Matt King wrote [everything-list] 6/16/03: > > Hi James, > > I don't want to get into the Platonism > discussion as I'm not of a philosophical bent, > but I would like to start discussion based on > something you wrote in one of your posts on > the subject: > > James N Rose wrote: > > > The square root of a negative number has no physical > > reality (or so it is presumed, because no abject > > examples have yet been shown/proven) but it has a most > > definite platonic ideal existence. > > The whole square root of a negative number > question boils down to the reality/unreality of > a single number, the square root of minus one, > usually called i, as every other negative > square root can be expressed as a real multiple > of this imaginary number. Now, I'd be the first > to accept that you can't have i oranges, so i > does not have the same kind of physical reality > as the natural numbers, or even the positive real > numbers. > > However, you also cannot have zero oranges, > or minus five oranges for that matter. So perhaps > it is no less physically real than the > negative numbers or zero. > > I'd also like to say that in a great deal of > physics, the imaginary number is indispensible, > at least in doing the math - could this be > sufficient evidence to declare it physically real? > Specifically, if we have used i to predict the > result of a particular experiment, and we find > that our prediction and the result match, is this > evidence for the physical reality of i? > > I'm reminded of looking out of the window > to watch the trees move, and concluding that > it is windy, even though I haven't seen or felt > the wind... > > Just a thought, > > Matt. >
Matt, Thank you for your remarks, question. First, let me say I am not wholly antagonistic to platonic notions, except as the current (last 2500 year) rendering of it has, IMHO, a severe deficiency. What is absent is clear linkage between the Universal and the Real. For I do not see a coherent consistent compatible universe existing without that connection/relation. So I have spent all my cognitive life working to identify where and how that requisite is present .. and to meld the domains. Essentially, the Universal has to be isomorphic with Cantorian transfinities and Potentia -- including the emergent. It must surpass Godelian restrictions and the entire domain of information possibilities must be 'self'-accessible even if local bounds or limits are noted, used or identified. In line with your question, it is time to re-conceive 'real'. The wind and the referential cognition of wind are both real and informationally co-relevant -- and -- communicatively involved. That 'influence' might be limited to a preferential direction, is distinct from the information access. And so it is the information access among domains that I am most interested in and see as being of superior importance in any cosmology. Since Plato and Aristotle, humanity has been myopically concerned with 'association' -- restrictively understood as 'causality'. With all the attendant disconnects: form from function, materiality from process, mind from matter, relations from relations, intentionality from mechanisms from conditions from implementation necessities. We struggle to put all these back together, but like the characters in Waiting for Godot, we carry hampering concepts and weighted baggage of old ideations which are more problem than utility. For the universe and whatever aspects of it one considers (material, energectic, aetheric) to function so pervasively consistently demands not just certain absolute rules of performance, but absolute communicative relational association: communicative architecture and access and enactiveness throughout all possible timespace of the architecture, access and enactiveness. Which means -- that Platonia, that 'i' [sqrt -1], that QM and continuum, and all dimensional realms have relation (communicative access) with attendant morphings of information (codification transfers). Designating the codification transfers relations is the plateau we have reached. Relating Universal to Real. Specifying that in a certain dimensional frame of reference the [sqrt -1] -is- "real", even if it doesn't attain to qualifying as "real" in the dimensional frame of reference our perception/cognition operates in. But the overarching communicative process~architecture of Being allows the information of one frame-of-reference to transcribe/transduce to others, and so, what is 'unreal' to our tactile criteria is still accessible relevant information, just restricted to the form it can exist in our reality as. No big deal. We just have to let go of the bigotted bias that 'our' frame of reference has to be 'the' frame of reference. This led me to a strange but unavoidable conclusion re certain aspects of 'information'. Nearly without exception, there isn't a scientific mind on this planet that doesn't 'understand' that 'different is different'. If you change information, it becomes 'different information'. But I noticed something else that seems intrinsic to the operational formalism of The Calculus. It can be run in mutual reversal: integration, differentiation. The function can take one set of information and generate a second set, then be reversed to retrieve the original data (within the caveat limit of +C). But absent that allowed variant, information is being consistently and perfectly reconstituted. "Different information". But what if those processes aren't generating 'different' information? Didn't Cantor alert us to the reality that the infinity of a line is identical with the infinity of a plane? Wouldn't that translate to there being some real and meaningful identity property inherent between the slope of a curve, a curve and the area under such surve? Yes, there most definitely could be. Which translates into this: there are several kinds/forms of information present in any observed system. One such is intrinsic and acts as reliable anchor. Another is extrinsic and is appropriate to the domain it presents in. What the function Calculus does -- in this expanded and strange way of thinking -- is alter the dimensional form of the anchor information. What 'looks' like different information, in one sense is, but in another way is merely a different presentation of an invariant information set; consistent invariant information -expressed in alternative dimensional configurations-. For the last several hundred years, we've been playing in a mathematical landscape oblivious of these associations and informational possibilities. All the things/relations we've discovered were the tail, ear, nose, gizzard parts, blood, etc. of the camel. Making holistic sense of them all, all together, requires identifying how they relate. We thought that reductionism would bring us to commonality, but that didn't work. And the distinct math frames of QM and continuum only made matters worse. But now the future is open and accessible -- if we have the courage to work with expanded evaluations re a 'communication universe'. Einstein was correct about there being no preferred frame of reference, but, there's more to the situation than that. We have to hone the skills to fly through these multiple frames of reference, not care about holding on to any one of them in particular, but also, not lose track of where we are as we navigate through these dimensional spaces, because there are utile demands afoot. We will be doing things in order to (as we have always done) accomplish things and expand our competence and sustenance of life and evolution. Strange new relations are becoming apparent. Such as: 'one' in x dimensions can be mathematically substituted for 'zero' in x+/-1 dimensions. One bearing this has touches on the notion of collapse of the wavefunction. We now have a mechanism which means that a wavefunction can be re-constituted. (!) It also means that in wholly normal operations, a wave -will- move to, through and past x=0 and never lose information content. Which means, that there is now a mathmematics for natural co-residency of QM and continuum. What once looked like an incompatible set of relations can now be explored as alternative dimensional presentations of self-same intrinsic information. The double and single slit experiments do what the Calculus did .. change the number of dimensions present. The 'duality' is not different information, but anchor information manipulated to be in x or x-1 dimensional configurations. James Rose Complex thinking. Thinking complexly. 17 June 2003
