5 thoughts on “My guest post on George Musser’s Sci Am Blog”
I think many mysteries of quantum mechanics come from the wrong interpretation …starting with plumb pudding atom …to Bhor atom … orbiting electrons … all a bit too simple really. The maths does a great job …but the model is not right . so we are led up garden path .
suppose the atom pulsed in three dimensions. in …out …radial 3D ….expansion / contraction.
driven by changing magneti field
the electron charge is always negative outside atom because as it moves one way through north mag field ( say) then it moves back in through south . …
when it contracts it can accept / absorb a photon … energy increases and on the next expansion it radiates .
A simple 3D movement not orbiting fuzzy particles . but a pulsing electron/ charge field around nucleus.
try to equate this action to spins etc. it may give some clue spin 1/2 spin 1 etc ..
expansion…contraction is iaw general relativity …and seems to point you in direction of two places at once …the in and the out . edges
also half lives … the half … means one of two things .. the in …the out movement . energy in …energy out .
does this idea fit anything to make things look correct.
Thanks Rob for your comment. I do think that the proper interpretation clears up a lot of the problems with QM. I’m working on a popular
book on this right now. See my CUP book for a more technical presentation (although many chapters are introductory and fairly basic).
To address the model you mention here, I would need more specifics to assess it.
This entry regarding the whole issue of space-time being a ‘construction’ into which physical actuality can be ‘situated’ is incredibly powerful, Ruth. I see it as connecting with Donald Hoffman’s ideas from the perspective of cognitive science and the idea that we have evolved a ‘physical interface’ to allow us to function as physically embodied beings, as related to Iain McGilchrist’s ideas about the ‘Divided Brain’ in which the left hemisphere is seen as our ‘nominalistic’ side that interfaces the ‘ego’ with physical actuality through the process of thought which constructs space-time so that fragments of our experience can be ‘situated’, but should be subservient as the ‘Emissary’ to the Master right hemisphere that is our ‘relational’ hemisphere that connects to deep time and to quantum reality, to Rupert Spira’s ideas about space-time as the construct of thought when, in fact, all we REALLY have is direct contact with the ‘NOW’, the present moment that is gone by the time we direct our meta-conscious thought-based attention toward it, as well as this basic distinction between thought/language based meta-consciousness which is where we ‘live’ our lives as physically embodied beings, but which is just a tiny, miniscule fragment (the visible tip of the iceberg), of the reality of which we are conscious but in a ‘non-reportable’ but affectively experienced manner. These ideas have huge, massive implications for our current situation on the planet. Something that is being dealt with, for example, by Peter Kingsley in his books, I believe, especially his most recent book, and which Iain McGilchrist deals with in his new, as yet unpublished book, ‘The Matter with Things’ which also decries our exclusive connection with our physical actuality and our resulting separation from our relational reality, the underlying reality of quantum mechanics that you call ‘QuantumWorld’ in your World Scientific books for the lay public. This is all of fundamental significance, I think, and also brings your ideas into direct connection and relationship to the ideas being developed and promoted by the Essentia Foundation, for which Bernardo Kastrup is the Executive Director. See: http://essentiafoundation.org/ Now, the issue with the Essentia Foundation and Bernardo Kastrup’s approach which is laid out in his book, ‘The Idea of the World’ is that the interpretation of QM that he relies upon in this book is Carlo Rovelli’s so-called ‘Relational’ interpretation. But I think that your RTI-QM interpretation, Ruth, is much more relevant and deeply connected to Bernardo’s ‘rationalist idealism’ (which I think of as a form of ‘objective idealism’ along the lines of the metaphysics of Charles Sanders Peirce). The reason why this is important is that it articulates the escape route from Cartesian Nominalism that has dominated scientific thinking and Western culture with a pervasive form of materialism for the last several hundred years, since Descartes formulated his ideas and drew the impenetrable line between Mind and Matter. Which has had dire consequences for how we view our place in the world and our relationship with Nature. Most importantly, it has undermined our moral sensibilities and responsibilities. Nominalism gives rise to its ‘offspring’ (Peirce called them the ‘daughters’ of Nominalism but I want to avoid this gender association–they are neither daughters nor sons, or they are both!) including materialism, individualism, phenomenalism and sensationalism. And it undermines the scientific process itself by turning it into a dogma rather than a practice, basically the faith that has been called ‘Scientism’–which says that such things as ‘meaning’, ‘value’, and ‘significance’ are beyond the domain of scientific investigation. That these are metaphysical questions, but that there is no need for any type of metaphysics when you put your faith and trust in ‘science’ defined as exclusively materialistic. Which, most importantly of all, leads to a questioning of moral understanding, vision and responsibility, and thus to a sort of nihilistic skepticism regarding the possibility that there can be anything non-physical that can be considered to be Absolute and foundational. So that all that we experience which cannot be explained by the tenets of physicalism and its form of science, can only be considered to be some kind of illusion or, worse, ‘madness’.
