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In my original message, I had attached also the original German text. The text was blocked by FIS due to its length, so here is the English text again for FIS.<br>
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Dear Gordana, Lou, John, Eric, Stuart and all,<br>
the many contributions in the current discussion are so extensive, rich and interesting that I am not in a position to respond to all these good thoughts.<br>
All the best<br>
Thomas<br>
<br>
Nevertheless, I would like to supplement some of the information, the energy and the matter with my ideas from physics.<br>
<br>
We humans primarily perceive shapes (Gestalten). Gestalt psychologists such as von Ehrenfels, Wertheimer, Köhler, Koffka and Lewin made this clear more than a century ago.<br>
<br>
Our perception is aimed at a wholeness, a holon. As a rule, we perceive wholes. Let us consider three lengths of 3, 4 and 5 inches that are joined together, but not in a line. Then it is impossible for us not to perceive a right-angled triangle. In our perception, the distances become properties of the triangle, its boundary lines. <br>
<br>
We see an abundance of different material shapes around us. These material shapes can in turn be broken down into parts. I can pick leaves from a tree. A leaf is simpler than a whole tree.<br>
How do the parts relate to the whole? <br>
I would like to make it clear that classical physics is essentially based on structures in which a whole is described mathematically as the sum of its parts. <br>
Classical mechanics provides the prime example of a whole being described as the sum of its parts. The state space of the planetary system is the “direct sum of the state spaces” of the individual planets. Nevertheless, we can of course perceive the planetary system as a whole, even if the mathematical description in classical physics does not correspond to this.<br>
<br>
It is right to add that the general theory of relativity also has a holistic structure. It describes the changes in the space-time structure. The space-time structure forms a whole, but it is not described as consisting of separate parts. <br>
Therefore, the general theory of relativity has the problem of capturing more than just a single object. <br>
Thus Einstein had to carry out his famous calculation of Mercury's orbit, which deviated slightly from the predictions of Newton's theory in the observations, with the mathematical model of a massless Mercury. Of course, the mass of Mercury, which is only about 0.00002% of the mass of the sun, disappears in relation to it, but it is not zero. As with all physics, this is not nature itself, but its best possible mathematical description.<br>
<br>
In contrast to classical physics, quantum theory is characterized by the fact that, on the one hand, parts can be defined in it. On the other hand, it has the only mathematical structure known to me that makes it clear that in its description “a whole is more than the sum of its parts”. The mathematical term for this is the “tensor product of state spaces”.<br>
In the quantum-theoretical description of nature, wholes are thus formed from parts in accordance with the laws of nature. For mathematical reasons, these wholes are even more than the sum of their parts. <br>
<br>
It is very important that in the mathematical description there is no longer any trace of the original parts. <br>
The states in the whole, in which we can also speak mathematically of the parts, form a set of measure zero in the state space of the whole. They can be ignored, just like the mass of Mercury in relation to the mass of the sun.<br>
<br>
The formation of wholes also happens without the influence of a consciousness that perceives this wholeness. <br>
<br>
I see a difference in whether we humans perceive and describe the forms as a wholeness with our consciousness - for example, we can regard the planetary system as a wholeness, although it is not described mathematically as a wholeness - or whether we have to state the emergence of a wholeness with completely new properties from parts for reasons of natural law.<br>
Until now, the terms “emergence” or “systems theory” have often been used to describe such transitions to completely new properties.<br>
<br>
The overwhelming successes in the applications of quantum theory prove quantum theory to be the best description of that part of nature that can be described scientifically. <br>
<br>
This statement is possible because quantum theory overcomes the millennia-old notion of an exclusive reality of the material.<br>
<br>
Without the concept of “meaningful information”, the realm of the living would be inexplicable from a scientific point of view. <br>
Living beings are unstable structures that have arisen in natural evolution because they not only react to energies due to their instability, but because they are able to perceive and react to the properties of material and energetic structures. <br>
Such properties can then become meaningful information for a living being, to which this living being can react intelligently. <br>
Through such intelligent reactions to meaningful information, living beings can stabilize themselves in their interaction with their environment. Even from single-celled organisms onwards, living beings control themselves intelligently in order to improve their chances of existence. <br>
<br>
I think one of the difficulties with the term information is that on the one hand it is used in the sense of “meaningful for a living being”. Such a meaning can be recognized by the fact that regardless of the carrier of this information (in all cases, these are real or virtual photons in the case of living beings), the meaning has an effect. For example, the energy of the photons (e.g. red or blue light) is normally completely irrelevant for the meaning of a read text.<br>
<br>
