Subject
Re: THOUGHTS: Time and Relativity
From
Date
Body
On 01/08/2008 02:44, "Nabokv-L" <nabokv-l@UTK.EDU> wrote:
>
> Subject:
> Re: [NABOKV-L] THOUGHTS Re: Einstein and Langevin
> From:
> joseph Aisenberg <vanveen13@sbcglobal.net> <mailto:vanveen13@sbcglobal.net>
> Date:
> Thu, 31 Jul 2008 11:57:39 -0700 (PDT)
> To:
> Vladimir Nabokov Forum <NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU>
> <mailto:NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU>
>
> Before outstaying my welcome, this Planck Time, being the theoretically
> smallest measurable interval, presents us with the QUANTUM view of time as
> DISCONTINUOUS. Stan Kelly-Bootle.
>
> J.A.: My Layman's mind, along with Friedman's help, thinks it may have
> understood about a third of what you discussed. Over the years I've plunked
> through several books about quantum physics because friends of mind insisted
> that it verified the possibility of magic and other stuff that of course
> turned out not to be the case, but I did get stuck on this time issue. When
> you say time can be discontinuous, obviously this must have to do with
> something other than what I will call real clock time (I recall reading about
> particles going backwards or forwards or something, meaning that time had been
> trumped or whatever), since its continuity, the sensation of passage, is
> really based on perceptual memory and if it became discontinous then time
> would be meaningless. Time is only a measuring device we use with our memories
> to correlate changes in space. People like myself who understand little or no
> science often get the idea that The Time Travelers are coming! from our
> shallow exposure to the Quantum revolution.
> -------
> JA: I feel your pain! Here's a quick Quantum fix that might work for
> Nabokovians. The particular sense organs & brains we HomSaps possess (whether
> gifted by some very gifted Creator[ess] or via a long-convoluted
> Darwinian/Dawkensian/Dickensian evolution, need not detain us here) give us a
> particular view of the world reasonably well-suited and scaled for our
> everyday survival. By scale, I mean our natural unaided ability to distinguish
> objects, locations and movements within an "appropriate" size and time range.
> Other successful species see, smell and explore the world with their own
> particular senses and size-time-scales. Nabokovians can, I suggest, more
> readily than most, imagine the vastly different world-views of mice, men and E
> Coli arising from having these widely different sensory acuities. Yet all
> these world-views are valid unto themselves, reflecting different aspects of
> what we loosely call an under-pinning "reality."
>
> So, dear reader, you are now invited to view the world through our
> instrumentally enhanced sense organs, aiding and aided by astute analytical
> brains. Jumping slow evolution, we now have better eyes than a house-fly,
> faster flutters than a butterfly: our spectrometers, electron-microscopes and
> atomic clocks boost the natural scale of our perceptions a
> trillion-trillion-fold. When we probe the physical world at very small quantum
> (and very large cosmic!) scales, we turn up astonishingly new, unexpected
> aspects of "reality." NOBODY (oft mis-read by VN as "Nabokov," you may
> recall!) yet understands how these new observations FIT together. You are not
> alone, nein, JA! Where you are dead wrong, though, is when you say " ... the
> possibility of magic and other stuff that of course turned out not to be the
> case ..." We may not understand the quantum "magic," but it's one of the
> least disputable FACTS of scientific LIFE! Schrodinger's wave-equation is the
> most widely, most divinely, accurately verified equation in history! Without
> its quantum "magic" the microchips processing our priceless (worthless?)
> messages just wouldn't work. BUT, out goes, at the quantum level, old
> cherished notions such as deterministic cause-effect, and knowing for CERTAIN
> the simultaneous values of some complementary properties (such as
> position/momentum or energy/time. See (ii) below)
>
> It's STILL OK to think of TIME as a "continuously" moving "now" triggered
> (somehow) by our brain's sequential processes, and watching the world go by.
