The Recognition of Truth When the Hands Were Used

Plato's theory of recollection explained why we simply recognize truths for what they are: the soul had seen them directly in an abstracter state, among the eternal Ideas, before we were born. Aristotle hedged these bets: some first principles were common to all the sciences, some were justified by the consequences they begot. All came from generalizing what we saw in the physical world. The Stoic philosophers a century later spoke of a "recognizable impression" which gave us our basic certainties. Our apprehensions first encounter a image as a open hand would a object: then begins to close around it in assent; next grasps it tightly-the fit of the hand to object was "recognition"- and finally (here the Stoic Zeno, teaching his students, would cap his clenched right fist with his left hand) holds it as knowledge.

Page 31 The Art of the Infinite, by Robert Kaplan and Ellen Kaplan, Oxford University Press

You see, I was attracted to the ideas imparted by the gestures of the hands, that I had seen these actions impart knowledge, from another time and place.

Heisenberg's Physics and Philosophies

In the famous simile of the cave Plato compares men to prisoners in a cave who are bound and can look in only one direction. They have a fire behind them and see on a wall the shadows of themselves and of objects behind them. Since they see nothing but the shadows, they regard those shadows as real and are not aware of the objects. Finally one of the prisoners escapes and comes from the cave into the light of the sun. For the first time he sees real things and realises that he had been deceived hitherto by the shadows. For the first time he knows the truth and thinks only with sorrow of his long life in the darkness. The real philosopher is the prisoner who has escaped from the cave into the light of truth, he is the one who possesses real knowledge. This immediate connection with truth or, we may in the Christian sense say, with God is the new reality that has begun to become stronger than the reality of the world as perceived by our senses. The immediate connection with God happens within the human soul, not in the world, and this was the problem that occupied human thought more than anything else in the two thousand years following Plato. In this period the eyes of the philosophers were directed toward the human soul and its relation to God, to the problems of ethics, and to the interpretation of the revelation but not to the outer world. It was only in the time of the Italian Renaissance that again a gradual change of the human mind could be seen, which resulted finally in a revival of the interest in nature.

[Socrates is speaking with Glaucon]

[Socrates:] And now, I said, let me show in a figure how far our nature is enlightened or unenlightened: --Behold! human beings living in a underground den, which has a mouth open towards the light and reaching all along the den; here they have been from their childhood, and have their legs and necks chained so that they cannot move, and can only see before them, being prevented by the chains from turning round their heads. Above and behind them a fire is blazing at a distance, and between the fire and the prisoners there is a raised way; and you will see, if you look, a low wall built along the way, like the screen which marionette players have in front of them, over which they show the puppets.

[Glaucon:] I see.

And do you see, I said, men passing along the wall carrying all sorts of vessels, and statues and figures of animals made of wood and stone and various materials, which appear over the wall? Some of them are talking, others silent.

You have shown me a strange image, and they are strange prisoners.

Like ourselves, I replied; and they see only their own shadows, or the shadows of one another, which the fire throws on the opposite wall of the cave?

True, he said; how could they see anything but the shadows if they were never allowed to move their heads?

And of the objects which are being carried in like manner they would only see the shadows?

Yes, he said.

http://www.ship.edu/~cgboeree/platoscave.html

Betrayal of Images" by Rene Magritte

I am expanding on the subject of the fifth dimension, and how I am percieving it.

The light behind, in the analogy of Plato's cave, sets up the thinking in how issues from the source[the fire]( and here it might be referred to the fifth dimension)shines in its radiation. How is form realized?

Betrayal of Images" by Rene Magritte. 1929 painting on which is written "This is not a Pipe"

The jest here recognizes, that a picture of, and the real pipe are very different indeed. How is "form" percieved from perspective. The picture of the pipe and the real pipe are different things? And yet in this comparison, there is a third aspect as the idea?

So from the notion of the fire of things(creation)there is a progression towards reality?

                    Probabilties
                 (The Fifth Dimension)
                         |
                         |
                  Idea of the pipe
                        / \
                       /   \
                      /     \
                 Picture of the pipe
                    /         \
                   /           \
                  /             \
               The real pipe and form  
                                         

Holography and Dimensional Relevance

Holography encodes the information in a region of space onto a surface one dimension lower. It sees to be the property of gravity, as is shown by the fact that the area of th event horizon measures the number of internal states of a blackhole, holography would be a one-to-one correspondance between states in our four dimensional world and states in higher dimensions. From a positivist viewpoint, one cannot distinquish which discription is more fundamental.

