[Fis] Fis Digest, Vol 113, Issue 17. From Mark

[Alex Hankey]

Dear Lou,
I found the contrast below quite amusing!!
I take it that it reflects your sentiments!
[image: image.png]
Best wishes,
and hopefully some laughs,
to everyone,
Alex

On Tue, 9 Jul 2024 at 10:20, Louis Kauffman <loukau at gmail.com> wrote:

> Dear Mark,
> I just came back from a trip, so will first just reply to part of your
> letter, but it does pertain to all of it.
> In the case of a diagram that represents a knotted curve in the space,
> there is a dialogue that is carried our that will bring most people into
> agreement about the meaning of the diagram. Different aspects of the
> dialogue will be emphasized by different groups. For example, imagine that
> I am working with weavers who will make actual versions of the diagrams.
> Then they need to know how to interpret the diagram as an instruction or
> recipe for making an actual woven knot from rope. And I would discuss with
> them not just the rules for making the weave, but also the kinds of rope we
> might use and how the actual knots would be displayed or otherwise used.
> Look at a book on knot tying and you will see various levels of such
> discussions. For mathematicians, the same interpretations are needed but
> also they need to see that the diagrams can be interpreted in terms of
> mathematical curves in space and they need to understand the combinatorial
> moves on the diagrams that we use to do topology and a number of other
> things. So the mathematical discussion is more complex. There is no
> controversy here since there seems to be no one who disputes the use of the
> diagrams. Some mathematicians prefer to use methods that are not
> diagrammatic, but this really is not a dispute.
>
> In the case of the bars which look like “3” at one end and look like “4”
> at the other end, I am interested in the possibility that the disputants
> could be led by a friendly mediator to see that there are the “bars” and
> how they lead to two different points of view and indeed to “3” or to “4”
> depending on the viewpoint. I would like the disputants to find a place
> from which each could see what the other sees. Some disputes can be settled
> this way. I do not claim that all can.
>
> An interesting contemporary example of a dispute is the argument between
> orthodox quantum mechanics and Bohmian quantum physics. Adherents to the
> orthodox mechanics tend to say that they see the Bohmian point of view but
> that it does not add anything new to quantum physics. While adherents to
> Bohemian view tend to believe that eventually this point of view will lead
> to new physics. The difference between the groups lies in their ontologies
> and how much they want  to work with the reality of possibility versus the
> actuality of physical objects. It is a very interesting and complex
> argument.
> Best,
> Lou
>
>
> On Jul 8, 2024, at 11:29 AM, Pedro C. Marijuán <pedroc.marijuan at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> *(clean posting: delete all the accumulated stuff below your message,
> otherwise it won't pass--P.)*
>
>
> -------- Mensaje reenviado --------
> Asunto: Re: [Fis] Fis Digest, Vol 113, Issue 17
> Fecha: Mon, 8 Jul 2024 16:31:25 +0100
> De: Mark Johnson <johnsonmwj1 at gmail.com> <johnsonmwj1 at gmail.com>
> Para: Louis Kauffman <loukau at gmail.com> <loukau at gmail.com>, fis
> <fis at listas.unizar.es> <fis at listas.unizar.es>
>
> Dear Lou, all,
>
> Apologies for taking ages to reply – I’ve had a busy couple of weeks
> travelling.
>
>
> I wonder if I might address your question about measurement and the
> representation of wholes by using the wonderful cartoon that you sent me a
> few months ago (attached)
>
>
> In a way, there is some similarity to the “blind men and the elephant”,
> but in that story we observers of the situation see there is an “elephant”
> and laugh at the story of the restricted perception of the blind men. With
> your cartoon, we observers are as much in the dark as the two people
> arguing.
>
> The two people:
>
> a.      Are perturbed by what they see;
>
> b.      Make a distinction;
>
> c.      Utter a word which has meaning to them;
>
> d.      Disagree with each other.
>
> I think it is the dynamics between a, b, c and d which is the whole.  More
> abstractly, there is:
>
> a.      Noise or disturbance;
>
> b.      A selection;
>
> c.      An utterance of a word relating to that selection whose meaning
> is contextualised within a shared culture
>
> d.      An appreciation that there is a difference between their
> selection and the other person’s, and that this awareness may even
> reinforce the selection and the utterance.
>
> It's similar, it seems to me, in your knot paper the abstract
> representation of the knot is the result of distinction-making, and the
> associated formal representation. And there might be argument (among
> mathematicians) as to the particular formalisation. This means that the
> formal representation on its own is not a representation of the whole. Seen
> in isolation from the original knot, it loses the dynamics between a, b, c
> and d. The formalism is a reduction which attenuates - rather like a
> measurement. Is it drained of meaning? I think it might be more accurate to
> say that it is divorced from the dynamics which connect "disturbance" with
> "distinction", "utterance" and shared expectation.
>
>
> But I think we can have “reduction” which doesn’t attenuate – a
> "non-reductive reduction" as Alex was puzzled by. This isn’t a new idea –
> David Bohm particularly talked a lot about “holomovements” and so on. I'm
> thinking particularly about Peter Rowlands’s physics as a compelling
> example - and indeed, your own work on time, commutators and imaginary
> numbers, from which you arrive at quaternions and Clifford algebra. If you
> go backwards from Clifford algebra back to commutators, distinctions and
> imaginary numbers have you performed a reduction?
