Monday 25 October 2010

Quantum and chaos.

Quantum and chaos brought together with one another? In what way? I read in John Gribbin's 'Q is for Quantum, Particle Physics from A to Z', page 391, for 'quantum leap'.

"quantum leap
The important feature of a quantum leap is that it is discontinuous transition between quantum states. For example, an electron 'in' one energy level in an atom jumps instantly into another energy level, emitting or absorbing energy as it does so. There is no in-between state, and it does not take any time at all for the leap to occur.
"

It does not take any time at all, absence of time. Time refuted at a deep fundamental level. Its existence as relative to the frame it is referred to, the simplest states in nature, materialising by the jump of an electron from energy level to energy level.

Jerky moves smoothed out. As the level the observer looks at, at ever decreasing scales as its field of view is continuously zoomed out, to include less and less information, spiky edges in a rough terrain gradually vanish. The details disappear. Zooming in and out, smoothing roughing fields of study, a perspective employed to explain all phenomena undergoing.

Zooming in, rough terrains appear. The information that brings forth allows to distinguish between a process and the outcomes of processes, the solid objects that appear in front of us, regardless size, shape, form dimensions as such, from a chair to earth, to sun stars and galaxies. By zooming in, the observer discriminates the process from its outcome, revealed within the time-frame it takes place, practically its history. Any object reveals itself in chunks of time discontinuously. Chunks of time including within the objects materialised. Atoms at the microscales the processes out of the nuclei-orbiting electrons interacting with nuclei-bound protons and neutrons, themselves out of processes at a deeper level, process histories as such , and by annealing their histories, they take up space (create space?). In a grander scale massive objects but nevertheless, processes themselves, out of combined chunks of time of all constituent comprising entities, the constituent histories and all the space they take up. The world of objects, a puzzle of immense proportions of discontinuous chunks of time. Time scattered, time-chunks, pieces here and there that appear uniform, smooth, continuous by virtue of residing within one of the time-chunks. Their boundaries limiting scope and perspective.

Universe, world, nature, whatever it is called, all that is, virtually discontinuous processes, continuity amenable to the eye of a beholder thanks to the limits imposed by insurmountable boundaries, what the senses have been engineered to, a cage that only imagination can escape.

Imagination and world-the-outcome of processes, at the same footing, quantum and chaos hand-in-hand.

Processes undergoing by what other than chaos, at every level imaginable. The same principle applies for all processes, despite their scale, nature-made and man-made. The discontinuity introduced by virtue of quantum mechanics, completes the picture and along with chaos provides a tool to explain all phenomena. To my mind that could be used to question the outcomes brought forth by Darwinism, the smooth or not so smooth transition of species and the survival of the fittest to discontinuous transition in speciation what goes along with the notion of habitat-bound replacement than survival of the strongest. Discontinuity that does not require class struggles. A virtual leave and let live scenario.

Wednesday 20 October 2010

Meaning, what New Scientist magazine offers and is about ..

Meaning, what New Scientist magazine offers and is about


meaning not out of sake of the ignorant masses but for the sake of the individual, the all-surpassing unit that populates earth

(a snippet found in .. out of a burst of chaos in my mind .. a year ago .. unfinished .. but I do not have in front of me what triggered it .. and I do not know how to finish it now .. and I fear I might loose its essence .. my conscious mind interfering .. what I have right now in my mind .. what stopped me in my tracks .. is the connection of meaning .. with nature .. meaning brings us close to nature .. one with nature )

and that meaning the individual achieves goes hand-in-hand with nature. The way nature has developed or develops or will develop, or even ignoring this distinction of time, and just state the way nature develops, in a way that (is reminiscent of) affirms the tenets of Occam's razor.

science popularisers, they are not .. (servants .. servile to a cause .. science to be used and abused .. to serve vile needs .. under the grasp of the lowest instincts .. human individuals possess ..)

