#heisenberg indeterminacy

[elvencantation]

i have a sort of question! reading dune with my mom (i’ve read it like ten times, but it’s her first) and we came across this passage

“The prescience, he realized, was an illumination that incorporated the limits of what it revealed—at once a source of accuracy and meaningful error. A kind of Heisenberg indeterminacy intervened: the expenditure of energy that revealed what he saw, changed what he saw.”

so then i got curious and looked up the Heisenberg indeterminacy, which is apparently a fundamental concept in quantum mechanics. to put it short “the more accurately one property is measured, the less accurately the other property can be known.” (from wikipedia)

which is a perfect correlation with some of the ways FH describes prescience. however, then i scrolled down a bit further and read this passage

Historically, the uncertainty principle has been confused with a related effect in physics, called the observer effect, which notes that measurements of certain systems cannot be made without affecting the system, that is, without changing something in a system. Heisenberg used such an observer effect at the quantum level as a physical "explanation" of quantum uncertainty.

(i bolded and italicized words to hopefully make it easier to parse the blocks of text)

anyway. it sounds like frank either got the indeterminacy confused with the observer effect in this specific case, given the explanation at the end of the novel passage or im just confused. opinions?

[unshatters-your-teacup]

When Frank Herbert makes explicit the theory you were hoping was true: that the act of observing the future through prophetic visions fundamentally alters the future you’re seeing

[cleekleequlee]

On a sunny summer day I decided to dive into the puzzles of Barad's spacetimemattering. Here are the two articles:

Barad, K. (2013). Ma(r)king Time: Material Entanglements and Re-memberings: Cutting Together-Apart. How Matter Matters: Objects, Artifacts, and Materiality in Organization Studies. P. R. Carlile, D. Nicolini, A. Langley and H. Tsoukas, Oxford University Press: 16–31.

Barad, K. (2018). Troubling Time/s and Ecologies of Nothingness: Re-turning, Re-membering, and Facing the Incalculable, Fordham University Press: 206.

It is not too difficult to understand matter - materialization as sediment of time as the "growth" of sedimental rocks:

"Memory - the pattern of sedimented enfoldings of iterative intra-activity-is written into the fabric of the world. The wolrd "holds" the memory of all traces; or rather, the world is its memory (its enfolded materialization)." (Barad, 2013, p.29)

"Matter doesn't move in time. Matter doesn't evolve in time. Matter does time. Matter materializes and enfolds different temporalities." (Barad, 2013, p. 17)

However the "iterative" needs a bit explanation. How can memory and matter be iteratively entangled?

The quantum-eraser experiment is crucial to Barad's theorization of temporality. In a time-stamp manner the experiment can be understood (by a non-physicist) as such:

t0: the photon sets off t1: the photon passes the slit(s) with the which-slit detector, the slit of passing gets recorded t2: the eraser erases the information detected by which-slit detector tn: a different pattern captured by the graph, which indicates a different ontological existence (wave/particle) on the photo when set off. In her explanation of the different pattern in t2, the erasure (t2) travels back to the "past" (t0) and changed the ontological being of the photon and consequently its behavior when passing slit (t2).

There is a sentiment that the past is never finished and done, taking a fixed form, but both continues into the future in its materialisation (consequence) and (more importantly) waiting for future reconfiguring that alters the present. This alternation, according to Barad, is not epistemological (our understanding of the present) but ontological (what present is):

"Heisenberg understands measurements as disturbances that place a limit on knowability - that is, measurements entail epistemic uncertainties. Whereas, for Bohr, measurement is about the conditions for possibility of semantic and ontic determination - that is, ontological indeterminacy." (Barad, 2013, p. 26, highlight added)

Barad uses Derrida's term "hauntology" for the materialization.

There is also hope, future possibilities opened by the reconfiguring of the entangled past:

"Hayashi's narrator bodily traces these entanglements of colonialist histories, violent erasures, and avoid-ances as an integral part of a sacred practice of re-membering - which is not a going back to what was, but rather a material reconfiguring of spacetimemattering in ways that attempt to do justice to account for the devastation wrought and to produce openings, new possible histories, reconfigurings of spacetimemattering through which time-beings might find a way to endure." (Barad, 2013, p. 230)

The 2018 article becomes obscure when it goes into the discussion of void, vacuum (fluctuations), tension of the void and virtual articles. At times it seems to have been inspired by Bergson/Deleuze's virtual and actual:

"The vacuum is far from empty; rather, it is flush with yearning, with innumerable possibilities/imagining of what was, could be, might yet have been, all coexisting. Don't for a minute think that there are no material effects of yearning and imagining. Virtual particles are experimenting with the im/possibilities of non/being, but that doesn't mean they aren't real; on the contrary." (Barad, 2018, p. 232)

She even offered a very swift speculative design of a scentific article, making virtual particles the actual essence of an atom.

The Bergsonian influence becomes more prominent in the discussion of electron as multiplicity - aggregation of all histories of intra-action with the others:

"Hence, according to QFT, even the smallest bits of matter are an enormous multitude! Each "individual" is made up of all possible histories of virtual intra-actions with all others; or rather, according to QFT, there is no such thing as a discrete individual with its own roster of properties. In fact, the "other" - the constitutively excluded - is always already within: the very notion of the "self is a troubling of the interior / exterior distinction.... all "selves" are not themselves but rather the iterative intra-activity of all matter of time-beings."

