The Nonintensive Universe,
or, Nearer My GUT to Thee
This is part of the eternal wonder of the universe
as man forages out to discover in the womb of time
the nascence of his individuality in the motherhood of possibility.
—Malzberg
Reflecting on the properties and ultimate character of such subatomic entities as electrons, one notes that nearly if not all the supposedly intensive properties thereof are defined in terms of extensive relationships such as gravitational attractions and electric and magnetic attractions and repulsions—and, indeed, if one can have waves without particles or even a medium, such as with regard to light, why cannot one likewise have, say, spin?
Is it not possible therefore that such entities are in fact only (ultimately misleading) "useful fictions", with no more reality than those of the radii between them used to calculate such attractions and repulsions?
And cannot, say, quantum mechanics and nuclear physics be recast in this light?
And would not such nonintensive and extensive mechanics and physics resemble the relativistic cosmologies so much more nearly, as to bring physics' long-sought Grand Unified Theory that much nearer?
[See also my "Occam's Universe: The CMBR as Space" and "Occam's Universe: Gravity is Expansion" .]
Keywords: astronomy, cosmology, extension, Grand Unified Theory, GUT, intension, nuclear, particle, philosophy, physics
as man forages out to discover in the womb of time
the nascence of his individuality in the motherhood of possibility.
—Malzberg
Reflecting on the properties and ultimate character of such subatomic entities as electrons, one notes that nearly if not all the supposedly intensive properties thereof are defined in terms of extensive relationships such as gravitational attractions and electric and magnetic attractions and repulsions—and, indeed, if one can have waves without particles or even a medium, such as with regard to light, why cannot one likewise have, say, spin?
Is it not possible therefore that such entities are in fact only (ultimately misleading) "useful fictions", with no more reality than those of the radii between them used to calculate such attractions and repulsions?
And cannot, say, quantum mechanics and nuclear physics be recast in this light?
And would not such nonintensive and extensive mechanics and physics resemble the relativistic cosmologies so much more nearly, as to bring physics' long-sought Grand Unified Theory that much nearer?
[See also my "Occam's Universe: The CMBR as Space" and "Occam's Universe: Gravity is Expansion" .]
Keywords: astronomy, cosmology, extension, Grand Unified Theory, GUT, intension, nuclear, particle, philosophy, physics
posted by John Kennard at 1:11 PM
2 Comments:
Are you familiar with the work of Manuel DeLanda?
Richard:
No.
But he looks like a hot one, from his Wikipedia entry.
I'm a sucker for dissipative process ("self-organizing systems") myself, and have been ever since reading the brief account of it in Moore's _Physical Chemistry_ lo several decades ago (the pictures of horizontal colored and colorless bands emerging in the classic test-tube experiment and maintaining themselves until the fuel runs out are quite bedeviling):
http://www.biolcell.org/boc/098/0589/boc0980589.htm
Of course, the basic idea is simple: One way of wasting energy is by generating order.
And, BTW, an expanding universe with constant mattergy should act as if its mattergy is pouring through and out of it, so . . . .
(Although I'm actually a steady-state fan.)
What fun!
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