(ignorant masses! .. ignorance spread in societies .. perpetrated by the top echelons .. their construction based upon .. the yield of power .. )

but move the individual

not a thankless .. but a fundamental task

in the out of the fields of ignorance into ...

to become closer to nature, to be one with nature

and not for the sake

Monday 18 October 2010

Chaos theory trashes the notions of equilibrium.


In 'Human Brain and Psyche as Complex Systems' by Gerald Schueler in page 2, under the title 'Chaos Theory', mentions..

"1. Equilibrium. One of the findings of chaos theory is that complex systems that seem to be in equilibrium are not really in equilibrium. Systems damped by friction, and driven by some kind of energy input, while appearing to be at an equilibrium state, are not really at equilibrium at all. Tiny variations are present which can send the system into chaos at any time. Complex systems, require far-from-equilibrium conditions in order to maintain self-organization or growth (Cohen & Stewart, 1994; Gleick, 1987; Kellert, 1993; Prigogine & Stengers, 1984)."

Equilibrium. May be its usefulness is past and gone. Dwindling into oblivion? A concept whose properties do not, and are not supported by the currently held knowledge. Superseded and turned obsolete by other concepts risen, and its continued use only deters a deeper exploration in the phenomena. A conceptual baggage in need of being rid off. Imperative the need to be replaced by concepts that they are more in tune and in the gist of the phenomena to be explained. In its ashes the concept of 'dynamic' emerges.

Thoughts straight out of the inability of the concept to attain a clear definition. Complex systems seem or appear to be in equilibrium but they are not. The apparent nature of equilibrium relying upon what is seen and not what lies underneath, expressed by a variable external to a system under study, one that an external observer finds appropriate and defines, befitted to the lack of means during the time of its original usage was ever thought. As the deeper probing into the underlying nature of systems, any system, has been gradually enabled, reveals its inadequacies. Redundant, likewise, nonsensical the far-from-equilibrium reference as a requirement for complex systems. The dynamic nature of complex systems under the continuous subjection to incompatible forces, a constant source of tiny variations ever ready to kickstart a bout of chaos, to test all possible outcomes to its evolution to the next state of existence.

Nevertheless, incisive the attribution to chaos of self-organization and growth, systems driven to perfection, to wholeness complete, overriding the necessity of any equilibrium.

Sunday 17 October 2010

Continuous attractors and memory retrieval?



This extract intrigued me. It is from the abstract of the paper titled as 'Context-dependent retrieval of information by neural-network dynamics with continuous attractors', published in the journal, Neural Networks, Volume 20, Issue 6, August 2007, Pages 705-713, cited in the ScienceDirect website

"Our results suggest that keyword extraction by the neural-network dynamics with continuous attractors might symbolically represent context-dependent retrieval of short-term memory from long-term memory in the brain."

I want to toy with these ideas as they drew my attention, the former act itself, in my mind relevant to what they mentioned in their findings. Short-term memory retrieves context-dependent information from long-term memory. As I read through the paragraph, the spontaneous and instantaneous formation of short-memory, quickly linked with relevant information, the context-dependent factor, in long-term memory. Is retrieval a correct term? As, in my mind, what it actually took and takes place.


Tuesday 12 October 2010

The world is finite. The chaotic process that spawned the universe has an end.



R.D. Smith's assertion

"A quantised space, however large, is effectively finite thus cannot provide for truly chaotic behaviour."

in 'Social Structures and Chaos Theory', article in Sociological Research Online, paragraph 3.10, stands.

What refers to continuous,

"In its most precise rendering chaos can only arise when the possibility of any given state repeating itself is potentially zero."

drawn out of the necessity of '.. any given state repeating itself is potentially zero' and ..

".. a situation in which the orbital pathway of a flow or flux can continue for an indefinitely long period of time (for eternity) without ever passing through the same point twice."

.. despite the flow been allowed to 'run for an eternity'. It should 'never pass through the same point twice'. Continuity, put down as a prerequisite for the flow to be chaotic, a flow that requires to have no end, and such an end is met at the boundaries of the very universe itself. Phase space meets its limits at the realm of quanta. That puts another twist to the saga of chaos.