> Much confusion arises from the notion that "words have a uniquely 'proper'
> meaning for all seasons and contexts." The linguistic crunch is whether
> disagreements can _always_ be resolved by replacing assertions about "time"
> with suitably refined terms such as "biological-time," "psychological-time,"
> "socio-historical-time," "VN's or Proust's À la recherche du temps perdu,"
> "thermodynamic-time," "quantum-time," and so on. Suffice it to say, that when
> our slick equations use the variable t it means something more precise than
> the vague subjective definitions, and WOE-BETIDE those who jump at spurious
> conclusions. The pure mathematician can reverse the sign of t creating a
> system where past and future are reversed. But in physics, there is a
> constraint known as ENTROPY and the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics, the so-called
> ARROW of TIME. It's all in that least-read bestseller by S Hawkings. C P
> Snow's Two Cultures (see many earlier postings) set this as a key challenge to
> non-scientists: having _some_ idea of Entropy is on a par with knowing
> Hamlet's soliloquy! (Entropy is a measurable statistical value that NEVER
> decreases in a closed system and therefore gives an _objective_ non-cultural
> meaning to the PASSING ONE-WAY flow of (thermodynamic) time. I'll test you on
> this, so pay attention.) On a technical point: even when t is a physically
> discrete variable, it can often be usefully treated as continuous, as, say,
> when we differentiate ds/dt to get velocity. Recall the Planck time is so
> terribly small that in many equations it might as well be infinitesimal.
> Nevertheless, JA, I can assure that when your car comes to rest from 30mph, IT
> DOES NOT PASS THROUGH EVERY SPEED FROM 30 TO ZERO mph. It slows down in tiny
> discontinuous increments. This fact may not alter your world-view or driving
> habits (why should it?), but it's as TRUE as er er ... VN remaining my
> favourite novelist.
>
> Summary: HomSap is a remarkable species (i) driven by "pure" curiosity; able
> to enhance its own sensory perceptions BEYOND the minimum "animal-survival"
> needs (ii) able, magically, to CALCULATE exactly the LIMITS of what can be
> observed and measured (Heisenberg's Uncertainty and Planck's constant) (iii)
> able to SUSPEND both belief and dis-belief, i.e., happy to shun dogma; free to
> consider conflicting theories as equally plausible until further evidence.
>
> Caveat: this email would require more precision were I writing for MAA or ACM.
>
> Stan Kelly-Bootle
>
http://www.acmqueue.org/modules.php?name=Content&pa=list_pages_categories&cid=>
8
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>
> Subject:
> Re: [NABOKV-L] THOUGHTS Re: Einstein and Langevin
> From:
> joseph Aisenberg <vanveen13@sbcglobal.net> <mailto:vanveen13@sbcglobal.net>
> Date:
> Thu, 31 Jul 2008 11:57:39 -0700 (PDT)
> To:
> Vladimir Nabokov Forum <NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU>
> <mailto:NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU>
>
> Before outstaying my welcome, this Planck Time, being the theoretically
> smallest measurable interval, presents us with the QUANTUM view of time as
> DISCONTINUOUS. Stan Kelly-Bootle.
>
> J.A.: My Layman's mind, along with Friedman's help, thinks it may have
> understood about a third of what you discussed. Over the years I've plunked
> through several books about quantum physics because friends of mind insisted
> that it verified the possibility of magic and other stuff that of course
> turned out not to be the case, but I did get stuck on this time issue. When
> you say time can be discontinuous, obviously this must have to do with
> something other than what I will call real clock time (I recall reading about
> particles going backwards or forwards or something, meaning that time had been
> trumped or whatever), since its continuity, the sensation of passage, is
> really based on perceptual memory and if it became discontinous then time
> would be meaningless. Time is only a measuring device we use with our memories
> to correlate changes in space. People like myself who understand little or no
> science often get the idea that The Time Travelers are coming! from our
> shallow exposure to the Quantum revolution.
> -------
> JA: I feel your pain! Here's a quick Quantum fix that might work for
> Nabokovians. The particular sense organs & brains we HomSaps possess (whether
> gifted by some very gifted Creator[ess] or via a long-convoluted
> Darwinian/Dawkensian/Dickensian evolution, need not detain us here) give us a
> particular view of the world reasonably well-suited and scaled for our
> everyday survival. By scale, I mean our natural unaided ability to distinguish
> objects, locations and movements within an "appropriate" size and time range.
> Other successful species see, smell and explore the world with their own
> particular senses and size-time-scales. Nabokovians can, I suggest, more
> readily than most, imagine the vastly different world-views of mice, men and E
> Coli arising from having these widely different sensory acuities. Yet all
> these world-views are valid unto themselves, reflecting different aspects of
> what we loosely call an under-pinning "reality."
