani, for the first time, put all the pieces together, explaining
the creation of motion, perihelion advance of the planets, the precession
of binary stars and pulsars, the modified 2nd law of thermodynamics, and
so on. The Pico-Gravitons travel in all directions. There is no "attraction"
from the Sun. On the other hand, the Earth, the Moon, etc., are spinning
bodies, and they have no preferential position inside or outside of them.
3-2) In the Universe, the Pico-Graviton is constantly created. AD changes
the Second Law of Thermodynamics forever. There is no longer increasing
entropy. The Universal entropy is constant! The process of energy
absorption-mass decay is constantly creating energy and under some
conditions, Pico-Gravitons in a Universal process.
Of course, the universal increment of mass will increase "gravity,"
but this process takes more than 3*10^9 years to duplicate the mass unit.
Probably this energy will not create more "fusion energy," but the
radiated energy will last longer.
3-3) To AD, the Universe is not static. It is constantly changing. The
Universe today differs from the past and will change in the future.
This doesn't violate the laws of Physics, even though it is possible that
"certain" laws could change in eons of time. It is an illusion that
human beings can talk sensibly about billions of years into the future of
the Universe.
We understand that physicists will reject all new paradigms out of hand.
The AD revolution is its simplicity. No more complex tensor equations
or fantastic speculations, with no scientific basis, to try to explain
what we cannot. Of course, some extrapolations are relevant.
The AD Universal Gravitation places the Gravitational field within
Mechanics. AD theory includes Quantum Mechanics inside its own
equations, explaining the Dirac equations. With the concept of
superluminal velocity and minute particles like the Pico-Graviton, AD
supports the possibility of "communication" between elemental particles.
You know very well that phenomena of diffraction and others, dubbed as
quantum phenomena, seem to show that the electrons "know" what other
electrons are "doing," that is to say, each electron "knows" the
position of the other. In AD the uncertainty principle of Heisenberg
no longer exists
=======>>>>>
>>
>> From the Web page:
>> "[Autodynamics] explains the perihelion advance of Mercury, Venus, Earth
>> and Mars, and all Binary Star precessions for which we have data."
>Where is your data posted?
Well, I didn't come up with this theory so I must confess I don't know. But
this is a good point. I'll email someone in the SAA and see if they can
put the data up on their web page.
>Some were, some weren't. He used normal scientific means to achieve his
>goal, including peer review.
As is AD. AD has been published several times.
>You don't.
>As for yours, it implies the use of "standard" equipment. Would not such
>apparatus be widely available at a good university. I would suspect this
>type of work is done at the graduate level if not lower.
Again, I can't comment, but I think you'll find that this is still a quite
expensive experiment. Don't quote me, but I have seen a figure of $500,000
thrown around (I can't remember where). Others may correct me if this is
in error.
>You don't even bother to acknowledge or defend serious analysis in these
>news groups.
I think this is more a lack of time than anything. It is often difficult
on this group to seperate the wheat from the chaff so to speak. While there
are obviously many intelligent and knowledgable physicists on this group, there
are also a lot of less knowledgeble hobbyists/layman (myself included).
I tend to respond to obvious problems if I think I can answer them, but there
are a lot of very good questions raised here which I can't. I'll leave these
up to the physicists to debate.
Of course this begs the question, if there is a clear and unquestionable flaw
in Autodynamics, why not publish a paper on it?
Dean.
Subject: Re: Do gravitational waves carry momentum? was: Does gravitational waves carry momentum
From: nurban@csugrad.cs.vt.edu (Nathan M. Urban)
Date: 11 Nov 1996 19:43:16 -0500
In article , kfischer@iglou.com (Ken Fischer) wrote:
> If gravity is not anything like opposite charge
> attractions, then it must be different.
It is like opposite charge attractions, in the weak field regime. Of
course, the fundamental explanations for the two effects are completely
different.
> Gravity can not be "created", can not be shielded,
> can not be deflected, can not be reflected, can not be
> amplified, can not be weakened,
Don't be so sure about that. Strong-field gravity can do some pretty
weird things. Even weak-field gravity can produce magnetic-like
effects. And I seem to recall some papers on the scattering of
gravitational waves off compact massive objects, like black holes or
neutron stars. (Oh yeah, that's right. You don't believe in
gravitational waves. Never mind.)
> never fails, and the mechanism by which it operates is not known.
Yeah, whatever. The mechanism of gravity is spacetime curvature. If
you're not satisfied with that, explain why you're satisfied with, say,
the mechanism for electromagnetism. (Or maybe you're not satisfied with
the mechanisms for anything?)
> If it were a "field" then there should be some way
> to alter the gravitational field, and there is no way known
> to alter it.
Uh, what? There are plenty of ways of altering gravitational fields.
Just change the stress-energy configuration.
> I wouldn't read too much into statements about the
> gravitational field generating more field,
It can be shown within the theory that gravity must self-gravitate.
This is common to other theories; for example, the force carriers for
the strong force (gluons) themselves interact via the strong force. It
is really only electromagnetism, a linear theory, which does not have
this self-interaction and hence the superposition principle.
> the reason that
> gravitation does not fall off as precisely the inverse
> square is apparently not well understood else there would
> not be dozens of theories with only minor differences.
Not at all. For just about any given physical theory, there are plenty
of other theories with only minor differences floating around. We only
hear about the ones we do because they're the simplest.
> I am pretty sure that photons do not attract anything,
> in fact, I don't think free electrons produce gravitational
> attraction, but I am still trying to research current thought
> on this, as I just became aware (if I am correct) that electrons
> are not composed of quarks,
They sure aren't! (Though they may BE quarks at sufficiently high
energies, according to some GUTs..)
I'm rather appalled that you have been proposing a theory of gravity
based on quark interactions without even knowing that leptons are not
made up of quarks. I think you'd better brush up on some basic particle
physics before pursuing this theory further.
> and I think quarks produce the major
> apparent "attraction" of gravity, although electrons are "attracted"
> by gravity.
So, you think that mass has nothing to do with gravity then? Or do you
think that the strong force is affected by mass as well?
> I am not impressed by the possibilities of mathematical
> representations, they can be very precise and formal, but they
> can also be misleading.
Only to the mathematically unsophisticated. Their precision and
formality is necessary, because frankly physical intuition often
doesn't get you very far in some disciplines; they are too far out of
our everyday experience for intuition to apply. Of course, physical
considerations are still motivate the equations to use.
Mathematical representations can be very useful. Just look at Wigner's
classification of particles based on representations of the Lorentz
group. If there were ever a triumph of mathematical physics, that was
it. Or Dirac's prediction of the positron, for that matter.
> If someone were to find a way to generate a gravitational
> field electrically, I would be very happy, gravity is my worse
> enemy, but it isn't going to happen, so thinking about it is
> like reading science fiction.
Well, technically, electromagnetic fields gravitate just like any other
form of energy, but the field strengths would have to be WAY up there to
have measurable gravitational effects.
> And I do not see gravity waves (if they exist) as
> a "particle-wave" duality, which seems to be a current
> popular confusion.
Gravity waves are purely classical. I don't know how gravitons fit in
with gravity waves though.
> it is a null experiment remains to be seen, as there needs to
> both, be a model of gravitation that does not require gravitational
> radiation (I am not convinced that GR does),
You are not convinced that GR requires gravitational radiation? Or that
GR needs to be the theory of gravity?
--
Nathan Urban | nurban@vt.edu | Undergrad {CS,Physics,Math} | Virginia Tech