Tom on "Quantum Enlightenment"

[Balder]

For anyone interested --

Tom, a former member of IPS, has posted an interesting -- and lengthy! -- blog on Integral Life.

 

Quantum Enlightenment 

[Balder]

Tom, if you're interested in discussing this:  In a noncausal account, what is the relationship between instantaneity and simultaneity?  Does instantaneity of change necessisitate belief in the simultaneity of events, or not?

[Balder]

I'm planning a response to this post on instantaneity, Tom, as soon as I get caught up

on grading and can do some more concentrated writing.

 

For now, I recalled an old book we discussed here awhile back, SpinbitZ, and wondered

if Joel Morrison, the author, might have any observations on quantum theory that

would be relevant here.  I did a quick search for a few terms and came across the

following discussion, which I share primarily for Tom’s interest – because it presents

an alternative view which would be interesting to engage.  Joel is a member

of this forum, so he might be willing to discuss this if I contact him.  (He discusses

quantum principles at multiple points in the book besides the section below).

 

Here’s a link to Joel’s website, where you can find a link to the (free) e-book.

 

 

Beginning on Page 237

 

"The Pearl Principle

 

As we have seen, the modern definition of the infinite represents a serious

divergence of mathematical reasoning, or meta-mathematics, from coherent

logical, causal and experiential thought, and specifically from the implicit

holonic logic of sets. This is because, rather than solving Galileo’s paradox of

the infinite, it has merely become the definition of the infinite. This

illustrates a common problem in modern and post-modern exoteric thought,

faced as it is with many paradoxes and insoluble problems brought about by

the representational forces of the finite imagination interfacing with the

undifferentiated Infinite (e.g. the two fundamental VL-axes of conceptual

thought and its Spinozan triune interface).

 

It serves the interests of exoteric, pragmatic, rigorous and logical

thought, to encapsulate and insulate an annoying problem or paradox into a

principle, axiom or fundamental definition in order to make it tractable and

operational and to forget about the problem enfolded within. But at every

turn of history toward this kind of encapsulation of paradox and problem

into axiom and definition, there results a controversy, simply because the

human mind seeks answers on many different fronts (e.g. Wilber’s AQAL

quadrants). Mankind as a whole seeks not merely abstract, mathematical

and syntactic answers, but also to grasp imaginable and visualizable semantic

answers; answers that make sense to the human mind at all levels, from

percept to integrated concept.

 

This kind of encapsulation of paradox into principle has occurred at

nearly all of our “revolutions” of thought. It happened with Newton’s

encapsulation of the problem of the missing mechanism of gravity into a

mathematical law. It happened with Einstein’s encapsulation of the

problematic Michelson-Morley “null-results” into his a-mechanical and

acausal principle of relativity. And it happened with the problematic wave-particle

paradox (violation of causality) codified directly into the axiomatic

principle of “complementarity” or “wave-particle duality.” And in

mathematics it happened with Dedekind/Cantor’s encapsulation of the

Galilean part-whole violation into the modern definition of finite and infinite

sets. In all of these cases, the solution to a problem or paradox was

substituted by a principle that would again allow progress to be made at the

abstract, operational and quantitative level, in spite of the confusions and

controversies remaining and even magnified at the semantic level of the

senses and the imagination, and hence at the expense of coherent, integral

understanding.

 

Merely accepting the paradox into the hermetically sealed axiomatic

layer of tacit assumptions—with no explanation of its core polarity

whatsoever—gives the common impression that the problem has been

solved. Indeed this is essentially what is claimed with the Copenhagen

Interpretation which places the blame of paradox and confusion on Nature

herself, at the quantum-level. According to this interpretation, we simply

discovered the surprising “truth” of complementarity and wave-particle

duality and bear no capability nor responsibility to solve the problem any

further. It’s Nature’s problem now. This axiomatization of problem into

principle allows progress on the more pragmatic fronts to continue, while

hiding the semantic problem, its con-fusion and potential solution, under

layers of abstraction, creating more problems for the philosophical attempt

to understand the problem and its potential resolution.

 

In the case of the quantum, nothing could be further from the truth, that

the ultimate “ground of Truth” had been reached at the “foundational” level

of the senseless and paradoxical quantum. Indeed, there is no empirical

reason to think this is the case whatsoever, because you can’t know a

boundary until you have gone beyond it. The reason is purely practical, to

cement a dogma and quell the chaos of uncertainty itself by encapsulating it

into a fundamental principle. The complexity (“randomness”) surprised us

merely because we were operating on a hidden foundational mindset and

expecting to reach the absolute ground of a-tomic (indivisible) simplicity

and generality. When this was not found, the interpretations based upon it,

namely classical, particle-based and categorical notions of causation, failed.