The continuity of the chaotic process it is not possible, the space within which it flows is finite even though its boundaries are as enormous as the universe itself is. It is not that this enormous space is quantised which as such it makes the duration of the flow even more immensely enormous, so if it takes an eternity, by being quantised it takes double or many times that eternity but still it is finite as the boundaries of the universe are finite.

And to speak of it, the boundaries of the universe are continuously expanding that augments the space available but still it is finite even if, for a given time, but for any given time, no matter how this interval of time can be comprehended, it is still finite. To what this conclusion points to, is that for a chaotic process, or the chaotic process of the universe is not continuous. There is an end to the chaos that created this very universe. At some point there will be no more space to explore, or even a situation where the chaotic process is catching up with the expansion of the universe itself.

And to add to that, is the current phase space, which according to the account of ever diminishing phase space, as the phase space opens up, explored via the chaos-induced bifurcations, out of the pre-existing phase space, within the space that the creation of attractors has already drawn, their ultimate space available what lies deeper down to the microscales, the world of quanta, excluding from what lies out of the attractors already created, the worlds, the universe that could have been, if at a certain bifurcation in its past a different choice has been made, as by, a different cosmological constant had been chosen.

Monday 11 October 2010

Social scientists perception of chaos. To serve their own means. Still a way to go.



Social scientists perception of chaos. To serve their own means. Still a way to go.

New ideas brought forth, as I was reading R.D. Smith's 'Social Structures and Chaos Theory', article in Sociological Research Online. In paragraph 3.10, it is mentioned

"In order to have a formal notion of structure which is consistent with the chaos theory paradigm we now need to return to a requirement so far unelaborated."

Formal notion of structure. Formalism, its journey from the means to becoming an end. It is not the formal notion of structure that is required but instead of, of formalism. What formalism is needed for, formalism as the tool to drive the human mind into learning of what nature employs in instantiating reality. Nature is already using chaos to organise itself. What is required by individuals is to unravel nature's workings in order to learn how that work is done. The individual would not tell nature how to do things, the individual would study nature, to learn how nature does things and to acquire a notion of structure as it has been put down by nature, to assist cognition. Human cognition has to devise formal notions, so the human mind will be able to comprehend how nature works. The forms are the props human mind requires in order to fathom into how nature works. Chaos is already there, whether the human mind wants it or not. It is up to the mind to understand how chaos works and not the other way around.

The requirements mentioned, it is not up to chaos to fulfill. Chaos does its job without any need for requirements, the requirements put forth are only a construct the human mind needs in order to comprehend the workings of chaos. Requirements as such it is what the mind requires to understand, to fully comprehend chaos. To elaborate the knowledge the human mind possess in order to fit with what actually happens. The tendency to see chaos as a predicting and controlling tool rather than a fundamental notion, it is what is underlying in that exposure, obstructing a clear view of what chaos is, the progress in the minds of people from chaos theory to chaos.

"In its most precise rendering chaos can only arise when the possibility of any given state repeating itself is potentially zero."

From an observer status to a controller status, what else could it come out from that statement, declaring what chaos requires in order to arise, seen as a requirement only from the perspective of the individual who has in mind that he has the upper hand in this process, seeking not its explanation for his mind to comprehend but its subjugation to its will, and as a result ignores what is already evident in a chaotic process. The possibility of any given state repeating itself, far removed by the very existence of bifurcations in the menagerie of tools in chaos, how chaos increases complexity within any given system, how does it open up new as yet uncharted phase space, phase equivalent to state, augments creates further space for new potential states to emerge.

Along with the notion of fractional space, fractal space from the macroscales to the microscales, states referred to by the nodes apparent at a certain stage in its development. All nodes present at a certain stage, the totality of all possible combinations, the totality of states possible being the phase space.

