[Leibniz and Quantum and Relativity] - A New Kind of Science: The NKS ForumA New Kind of Science: The NKS Forum
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Leibniz and Quantum and Relativity
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Posted by: MikeHelland
In discussing my ideas I have been recently pointed towards Leibniz as many of my ideas are not original! They seem to be over 300 years old. Here's a starter:
http://www.utm.edu/research/iep/l/l...0Indiscernibles
Its interesting how science has evolved its thinking about space and time.
Newton: space and time are aboslute
Einstein: space and time are relative, they're also closely related
Me: space and time are not "out there", they exist as a result of action
Meanwhile, at the same time of Newton there was...
Leibniz: there is no absolute location in either space or time, and they cannot be thought of apart from one another. Space and time are not "out there", they exist as illusions from action
How about science's thinking on matter?
Newton: matter is formed in solid, massy, hard, impenetrable, movable particles
Einstein: matter is closely related to energy
Me: matter is also the result of action (energy); there are fundamental things and interaction of these fundamental things result in natural things
And what did Leibniz say?
Leibniz: Monads are fundmanetal things that contain the properties we see in things; these monads exist at a 'metaphysical' level with no causality, no space, no time at least as ordinarily understood
I think this is facinating.
In the advances we've seen in the 20th century with relativistic and quantum physics, why has noone suggested that Leibniz's framework might be a better starting point then Newton's? Much less ad-hoc patchwork would be required, and we might even by able to understand quantum behavior more intuitivly.
The ideas I developed seem nearly identical in many ways to Leibniz's view of the world. Here is my work:
http://www.techmocracy.net/science/time.htm
Posted by: Charlie Stromeyer jr.
"In the advances we've seen in the 20th century with relativistic and quantum physics, why has no one suggested that Leibniz's framework might be a better starting point then Newton's? Much less ad-hoc patchwork would be required, and we might even by able to understand quantum behavior more intuitivly."
People have advocated the importance of Leibniz-like thinking for physics. For instance, the famous mathematician Gregory Chaitin gave a talk on math, information, Leibniz and physics and has written more regarding Leibniz. See his website:
http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/CDMTCS/chaitin/
You might not have heard of Chaitin's thoughts on these topics before because reality is often solipsistic, meaning that the "reality" we are aware of or think that we know is greatly limited by what we already know or do not know. Thus, e.g. it may turn out to be the case that Wolfram's ideas about NKS are valid within some context that he is aware of but may not hold in a broader context perhaps a bit like how classical Euclidean geometry is valid within its context but will no longer hold in a non-Euclidean framework.
Personally, I am not sure or convinced yet that philosophy even contains the possibility of being a "valid" field of inquiry rather than merely being just a field of practice, and the same could be argued for economics aka the "dismal science".
The great philosopher Eric Idle wrote what may be the best summary ever of Western philosophy:
http://www.wilken.freeserve.co.uk/M...Songs/song8.htm
I sometimes believe that our universe is infinitely recursive but that the sole undelying basis for the recursion is irony.
Posted by: MikeHelland
Charlie, thank you for the excellent pointer to Chaitin's work!
I'd like to point out one thing from your message:
<quote>Personally, I am not sure or convinced yet that philosophy even contains the possibility of being a "valid" field of inquiry rather than merely being just a field of practice, and the same could be argued for economics aka the "dismal science".</quote>
What is the difference between philosophy and science?
Philosophy is about making conjectures, and then criticising these conjectures thoroughly.
Science is about making conjectures, and emphasizing the importance of conjectures that make predictions that can be confirmed by observation.
How did human beings decide that the method of science is desirable?
Well, one day someone said "We criticize each other's conjectures quite a bit and sometimes don't get very far. If we were to limit ourselves to conjectures that can stand up to the scrutiny of observation these conjectures should be perfered we could get further" and no one could really argue that point.
In other words, experiment in science is simply a very strict form of criticism.
More remarkably, the idea of science is a conjecture itself, one that stands up to good criticism.
Science, in this view, is a product of philosophy, and is more or less philosophy itself.
Sir Karl Popper, former professor of the Scientific Method at the London School, actually believed that "science" didn't literally exist. It is simply a human classifcation of conjectural knowledge, much like "metaphysics" or "biology." Read the preface to "Realism and the Aim of Science" to get a better understanding of his rationale.
My point is that science is no more "valid" than philosophy is, because when it all boils away we are left with a simple method called critical rationalism:
1. We devise creative conjectures
2. We devise creative criticisms of these conjcectures to weed out the bad ones
3. Repeat
Posted by: Charlie Stromeyer jr.
Science is "valid" because it works. Here is a simple example of what I mean:
Suppose it is 6,000 years ago and you argue that the world is round and I argue that the world is flat. In principle, this argument goes on for all eternity.
However, if we can imagine the possibility of doing some kind of empirical measurement then we may be able to break the above impasse by ruling out my false conjecture after it has already been formulated in a falsifiable way.
You see, science is the underlying hope for the possibility of realizing the ideal of "democracy" because otherwise life becomes nothing but one person's opinion vs. another's and there would never be a way to settle any argument or conflict except via physical force (e.g. the way of Caesar) or via surrender (e.g. the way of Jesus).
However, here in more modern times, many people would rather not have to assume the roles of either Caesar or Jesus, and would prefer some guidance from a more practical approach to problems.