Again, (the entangling of) time wins over the "vulgar" space.

After some winding narratives tracing the travel hopping, Barad comes back to the question of self, and what this re-membering - visiting and reconfiguring the past - means:

"The pilgrimage of Hayashi's unnamed protagonist is a work of mourning, a concerted ongoing labor, never finished or complete; where mourning is not about making memories, but rather about ontologically reconfiguring a past that never was on behalf of possibilities for a better future, not as performed by a willful liberal humanist subject, but in the tracings of entanglements of multiple time-beings through which the unnamed protagonist is herself constituted."

Self is not pre-fixed, but constitutued by assembling a different narrative, tracing of entanglements of the past. Self is not history, but our act of returning and open to countless future returnings.

[lakelewisia]

Kim spent the summer working on his favorite research focus, a possible corollary to the Heisenberg Indeterminacy Principle. The Wilson Wouldn’t It Be Nice Principle stated that sometimes, it was possible to know something ordinarily unknowable, provided that knowledge would just make everything a bit more lovely. It was one of a suite of scientific theories intended to account for the seemingly impossible things that happened in places like Lewisia and it was, when it worked, one of the more pleasant things to contemplate on a summer afternoon.

[fieldnoting]

01.27.24

heisenberg's indeterminacy / uncertainty principle -- "It states that there is a limit to the precision with which certain pairs of physical properties, such as position and momentum, can be simultaneously known."

observer effect -- "the fact that observing a situation or phenomenon necessarily changes it. Observer effects are especially prominent in physics where observation and uncertainty are fundamental aspects of modern quantum mechanics...well known in fields other than physics, such as sociology, psychology, linguistics and computer science, but none of these other fields have experienced the same level of publicity and controversy as physics."

the heartbreaking podcast of a widower whose wife died by her own hand; how he spoke to how she experienced abuse as a kid, and a way she coped might have been in how she created a space that was only for herself / i only recently learned how virginia wolf died, which i looked for after reading a letter she wrote to her husband (like this week) / came across an excerpt about pre menstrual dysphoria disorder

what i am contending with now, which is a kind of sanctity i think i can only access when i am alone / my continuing to check my notifications to read the same set of bubbles / my want to circle around over and over, just to make sure i haven't missed anything that might change the trajectory, for better or for worse

"just looking"

the constraints i feel around wanting to avoid being perceived in very particular ways - trying to treat these constraints as generative / at least not paralyzing

[drnikolatesla]

Nikola Tesla Roasts the Pop Science World

ASKED to select his choice of the greatest modern and future wonders, the electrical wizard refused to accept the popular notion of what is wonderful. His reply led him into onslaught on the scientists who have abandoned “cause and effect” and who take the position that there are accidents in nature and that anything might happen.

“To the popular mind, any manifestation resulting from any cause will appear wonderful if there is no perceptible connection between cause and effect. For instance, through the means of wireless telephone speech is carried to opposite points of the globe. To the vast majority this must appear miraculous. To the expert who is familiar with the apparatus and sees it in his mind’s eye the result is obvious. It is exactly as though visible means existed to which the impetus is transmitted.

“As I revolve in my mind the thoughts in answer to your question I find the most wonderful thing is the utter aberration of the scientific mind during the last twenty five years. In that time the relativity theory [(Albert Einstein)], the electron theory [(J. J. Thomson)], the quantum theory [(Max Planck, Niels Bohr, Werner Heisenberg, Erwin Schrödinger, Arthur Compton, Paul Dirac, Wolfgang Pauli)], the theory of radioactivity [(Marie Curie)] and others have been worked out and developed to an amazing degree. And yet probably not less than 90 per cent of what is thought today to be demonstrable scientific truth is nothing but unrealizable dreams.

“What is ‘thought’ in relativity, for example, is not science, but some kind of metaphysics based on abstract mathematical principles and conceptions which will be forever incomprehensible to beings like ourselves whose whole knowledge is derived from a three-dimensional world.

“The idea of the atom being formed of electrons and protons which go whirling round each other like a miniature sun and planets is an invention of the imagination, and has no relation to the real nature of matter.

“Virtually all progress has been achieved by physicists, discoverers and inventors; in short, devotees of the science which [Isaac] Newton and his disciples have been and are propounding.

“Personally, it is only efforts in this direction which have claimed my energies. Similar remarks might be made with respect to other modern developments of thought. Take, for example, the electron theory. Perhaps no other has given rise to so many erroneous ideas and chimerical hopes. Everybody speaks of electrons as something entirely definite and real. Still, the fact is that nobody has isolated it and nobody has measured its charge. Nor does anybody know what it really is.

“In order to explain the observed phenomena, atomic structures have been imagined [(Quantum Mechanics)], none of which can possibly exist. But the worst illusion to which modern thought has led is the idea of ‘indeterminacy’ [(ex. Uncertainty Principle: W. Heisenberg, E. Schrödinger)]. To make this clear, I may remark that heretofore we have in positive science assumed that every effect is the result of a preceding cause.

