# The rule of omitting the self-field in calculations—and whether potentials have an objective existence or not

There was an issue concerning the strictly classical, non-relativistic electricity which I was (once again) confronted with, during my continuing preoccupation with quantum mechanics.

Actually, a small part of this issue had occurred to me earlier too, and I had worked through it back then.

However, the overall issue had never occurred to me with as much of scope, generality and force as it did last evening. And I could not immediately resolve it. So, for a while, especially last night, I unexpectedly found myself to have become very confused, even discouraged.

Then, this morning, after a good night’s rest, everything became clear right while sipping my morning cup of tea. Things came together literally within a span of just a few minutes. I want to share the issue and its resolution with you.

The question in question (!) is the following.

Consider 2 (or $N$) number of point-charges, say electrons. Each electron sets up an electrostatic (Coulombic) potential everywhere in space, for the other electrons to “feel”.

As you know, the potential set up by the $i$-th electron is:
$V_i(\vec{r}_i, \vec{r}) = \dfrac{1}{4 \pi \epsilon_0} \dfrac{Q_i}{|\vec{r} - \vec{r}_i|}$
where $\vec{r}_i$ is the position vector of the $i$-th electron, $\vec{r}$ is any arbitrary point in space, and $Q_i$ is the charge of the $i$-th electron.

The potential energy associated with some other ($j$-th) electron being at the position $\vec{r}_j$ (i.e. the energy that the system acquires in bringing the two electrons from $\infty$ to their respective positions some finite distance apart), is then given as:
$U_{ij}(\vec{r}_i, \vec{r}_j) = \dfrac{1}{4 \pi \epsilon_0} \dfrac{Q_i\,Q_j}{|\vec{r}_j - \vec{r}_i|}$

The notation followed here is the following: In $U_{ij}$, the potential field is produced by the $i$-th electron, and the work is done by the $j$-th electron against the $i$-th electron.

Symmetrically, the potential energy for this configuration can also be expressed as:
$U_{ji}(\vec{r}_j, \vec{r}_i) = \dfrac{1}{4 \pi \epsilon_0} \dfrac{Q_j\,Q_i}{|\vec{r}_i - \vec{r}_j|}$

If a system has only two charges, then its total potential energy $U$ can be expressed either as $U_{ji}$ or as $U_{ij}$. Thus,
$U = U_{ji} = U_{ij}$

Similarly, for any pair of charges in an $N$-particle system, too. Therefore, the total energy of an $N$-particle system is given as:
$U = \sum\limits_{i}^{N} \sum\limits_{j = i+1}^{N} U_{ij}$

The issue now is this: Can we say that the total potential energy $U$ has an objective existence in the physical world? Or is it just a device of calculations that we have invented, just a concept from maths that has no meaningful physical counterpart?

(A side remark: Energy may perhaps exist as an attribute or property of something else, and not necessarily as a separate physical object by itself. However, existence as an attribute still is an objective existence.)

The reason to raise this doubt is the following.

When calculating the motion of the $i$-th charge, we consider only the potentials $V_j$ produced by the other charges, not the potential produced by the given charge $V_i$ itself.

Now, if the potential produced by the given charge ($V_i$) also exists at every point in space, then why does it not enter the calculations? How does its physical efficacy get evaporated away? And, symmetrically: The motion of the $j$-th charge occurs as if $V_j$ had physically evaporated away.

The issue generalizes in a straight-forward manner. If there are $N$ number of charges, then for calculating the motion of a given $i$-th charge, the potential fields of all other charges are considered operative. But not its own field.

How can motion become sensitive to only a part of the total potential energy existing at a point even if the other part also exists at the same point? That is the question.

This circumstance seems to indicate as if there is subjectivity built deep into the very fabric of classical mechanics. It is as if the universe just knows what a subject is going to calculate, and accordingly, it just makes the corresponding field mystically go away. The universe—the physical universe—acts as if it were changing in response to what we choose to do in our mind. Mind you, the universe seems to change in response to not just our observations (as in QM), but even as we merely proceed to do calculations. How does that come to happen?… May be the whole physical universe exists only in our imagination?

Got the point?

No, my confusion was not as pathetic as that in the previous paragraph. But I still found myself being confused about how to account for the fact that an electron’s own field does not enter the calculations.

But it was not all. A non-clarity on this issue also meant that there was another confusing issue which also raised its head. This secondary issue arises out of the fact that the Coulombic potential set up by any point-charge is singular in nature (or at least approximately so).

If the electron is a point-particle and if its own potential “is” $\infty$ at its position, then why does it at all get influenced by the finite potential of any other charge? That is the question.

Notice, the second issue is most acute when the potentials in question are singular in nature. But even if you arbitrarily remove the singularity by declaring (say by fiat) a finite size for the electron, thereby making its own field only finitely large (and not infinite), the above-mentioned issue still remains. So long as its own field is finite but much, much larger than the potential of any other charge, the effects due to the other charges should become comparatively less significant, perhaps even negligibly small. Why does this not happen? Why does the rule instead go exactly the other way around, and makes those much smaller effects due to other charges count, but not the self-field of the very electron in question?

While thinking about QM, there was a certain point where this entire gamut of issues became important—whether the potential has an objective existence or not, the rule of omitting the self-field while calculating motions of particles, the singular potential, etc.

The specific issue I was trying to think through was: two interacting particles (e.g. the two electrons in the helium atom). It was while thinking on this problem that this problem occurred to me. And then, it also led me to wonder: what if some intellectual goon in the guise of a physicist comes along, and says that my proposal isn’t valid because there is this element of subjectivity to it? This thought occurred to me with all its force only last night. (Or so I think.) And I could not recall seeing a ready-made answer in a text-book or so. Nor could I figure it out immediately, at night, after a whole day’s work. And as I failed to resolve the anticipated objection, I progressively got more and more confused last night, even discouraged.