So, as I have said to you elsewhere, Ruth, I see your work and the direction that you are taking it with the new Quantum Institute as lining up very well and in a synergistic manner with the direction being taken by Bernardo and his colleagues, the authors who have signed on with the transdisciplinary Essentia Foundation…
I think many mysteries of quantum mechanics come from the wrong interpretation …starting with plumb pudding atom …to Bhor atom … orbiting electrons … all a bit too simple really. The maths does a great job …but the model is not right . so we are led up garden path .
suppose the atom pulsed in three dimensions. in …out …radial 3D ….expansion / contraction.
driven by changing magneti field
the electron charge is always negative outside atom because as it moves one way through north mag field ( say) then it moves back in through south . …
when it contracts it can accept / absorb a photon … energy increases and on the next expansion it radiates .
A simple 3D movement not orbiting fuzzy particles . but a pulsing electron/ charge field around nucleus.
try to equate this action to spins etc. it may give some clue spin 1/2 spin 1 etc ..
expansion…contraction is iaw general relativity …and seems to point you in direction of two places at once …the in and the out . edges
also half lives … the half … means one of two things .. the in …the out movement . energy in …energy out .
does this idea fit anything to make things look correct.
Thanks Rob for your comment. I do think that the proper interpretation clears up a lot of the problems with QM. I’m working on a popular
book on this right now. See my CUP book for a more technical presentation (although many chapters are introductory and fairly basic).
To address the model you mention here, I would need more specifics to assess it.
This entry regarding the whole issue of space-time being a ‘construction’ into which physical actuality can be ‘situated’ is incredibly powerful, Ruth. I see it as connecting with Donald Hoffman’s ideas from the perspective of cognitive science and the idea that we have evolved a ‘physical interface’ to allow us to function as physically embodied beings, as related to Iain McGilchrist’s ideas about the ‘Divided Brain’ in which the left hemisphere is seen as our ‘nominalistic’ side that interfaces the ‘ego’ with physical actuality through the process of thought which constructs space-time so that fragments of our experience can be ‘situated’, but should be subservient as the ‘Emissary’ to the Master right hemisphere that is our ‘relational’ hemisphere that connects to deep time and to quantum reality, to Rupert Spira’s ideas about space-time as the construct of thought when, in fact, all we REALLY have is direct contact with the ‘NOW’, the present moment that is gone by the time we direct our meta-conscious thought-based attention toward it, as well as this basic distinction between thought/language based meta-consciousness which is where we ‘live’ our lives as physically embodied beings, but which is just a tiny, miniscule fragment (the visible tip of the iceberg), of the reality of which we are conscious but in a ‘non-reportable’ but affectively experienced manner. These ideas have huge, massive implications for our current situation on the planet. Something that is being dealt with, for example, by Peter Kingsley in his books, I believe, especially his most recent book, and which Iain McGilchrist deals with in his new, as yet unpublished book, ‘The Matter with Things’ which also decries our exclusive connection with our physical actuality and our resulting separation from our relational reality, the underlying reality of quantum mechanics that you call ‘QuantumWorld’ in your World Scientific books for the lay public. This is all of fundamental significance, I think, and also brings your ideas into direct connection and relationship to the ideas being developed and promoted by the Essentia Foundation, for which Bernardo Kastrup is the Executive Director. See: http://essentiafoundation.org/ Now, the issue with the Essentia Foundation and Bernardo Kastrup’s approach which is laid out in his book, ‘The Idea of the World’ is that the interpretation of QM that he relies upon in this book is Carlo Rovelli’s so-called ‘Relational’ interpretation. But I think that your RTI-QM interpretation, Ruth, is much more relevant and deeply connected to Bernardo’s ‘rationalist idealism’ (which I think of as a form of ‘objective idealism’ along the lines of the metaphysics of Charles Sanders Peirce). The reason why this is important is that it articulates the escape route from Cartesian Nominalism that has dominated scientific thinking and Western culture with a pervasive form of materialism for the last several hundred years, since Descartes formulated his ideas and drew the impenetrable line between Mind and Matter. Which has had dire consequences for how we view our place in the world and our relationship with Nature. Most importantly, it has undermined our moral sensibilities and responsibilities. Nominalism gives rise to its ‘offspring’ (Peirce called them the ‘daughters’ of Nominalism but I want to avoid this gender association–they are neither daughters nor sons, or they are both!) including materialism, individualism, phenomenalism and sensationalism. And it undermines the scientific process itself by turning it into a dogma rather than a practice, basically the faith that has been called ‘Scientism’–which says that such things as ‘meaning’, ‘value’, and ‘significance’ are beyond the domain of scientific investigation. That these are metaphysical questions, but that there is no need for any type of metaphysics when you put your faith and trust in ‘science’ defined as exclusively materialistic. Which, most importantly of all, leads to a questioning of moral understanding, vision and responsibility, and thus to a sort of nihilistic skepticism regarding the possibility that there can be anything non-physical that can be considered to be Absolute and foundational. So that all that we experience which cannot be explained by the tenets of physicalism and its form of science, can only be considered to be some kind of illusion or, worse, ‘madness’.
So, as I have said to you elsewhere, Ruth, I see your work and the direction that you are taking it with the new Quantum Institute as lining up very well and in a synergistic manner with the direction being taken by Bernardo and his colleagues, the authors who have signed on with the transdisciplinary Essentia Foundation…
Thanks, Gary. I will make contact with the Essentia Foundation.