“As far as I am concerned, I can say that after years of concentrated thought and investigation there is no truth in nature of which I would be more fully convinced. But the new theories of ‘indeterminacy’ state this is not true, that an effect cannot be predicted in advance.

“If two planets collide at certain time and certain place, this is to the student of positive science an inevitable result of preceding interactions between the bodies; and if our knowledge would be adequate, we would be able to foretell the event accurately.

“But in the spirit of the new theories this would simply be an accident. ‘Indeterminacy’ introduces into the world of inert matter a principle which might virtually be compared with the universal illusion of free will.

"Of course, there is no such thing. In years of experimenting I have found that every thought I conceive, every act I perform, is the result of external impressions on my senses.

"It is only because the vast majority of human being are not observant sufficiently that they live in the illusion of perfect choice and freedom in their thoughts and actions. And if this holds true even in the most complex and involved manifestations of human life, it holds true with the same force in all the world of matter.”

–Nikola Tesla

“Great Scientific Discovery Impends.“ The Sunday Star, Washington D.C., May 17, 1931.

[alittlefrenchtree]

Aaaand we're back at it and things are getting serious.

SPOILERS DUNE (Book II : MUAD'DIB, Chapters 10-11)

Chapter 10:

For a unknown reason this,

has become "twenty kilometers" in the french translation. So it's not as big as I thought but it's still quite big.

So the apparent goal of the Fremen is to plant trees (how ironic for a Timmy movie 😁) but they have to do it secretly because... Because with trees there wouldn't be as much spice and people who control Arrakis don't want that? I'm trying to simplify a hypothesis here so I can start caring a bit more about the political plot of Dune. I don't know if it's true.

Did I already wonder if Arrakis was Earth? What is left of it anyway. With all that water deep underground, that could mean something but I haven't really paid attention to details for that theory.

I'm less interested to the first part of the quote, which feels quite common than by the second and the importance it give to individuals. I'm not sure what I think about it yet, but it's interesting. Tell me more, Stilgar.

I'm starting to like this guy.

Ok, I don't know if we didn't talk about this yet or if we did and I already forgot,

but I haven't paid attention to the words used to talk about the prophecy and if it ever mentions a boy or if it's a genderless word every time like child or offspring. I don't remember ever seeing anything about a boy? Because this Bene Gesserit is going to have another kid. And based on how much Star Wars is "inspired" of Dune, do I have to consider that the Chosen One is not the one we expected but someone else from his family? Will Paul go full dark side and is the young sister going to bring balance to the Force? We'll see.

There is something mentioned in this chapter and in the next one that intrigue me a lot:

and this:

I wonder if it's because on something on Arrakis, like the Spice or if someone purposely did something. And if so, who?

So. We need to talk about the end of this chapter. It is part of the answer I was looking for, isn't it? I think?

I really feel like these last couple of pages are a gift celebrating all of my birthdays at the same time so I couldn't be happier. I'm not sure it's going to be the most interesting thing to read but I'm going to try to rephrase all that it says about prescience to sort my thoughts out and be sure I have understood everything.

So first, future in the Dune universe is not predefined timelines set in stone. Paul sees some of them, maybe too much of them for them to all be intelligible for him (yet?) but there are too many, each of them able to sprout from the tiniest changes, including one I hadn't considered before but that is very clever. Which is that, every time Paul accesses to prescience, he makes the future shifts by this very access to prescience.

But, even more amazing amazingness:

Quantum mechanics!! Remember when I was obsessed with it a few months back? Now I have the perfect excuse to make time to read about quantum mechanics again 😍 I'm so happy 😭

Edit: couldn't help myself and start reading about Heisenberg indeterminacy and omg it's amazing and it's even more amazing used it at a way to illustrate prescience. For those who understand French and are interested, I recommend this short and easy access video. But is exactly what's happening with Paul. Future reacts to him like quantum particles react to light. Why are quantum mechanics always so amazing? 😭

But let's go back a few lines above because:

First, Herbert was brillant for using the lexical field of water to talk about Paul's visions of the future. I mean it says it all by itself, isn't it? And secondly, am I supposed to read there that the blind spots of prescience are directly born from fear and that the litany is here to make the blindness go away or, to make the subject survive through blindness or am I not? Like when it says Fear is a mind killer, it isn't just a way of speaking, a psychological thing but a way of saying Fear makes you lose your prescience capacity?

And,

I absolutely love to see stillness making a comeback with an image close that what I have in mind. I can't wait to see what it will look like on screen. Given what I saw of Villeneuve's work already and the second Dune trailer, I trust him completely with this part. The inspiration is going to be amazing, the fan arts are going to be amazing, everything is going to be amazing.

I love and admire Herbert a lot for what he has done here with the end of this chapter and prescience in general. Trying to explain how a brain can apprehend concepts and principles that are too big, beyond everything that can normally be grasped by a human mind. Feeling the brain expands as it tries. Accept concepts that are opposite, contradictory even and still both true. It's really the kind of things I was expecting when I start reading so I'm very happy to see it deliver (and i need even more of it).

