Deviations and uncertainty reviseed

The discontinuity of matter was originally postulated with an explicit purpose: to demonstrate the reality of movement. However, a deterministic and necessary movement eliminated the possibility of explaining freedom. Epicurus first, and Lucretius later, modified the doctrine of Democritus (founder of Greek atomism) in regard to a very important point, since they both admitted the spontaneous movement of swerving or clinamen of some atoms, as opposed to their stable fall, situating matter between reality and possibility. For its part, quantum mechanics also teaches that, since

2011

The question of whether reality is necessarily continuous or discrete (i.e., analog or digital) is investigated by examining the nature of physics. It is argued that the view of physics as describing substance-common since ancient Greece-is today obsolete, and that modern physics is better understood as a way of describing reality as mathematical order. The question of whether reality is discrete or continuous is then reframed as a question of the nature of theories and the mathematics that they use. Because both measurement and theory are fundamentally grounded in discrete mathematical concepts based on distinctions, it is concluded that any description of reality by physics is necessarily discrete at its foundations. This conclusion points to a more fundamental insight into the nature of reality beyond the scope of physics.

2008

Particle or Wave is the first popular-level book to explain the origins and development of modern physical concepts about matter and the controversies surrounding them. The dichotomy between particle and wave reflects a dispute--whether the universe's most elementary building blocks are discrete or continuous in nature--originating in antiquity when philosophers first speculated about the makeup of the physical world. Charis Anastopoulos examines two of the earliest known theories about matter--the atomic theory, which attributed all physical phenomena to atoms and their motion in the void, and the theory of the elements, which described matter as consisting of the substances earth, air, fire, and water. He then leads readers up through the ages to the very frontiers of modern physics to reveal how these seemingly contradictory ideas still lie at the heart of today's continuing debates. Anastopoulos explores the revolutionary contributions of thinkers like Nicolas Copernicus, Isaac Newton, and Albert Einstein. He shows how Einstein's ideas about relativity unify opposing concepts by identifying matter with energy, and how quantum mechanics goes even further by postulating the coexistence of the particle and the wave descriptions. Anastopoulos surveys the latest advances in physics on the fundamental structure of matter, including the theories of quantum fields and elementary particles, and new cutting-edge ideas about the unification of all forces. This book reveals how the apparent contradictions of particle and wave reflect very different ways of understanding the physical world, and how they are pushing modern science to the threshold of new discoveries.

Modern Physics and the Philosophy of Science, 2019

This article is a summary of a book which I have published as an Amazon Kindle book. As a retired professor of anthropology who has a strong interest in the philosophy of science, I am now pursuing a life-long interest in physics. However, in reading Modern Physics, I have become more and more critical of the approach it uses, and I believe that the methodology used is unscientific and tends toward metaphysics and mysticism. Hence the book is about epistemology (how we know what we know), primarily focusing on language and logic as ways of knowing. Some physicists have admitted that the physics enterprise is now more mysticism than science. Among these notable physicists are Fritjof Capra and David Bohm who essentially said that modern physics is more similar to Eastern mysticism than Western Science. As an anthropologist who has studied linguistics, I am conscious of the way language is used in science. Two of the terms that are often confused in physics are space and time. Although space and time are metaphysical concepts, they are treated as physical entities since Einstein’s relativity came to dominate physics thinking. Conceiving of these metaphysical entities as physical has led to the vain search for particles of space (space-atons, if you will) and time (perhaps time-atons) as physicists try to quantize space and time as they have quantized matter and energy. Consider this confusion regarding the concept of space. Michelson-Morley found no evidence for ether filling space, in Special Relativity, Einstein said that space is vacuum (nothingness), in General Relativity, Einstein said that space is something material that is subject to be warped by mass thus causing planets to revolve around a star, in quantum physics, space is said to be nothing and something (a quantum foam of particles is constantly being born out of the vacuum). It is apparent that physicists have relied far too much on mathematics and paid much too little attention to the accuracy and consistency of language. It is the thesis of this book that the mathematics of a theory can be no better than the verbal logic upon which these mathematics rest. The book also examines the evidence that supports relativity and quantum mechanics. It was found that the evidence offered as conclusive support for relativity (Haefele-Keating airliner experiment and GPS synchronization) is not nearly as airtight as physicists make it out to be. It is also found that there is contradictory evidence offered for the various interpretations of quantum theory. For example, how does the uncertainty principle of quantum mechanics explain the certainty regarding the high level of accuracy of Cesium clocks which depend on quantum emissions? Some physicists I have read are beginning to question the accuracy of the premises upon which Modern Physics rests. Perhaps, it requires an outside perspective to see through the thought molds and group think of insiders more completely. Hopefully, this book provides some insight on the fallacies of physics based in language from an outsider not socialized in the halls of academic physics. If you have any interest in reading my book in its entirety, you may download it from Amazon.com for a free 30-day trial. Douglas Reinhardt, Ph.D. anthropology UNC-Chapel Hill, Chief Interest: Philosophy of Science Retired Professor of Anthropology