>
>
> When I first encountered Peter’s “Rewrite system” I was confused that each
> group of terms expressing the quaternion variables do not use i, j, and k.
> He does explain it in his “Foundations of Physical Law) that he just uses i
> and j:
>
> “It may be significant that the rules A → B and B → AB seem to be
> suggesting the structure of 3-dimensional (quaternion) algebra:
>
> i → j
>
> j → ij (“ = k”)
>
> and that a string like BABABBABABBABBABABBAB appears to be creating a
> fractal-like structure in 3-dimensional space, but situated in the AB or ij
> plane, as in holography. The logarithmic spiral then becomes a way of
> expressing 3-dimensionality in the plane with the increasing length of the
> intervals substituting for penetration into the third dimension”.
>
>
> It was obvious when he explained it – but this is precisely the kind of
> non-reductive reductionism that I am concerned with. I think we agree that
> non-commutativity is the key to make it work. Non-commutativity creates a
> spiral leading to ever-deeper recursions, which obviates the need for more
> than three dimensions. (Do we need n-dimensional Hilbert spaces?? – Peter
> blames Eddington for that)
>
> (1, –1)
>
> (1, –1) × (1, i)
>
> (1, –1) × (1, i) × (1, j)
>
> (1, –1) × (1, i) × (1, j) × (1, i)
>
> (1, –1) × (1, i) × (1, j) × (1, i) × (1, j)
>
> (1, –1) × (1, i) × (1, j) × (1, i) × (1, j) × (1, i) ...
>
>
> The perception of wholes entails apprehension of this spiral. Your cartoon
> exemplifies this: the perturbation is a kind of “noise” – a scalar; the
> distinction is a vector; the utterance is a chosen in the context of
> language and culture – it is reliant on redundancy which is a higher order
> than a vector (a bivector probably); and the mutual understanding is a
> higher order still.
>
>
> So to come to music, the “swing” is in the spiral. There is dimensionality
> in making any sound – it involves noise, notes (signals), redundancy
> (repetition/pattern) and expectation. And most importantly, once we start
> “swinging”, we have to find a way to stop: music has to reach a point where
> the next thing that happens is silence.
>
>
> With regard to AI, I am no zealot. But it raises fascinating questions – I
> really recommend playing with Google’s Teachable Machine (
> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://teachablemachine.withgoogle.com__;!!D9dNQwwGXtA!VXOcArN_FKpKel-uB8i7V_Ohqh_Ujq77hlFVwglH5OXu0Corw7hZooyk6RfKiu9C1wA5-9bSbwMRESJYWNv49w$ 
> <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://teachablemachine.withgoogle.com/__;!!D9dNQwwGXtA!UsPK2SRbiXBsfUCVImOrMm7fPKKNuBbKeVeR7v6-AmTt7BCvZVrKGYKDIRzLOAqwbokC90rmAhTGK6Hkf8MZ_pw$>)
> – it’s good to experiment with this stuff.  But there are structural
> similarities to how it performs its selections to what I’ve described
> above. It is noisy (and this is significant in driving its development
> further); it selects signals as predictions of the likely categories of
> data it hasn’t seen before; it both requires redundancy for training, and
> exhibits redundancy in the structuring of its output; and it must meet our
> expectations otherwise we would not see any good or use in it. Is it a
> practical non-reductive reduction? That’s the question. If it is then we
> have a very important new kind of scientific instrument on our hands which,
> like all previous scientific instruments, helps us perceive deeper order in
> nature.
>
>
> Measurement, I think, is how we encode our perception of that deeper
> order. While the encoding of measurement drains the meaning from any
> specific perception, it creates a new meaning through the shared
> understanding. Isn't it another level in the spiral? So we move from
> perception to measurement with each having commensurable dynamics. Musical
> notation provides another example of this: written notes are not music, but
> they are part of a complex set of inter-relationships which connect noise
> with signal, pattern and mutual expectation.
>
>
> Best wishes,
>
>
> Mark
>
> On Sun, 23 Jun 2024 at 16:23, Louis Kauffman <loukau at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Dear Mark,
>> I am writing privately since I have to rights on fis until tomorrow.
>> When we use the word measurement in the usual scientific context, we mean
>> making a record that can be viewed without disturbance by anyone.
>> Thus the measurement is drained of all meaning that might be supplied by
>> a given observer.
>> It takes a very concentrated effort to produce measurements of this kind
>> and they are the subject of engineering practice.
>> Think of vinyl records. The track is an accurate transform of the sound.
>> The track is in itself meaningless. The track can be transformed back into
>> sound and
>> observed/ heard by a sensitive human at which point the meaning can arise
>> in the interaction of the human with the sound.
>> Best,
>> Lou
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> >Isn't meaning "part" of any measurement? How could it not be? But perhaps
>> >the difficulty lies in what one might mean by "part"... Reductionism - as
>> >in the attenuation of "dimensions" of experience - lies in wait for any
>> >trivial identification of a "part". But there is a kind of "reduction"
>> >which does not attenuate... Holograms are reductions, for example.
>>
>>
>> --
>>
>
> Dr. Mark William Johnson
> Faculty of Biology, Medicine and Health
> University of Manchester
>
> Department of Science Education
> University of Copenhagen
>
> Department of Eye and Vision Science (honorary)
> University of Liverpool
> Phone: 07786 064505
> Email: johnsonmwj1 at gmail.com
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-- 
Alex Hankey M.A. (Cantab.) PhD (M.I.T.) DSc. (Hon Causa) Professor Emeritus
of Biology,
MIT World Peace University,
124 Paud Road, Pune, MA 411038
Mobile (Intn'l): +44 7710 534195
Mobile (India) +91 900 800 8789
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