 

This foundationalism, however, as we have seen, is a violation of nonduality

and the Univocity Framework. The paradox was simply placed firmly out of

reach at the level of axiomatic assumption, and taken for the ultimate truth

and foundational ground of existence in the metaphysics of scientism. These

“truths” are much easier to take as self-evident if they can be abstracted into

a principle and incorporated into everyday operational usage. Indeed, this

tendency to encapsulate an irritating paradox into a simple principle is so

common and pervasive today, that it will serve our purposes to encapsulate

this understanding into a principle of our own.

 

As an oyster encapsulates an irritation within layers upon layers of its

beautiful iridescent shell, so human beings encapsulate irritating problems

into intricate abstract systems of operation, with layers and layers of

impressive and daunting—and certainly useful—complexity and

abstraction. Indeed, it may be the case that in rigorous systems of thought,

such as science and mathematics, any problem or paradox of sufficient

importance that cannot be solved or removed will eventually become

encapsulated and insulated into a principle, axiom, equation and/or

fundamental definition in order to make it seamlessly tractable,

pragmatically operational, invisible and untouchable by the status quo, in

order that the normal functions of paradigm evolution can continue their

daily grind without calling into question the troubling problems at the very

foundations upon which these workers build.

 

Principle 6: The Pearl Principle of Axiomatic Encapsulation

The tendency to encapsulate irreconcilable paradox into principle; dilemma into

dictum; enigma into equation; nonsense into nomenclature; ambiguity into

axiom – in order to reduce irritation and stress from repeated and constant

contact with the unknown.

 

The Pearl Principle is actually a meta-principle, because it deals with

principles themselves. But this meta-principle is true for the work of many

of our scientific heroes and their “revolutionary” handiwork. Newton, for

instance, couldn’t solve the causation of gravity so he incorporated it into an

operational principle (and an equation) to effectively save us from

constantly confronting the mystery; Einstein, with the help of Minkowski,

Poincaré et. al. couldn’t make sense of the Michelson-Morley null-results so

he codified it into the Principle of Relativity—a violation of common-sense,

to be sure, but it balanced the books; Bohr et al. couldn’t understand the

“wave-particle duality” and the fundamental complexity or “randomness” so

they codified it into the principles of “complementarity” and “uncertainty”

which say that the incomprehensible, “acausal” complexity and paradoxical

duality of quantum theory is intrinsic to Nature herself at the quantum level,

and that sub-atomic understanding is an ultimate impossibility; and Cantor

and friends couldn’t escape the Galilean violation of the part-whole axiom

implicit in the holonic logic of sets when looking at the Infinite through the

lens of Set Theory, so they changed the definition of infinity to incorporate

the paradox itself as the definition. In so doing, Cantor appears (but only on

the surface) to have entirely abandoned the esoteric understanding of

infinity as boundless and innumerable, calling it denumerable and bounding

it with a cardinality and number for the sake of operationality.i*

 

For this encapsulation of ambiguity into axiom; enigma into equation; or

paradox into principle, we give these intensely creative individuals the

highest praise. But one can’t blame us, we seek direct expansion of

pragmatic power, often regardless of whether or not we understand that

power. And we can only bang our head against a wall for so long before we

seek a new direction in the labyrinth. So it is natural to praise the guy who

points us away from the operational dead-end and into a new, more

productive direction, even if, with respect to understanding (and in this case

meta-mathematics), the operational advance is often necessarily backward

and mostly lateral in other domains, causing, in these domains, more

confusion than resolution."

[Balder]

Joel, to my knowledge, does want to retain a 'metaphysics of causality,' but not a causality linearly conceived; he argues in many places for the non-linearity of the cosmos-view he is articulating.  I do not say this in order to defend his thesis -- I actually don't have a good enough sense of it at this time to do so, or even to know if I'd want to do so -- but just to point you to the text itself, if you're interested, to see what you see there.

[Balder]

I believe that one of his ideas is that nondual continuity = infinite discontinuity, and vice versa.

[Joel Morrison]

OK, I'll play a bit. 

 

Hi Thomas, nice to meet you.

 

Let's clear the air a bit.  Firstly, no I'm not arguing for a linear view, and I'm not at all arguing that one should restrict oneself to a rational view either.

 

Also, since you claim Einstein's relativity view is causal, can you state the causation involved?  It is true that he certainly believed in causation, but it's also true that nobody in the orthodox tree of the physical sciences has yet succeeded in giving a causal understanding.  Einstein's model simply presents a tautology pushing the mechanism of gravitation into the abstraction of the "geometry of space-time". In the rubber-sheet example, what is it that causes the smaller mass to move toward the larger one?  The warping of the sheet, no?  Yes, but what causes the warping of the sheet if not gravity itself?  Where then is the causal explanation of gravity? 

 

And also, how does my argument "replay the theme of fundamental duality"?  Maybe first start by explaining what precisely you mean by that?

 

Thanks much for engaging.