However, the concept of information is also used in the sense of Shannon in connection with problems of coding and decoding. This is not primarily about meaning, but about the size of information relative to two semantic levels. This can be, for example, the number of words in a message from a language in relation to the number of letters used for it. Although this use overlaps with meaning, it is not identical to it in my view.<br>
<br>
A third use of the term “information”, which is probably even more difficult to understand, is the term “quantum bit”.<br>
The quantum bit is primarily the mathematical description of a quantum structure with a two-dimensional state space. They are the mathematically simplest of the possible quantum structures.<br>
<br>
A distinction must be made between, on the one hand, the quantum bits in the quantum computer. These quantum bits are properties of material or energetic structures, i.e. photons or squids, ions, electrons or similar. <br>
They are usually described using a two-dimensional real state space, the Bloch sphere.<br>
In contrast to the quantum computer, my field of work is quantum bits, which are to be understood as independent quantum structures and form the foundation of quantum physics. Their state space is a two-dimensional space above the complex numbers.<br>
<br>
Although they can be described as the simplest possible information structures, as quantum bits, no special meanings may be assigned to them. As the foundations of physics, they have an objective character.<br>
<br>
Because of this freedom of meaning, I prefer not to refer to them as quantum information, at most in the abbreviation “AQIs”, but as “protyposis”. <br>
It can be jokingly remarked that the term “protyposis” does not mean anything and therefore nothing wrong.<br>
<br>
Such an abstract and absolute bit of quantum information, AQI, has the smallest possible effect, Planck's quantum of action. This bit has the lowest possible energy density and is an independent mathematically and physically based quantum structure, not a property of anything. <br>
Because of its lowest energy density, it is spatially extended over the entire cosmos. <br>
As it is known that the action is the product of energy times time, the energy of an AQI is approximately 1 AQI = 10<sup> - 32.5</sup> eV if the cosmos is around 13.9 billion years old.<br>
From about 10<sup>41.5</sup> AQIs, a structure can be formed that we can describe as the mass of a proton. Such a mass is not normally referred to as information. To the 10<sup>41.5</sup> AQIs can be added a vanishingly small structure of about 10<sup>38.5</sup>AQIs, which is called the kinetic energy of 1 MeV of such a proton. The kinetic energy is also not normally referred to as information, although it is a structure of AQIs. <br>
1 MeV are orders of magnitude of energies that occur in nuclear explosions. In addition, structures on a proton in the order of between 10 and perhaps 1000 quantum bits can still be described as meaningful information. <br>
<br>
The AQIs that we can describe in the cosmos therefore almost all appear in a form in which we do not describe what is formed as “information”.<br>
(Incidentally, the phenomena that are attributed to so-called “dark matter” are indeed caused by AQI structures. However, these have not formed into either material or energetic particles or quantum fields. They have no charges and therefore only have a gravitational effect. )<br>
<br>
Of course, an AQI is still free of any concrete meaning assigned to it. <br>
Only properties (i.e. structures from AQIs) on structures that are formed from AQIs (i.e. on energetic or material quantum particles) can become information in the usual sense. <br>
“Meaning” only arises in cosmic development with the first life forms. “Meaning-free quantum information” is therefore necessarily a difficult abstraction claim. <br>
<br>
To repeat:<br>
The important and new thing about quantum theory is above all that it relativizes differences that seem insurmountable in everyday life. <br>
During my studies in the communist part of Germany, we were supposed to learn: “There is only matter and motion is its basic property.” For over a century, however, we have known in physics that motion (kinetic energy) can be converted into matter and matter into motion (energy). Quantum theory thus relativizes the difference between matter and its properties and therefore suggests that there is a common scientific basis for both. Of course, this basis for explaining nature cannot be the smallest material particles. <br>
<br>
But many other differences are also relativized by quantum theory, such as between localization and extension (wave-particle dualism), between force and substance (bosons and fermions), between fullness and emptiness (“Dirac-Sea”, Heisenberg: the vacuum is the whole)<br>
<br>
Information about properties can become meaningful information if it has an effect on a living being.<br>
<br>
The most appropriate description of quantum fields is that they are an indefinite (even infinitely large) number of quantum particles. <br>
Quantum fields are the most complex structures with which it is still possible to access experiments. <br>
But even quantum particles with their infinite-dimensional state space are not yet simple structures.<br>
Planck's formula E=hc/λ or ϱ=hc/λ<sup>4</sup> also shows that spatially ever smaller structures mean an ever-greater energy density. This is also no indication of simplicity.<br>
Only the AQIs are actually simple. <br>
<br>
Living beings are structures that have arisen naturally through evolution. <br>
<br>
Insofar as their structures can be scientifically understood, this evolution is based on “information chemistry”. <br>
All chemical processes are electromagnetic interactions. All electromagnetic interactions, chemical bonding, and ion flows are influenced by the energies available in each case (i.e. by real and virtual photons) and also by properties in the neighborhood of the molecules involved, which are also transmitted by photons. Such properties of enzymes respectively catalysts then mean “meaningful information” for the respective process. <br>