The truth of a mathematical proof is valid because a majority of experts accept it as valid, and not because Britney Spears, Jessica Simpson or Anna Nicole Smith declare the proof valid.
Philosophy is the practice of one person's opinion vs. another's but science is the practice of getting a bit closer to a less subjective (or more objective) view of reality. I am implying that science is an ongoing and sometimes diverse practice, but not some kind of Platonic ideal noun "Science".
Posted by: MikeHelland
<quote>However, if we can imagine the possibility of doing some kind of empirical measurement then we may be able to break the above impasse by ruling out my false conjecture after it has already been formulated in a falsifiable way.</quote>
I agree completely.
But its important to realize that the experiment only acts as a criticism, and nothing more divine than that.
Science works and exists because the method of critical rationalism works and exists.
Critical rationalism (which underlies not only science but philosophy as well) is the valid method.
So to suggest that a philosophy may not be a valid field of study, I think, misuses the distinction between philosophy and science.
We can make the following analogy:
The only difference between a hypothesis and a theory is that we have much more confidence in the theory.
For good reasons of course, repeated confirmation by experiment.
The only difference between a philosophy and a science is that we have much more confidence in the science.
For good reasons of course, the high degree of falsifiablily of predictions derived from mathematics.
But lacking that, they are fundamentally the same, and therefore, I would suggest equally valid. In fact, it is often the case where inquirey into a philosophy results in evolvution and maturity to the point where it becomes... um... a new kind of science.
Posted by: Charlie Stromeyer jr.
"The only difference between a philosophy and a science is that we have much more confidence in the science."
The history of scientific discovery has been filled with accidents and serendipity. As I'm sure you realize, critical rationalism or reasoning is hardly sufficient. Otherwise we could just start with merely the classical philosophical assumptions of Plato and then be able to deduce everything hence.
Or we would be the intellectual descendants of the writer of this equation:
http://www.sciencecartoonsplus.com/gallery.htm
Posted by: MikeHelland
Recall that the method of the critical rationlist is:
1. We devise creative conjectures
2. We devise creative criticisms of these conjcectures to weed out the bad ones
3. Repeat
However we devise these conjectures... pure imagination, accident, dumb luck, good drugs... isn't addressed by the method.
Critical Rationalism isn't synomamous with either deductive or inductive reasoning, as you seem to suggest it is.
I enjoyed the cartoon :-)
Posted by: Charlie Stromeyer jr.
Perhaps Critical Rationalism is more of a vauge method than a particular philosophy. So how would Critical Rationalism compared to, say, NKS account for the seemingly self-evident truths of the law of the excluded middle, the cut rule etc. from logic?
Or is Critical Rationalism more like a bias than a method, but some prefer this bias becuase it tends to work in a practical sense?
Posted by: MikeHelland
Critical Rationalism - as I understand it, which coudl be wrong of course - is not a particular philosophy, but rather an approach to knowledge, whether we're talking about scientific knowledge of philosophical knowledge.
The idea is that every thing human beings call knowledge, whether it is understanding of the natural world, understanding of social patterns, understanding of politics or economics, is merely conjectures.
All knowledge is conjectural knowledge, as opposed to some "pure" or divine knowledge. And all conjectures are subject to criticism.
In fact, the way we communicate this knowledge is through the words and symbols of language, and language is knowledge too, therefore language is highly involved in the shaping of our knowledge and deserves to be criticized and refined as well.
The critical rationalist doesn't believe there is any "true" method for discovering knowledge and doesn't believe there is any "true" method for verifying knowledge - knowledge cannot be known to be certain, the best that we can do is criticize conjectures to get rid of the bad ones, but this says nothing about the "truthfullness" of the conjectures that remain unrefuted.
So critical rationalism is the underlying method of all science and philosophy, even though it is most often unconsciously used.
It seems to be important mainly in discussing which methods are "valid" and which are not, which is where our conversation had shifted. :-)
Posted by: Charlie Stromeyer jr.
NKS View of Formal vs. Nonformal
To relate what you are saying to the ANKS book, how does NKS distinguis between the "words and symbols" of common human languages vs. a more formal algorithmic-like basis? I ask because I do not know anything about linguistics (of human languages).
Is there some general way to distinguish between mathematical algorithms vs. 'real life algorithms'? A mathematical algorithm operates only with symbolic expressions (objects) that are words of some formal language, whereas real life algorithms such as a cooking recipe can and are applied to a variety of different kinds of objects.
How does NKS define the notion of a 'formal language' vs. the usual definition [1] ? Does NKS provide a unity or a fundamental type of dichotomy between semantic reasoning (model theory) vs. syntactic reasoning (proof theory, deduction or inference and symbols)?
Perhaps the ANKS book addresses these questions somewhere in the notes, but if it does so then I might be willing to bet you all of your money that Jason Cawley could explain these thoughts more clearly than Wolfram may have done.
[1] A formal language is usually thought of as an arbitrary subset of the set A* of all words in A, where A is the alphabet. It is impossible to determine generally whether any two Turing machine languages are equivalent as sets.
I ask these questions after having recently read a paper by the mathematician Mark Burgin entitled "Unified Foundations for Mathematics" in which he considers these same questions:
http://arxiv.org/abs/math.LO/0403186
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