Chapter 11:

I was talking about religion vs propaganda last time and how maybe it wasn't that different for some aspects but... Bene Gesserit are religious people aren't they? I mean Jessica does pray. I don't know what or who she prays but she believes in the power of it.

"If I could only pray -- truly pray."

And by this truly pray, I suspect it's not only a matter of belief but the prayer does have real power. I'm-- confused about what kind of beliefs BG has given (more or less willingly) to Fremen (and probably other people around the universe as well). Is the religion only based on Bene Gesserit's powers? Is it a religion they believe in themselves? And for what purpose? Only create safe places for themselves or something else?

I also wonder why Chani is helping Paul so much as well? The guy just show up from nowhere and she already gives him tips to help him kill one of her people. It's weird.

Of course there are so many parts of the fight that made me go omg I can't wait to see Timmy play this. Gimme the fighting machine trained since the day he was born.

The after-fight is really interesting:

"Jessica stared at her son. Paul's were bright. He breathed heavily, permitting the ministration to his body rather than helping them."

🙇🏻‍♀️🙇🏻‍♀️🙇🏻‍♀️

This kid is going to be the death of me, isn't he? But Jessica bringing him down right after is kind of funny. From a semi-god to a child in one quick mental slap of his mother 😁

I've already talked about the tiny jumping mouse Muad'dib but it's really amazing. I wasn't expecting that at all. I'm guessing the mouse will have a bigger purpose at some point? No sure. What I'm really wondering is if I should expect Paul to go full Anakin on me? Wait. Oh. OH. Jessica is the one bringing him down so he doesn't grow so full of himself for killing opposants but what if she's gone? What if she dies, like Anakin's mom and, like for Anakin, the mom's death is one of the first steps leading the son to dark side? Damn. We see there are several futures where people walking behind Paul or the Atreides and setting worlds of fire (and not planting trees, obviously). It goes without saying that I would love, love to see Timmy plays a character who go dark side. Not sure if it will be the case here, but it could be interesting.

Ok, it's already long enough with only two chapters so I'm going to stop this for now. I have to read first anyway. See ya! 🌖💛

[postlapsarian-rot]

Awareness flowed into that timeless stratum where he could view time, sensing the available paths, the winds of the future, […] the winds of the past: the one-eyed vision of the past, the one-eyed vision of the present and the one-eyed vision of the future – all combined in a trinocular vision that permitted him to see time-become-space. There was danger, he felt, of overrunning himself, and he had to hold onto his awareness of the present, sensing the blurred deflection of experience, the flowing moment, the continual solidification of that-which-is into the perpetual-was. In grasping the present, he felt for the first time the massive steadiness of time’s movement everywhere complicated by shifting currents, waves, surges, and counter surges, like surf against rocky cliffs. It gave him a new understanding of his prescience, and he saw the source of blind time, the source of error in it, with an immediate sensation of fear. The prescience, he realized, was an illumination that incorporated the limits of what it revealed – at once a source of accuracy and meaningful error. A kind of Heisenberg indeterminacy intervened: the expenditure of energy that revealed what he saw, changed what he saw. And what he saw was a time nexus within this cave, a boiling of possibilities focused here, wherein the most minute action – the wink of an eye, a careless word, a misplaced grain of sand – moved a gigantic lever across the known universe

Dune

[ryan-sometimes]

🤘🎸😡 heisenberg's indeterminacy equation 🤬 states that the momentum indeterminacy times the position indeterminacy 💥💣🧨 is greater than or equal to ‼️🕷 PLANCK'S CONTANT OVER 4 PI💥‼️😡🤬🎸

Studying for my chemistry midterm listening to Chop Suey by System Of A Down. Never made flash cards this aggressively

[pylott252]

Chaos Theory verses Prediction

I feel that I have to put a certain theory or should I say acceptability through the wringer before my head explodes with trying to answer the question of 'Predictability'. For over 30 years, people have asked me the question, how can using Tarot cards produce the answers to the future, tell fortunes, be able to predict the future. The only answer I can give is, "To be honest, I don't know, but it does seem to work". And the same goes for any other form of divination except Astrology, which is not a predictive tool but a system that identifies all aspects of our lives which relate to the planets influences which in turn affects our day-to-day actions and thoughts. Most Astrologers would probably explain the fact that we, (that is, us humans) have what's called, 'Freewill', and so are able to choose how we wish to live our lives and ignore the influences the planets offer. Chaos theory has been around for many years and has been used by many Scientists, Physicists, etc, to work with all sorts of mathematical equations and scientific theory's in the past and present and so I have no qualms of its existence. Chaos Theory does exist. So lets move on, to the next part of this article and that is, Prediction. But before I do, I would just like to add some outside information, which follows......

In experimental physics, there are always observational errors determining variables such as positions and velocities. So perfect prediction is practically impossible. Moreover, in modern quantum mechanics,Werner Heisenberg's indeterminacy principle puts limits on the accuracy with which such quantities can be known. So such perfect predictability is also theoretically impossible. This paragraph is taken from Wikipedia on Predictability.