Pg 198, The Universe in Nutshell, by Stephen Hawking

One had to understand what Einstein did for us, and the progression through to Riemann views. Once you get to the point of discerning geometrodynamics as a feature of that dynamical world of the fifth dimension, we soon understand what feature of the bulk has been assigned to the dimensions lower.

The higher dimensional significance of the world I am saying is beyond the forms we are accustom too.

         Beyond forms
 Probability of all events(fifth dimension)
         vvvvvvvvvvvvv           Future-Time
          vvvvvvvvvvv                  |
           vvvvvvvvv                   |
            vvvvvvv                    |
             vvvvv                     |
              vvv                      |
               v                       |
  <<<<<<<<<<<< o >>>>>>>>>>>now -------|
  flash fourth dimension with time     |         
               A                       |
              AAA                      |
             AAAAA                     |
            AAAAAAA                    |
           AAAAAAAAA                   |
          AAAAAAAAAAA                  |
         AAAA ___AAAAA                 |
        AAAAA/__/|AAAAA____Three dimension           
       AAAAAA|__|/AAAAAA               |
      AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA              |
                                       |
              ___                      |
             /__/ brane--------two dimension 
             \ /               
              .(U)1=5th dimension

I hope this helps explain. It certainly got me thinking, drawing it:)

Quantum Gravity Models

PLato saids,"Look to the perfection of the heavens for truth," while Aristotle saids "look around you at what is if you would know the truth"


Quantum Gravity

I guess we have a choice here?

Between the models of what would be percieved of, as higher dimensional realms, in terms of abstract model building, that is being produced by LQG and String/M Theory respectively?



If we were to accept forms of reality, then what artistic renditions would have made us realize that a deeper perspective exists.

What historical data would have been place before introspective artists and we reconcile that the cubists have found some satisfaction in the monte carlo explanation of membranes shown in the developing work of John Baez?

John Baez: Higher-Dimensional Algebra
and Planck-Scale Physics





A spin network

Using the relationships between 4-dimensional quantum gravity and topological quantum field theory, researchers have begun to formulate theories in which the quantum geometry of spacetime is described using `spin foams' -- roughly speaking, 2-dimensional structures made of polygons joined at their edges, with all the polygons being labelled by spins [6,11,16,23,24]. The most important part of a spin foam model is a recipe assigning an amplitude to each spin foam. Much as Feynman diagrams in ordinary quantum field theory describe processes by which one collection of particles evolves into another, spin foams describe processes by which one spin network evolves into another. Indeed, there is a category whose objects are spin networks and whose morphisms are spin foams! And like , this category appears to arise very naturally from purely -categorical considerations.

Light From the Fifth Dimension

From a supersymmetrical stand point, this would have to make sense shining from a hyperdimensional (fifth dimensional) realm.

Plato's cave reveals the light from these higher dimensions, and the shadows on the wall, lead to eucldidean perspectives?

Pythagoras Could be Called the First Known String Theorist

Pythagoras could be called the first known string theorist. Pythagoras, an excellent lyre player, figured out the first known string physics -- the harmonic relationship. Pythagoras realized that vibrating Lyre strings of equal tensions but different lengths would produce harmonious notes (i.e. middle C and high C) if the ratio of the lengths of the two strings were a whole number. Pythagoras discovered this by looking and listening. Today that information is more precisely encoded into mathematics, namely the wave equation for a string with a tension T and a mass per unit length m. If the string is described in coordinates as in the drawing below, where x is the distance along the string and y is the height of the string, as the string oscillates in time,

Plato: Mathematics Would Reveal the Structure of the World

We should ask why Plato's theory is so progressive, why Aristotle's is so archaic, and why Plato is usually given so little credit for his theory. The answer to all these is the same: Plato comes up with this kind of theory because of his Pythagorean faith that mathematics would reveal the structure of the world. Aristotle had no such faith, regarding mathematics only as a calculating device (the common opinion in the Middle Ages). In turn, Plato is usually overlooked by down-to-earth philosophers and historians of science because his Pythagorean number mysticism seems to them of a piece with the rest of his philosophy, which they regard as, in general, a mysticism unworthy of consideration. Yet modern science, which is distinctively mathematical, was set on its way by just those scientists, like Galileo Galilei and Johannes Kepler, who shared Plato's mystical faith in mathematics. That is the most conspicuous in Kepler, whose flights of fancy, which included a science fiction book about life on the Moon (the Somnium or "Dream"), are found together with the most serious, hard mathematical breakthrough in the formulation of modern astronomy short of Isaac Newton's own theory of universal gravitation: Kepler's Three Laws of planetary motion.