Impossible what lies outside the existing node-defined phase space, plausible-possible what still lies within the already existing phase space which is instantiated by bifurcating at any of the nodes already existing but not of any nodes outside phase space, as there are not such nodes existing.

There follows a bold assumption made, which I would require some enormous amount of reasoning to comprehend what was in the mind of the originator.

"To take the illustration of a strange attractor such as the Lorenz attractor what is needed is a situation in which the orbital pathway of a flow or flux can continue for an indefinitely long period of time (for eternity) without ever passing through the same point twice. If this condition is not met the orbit is not in fact chaotic but periodic even though highly convoluted. What this in turn means is that the phase-space in which the flux is propagated should be continuous and not quantised. A quantised space, however large, is effectively finite thus cannot provide for truly chaotic behaviour."

Eternity is not big enough in the mind of the author, the mind can include eternity within its bounds. Large, the symbol used to depict such a conceptualisation, it is within the grasp of his mind, a mere leap of imagination and the conceptualisation is achieved, it is fathomed, it is controlled, becomes finite, trivialises chaotic behaviour its essence cheapened unworthy of consideration by social scientists.

From such humble beginnings, social scientists marred with complexes of grandeur, epistemology devised to dictate individuals to the what's and why's they do what they do, their social groupings their personalities by the know-alls.

Just by chance they stumbled upon chaos and they want to bring down to their level, down to the bare necessities, what their mind can comprehend, a caricature to serve their needs to retain their position at the pedestal, instead of rising themselves up to the occasion, lowering levelling chaos down.

However it is a beginning but they have a lot of way to go but certainly not with these attitudes.

Still what it puzzles me, is the proposition of the phase-space that, it should be continuous and not quantised. What does it mean? What is the distinction between, continuous and quantised? What kind of phase-space do they have in mind?

Quantised it is the underlying all-inclusive all-pervading state existing where all phase-space resides, the ultimate ground universe-, reality-wide. Continuous from the sense of, bursts of quanta to an uninterrupted stream of energy? It is proven by quantum physics that is not an an uninterrupted stream of energy, a well-established fact.

Then what? Continuous, as the only option left, is attributed to phase-space? What would this actually mean? A continuous phase space? Phase-space primarily thought of, as all the potential states available in a system. States, as defined by the author too, as all the combinations of nodes existing, which, going along with quantised principles, are snapshots of even infinitesimal duration, collating snapshots to reveal reality. The very concept of continuity only applicable for human perception-wide world, our immediate world called classical world from the viewpoint of quantum physics.

The use of continuous for phase-space is meaningless. The assumption bold worthy of social scientists.

Saturday 9 October 2010

Fundamental or emergent?

The only fundamental entity in the universe is energy. And not in the form that is around us now, but the form it existed before the big bang.

I do not think we are able to even grasp what energy is. The reason being that we are dealing with the emergent entities, that is all that physics is about. The carrier particles that transfer energy from place to place are emergent entities and they did not exist 'back then'. Are the energy and carrier particles conceptualisations tightly woven to one another and can not have energy without the carriers?

But physics can not penetrate deeper and offer viable solutions of what energy is.
Descriptions, of immense energy amounts before the big bang, unimaginably hot or super-dense, carry no meaning.

We can not transfer the meanings hot and dense, that have been developed by studying the emergent phenomena to that fundamental context where neither space nor time existed. Hot explained out of the necessity to describe this energy form out of human standards, is not enough to describe the state of energy and energy itself, where there were no standard to measure against. There were no living beings around. Likewise for dense when there were no particles to create the density conditions we now know.

The very meaning of energy we hold now is not applicable. A meaning that is woven around the manifestation of emergent processes while to grasp the full meaning of what energy is should be done without the use of what has emerged out of the big bang. And the only thing that can be said for sure, that carries meaning is that energy is carried or transferred or distributed via the forces of nature. The forces of nature themselves, being an emergent phenomenon itself spawned out of a primeval super-force.

which do not give