So, should I pack up my faithful Tarot cards and disappear into the wilderness because some physicists have proved that prediction is impossible or take the stance of, Freewill, and carry on dealing my cards to anyone who ask me to read for them. Well that has to be my decision and no one else's. If I believe that divination works, to some extent, then why shouldn't I carry on reading the Tarot and help others to understand the effects Tarot cards can have on their future. I also believe that, without Chaos there can be no Order and that gives me the strength to carry on reading my Tarot cards so at least I can assimilate some kind of order from the chaos my clients bring to me in their questions.

As I sit here shuffling my Tarot cards and wondering if I can predict the lottery numbers this week for £170 million I know deep down, that is all it is, a lottery. So how can I predict the exact 7 numbers from possibly a randomly generated sequence of several hundred millions to one. To be that accurate every week, would be either pure luck or simply amazing and unnatural. Yet some people win, how do they do it? Simple, they play the same numbers, week in and week out and by some coincidence they match the winning numbers. That is NOT predicting, it is pure luck on their behalf. There are hundreds of examples like that associated with gambling, maybe thousands. I will keep reading Tarot cards and writing about divination systems but that doesn't say I can predict the future or maybe I can, it's just that people don't always tell me when I am accurately correct. There are only two certainties in life, Death and Taxes - Benjamin Franklin 1789.

[fettesans]

Top, Love and Anarchy, directed by Lina Wertmüller, 1973. Via. Bottom, If I can’t sleep at night is it because I am awake in someone else’s room?, directed by Fette Sans, 2017.

--

The uncertainty principle is certainly one of the most famous aspects of quantum mechanics. It has often been regarded as the most distinctive feature in which quantum mechanics differs from classical theories of the physical world. Roughly speaking, the uncertainty principle (for position and momentum) states that one cannot assign exact simultaneous values to the position and momentum of a physical system. Rather, these quantities can only be determined with some characteristic “uncertainties” that cannot become arbitrarily small simultaneously. But what is the exact meaning of this principle, and indeed, is it really a principle of quantum mechanics? (In his original work, Heisenberg only speaks of uncertainty relations.) And, in particular, what does it mean to say that a quantity is determined only up to some uncertainty? These are the main questions we will explore in the following, focusing on the views of Heisenberg and Bohr. The notion of “uncertainty” occurs in several different meanings in the physical literature. It may refer to a lack of knowledge of a quantity by an observer, or to the experimental inaccuracy with which a quantity is measured, or to some ambiguity in the definition of a quantity, or to a statistical spread in an ensemble of similarly prepared systems. Also, several different names are used for such uncertainties: inaccuracy, spread, imprecision, indefiniteness, indeterminateness, indeterminacy, latitude, etc. As we shall see, even Heisenberg and Bohr did not decide on a single terminology for quantum mechanical uncertainties. Forestalling a discussion about which name is the most appropriate one in quantum mechanics, we use the name “uncertainty principle” simply because it is the most common one in the literature.

Jan Hilgevoord, introduction to The Uncertainty Principle, First published Mon Oct 8, 2001; substantive revision Tue Jul 12, 2016. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

[is71076acs]

Week 6 Reading Week

During reading week, I managed to delve into my first official journal by Karen Barad entitled Posthumanist Performativity: Toward an Understanding of How Matter Comes to Matter. In the text she advocates her theory of Agential Realism as an alternative to traditional western forms of “representationalism” within the sciences. How language can only take us so far before we should shift focus to posthumanist performativity and “nonhuman agency.”

Offering space for “diffraction rather than reflection”, Barad expresses “Cartesian doubt” over the Heisenberg uncertainty principle before suggesting that quantum psychics is based more on matters of “indeterminacy” over uncertainty. Barad believes that metaphysical notions of “agential separability” and “intra-actions” could offer a critical resolution to long-standing issues within quantum mechanics such as the measurement problem of wave-functions.

These are all fascinating ideas but admittedly some of them go over my head, so I was intrigued to find practicing artists influenced by the quantum world’s weirdness. Upon Helen’s recommendation, I uncovered the work of Jane Grant an artist/researcher whose work explores the boundaries between scientific investigation and artistic exploration. I found her site-specific artwork “This Excited Surface” to be particularly inspiring as it draws upon Karen Barad’s writing.

The sound-based work consists of a glowing yellow dish (representing Earth’s ionosphere) concealing floor speakers playing back a sonification of the sun’s activity. This interplanetary interplay interweaves cosmological ideas with a profoundly human desire for connection. Figuring human ontology through scientific phenomena is exactly what I want to achieve with this research report. Grant’s work is an excellent example of this and reminds me of Terrence Malick’s 2011 film The Tree of Life which similarly explores the philosophy of human relationships against solar backdrops. To quote Karen Barad in the Posthumanist Performativity journal “We are part of the world in its differential becoming.”

References • Barad, K., 2003. Posthumanist Performativity: Toward an Understanding of How Matter Comes to Matter. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 28(3), pp.801–831. • https://continentaldrift.blog/2016/03/31/summary-notes-karan-barad-posthuman-performativity/ • https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Measurement_problem • http://www.janegrant.org/this-excited-surface • Malick, T. et al., 2011. The tree of life, Fox Searchlight Pictures / River Road Entertainment present.

