On the physical interpretation and the mathematical structure of the combinatorial hierarchy

Bastin, Ted; Noyes, H. Pierre; Amson, J C; Kilmister, C. W.

doi:10.1007/bf00670503

Cited by 25 publications

(27 citation statements)

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“…We concluded that a more fundamental approach was required, in the pursuit of which [11,73] the non-perturbative formula which is the subject of this paper was discovered [51]. However the reasoning was considered so bizarre as, according to one referee, not even to qualify as science.…”

Section: Mmentioning

confidence: 88%

“…I agreed to accompany Ted to the 1978 meeting and present a joint paper. I arrived in England to learn of the startlingly successful successful calculation of the proton-electron mass ratio, which Ted and I had to discuss and digest in order to present Fredrick's result [11,81] at the Tutzing meeting, which followed almost immediately thereafter. This formula has been extensively discussed at ANPA meetings.…”

Section: Meanwhile Ted Had Attended the 1976 Tutzing Conference Organmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…What follows next is an unsystematic presentation of results, some of which were initially obtained using the combinatorial hierarchy [11,73], but which we now claim to have placed firmly within at least the phenomenology of standard elementary particle physics.....…”

Section: Mmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

A Short Introduction to BIT-STRING PHYSICS

Noyes

2001

Series on Knots and Everything

Self Cite

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This paper starts with a personal memoir of how some significant ideas arose and events took place during the period from 1972, when I first encountered Ted Bastin, to 1979, when I proposed the foundation of ANPA. I then discuss program universe, the fine structure paper and its rejection, the quantitative results up to ANPA 17 and take a new look at the handydandy formula. Following this historical material is a first pass at establishing new foundations for bit-string physics. An abstract model for a laboratory notebook and an historical record are developed, culminating in the bit-string representation. I set up a tic-toc laboratory with two synchronized clocks and show how this can be used to analyze arbitrary incoming data.This allows me to discuss (briefly) finite and discrete Lorentz transformations, commutation relations, and scattering theory. Earlier work on conservation laws in 3-and 4-events and the free space Dirac and Maxwell equations is cited. The paper concludes with a discussion of the quantum gravity problem from our point of view and speculations about how a bit-string theory of strong, electromagnetic, weak and gravitational unification could take shape. Revised and considerably extended version of two invited lectures presented at the18th annual international meeting of the ALTRNATIVE NATURAL PHILOSOPHY ASSOCIATIONWesley House, Cambridge, England, September 4-7, 1996 * Work supported by Department of Energy contract DE-AC03-76SF00515. † Conference Proceedings, entitled Merologies, will be available from ANPA c/o Prof.C.W.Kilmister, Red TilesCottage, Hight Street, Bascombe, Lewes, BN8 5DH, United Kingdom.1 Pre-ANPA IDEAS: A personal memoir First EncountersWhen I first met Ted Bastin in 1972 and heard of the Combinatorial Hierarchy (hereinafter CH), my immediate reaction was that it must be dangerous nonsense. Nonsense, because the two numbers computed to reasonable accuracy -137 ≈hc/e 2 and 2 127 + 136 ≈hc/Gm 2 p -are empirically determined, according to conventional wisdom. Dangerous, because the idea that one can gain insight into the physical world by "pure thought" without empirical input struck me then (and still strikes me) as subversive of the fundamental Enlightenment rationality which was so hard won, and which is proving to be all too fragile in the "new age" environment that the approach to the end of the millennium seems to encourage [84,86].Consequently when Ted came back to Stanford the next year (1973)[8], I made sure to be at his seminar so as to raise the point about empirical input with as much force as I could. Despite my bias, I was struck from the start of his talk by his obvious sanity, and by a remark he made early on (but has since forgotten) to the effect that the basic quantization is the quantization of mass. When his presentation came around to the two "empirical" numbers, I was struck by the thought that some time ago Dyson[19] had proved that if one calculates perturbative QED up to the approximation in which 137 electron-positron pairs can be presen...

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Section: Mmentioning

confidence: 88%

Section: Meanwhile Ted Had Attended the 1976 Tutzing Conference Organmentioning

confidence: 99%

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A Short Introduction to BIT-STRING PHYSICS

Noyes

2001

Series on Knots and Everything

Self Cite

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“…Although most physicists at the moment seem to assume that the values of the fundamental constants are contingent, and therefore need to be explained by either random choice, or some selection criterion such as the Anthropic principle [Carr & Rees, 1979;Barrow & Tipler, 1988] or cosmological natural selection [Smolin, 1997], we must remain open to the possibility that they are necessary, and derivable from some as yet not clearly formulated first principles [see e.g Bastin et al 1979, Bastin & Kilmister, 1995 for an attempt at deriving fundamental constants from combinatorial principles]. The example of the origin of the genetic code may remind us that some aspects of a law may be purely the result of chance, while others represent intrinsic constraints that determine which variants will be selected.…”

Section: The Origin Of Causal Lawsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Self-Organization of Time and Causality: Steps Towards Understanding the Ultimate Origin

Heylighen

2010

Found Sci

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Abstract:Probably the most fundamental problem is the origin of time and causality. The inherent difficulty is that all scientific theories of origins and evolution consider the existence of time and causality as given. We tackle this problem by starting from the concept of self-organization, which is seen as the spontaneous emergence of order out of primordial chaos. Self-organization can be explained by the selective retention of invariant or consistent variations, implying a breaking of the initial symmetry exhibited by randomness. In the case of time, we start from a random graph connecting primitive "events". Selection on the basis of self-consistency eliminates cyclic parts of the graph, so that transitive closure can transform it into a partial order relation of precedence. Causality is assumed to be carried by causal "agents" which undergo a more traditional variation and selection, giving rise to causal laws that are partly contingent, partly necessary.Keywords: self-organization, cosmology, ontology, time, causality The problem of originsWithout doubt, the most difficult and fundamental problem in cosmology is the origin of the universe. The main reason why this problem is so difficult is that all traditional physical theories assume the existence of time and causal laws. These theories include Newtonian mechanics, quantum mechanics, relativity theory, thermodynamics, and their various combinations, such as quantum field theories or quantum gravity. In all these theories, the evolution of a system is reduced to the (deterministic or more rarely stochastic) change of the system's state s(t) according to a given causal law (which is typically represented by the Schrödinger equation or some variation of it) [Heylighen, 1990b]. The time t here is seen as a real number, which therefore by definition takes values between minus infinity and plus infinity. The "system" therefore is assumed to have existed indefinitely. If we apply this same formal representation to the evolution of the universe, then we can only conclude that this universe cannot have an origin at any finite time t 0 , because that would assume that before t 0 there was no system that could evolve, and therefore no previous state that could causally give rise to the "origin" state s(t 0 ). Yet, the observation by Hubble that the universe is expanding, when extrapolated backwards, can only lead to the conclusion that the universe started at a single point in space and time, the Big Bang.

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“…They are the consequence of the convergence of a number of lines of research extending over three decades, some of which has been published (1,2,3) Bohr believed that this haptic language was inescapable and tried to meet the problem by a "correspondence principle" and the profound idea of "complimentarity." Einstein and deBroglie challenged this approach as productive of paradox, or at least incompleteness, but for most working physicists the "Bohr-Einstein debate" left Bohr in possession of the field; they went on to more pragmatic concerns.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%