Friday, June 23, 2006

THEORETICAL MATHEMATICS

Before I was to ask the question below I had gone through the links given by Alejandro RIvero and in and thinking of the work I had been doing to understand this relation between mathematics and the physics world.

Of course as you know I am deeply involved in building a "foundational perspective" in a number of ways, which takes up a enormous amount of time. So having these oportunities to advance my thinking, are extremely difficult now, besides putting in a full days work in the heat and misquitos.

I ask this question on Cosmic Variance for obvious reasons.

A VIEW OF MATHEMATICS by Alain CONNES

Most mathematicians adopt a pragmatic attitude and see themselves as the explorers of this mathematical world" whose existence they don't have any wish to question, and whose structure they uncover by a mixture of intuition, not so foreign from poetical desire", and of a great deal of rationality requiring intense periods of concentration.

Each generation builds a mental picture" of their own understanding of this world and constructs more and more penetrating mental tools to explore previously hidden aspects of that reality.


After reading here, some things pop into my mind about the work I had gathered from Hooft, on the defintions of "theoretical developement."

When I read this it seem to bring it together a little more for me.


String theory clearly appears to be strikingly coherent. What seems to be missing presently, however, is a clear description of the local nature of its underlying physical laws. In all circumstances encountered until now, it has been imperative that external fields, in- and outgoing strings and D-branes are required to obey their respective field equations, or lie on their respective mass shells. Thus, only effects due to external perturbations can be computed when these external perturbations obey equations of motion. To me, this implies that we do not understand what the independent degrees of freedom are, and there seems to be no indication that these can be identified. String theoreticians are right in not allowing themselves to be disturbed by this drawback.


So you know you are stifled by a problem? You need ways in which to think about this?

So, in thinking about the mathematics and physics involved, are the two so wide apart that we can say that the world of the "theoretical mathematics" is so far from the reality of the "average human being," that they are to smart for us? Or is it, that they "see" in different ways?

That is the jest of what I see in Dirac's wordings I highlight or Alain CONNES words for more thinking. It is not enough for me to be dismissed out of hand on "string theory", for what has been experimentally challenged, should be cast aside for, "other roads to quantum gravity," so easy.

I see something beautiful in it myself, of course, being biased from the "position of speaking" that I do by name only:)

Responsibiity of course rings very well within my mind, as I write these words. It is not my intention to take people down roads and divert them from the roads that lead them to quantum gravity? But to keep my self critically thinking about the problems that are being spoken by, engaging in, the topic Sean produced in "stringtheory backlash."

There is some healing that needs to be taken care of, that has been inflicted on those who are speaking, for and against string theory, while it is perspectve "on vision" that must be maintained? The algebraic equations are something I am working on to develope.

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