Image of This Excited Surface by: Jane Grant http://www.janegrant.org/this-excited-surface 

Image from The Tree of Life (2011) by: Terrence Malick http://www.foxsearchlight.com/thetreeoflife/

[wozziebear]

via https://arxiv.org/abs/1301.7036

The 20th century has revealed two important limitations of scientific knowledge. On the one hand, the combination of Poincaré's nonlinear dynamics and Heisenberg's uncertainty principle leads to a world picture where physical reality is, in many respects, intrinsically undetermined. On the other hand, Gödel's incompleteness theorems reveal us the existence of mathematical truths that cannot be demonstrated. More recently, Chaitin has proved that, from the incompleteness theorems, it follows that the random character of a given mathematical sequence cannot be proved in general (it is 'undecidable'). I reflect here on the consequences derived from the indeterminacy of the future and the undecidability of randomness, concluding that the question of the presence or absence of finality in nature is fundamentally outside the scope of the scientific method.

[...]

Randomness

Chance is a concept that, in a vague form, has been invoked since remote times. It is used by the ancient Greeks, especially Aristotle, and even in the Bible. Chance can be understood as indeterminacy without design. Randomness is practically a synonym of chance. The term ‘chance’ has a dynamic connotation and is used more often in the context of history and biology; ‘randomness’ has a more static meaning and is preferentially used in physics and mathematics. For many practical purposes, the two terms can be taken as synonymous, since the inability to predict the future is directly related to the absence of a clear pattern in the (conveniently quantified) past events. However, they are not always equivalent. For instance, as a result of chance, it is possible, with a low probability, to generate a non-random sequence.

The Argentine-American mathematician Gregory Chaitin has given a static but probably more fundamental definition of randomness that applies to mathematical sequences, which is not an important limitation if one is aiming at a quantitative description of nature. It is simpler to define the absence of randomness. A mathematical sequence (made, for instance, of zeros and ones) is not random if it can be compressed, i.e., if there is a shorter sequence that, when applied to a Turing machine, yields the longer sequence. Then one says that the shorter sequence contains the longer sequence in a compressed form. A long sequence is said to be random if it cannot be compressed, i.e. if no shorter sequence exists that determines it.

A canonical example of non-random sequence is, for instance, the first million digits of the number π (up to 1013 digits of π are known). Despite its apparent random character, that sequence is not random because a program can be written, of length much shorter than one million digits, which yields number π as the outcome.

Chaitin has proved that the question of whether or not a long number sequence is random, is undecidable, in the sense of Gödel and Turing. No algorithm exists that, when applied to an arbitrary sequence, goes to a halt casting an answer ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to the question of whether that sequence is random.

The consequence is that, even if chance or randomness is a useful –even necessary– hypothesis in many contexts, it cannot be ascribed with total certainty to any mathematical sequence and therefore to any physical or biological process. This consideration may not have practical implications, but it has indeed important epistemological consequences. To the extent that chance is understood as indeterminacy without design, it can never be legitimate to present the absence of design as a scientific conclusion. Randomness can be a reasonable working hypothesis, a defensible philosophical proposal, but it cannot be presented as an established scientific fact when questions of principle are being debated such as the presence or absence of design in nature.

[...]

Design and chance lie outside the scope of the scientific method

While discussing the relation between Chaitin’s work on randomness and the debate on finality, Hans-Christian Reichel made the following observation:

“Is evolution of life random or is it based on some law? The only answer which mathematics is prepared to give hast just been indicated: the hypothesis of randomness is unprovable in principle, and conversely the teleological thesis is irrefutable in principle.”

This logical conclusion may be viewed as a virtue of design theories, since they cannot be refuted. However, it may also be viewed as a weakness, since, according to Popper’s criterion, a theory which is fundamentally irrefutable cannot be scientific.

We thus reach the conclusion that, due the impossibility of verifying randomness in any particular sequence of (conveniently quantified) events, finality cannot be refuted as a general law. This intuitive conclusion is rooted in Gödel’s theorems.

Analogously, we may wonder whether design cannot be verified for a particular sequence of events, or equivalently, whether the chance hypothesis is irrefutable. To prove these two equivalent statements, we may seem to lack a fundamental theorem of the type invoked in the previous paragraph. However, the weakness of the chance assumption is not so much that it is practically irrefutable when invoked as an ingredient of a general law, but rather that it is fundamentally unverifiable when ascribed to any singular event properly characterized by a mathematical sequence. Popper’s falsifiability criterion emphasizes that, in order to be considered scientific, a universal statement should be amenable to refutation by the hypothetical observation of a singular event that contradicted the general proposal. However, such a criterion gives for granted that the general law can at least be verified in a finite number of singular cases which provide the seed for induction. This latter requirement cannot be satisfied by the chance hypothesis, for fundamental reasons rooted in Gödel’s theorems.

In brief, Chaitin’s work on the undecidability of randomness leads us to conclude that the design hypothesis is irrefutable as a general law while the chance hypothesis is unverifiable in any particular case. Both types of assumptions lie therefore outside the reach of the scientific method.

