Re: Reality of i (was Something for Platonists)

From: James N Rose <integrity.domain.name.hidden>
Date: Tue, 17 Jun 2003 11:07:04 -0700

Matt King wrote [everything-list] 6/16/03:
>
> Hi James,
>
> I don't want to get into the Platonism
> discussion as I'm not of a philosophical bent,
> but I would like to start discussion based on
> something you wrote in one of your posts on
> the subject:
>
> James N Rose wrote:
>
> > The square root of a negative number has no physical
> > reality (or so it is presumed, because no abject
> > examples have yet been shown/proven) but it has a most
> > definite platonic ideal existence.
>
> The whole square root of a negative number
> question boils down to the reality/unreality of
> a single number, the square root of minus one,
> usually called i, as every other negative
> square root can be expressed as a real multiple
> of this imaginary number. Now, I'd be the first
> to accept that you can't have i oranges, so i
> does not have the same kind of physical reality
> as the natural numbers, or even the positive real
> numbers.
>
> However, you also cannot have zero oranges,
> or minus five oranges for that matter. So perhaps
> it is no less physically real than the
> negative numbers or zero.
>
> I'd also like to say that in a great deal of
> physics, the imaginary number is indispensible,
> at least in doing the math - could this be
> sufficient evidence to declare it physically real?
> Specifically, if we have used i to predict the
> result of a particular experiment, and we find
> that our prediction and the result match, is this
> evidence for the physical reality of i?
>
> I'm reminded of looking out of the window
> to watch the trees move, and concluding that
> it is windy, even though I haven't seen or felt
> the wind...
>
> Just a thought,
>
> Matt.
>



Matt,

Thank you for your remarks, question.

First, let me say I am not wholly antagonistic
to platonic notions, except as the current
(last 2500 year) rendering of it has, IMHO,
a severe deficiency. What is absent is clear
linkage between the Universal and the Real.

For I do not see a coherent consistent compatible
universe existing without that connection/relation.

So I have spent all my cognitive life working
to identify where and how that requisite is
present .. and to meld the domains.

Essentially, the Universal has to be isomorphic
with Cantorian transfinities and Potentia --
including the emergent. It must surpass Godelian
restrictions and the entire domain of information
possibilities must be 'self'-accessible even if
local bounds or limits are noted, used or identified.

In line with your question, it is time to re-conceive
'real'.

The wind and the referential cognition of wind
are both real and informationally co-relevant
-- and -- communicatively involved. That
'influence' might be limited to a preferential
direction, is distinct from the information
access. And so it is the information access
among domains that I am most interested in and see
as being of superior importance in any cosmology.

Since Plato and Aristotle, humanity has been myopically
concerned with 'association' -- restrictively understood
as 'causality'. With all the attendant disconnects:
form from function, materiality from process, mind
from matter, relations from relations, intentionality
from mechanisms from conditions from implementation
necessities.

We struggle to put all these back together, but like
the characters in Waiting for Godot, we carry
hampering concepts and weighted baggage of old
ideations which are more problem than utility.

For the universe and whatever aspects of it one
considers (material, energectic, aetheric) to
function so pervasively consistently demands
not just certain absolute rules of performance,
but absolute communicative relational association:
communicative architecture and access and enactiveness
throughout all possible timespace of the architecture,
access and enactiveness.

Which means -- that Platonia, that 'i' [sqrt -1],
that QM and continuum, and all dimensional realms
have relation (communicative access) with attendant
morphings of information (codification transfers).

Designating the codification transfers relations
is the plateau we have reached. Relating Universal
to Real. Specifying that in a certain dimensional
frame of reference the [sqrt -1] -is- "real", even
if it doesn't attain to qualifying as "real" in the
dimensional frame of reference our perception/cognition
operates in. But the overarching communicative
process~architecture of Being allows the information
of one frame-of-reference to transcribe/transduce
to others, and so, what is 'unreal' to our
tactile criteria is still accessible relevant information,
just restricted to the form it can exist in our reality
as.

No big deal. We just have to let go of the bigotted
bias that 'our' frame of reference has to be 'the'
frame of reference.

This led me to a strange but unavoidable conclusion
re certain aspects of 'information'. Nearly without
exception, there isn't a scientific mind on this
planet that doesn't 'understand' that 'different
is different'. If you change information, it becomes
'different information'.

But I noticed something else that seems intrinsic to
the operational formalism of The Calculus. It can
be run in mutual reversal: integration, differentiation.
The function can take one set of information and generate
a second set, then be reversed to retrieve the original
data (within the caveat limit of +C). But absent that
allowed variant, information is being consistently
and perfectly reconstituted. "Different information".

But what if those processes aren't generating
'different' information? Didn't Cantor alert us
to the reality that the infinity of a line is
identical with the infinity of a plane? Wouldn't
that translate to there being some real and
meaningful identity property inherent between
the slope of a curve, a curve and the area
under such surve? Yes, there most definitely
could be.

Which translates into this: there are several
kinds/forms of information present in any
observed system. One such is intrinsic and acts
as reliable anchor. Another is extrinsic and
is appropriate to the domain it presents in.

What the function Calculus does -- in this
expanded and strange way of thinking -- is
alter the dimensional form of the anchor
information. What 'looks' like different
information, in one sense is, but in another
way is merely a different presentation of
an invariant information set; consistent
invariant information -expressed in alternative
dimensional configurations-.

For the last several hundred years, we've been
playing in a mathematical landscape oblivious
of these associations and informational possibilities.

All the things/relations we've discovered were
the tail, ear, nose, gizzard parts, blood,
etc. of the camel. Making holistic sense of
them all, all together, requires identifying
how they relate. We thought that reductionism
would bring us to commonality, but that
didn't work. And the distinct math frames
of QM and continuum only made matters worse.

But now the future is open and accessible --
if we have the courage to work with expanded
evaluations re a 'communication universe'.
Einstein was correct about there being
no preferred frame of reference, but, there's
more to the situation than that. We have to
hone the skills to fly through these multiple
frames of reference, not care about holding
on to any one of them in particular, but also,
not lose track of where we are as we navigate
through these dimensional spaces, because there
are utile demands afoot. We will be doing things
in order to (as we have always done) accomplish
things and expand our competence and sustenance
of life and evolution.
 
Strange new relations are becoming apparent.
Such as: 'one' in x dimensions can be mathematically
substituted for 'zero' in x+/-1 dimensions.

One bearing this has touches on the notion of
collapse of the wavefunction. We now have
a mechanism which means that a wavefunction
can be re-constituted. (!) It also means that
in wholly normal operations, a wave -will- move
to, through and past x=0 and never lose information
content.

Which means, that there is now a mathmematics
for natural co-residency of QM and continuum.
What once looked like an incompatible set of
relations can now be explored as alternative
dimensional presentations of self-same intrinsic
information.

The double and single slit experiments do
what the Calculus did .. change the number
of dimensions present. The 'duality' is
not different information, but anchor information
manipulated to be in x or x-1 dimensional
configurations.

James Rose
Complex thinking.
Thinking complexly.
17 June 2003
Received on Tue Jun 17 2003 - 14:08:33 PDT