[ Sunday 31 July 1983 - Saturday 6 August 1983 ]
[notebook Creation - The Metaphysics of Peace II = CMP II: DB31]
[page 1]
Subtle is the Lord: Abraham Pais. Pais
'He was the finest man I have ever known'.
'Better than anyone before or after him, he knew how to invent invariance principles and make use of statistical fluctuations.'
'He lived by a deep faith - a faith not capable of rational foundation - that there are laws of nature to be discovered.'
'Nature hides her secret by her essential loftiness, but not by means of ruse.'
[page 2]
Pais page 9: 'Einstein wanted nothing more than to find a unified field theory that would not only join gravitational and electromagnetic forces, but also would provide the basis for a new interpretation of quantum phenomena.'
The quantum was his demon: E to Otto Stern: 'I have thought a hundred times as much about the quantum problems as I have about general relativity theory.'
On epistemology: scientist takes a bit of all. What we are interested in is what works in the real world. Theorists are more concerned with what works as a work of art. [page 3]
What does the concept of physical causality mean? We say that event B is caused by event A if it inevitably follows it. (no B without A, although if course there may be A without B) Let us assume that causality is the result of communication, the transfer of information, and that the amount of information that can be transferred in a given time is limited, thereby limiting the definition of what we are inclined to call causality.
In special relativity, the emission of a photon at the edge of the Universe and its arrival here are, to the photon, simultaneous events. We are moving at the speed of light relative to the edge of the Universe.
[page 4]
Pais page 22: Explaining procession of the perihelion of Mercury was the high point in Einsteins scientific life
page 23: New branch of mathematics, the theory of connections [possibly relevant to what I am doing].
page 27: Einstein on Planck on love of science.
constructive theory, interpreting complex phenomena as simple propositions
principle: empirically observed properties of matter.
'the theory of relativity is a theory of principle.
Pais page 30: 'The births of the relativities were orderly transitions; the days of the old quantum theory were a revolutionary period.'
Why should there be a unified theory? Should we expect a single coherent mathematical structure to embrace all phenomena at the root, or can we be satisfied with a set of mathematical structures that communicate with one another as and when required. If, for instance, gravitation represents a fundamental characterisation of mass energy, then it can apply to all mass energy even when that is engaged in electrical interactions rather as a single human individual is subject at various places and times to a very large set of human, biological,
[page 5]
and physical jurisdictions. In essence we may say that the world is time division multiplexed.
Pais page 32: Singularities considered to be weakness of gravitational theories.
page 33: 'All modern work on unification may be said to represent a program of geometrisation that resembles Einstein's earlier attempts, although the manifold subject to geometrisation is larger than he anticipated and the quantum framework of the program would not have been to his liking.
page 34 Einstein's complaint: 'The theories which have gradually been associated with what has been observed have led to an unbearable accumulation of independent assumptions.'
'In a sensible theory there are no [dimensionless] numbers whose values are determined only empirically. I can, of course, not prove that . . . dimensionless constants in the laws of nature, which from a purely logical point of view can just as well have other values, should not exist.'
In his sixties he once commented that he had sold himself body and soul to science, being in flight from the 'I' and the 'me' to the 'it'.
page 44: You are a smart boy, Einstein, a very smart boy. But you have one great fault. You do not let yourself be told anything.
page 45: Swiss citizenship 21/2/1901.
[page 6]
Pais page 57: Einstein: 'It is a wonderful feeling to recognise
the unifying features of a complex of phenomena which present
themselves as quite unconnected to the direct experience of the
senses.
page 60: S = k ln W + C (Boltzmann's Law.
page 62: Time reversal invariance is an interesting problem, but it may be a read herring resulting from a particular dynamical view of the universe. What,
page 65: 'The most probable state is the state in which the system
persists for the longest time.'
This statistical mechanical definition is based on certain
assumptions about the nature of the ensembles in question which may
not be borne out in fact. What are we to make of the workings of
intelligence, for instance?
page 67: Paul Herz criticism: 'If one assumes, as Einstein did, that more probable distributions follow less probable ones, then one introduces thereby a special assumption which is not actual and which is thoroughly in need of proof.
[page 7]
Pais page 70: '. .. all of Einstein's main contributions to the
quantum theory are statistical in origin.'
Statistical mechanics and thermodynamics deal with macroscopic
states as consequences of microscopic states. They define macroscopic
states which are in fact verified, and this verification is used to
prove the truth of both the assumptions and the reasoning, shaky
ground. Quantum mechanics seems to proceed the same way. If in fact
each molecules, each is individual (as human beings are individuals)
then means, standard deviations etc are all artificial (though possibly useful)
quantities, and a 'true' theory of the situation must deal with
individual conditions. This is what QED seems to do by attempting to
sum over all the possibilities of the life of an electron.
page 100: 'Because of the understanding of the essence of Brownian
motion, suddenly all doubts vanished about the correctness of
Boltzmann's interpretation of the thermodynamic laws.'
page 111: 'Relativity, the special theory . . . '
'The most incomprehensible thing about this Universe is that it is comprehensible.' Einstein? Look out for this in Pais. Albert Einstein
This statement must be explained by the intelligence of the
Universe.
'The essence [of this equation], the insight that the second law
of thermodynamics can be understood only in terms of a connection
between entropy and probability, is one of the great advances of the
nineteenth century.'
Wednesday 3 August 1983
Thursday 4 August 1983
Friday 5 August 1983
Saturday 6 August 1983