A similar conclusion may be reached following some intuitive reasoning not necessarily rooted in fundamental theorems. To that end, we imagine a debate between two scientists who are also philosophers. Albert is in favor of chance; Beatrice favors design. They are shown two sequences describing two different natural processes. The first one seems random; the second one displays some clear non-random patterns.

They discuss the first sequence, unaware of Chaitin’s work on Gödel and Turing. Albert claims that the sequence is obviously random, since it shows no clear pattern. Beatrice responds saying that the sequence is designed, although not manifestly so. She claims that the designer has wished to give the sequence an appearance of randomness. They don’t reach an agreement.

Had they been informed about Chaitin’s work, the debate would not have been very different. Albert would have continued to claim that the first sequence is random but admitting that he cannot prove it. Alice would have insisted on the ability of the designer to simulate randomness and quite pleased would have noted that the random character of the sequence was unprovable in any case. No agreement would have been reached.

Now they discuss the second sequence. Beatrice claims that, quite obviously, it has been designed, since it shows some clear patterns. Albert counters that the sequence is random, noting that, with a nonzero probability, a randomly generated sequence may happen to show some repetitive patterns. He goes on to point out that, given the physical content of the processes described by the second sequence, those patterns have been necessary for the existence of the two debaters. If the sequence had not shown those regularities, none of them would be there to argue about it. Thus, says Albert, the non-random character of the second sequence should not be surprising, as it is a necessary condition for the very existence of him and Beatrice. Again, they don’t reach an agreement.

The two philosophical contenders are unable to reach an agreement and no experiment seems to exist that can settle the question. The debate we have just described is obviously a caricature of a real discussion. However, it is easy to find in it reasoning patterns that are frequently heard in debates about the presence or absence of design in natural processes, whether biological or cosmological. When there is a strong philosophical motivation to maintain an interpretation, there is always an argument to defend it in front of the experimental appearance. It is naturally so, because in the debate about finality no decisive experiment or observation can be conceived.

It is interesting to note that the existence of design is non-controversial in other contexts. Nobody questions the existence of design in an airplane, although strictly speaking it is not more provable or less refutable than in the case of biological evolution. There is no experiment that casts as a result that the airplane has been designed. The difference is that we have an experience of design in ordinary life; we know that there are engineers who design airplanes. However, we don’t have similar evidence about the existence of an external designer promoting the evolution of species. Because of this, the question of design in biological evolution will always be more controversial.

We are led to conclude that the debate about the presence or absence of finality lies outside the scope of the scientific method. Returning to our two previous contenders, it is clear that, even if they are able to agree about the apparent random or non-random character of the sequences, the debater in a weak position always has an argument to deny the apparently winning interpretation. We have argued that the apparent irreducibility of the chance-design debate is actually fundamental, since it can be regarded as a consequence of Gödel’s theorems.

It seems more constructive that, in their daily scientific work, the two researchers participating in the discussion just described, choose in each context the working hypothesis which best stimulates the progress of knowledge, leaving for the sphere of the philosophical interpretation those considerations about finality which can be debated with the tools of reason but not with the tools of the scientific method.

Poincaré, Heisenberg, Gödel and the limits of scientific knowledge

https://arxiv.org/abs/1301.7036 Comments

[neo-somaliana]

We live in a world that has become mechanized to an amazingly high degree. Irrational unconscious phenomena are always a threat to this mechanization. Poets may be delightful creatures in the meadow or the garret, but they are menaces on the assembly line. Mechanization requires uniformity, predictability, and orderliness; and the very fact that unconscious phenomena are original and irrational is already an inevitable threat to bourgeois order and uniformity. This is one reason people in our modern Western civilization have been afraid to unconscious and irrational experience. For the potentialities that surge up in them from deeper mental wells simply don’t fit the technology which has become so essential for our world. What people today do out of fear of irrational elements in themselves as well as in other people is to put tools and mechanics between themselves and the unconscious world. This protects them from being grasped by the frightening and threatening aspects of irrational experience. I am saying nothing whatever, I am sure it will be understood, against technology or techniques or mechanics in themselves. What I am saying is that the danger always exists that our technology will serve as a buffer between us and nature, a block between us and the deeper dimensions of our own experience. Tools and techniques ought to be an extension of consciousness, but they can just as easily be a protection from consciousness. Then tools become defense mechanisms - specifically against the wider and more complex dimensions of consciousness that we call the unconscious. Our mechanisms and technology then make us “uncertain in the impulse of the spirit,” as the physicist Heisenberg puts it. Western civilization since the Renaissance has centrally emphasized techniques and mechanics. Thus it is understandable that the creative impulses of ourselves and our forefathers, again since the Renaissance, should have been channeled into the making of technical things - creativity directed toward the advance and application of science. Such channeling of creativity into technical pursuits is appropriate on one level but serves as a psychological defense on a deeper level. This means that technology will be clung to, believed in, and depended on far beyond its legitimate sphere, since it also serves as a defense against our fears of irrational phenomena. Thus the very success of technological creativity- and that its success is magnificent does not need to be heralded by me - is a threat to its own existence. For if we are not open to the unconscious, irrational, and transrational aspects of creativity, then our science and technology have helped to block us off from what I shall call “ creativity of the spirit.” By this I mean creativity in art, poetry, music, and other areas that exist for our delight and the deepening and enlarging of meaning in our lives rather than for making money or for increasing technical power. To the extent that we lose this free, original creativity of the spirit as it is examplified in poetry and music and art, we shall also lose our scientific creativity. Scientists themselves, particularly the physicists, have told us that the creativity of science is bound up with the freedom of human beings to create in the free, pure sense. In modern physics it is very clear that the discoveries that later become utilized for our technological gains are generally made in the first place because a physicist lets his imagination go and discover something simply for the joy of discovery. But this always runs the risk of radically upsetting our previously nicely worked-out theories, as it did when Einstein introduced his theory of relativity, and Heisenberg introduced his principle of indeterminacy. My point here is more than conventional distinction between “pure” and “applied” science. The creativity of the spirit does and must threaten the structure and presuppositions of our rational, orderly society and way of life. Unconscious, irrational urges are bound by their very nature to be a threat to our rationality, and the anxiety we experience thereupon is inescapable. I am proposing that the creativity coming from the preconscious and unconscious is not only important for art and poetry and music; but is essential in the long run also for our science. To shrink from the anxiety this entails, and block off the threatening new insights and forms this engenders, is not only to render our society banal and progressively more empty, but also to cut off as well the headwaters in the rough and rocky mountains of the stream that later becomes the river of creativity in our science

