On 8/25/2019 1:13 AM, Philip Thrift wrote:
Ironically (and I thought this at the time almost 20 years ago now
when I was interacting with Vic on his old group [
https://groups.google.com/forum/?hl=en#!forum/atvoid ]) is that "laws
from symmetry" and "symmetry-breaking were contradictory to his
anti-Platonist philosophy of science. It was his way to address the
idea of a universe not created by God, but a way I think both
unnecessary and wrong.
/A universe born of pure randomness and so-called symmetries forming
which are merely contingent that gives a universe we just happen to be
in/ makes sense instead: It is the opposite of symmetry-breaking. It
is happenstance symmetry-forming. That there is a prior symmetry that
is then broken is pure Platonism.
Vic's view of the major symmetries were that they were picked out by us
because we wanted physical laws that applied at all times
(time-translation->energy conservation spacial-translation->momentum
conservation). He didn't say this was free choice, but one constrained
by nature. In other words we abstracted away some "geographic" problems
to reach them. Then he extended this idea to Point Of View
Invariance. It's application to the internal symmetries of particles
was not so clear. We not only had to choose the thing conserved by also
the transformation which conserved it.
Brent
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