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.
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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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