Re: [Fis] Fis: 25/7

[Madan Thangavelu]

*What is Physics? The Biological Aspects of the "Non-Living" Universe.*

Dear Plamen,

Perhaps the time is ripe for a Biologist / Life scientist to write a short
book titled

*"What is Physics?"*
A good model on how to approach this is know to all (and available here:
http://whatislife.stanford.edu/LoCo_files/What-is-Life.pdf).

First published in 1944 (based on lectures in 1943; and ten years before
the discovery of the double helical structure of DNA!) - the are several
sections here which are invaluable to remind that new knowledge can
surprise us in strange ways.  For instance, the section titled:  *Maximum
size of a gene!*

Based on what we know today it is evident that human knowledge has not
stayed at that level expressed in 1944!

Biology is reminding us constantly to reach for rules at the sub-Planckian
scales (both space and time beyond the Planck scale)

To a Biologist, sentiments conveyed in Wojciech Zurek's Letter to Nature
(2001)  "Sub-Planck structure in phase space and its relevance for quantum
decoherence." seems so much like what happens in the inside of cells but at
a meso-macro level!

Reminds one of some of the early exchanges and thoughts that Brian
(Josephson) has rehearsed with some of us and also alluded to in *Conrad,
Home & Josephson (1988)* and implications for appreciating the subtle
(beyond the physically 'tiny') and beyond and the



* "common substratum"That the common substratum, the subtle and the human
mind (currently externalised), has a structure, and a common structure,
the same internal structure "and neither on its own contains the full
story" needs appreciating better.*Life and biology offer the best probes
for the subtle and beyond.





Thanks to Guy (Hoelzer) for mentioning Deacon.  I copy below two excerpts
to add to my comments:

*"The Sacred Emergence of Nature"* (Ursula Goodenough, Washington
University in St Louis, goodeno...@wustl.edu & Terrence W. Deacon; 2008)

*PDF available at:*

http://openscholarship.wustl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1066=bio_facpubs

>From the paper:

Emergence as a General Concept
...

Emergent properties arise as the consequence of relationships between
entities.

Robert Laughlin (2005) intriguingly suggests that emergent properties arise
even at the level of relationships between subatomic entities—indeed, he
suggests that the very ‘laws’ of nature may prove to be emergent—but since
we are not trained in discourse at this level, we will begin with
relationships between atoms.

Another excerpt:

As different species’ genomes have been sequenced, an initially surprising
finding
has been that complex organisms don’t have all that many more genes than do
simple
organisms. A unicellular alga, for example, has about 17,000 genes, and a
human has
about 23,000 genes. Moreover, well over half of these genes encode
‘housekeeping
proteins’—actin, myosin, metabolic enzymes, and so on—that are present in
both
kinds of organisms. What has happened during evolution, then, is not so
much the
acquisition of new genes as changes in the patterns of expression of
existing gene
families such that *novel combinations of proteins appear in a given cell
at a given*
*time, interact with one another, and generate novel emergent properties.*


On Wed, Apr 6, 2016 at 8:09 AM, Dr. Plamen L. Simeonov <
plamen.l.simeo...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Dear Alex and FIS,
>
> what I can only say as (now) qualified non-expert in QT is that points
> 1-13 embrace a period in scientific research of really great minds (I did
> not see Feynman”s name in the list, but he is certainly meant under
> “others") a little bit more than 100 years. Please excuse my doubts, but I
> simply cannot start believing that human knowledge will stay at that level
> for ever. Some day there will be certainly another revolution in physics
> and/or biology or even another discipline that could embrace the 13 domains
> as special cases. I cannot understand why (quantum) physicists are
> sometimes so egocentric like monks with their domain that they try to
> explain even the behaviour of viruses with quantum interactions. I
> apologise for hurting someone’s feelings.
>
> Plamen
>
>
> On Tue, Apr 5, 2016 at 2:39 AM, Alex Hankey  wrote:
>
>> RE: I am not sure that QT is the ultimate theory of all things, but I
>> think
>> the effort is worth doing it, since we hardly have anything else to step
>> on
>> now.I invite all those interested in this endeavor to join hands!
>>
>> ME: Speaking as a theoretical physicist with 45 years experience and deep
>> interests in the foundations of physics and the origins of quantum theory,
>> I should like to comment that to really understand quantum theory so as to
>> see how to patch up its faults is not easy, and requires many years study
>> in many different subfields.
>>
>> It requires deep knowledge and understanding 

[Fis] Fis: 25/7

[Alex Hankey]

RE: I am not sure that QT is the ultimate theory of all things, but I think
the effort is worth doing it, since we hardly have anything else to step on
now.I invite all those interested in this endeavor to join hands!

ME: Speaking as a theoretical physicist with 45 years experience and deep
interests in the foundations of physics and the origins of quantum theory,
I should like to comment that to really understand quantum theory so as to
see how to patch up its faults is not easy, and requires many years study
in many different subfields.

It requires deep knowledge and understanding of all of the following
subfields;
1. The Copenhagen interpretation as fully expressed by Henry Stapp.
2. John Von Neumann's formulation, together with its limitations.
3. The Many Worlds (Princeton) interpretation as most recently promoted by
Tegmark.
4. Einstein's objections as expressed  in the EPR paradox, and
5. David Bohm's program of hidden variables to support Einstein, and
6. Bell's Theorem to experimentally distinguish Bohr;s and Bohm's
approaches.
7. Aspect's experiments (and Clauser's preceding it) showing that Bohr was
right.
8. Bernard D'Espagnat's important contributions, especially the Theorem for
which he received the Templeton prize - physical reality is not 'strongly
objective' on either macroscopic or microscopic levels.
9. All the debate initiated by Gell-Man and others on how wave-functions
collapse. and what happens to quantum correlations that are generated.
10. David Deutsch's theory of quantum information.
11. Anton Zeilinger's use of quantum fluctuations for 'quantum
teleportation'
12. The quantum theory of open systems by ECG (George) Sudarshan and
others, the inherent limitations of their approach and its possible
resolution.
13. The debates on the relationship between quantum theory and classical
physics, the shortcomings of Bohr's Correspondence Principle and how to
overcome them.

I should hate to say that this is a field for specialists, because I truly
believe that non-experts can often cut through the Gordian knot in the
middle of a field, simply because they have not adopted the world view of
the experts in following the debates for decades up to that point, and are
therefore not indoctrinated with a paradigm that in fact needs updating -
often not obvious to those in the field itself.

But like most advanced scientific fields there is a lot to digest!
(And my own views are radical, and almost as violent as the
victor's approach to the Gordian Knot itself!)

-- 
Alex Hankey M.A. (Cantab.) PhD (M.I.T.)
Distinguished Professor of Yoga and Physical Science,
SVYASA, Eknath Bhavan, 19 Gavipuram Circle
Bangalore 560019, Karnataka, India
Mobile (Intn'l): +44 7710 534195
Mobile (India) +91 900 800 8789


2015 JPBMB Special Issue on Integral Biomathics: Life Sciences, Mathematics
and Phenomenological Philosophy

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