>
> So, dear reader, you are now invited to view the world through our
> instrumentally enhanced sense organs, aiding and aided by astute analytical
> brains. Jumping slow evolution, we now have better eyes than a house-fly,
> faster flutters than a butterfly: our spectrometers, electron-microscopes and
> atomic clocks boost the natural scale of our perceptions a
> trillion-trillion-fold. When we probe the physical world at very small quantum
> (and very large cosmic!) scales, we turn up astonishingly new, unexpected
> aspects of "reality." NOBODY (oft mis-read by VN as "Nabokov," you may
> recall!) yet understands how these new observations FIT together. You are not
> alone, nein, JA! Where you are dead wrong, though, is when you say " ... the
> possibility of magic and other stuff that of course turned out not to be the
> case ..." We may not understand the quantum "magic," but it's one of the
> least disputable FACTS of scientific LIFE! Schrodinger's wave-equation is the
> most widely, most divinely, accurately verified equation in history! Without
> its quantum "magic" the microchips processing our priceless (worthless?)
> messages just wouldn't work. BUT, out goes, at the quantum level, old
> cherished notions such as deterministic cause-effect, and knowing for CERTAIN
> the simultaneous values of some complementary properties (such as
> position/momentum or energy/time. See (ii) below)
>
> It's STILL OK to think of TIME as a "continuously" moving "now" triggered
> (somehow) by our brain's sequential processes, and watching the world go by.
> Much confusion arises from the notion that "words have a uniquely 'proper'
> meaning for all seasons and contexts." The linguistic crunch is whether
> disagreements can _always_ be resolved by replacing assertions about "time"
> with suitably refined terms such as "biological-time," "psychological-time,"
> "socio-historical-time," "VN's or Proust's À la recherche du temps perdu,"
> "thermodynamic-time," "quantum-time," and so on. Suffice it to say, that when
> our slick equations use the variable t it means something more precise than
> the vague subjective definitions, and WOE-BETIDE those who jump at spurious
> conclusions. The pure mathematician can reverse the sign of t creating a
> system where past and future are reversed. But in physics, there is a
> constraint known as ENTROPY and the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics, the so-called
> ARROW of TIME. It's all in that least-read bestseller by S Hawkings. C P
> Snow's Two Cultures (see many earlier postings) set this as a key challenge to
> non-scientists: having _some_ idea of Entropy is on a par with knowing
> Hamlet's soliloquy! (Entropy is a measurable statistical value that NEVER
> decreases in a closed system and therefore gives an _objective_ non-cultural
> meaning to the PASSING ONE-WAY flow of (thermodynamic) time. I'll test you on
> this, so pay attention.) On a technical point: even when t is a physically
> discrete variable, it can often be usefully treated as continuous, as, say,
> when we differentiate ds/dt to get velocity. Recall the Planck time is so
> terribly small that in many equations it might as well be infinitesimal.
> Nevertheless, JA, I can assure that when your car comes to rest from 30mph, IT
> DOES NOT PASS THROUGH EVERY SPEED FROM 30 TO ZERO mph. It slows down in tiny
> discontinuous increments. This fact may not alter your world-view or driving
> habits (why should it?), but it's as TRUE as er er ... VN remaining my
> favourite novelist.
>
> Summary: HomSap is a remarkable species (i) driven by "pure" curiosity; able
> to enhance its own sensory perceptions BEYOND the minimum "animal-survival"
> needs (ii) able, magically, to CALCULATE exactly the LIMITS of what can be
> observed and measured (Heisenberg's Uncertainty and Planck's constant) (iii)
> able to SUSPEND both belief and dis-belief, i.e., happy to shun dogma; free to
> consider conflicting theories as equally plausible until further evidence.
>
> Caveat: this email would require more precision were I writing for MAA or ACM.
>
> Stan Kelly-Bootle
>
http://www.acmqueue.org/modules.php?name=Content&pa=list_pages_categories&cid=>
8
Search archive with Google:
http://www.google.com/advanced_search?q=site:listserv.ucsb.edu&HL=en
Contact the Editors: mailto:nabokv-l@utk.edu,nabokv-l@holycross.edu
Visit Zembla: http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/zembla.htm
View Nabokv-L policies: http://web.utk.edu/~sblackwe/EDNote.htm
Visit "Nabokov Online Journal:" http://www.nabokovonline.com
Manage subscription options: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/