 

- Joel

[Joel Morrison]

It is true that I do not believe in the foundational notion of an absolute quantum, at the Planck level or any other.  And it's true that I do posit a "corpuscular", as opposed to the more atomic orthodox quantum view.

[Joel Morrison]

My view is expressible by Leibniz-Deleuze's notion of "infinite difference" as infinitely folded.  It is the same as that found in the "continuity" in complexity theory and ALL of modern mathematics.  The continuum exists because it is infinitely determined (and hence indeterministic), or infinitely folded.  These are your "inflexion points", if I understand you correctly.  It's not continuous in the sense of homogenous, or the old substance views, but in the modern complexity sense informed by the cusp of mathematics.

Thomas said:

Btw, a continuous understanding sees turtles all the way down.  A non-linear understanding sees qualitative changes at inflexion points.  For instance, below the level at which mass manifests is the level of massless quarks.  This is quite different from a turtles-all-the-way-down linear, continuous understanding.

[Joel Morrison]

Also it is true that ALL comprehensive and modern and useful nonlinear views are informed by the modern mathematics of the continuum and indeed unthinkable without it.  Look at the whole of complexity science, for example.  It would not exist with the modern continuum.

[Joel Morrison]

To be precise, my view is effectively an infinite self-similar "punctuated equilibrium".  A "quasi-continuum" as Rob Oldershaw calls it.  This means that it can be seen as both continuous and discontinuous depending on where and how you look.  It is not absolutely homogeneous at any level, and at particular self-similar levels (including the Planck level) it does "jump", in a sense, or quantize into discrete "root-unit" forms.  But in each case, if you drill down deeper you find that there is always a continuity within.  And then again when you drill down into that continuity you will find yet more quantizations into discrete units, ad infinitum, I posit, along with the emerging Fractal Cosmologies and in line with complexity science.

[Joel Morrison]

[The above is supported, or rather emerges from, an empirical self-similar scaling relation gathered from data about the frequencies or numbers and types of material forms in the cosmos, e.g. atomic, stelar and galactic forms.  See the work of Rob Oldershaw.]

[Joel Morrison]

Excellent, yes, indeed a good deal of traction here.  OK, so we agree that Einstein himself had a causal view of the cosmos, and we agree that his model of gravitation contains causal elements, but as I explained (and you did not yet address) this is not the same as explaining the actual cause of gravitation.  Again, he described the shape of the field and merely claimed that it causes gravitational attraction while not at all explaining how it does so.  This was supposed to be explained by the Higgs boson, were it to have been found (yet another theory-changing falsification), but in reality there is still no real causation in the notion of particle-mediated forces.  We could go into this in detail, if you wish. 

 

We also agree perhaps more than you are aware yet on the concept of fundamental "duality" or polarity (which is nonduality, really).  Your "unity" seems pretty much the same as my "absolute scope", in position and description, actually.  See the discussion on the univocity framework, perhaps.  In this framework, yes, 'unity' or the absolute scope is indeed a pole, and a key fundamental one.

 

Also, in the discussion above re 'nothingness' the context is key.  This is actually a reframing of issues in modern theory, and in particular the problems with the duality of the atom/void.  In my own view I don't posit any causality to "nothingness" because I find it a misleading concept, in general, and always a deeper level of form/substance.  So it seems we are also more in agreement here than it might seem.

[Joel Morrison]

But, to be more clear, the reason I say Einsteinian relativity is 'acausal' is because it moves from the classical causation of motion and mechanics into the absolutized relativity of a naive and post-modern perspectivism.  It is no longer dealing with mechanics, having abandoned the problematic classical model, and not having found the post-classical causation, which is actually non-linear (a point of at least surface-level disagreement, perhaps).  

 

Re post-classical causality, For example, we can take the mathematics of complexity theory as causal, in a sense of the fractal forms it engenders, and yet in the most useful sense of the word it is actually indeterministic.  Why is this so?  Because it is infinitely determined or infinitely detailed.  This means that it is fundamentally unpredictable.  I would argue that the other meanings of the word "indeterministic" which equate to "acausal" are actually pre-rational, because they are founded on a transitive or linear notion of determinism, whereas the complexity view has, post-ratio, moved onto the immanent/transcendent axis.

 

Also, I entirely disagree with the notion that linear and continuous are the same.  Again I will point out that ALL mathematical notions of nonlinearity are founded on the modern mathematical continuum.  Indeed, I posit that a foundationalist quantized view is closer to the pre-rational linear view than the reverse.  I actually demonstrate this with the embryogenesis of the concept of fundamental mathematics in SpinbitZ.

 

But I think the confusion is that continuity seems to imply homogeniety, which is an incorrect or very incomplete view, imho.  Again, look to complexity theory which would be nothing without the modern continuum....the infinite depth of which is the hallmark of indeterminism and complexity itself.