<br>
Living beings are therefore structures that interact with matter and energy and are triggered by information. <br>
<br>
It was only with quantum theory that it became possible to relativize the fundamental distinctions between matter, energy and information in everyday life. This also makes the interaction between them scientifically comprehensible. <br>
<br>
Without this equivalence of matter, energy and information, only a dualistic description would be available. <br>
However, this is then always faced with the problem of how the psychic can influence the material. Such a long-accepted separation in the sense of Descartes is difficult to accept from a scientific point of view today. <br>
Since quantum theory shows that the material can be understood as a special form of meaning-free quantum information, dualism is no longer necessary today.<br>
<br>
Here are a few more explanations: <br>
If information influences the processes in a living being, then this information becomes meaningful for the living being itself. <br>
For other living beings, the same information can remain completely meaningless.<br>
<br>
Living beings are structures that have the “will” to continue to exist in a changing environment. This requires them to be able to learn from previous experiences. <br>
Living beings must therefore be able to recognize repetitions, i.e. regularities, in the processes of nature. <br>
As there are never two completely identical situations in an expanding cosmos, the rules are not based on sameness but on similarity. Such similarity arises when non-essentials can be ignored. <br>
<br>
If even more can be ignored, rules can even become laws. <br>
Laws of nature are thus found by ignoring a lot of non-essentials. <br>
Natural laws are therefore approximate descriptions of natural processes.<br>
The history of the natural sciences shows that with increasing precision, some things that were previously ignored become significant after all. <br>
<br>
In everyday life, we take it for granted that not only the facts, but also possibilities that have not yet become facts, have an influence on our options for action. We usually imagine such future possibilities with our inner images like as something factual. At the same time, however, we know that they are possibilities. <br>
<br>
Such a reciprocal structure between facts and possibilities was not yet so clearly recognizable at the beginning of quantum theory. This is why it is still often referred to as “microphysics”. In my view, this is too narrow.<br>
<br>
The realization, which became clear in the mathematical structure, that not only the factual, but also possibilities that have not yet become factual can already produce real effects in a physical system, led to an understanding of the transition from classical physics to quantum theory.<br>
Possibilities in the sense of classical probability theory, i.e. as unknown facts, have no effect on the system in question, although they may have an effect on an observer who has only incomplete knowledge of the system.<br>
Rules and laws of nature capture a very significant aspect of natural processes. <br>
<br>
For phenomena beyond the regular, e.g. for the unrepeatable, i.e. the unique - one could call such things “No LAW” with Stuart Kauffman - repetitions will not be recognizable - otherwise one could establish rules for them as well. They cannot be recorded or described scientifically.<br>
<br>
The description of nature began historically with the description of material objects. Their existence must be understood as something factual. <br>
The scientific explanation “from the simple to the complex” already led in antiquity to the idea of material objects so small that they could no longer be divided. They were therefore the simplest thing that could be imagined within this framework. Thus, they were to provide the basis for describing nature.<br>
<br>
The transition to laws of nature in the mathematical forms of differential equations led to classical physics and to the idea of a deterministic change of facts. <br>
The more precise description of quantum theory shows that the facts are often a fairly accurate approximation of a non-deterministic event. However, since the mathematical structure of natural laws is deterministic, it should be remembered that in quantum theory only the change of possibilities is described as determinate. <br>
The facts that arise for us from the possibilities, on the other hand, are limited by the possibilities and are extremely precise in their possible values. (This accounts for the enormous accuracy of quantum theory.) But which of these facts actually becomes factual is a matter of chance.<br>
<br>
Machines do not arise in evolution in a natural and lawful way.<br>
Machines as intentionally built structures naturally satisfy the laws of nature, which the builders have taken into account in their construction. <br>
Machines therefore do not arise by themselves in evolution, which takes place on the basis of natural law! Machines require a consciousness that constructs them and initiates their construction - or at least a consciousness that initiated the construction of the machines that build the new machines.<br>
<br>
<br>
</p>
<div>Prof. Dr. Thomas Görnitz<br>
Fellow of the INTERNATIONAL ACADEMY OF INFORMATION STUDIES <br>
<br>
Privat (für Postsendungen):<br>
Karl-Mangold-Str. 13<br>
D-81245 München<br>
Tel: 0049-89-887746<br>
<a href="https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://goernitzunderstandingquantumtheory.com/__;!!D9dNQwwGXtA!Xq6Z5FFqXo0zFLi8AjITXXykpr0iDs7ut46hvgXWz_32RtO6LA_oGXEYhwAPfPS4HPqJPh6KuaQYW6rgyQAeZGdK1WVSIQ$" target="_blank">https://goernitzunderstandingquantumtheory.com/</a><br>
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Fachbereich Physik<br>
J. W. Goethe-Universität Frankfurt/Main</div></body></html>