This view of God seems to be prevalent in todays views that I have yet to produce John Baez's view, as has been previously suggested.

Physical Reality as a Four Dimensional Existence

Since there exist in this four dimensional structure [space-time] no longer any sections which represent "now" objectively, the concepts of happening and becoming are indeed not completely suspended, but yet complicated. It appears therefore more natural to think of physical reality as a four dimensional existence, instead of, as hitherto, the evolution of a three dimensional existence.

On the Effects of External Sensory Input on Time Dilation." A. Einstein, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, N.J.

Abstract: When a man sits with a pretty girl for an hour, it seems like a minute. But let him sit on a hot stove for a minute and it's longer than any hour. That's relativity.

As the observer's reference frame is crucial to the observer's perception of the flow of time, the state of mind of the observer may be an additional factor in that perception. I therefore endeavored to study the apparent flow of time under two distinct sets of mental states.

Methods: I sought to acquire a hot stove and a pretty girl. Unfortunately, getting a hot stove was prohibitive, as the woman who cooks for me has forbidden me from getting anywhere near the kitchen. However, I did manage to surreptitiously obtain a 1924 Manning-Bowman and Co. chrome waffle iron, which is a reasonable equivalent of a hot stove for this experiment, as it can attain a temperature of a very high degree. Finding the pretty girl presented more of a problem, as I now live in New Jersey. I know Charlie Chaplin, having attended the opening of his 1931 film City Lights in his company, and so I requested that he set up a meeting with his wife, movie star Paulette Goddard, the possessor of a shayna punim, or pretty face, of a very high degree.

Discussion: I took the train to New York City to meet with Miss Goddard at the Oyster Bar in Grand Central Terminal. She was radiant and delightful. When it felt to me as if a minute had passed, I checked my watch to discover that a full 57 minutes had actually transpired, which I rounded up to one hour. Upon returning to my home, I plugged in the waffle iron and allowed it to heat up. I then sat on it, wearing trousers and a long white shirt, untucked. When it seemed that over an hour had gone by, I stood up and checked my watch to discover that less than one second had in fact passed. To maintain unit consistency for the descriptions of the two circumstances, I rounded up to one minute, after which I called a physician.

Conclusion: The state of mind of the observer plays a crucial role in the perception of time.

Einstein scholars disagree, but the pretty girl/hot stove experiment also may have led to another of his pithy remarks, namely: "If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it?" Then again, Einstein was a bit of a wag. Consider his explanation of wireless communication: "The wireless telegraph is not difficult to understand. The ordinary telegraph is like a very long cat. You pull the tail in New York, and it meows in Los Angeles. The wireless is the same, only without the cat." This quote reportedly kept Schrödinger awake well past his bedtime.

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=0001AA08-864C-1D4

Quantum Harmonic Oscillator

Let us see how these great physicists used harmonic oscillators to establish beachheads to new physics.

Albert Einstein used harmonic oscillators to understand specific heats of solids and found that energy levels are quantized. This formed one of the key bridges between classical and quantum mechanics.

Werner Heisenberg and Erwin Schrödinger formulated quantum mechanics. The role of harmonic oscillators in this process is well known.

Paul A. M. Dirac was quite fond of harmonic oscillators. He used oscillator states to construct Fock space. He was the first one to consider harmonic oscillator wave functions normalizable in the time variable. In 1963, Dirac used coupled harmonic oscillators to construct a representation of the O(3,2) de Sitter group which is the basic scientific language for two-mode squeezed states.

Hediki Yukawa was the first one to consider a Lorentz-invariant differential equation, with momentum-dependent solutions which are Lorentz-covariant but not Lorentz-invariant. He proposed harmonic oscillators for relativistic extended particles five years before Hofstadter observed that protons are not point particles in 1955. Some people say he invented a string-model approach to particle physics.

Richard Feynman was also fond of harmonic oscillators. When he gave a talk at the 1970 Washington meeting of the American Physical Society, he stunned the audience by telling us not to use Feynman diagrams, but harmonic oscillators for quantum bound states. This figure illustrates what he said in 1970.


We are still allowed to use Feynman diagrams for running waves. Feynman diagrams applicable to running waves in Einstein's Lorentz-covariant world. Are Feynman's oscillators Lorentz-covariant? Yes in spirit, but there are many technical problems. Then can those problems be fixed. This is the question. You may be interested in reading about this subject: Lorentz group in Feynman's world.

Can harmonic oscillators serve as a bridge between quantum mechanics and special relativity

?