Rollo May, The Courage to Create

[drnikolatesla]

Asked to select his choice of the greatest modern and future wonders, the Nikola Tesla refused to accept the popular notion of what is wonderful. His reply led to an onslaught on scientists and the popular science community.

“To the popular mind, any manifestation resulting from any cause will appear wonderful if there is no perceptible connection between cause and effect. For instance, through the means of wireless telephone speech is carried to opposite points of the globe. To the vast majority this must appear miraculous. To the expert who is familiar with the apparatus and sees it in his mind’s eye the result is obvious. It is exactly as though visible means existed to which the impetus is transmitted.

“As I revolve in my mind the thoughts in answer to your question I find the most wonderful thing is the utter aberration of the scientific mind during the last twenty five years. In that time the relativity theory [Albert Einstein], the electron theory[J. J. Thomson], the quantum theory [Max Planck, Niels Bohr, Werner Heisenberg, Erwin Schrödinger, Arthur Compton, Paul Dirac, Wolfgang Pauli], the theory of radioactivity [Marie Curie] and others have been worked out and developed to an amazing degree. And yet probably not less than 90 per cent of what is thought today to be demonstrable scientific truth is nothing but unrealizable dreams.

“What is ‘thought’ in relativity, for example, is not science, but some kind of metaphysics based on abstract mathematical principles and conceptions which will be forever incomprehensible to beings like ourselves whose whole knowledge is derived from a three-dimensional world.

“The idea of the atom being formed of electrons and protons which go whirling round each other like a miniature sun and planets is an invention of the imagination, and has no relation to the real nature of matter.

“Virtually all progress has been achieved by physicists, discoverers and inventors; in short, devotees of the science which Newton and his disciples have been and are propounding.

“Personally, it is only efforts in this direction which have claimed my energies. Similar remarks might be made with respect to other modern developments of thought. Take, for example, the electron theory. Perhaps no other has given rise to so many erroneous ideas and chimerical hopes. Everybody speaks of electrons as something entirely definite and real. Still, the fact is that nobody has isolated it and nobody has measured its charge. Nor does anybody know what it really is.

“In order to explain the observed phenomena, atomic structures have been imagined [Quantum Mechanics], none of which can possibly exist. But the worst illusion to which modern thought has led is the idea of ‘indeterminacy’ [ex. Uncertainty Principle: W. Heisenberg, E. Schrödinger]. To make this clear, I may remark that heretofore we have in positive science assumed that every effect is the result of a preceding cause.

“As far as I am concerned, I can say that after years of concentrated thought and investigation there is no truth in nature of which I would be more fully convinced. But the new theories of ‘indeterminacy’ state this is not true, that an effect cannot be predicted in advance.

“If two planets collide at certain time and certain place, this is to the student of positive science an inevitable result of preceding interactions between the bodies; and if our knowledge would be adequate, we would be able to foretell the event accurately.

"But in the spirit of the new theories this would simply be an accident. ‘Indeterminacy’ introduces into the world of inert matter a principle which might virtually be compared with the universal illusion of free will.

"Of course, there is no such thing. In years of experimenting I have found that every thought I conceive, every act I perform, is the result of external impressions on my senses.

"It is only because the vast majority of human being are not observant sufficiently that they live in the illusion of perfect choice and freedom in their thoughts and actions. And if this holds true even in the most complex and involved manifestations of human life, it holds true with the same force in all the world of matter.”

–Nikola Tesla

“Great Scientific Discovery Impends.“ The Sunday Star, Washington D.C., May 17, 1931.

[omokoshaban]

Uncertainty principle

Uncertainty principle is sometimes called indeterminacy principle. Warner Heisenberg, a German Physicist, from his experiment in year 1920s discover that the position and motion of particle wave cannot be pinned down. What its mean is that you can not find the position and the motions of a particle at the same time. If a particular particle wave can be pointed in the specific location it motion…