1978

A brief explanation of the development of the continuous concept of matter, as represented by the general theory of relativity and the unified field theory, is offered, as opposed to the discrete theory of matter represented by quantum mechanics which has been normally interpreted by the Copenhagen School. Throughout the modern development of these two concepts - the discrete and continuous aspects of nature - the thread of wave/particle duality is intimately woven. Yet they do not seem to be compatible. Wave/particle duality is a unifying concept while the debate over the discrete and continuous natures of matter is anything but unifying. In spite of the overwhelming presence of the discrete-continuity debate in physics, wave/particle duality remains important because the concept is an honest attempt to bring these two opposing views together as one universal concept. It seems strange that the physics community can allow this vast discrepancy in basic notions of nature to exist and persist, but it does so in spite of all attempts to describe nature within the context of either one or the other of these seemingly incompatible concepts. This paper was written well before the Standard Particle Model became the dominant theory of the quantum. Yet, paradoxically, parts of this argument have become ever more relevant because of the dominance of the Standard Model, which is supposedly a unifying theory, but seems to stress the differences between discrete and continuous rather than attempt to either unify them or demonstrate their physical compatibility in any manner.

This paper is a critical alternative to The Standard Theory (briefly reviewed here for non-specialists). It is hard to believe that so many intelligent men have created this incredible fantasy structure with purely imaginary 'objects' (like quarks) and equally bizarre properties, such as 'strangeness', 'charm' and a misused 'beauty'. This Weird World only exists at unreachable distances, at the center of atoms, and 'persist' for durations so brief that they will never be part of human reality. It is only because these descendants of the creators of nuclear weapons have 'hinted' to the current military authorities that they might be able to build an even bigger bomb that they can spend huge quantities of the world's cash each year. All of this is the logical conclusion of processes that were initiated over 2500 years ago in Ancient Athens. Furthermore, this whole 'Package' is wrapped in the Magic of Mathematics that our society has sanctified and requires so long to master that informed criticism is nearly non-existent. This essay will offer an explanation for how Western Philosophy has generated this mathematical model of Reality. A much simpler model is offered that can replace all this mathematics with a real physical model that resembles objects and their actions at the understandable scale of human experience. The heart of this new research is the conviction that physics has fallen into the same mistake that has afflicted philosophy, mathematics and logic for many centuries: the avoidance of thinking about time. For over 300 years now, physics has replaced time with spatial techniques to avoid having to handle the complexities of time. Even quantum theory continues to make the "instantaneous" error ignoring the fact that all 'force-carriers', even the magical 'photon' still takes a finite time to cross the smallest finite separations at the atomic or nuclear levels. The mathematics then sums over infinite times to produce timeless averages (erroneously interpreted as probabilities) with bizarre interpretations, like the magical collapse of the central " Wave-Function " or 'Multiple-Universes'.

American Journal of Physics

A book titled "MASS" promises all sorts of conceptual delights, and so I came to this work with great expectations. The concept of mass, though central to most, if not all of physics, is exquisitely subtle and still evolving. Anyone bold enough to take on the task of explaining the as yet unexplained deserves encouragement. Alas, I must apologize to the author, Jim Baggott, at the outset; having read the book twice in whole, and several times in part, I remain somewhat disappointed. Readers of AJP know and enjoy physics, and like me, no doubt come to a popularization expecting to find something insightful, perhaps some fresh explanation, or a novel synthesis, possibly a new perspective, or even an elegant historical account, but above all such a book must be scrupulously accurate. This book-i.e., at least its first 110 pages or so-seems not to have been written for the informed AJP subscriber. "MASS" has a friendly light style, even while admirably attempting to explain concepts that are extremely subtle and complex, such as general relativity and quantum field theory. Unfortunately, it too often rather casually says things about physics that are not rigorously true; if you are a reader of AJP those little lapses will be quite jarring. One thing seems certain, this book was neither written nor edited by a physics teacher. On the strikingly handsome black dust jacket the book proclaims itself to be about MASS, but the easily missed small-print subtitle, "The quest to understand matter from Greek atoms to quantum fields," is much closer to its true overly ambitious intent. The treatment begins under the banner of "ATOMS AND VOID" with the oftenirrelevant notions of the usual collection of ancient Greek scholars. The next chapter wanders around dropping names like Sixtus IV, Gutenberg, Spinoza, and Bruno; I love Giordano Bruno, he's one of my heroes, but not here in a book that's supposed to be about MASS. Continuing this aimless historical meandering, the author lists "mechanical philosophers" from Bacon to Descartes to Newton, (p. 21) inexplicably overlooking two pivotal figures, Isaac Beeckman (from whom Descartes learned what meaningful physics he had) and the great Robert Hooke. It is not until Chapter 3 that the word mass finally appears, and then it's done by quoting Newton's awkward Definition 1, from the Principia, as if this is when the concept first entered physics-it is not. Baggott paraphrases Newton: "So, an object has a certain intrinsic mass-the 'quantity of matter' in it-which is related

Arxiv preprint quant-ph/0107044, 2001

viXra, 2016

In this paper, which is author's extended published paper [32], the substance of gravity and inertial forces is debunked. The substance of mass is recovered. The nature of time in physics is revealed. The reality of the double-slit experiment is revealed. This paper shows that Quarks and Higgs boson hardly exist. This paper documents that, for past four hundred years, there is no distinguished physicist who would not have recognized the existence of the ether. It shows that filling the space of the Universe with swirling ether is all that is needed for the self-evolution of the Universe. It further provides an overview of the opposition of the physicists against the mainstream physical image of the world for the past hundred years. And finally, it documents the basic historical, philosophical and physical reasons for denial of the main physical theories of the 20th century.