However, this morning, it all got resolved in a jiffy.

Would you like to give it a try? Why is it that while calculating the motion of the $i$-th charge, you consider the potentials set up by all the rest of the charges, but not its own potential field? Why this rule? Get this part right, and all the philosophical humbug mentioned earlier just evaporates away too.

I would wait for a couple of days or so before coming back and providing you with the answer I found. May be I will write another post about it.

Update on 2019.03.16 20:14 IST: Corrected the statement concerning the total energy of a two-electron system. Also simplified the further discussion by couching it preferably in terms of potentials rather than energies (as in the first published version), because a Coulombic potential always remains anchored in the given charge—it doesn’t additionally depend on the other charges the way energy does. Modified the notation to reflect the emphasis on the potentials rather than energy.

A song I like:

[What else? [… see the songs section in the last post.]]
(Hindi) “woh dil kahaan se laaoon…”
Singer: Lata Mangeshkar
Music: Ravi
Lyrics: Rajinder Kishen

A bit of a conjecture as to why Ravi’s songs tend to be so hummable, of a certain simplicity, especially, almost always based on a very simple rhythm. My conjecture is that because Ravi grew up in an atmosphere of “bhajan”-singing.

Observe that it is in the very nature of music that it puts your mind into an abstract frame of mind. Observe any singer, especially the non-professional ones (or the ones who are not very highly experienced in controlling their body-language while singing, as happens to singers who participate in college events or talent shows).

When they sing, their eyes seem to roll in a very peculiar manner. It seems random but it isn’t. It’s as if the eyes involuntarily get set in the motions of searching for something definite to be found somewhere, as if the thing to be found would be in the concrete physical space outside, but within a split-second, the eyes again move as if the person has realized that nothing corresponding is to be found in the world out there. That’s why the eyes “roll away.” The same thing goes on repeating, as the singer passes over various words, points of pauses, nuances, or musical phrases.

The involuntary motions of the eyes of the singer provide a window into his experience of music. It’s as if his consciousness was again and again going on registering a sequence of two very fleeting experiences: (i) a search for something in the outside world corresponding to an inner experience felt in the present, and immediately later, (ii) a realization (and therefore the turning away of the eyes from an initially picked up tentative direction) that nothing in the outside world would match what was being searched for.

The experience of music necessarily makes you realize the abstractness of itself. It tends to make you realize that the root-referents of your musical experience lie not in a specific object or phenomenon in the physical world, but in the inner realm, that of your own emotions, judgments, self-reflections, etc.

This nature of music makes it ideally suited to let you turn your attention away from the outside world, and has the capacity or potential to induce a kind of a quiet self-reflection in you.

But the switch from the experience of frustrated searches into the outside world to a quiet self-reflection within oneself is not the only option available here. Music can also induce in you a transitioning from those unfulfilled searches to a frantic kind of an activity: screams, frantic shouting, random gyrations, and what not. In evidence, observe any piece of modern American / Western pop-music.

However, when done right, music can also induce a state of self-reflection, and by evoking certain kind of emotions, it can even lead to a sense of orderliness, peace, serenity. To make this part effective, such a music has to be simple enough, and orderly enough. That’s why devotional music in the refined cultural traditions is, as a rule, of a certain kind of simplicity.

The experience of music isn’t the highest possible spiritual experience. But if done right, it can make your transition from the ordinary experience to a deep, profound spiritual experience easy. And doing it right involves certain orderliness, simplicity in all respects: tune, tone, singing style, rhythm, instrumental sections, transitions between phrases, etc.

If you grow up listening to this kind of a music, your own music in your adult years tends to reflect the same qualities. The simplicity of rhythm. The alluringly simple tunes. The “hummability quotient.” (You don’t want to focus on intricate patterns of melody in devotional music; you want it to be so simple that minimal mental exertion is involved in rendering it, so that your mental energy can quietly transition towards your spiritual quest and experiences.) Etc.

I am not saying that the reason Ravi’s music is so great is because he listened his father sing “bhajan”s. If this were true, there would be tens of thousands of music composers having talents comparable to Ravi’s. But the fact is that Ravi was a genius—a self-taught genius, in fact. (He never received any formal training in music ever.) But what I am saying is that if you do have the musical ability, having this kind of a family environment would leave its mark. Definitely.

Of course, this all was just a conjecture. Check it out and see if it holds or not.

… May be I should convert this “note” in a separate post by itself. Would be easier to keep track of it. … Some other time. … I have to work on QM; after all, exactly only half the month remains now. … Bye for now. …

/

# An intermediate update regarding my intermediate development regarding my new approach regarding QM

Update on 2019.10.02, 17:00 IST

I have completed writing (more like somehow filling in the contents for) the alpha version of the outline document. However, it is not at all readable. So, I am not in a position to be able to distribute it even as a private communication. (Talking besides the black-board is so much easier to do!)

By now, the outline document alone runs into 18 pages (some of the contents being repetitive). The background document has become another 12 pages. Editing 30 pages should take at least about a week or so, if not a little more.

So, no promises, but chances are good that both these documents could get finalized and distributed within the next 7 to 10 days.

In the meanwhile, feel free to look for the other things on this blog, and bye for now.

Update over; original post, below the fold.

0. As mentioned here earlier, I have been in the process of writing a point-by-point outline document on my new approach to quantum mechanics.

1. A certain preliminary version of the outline document was completed on the afternoon of 4th February 2019. It is about 10 pages long, and roughly at a pre-alpha stage. Separately, there also has been an additional document covering some of the background material for understanding QM. (An earlier version of this background document was posted here at this blog few days ago—too bad if you never noticed it—bad, for you, that is.) It too has been under expansion and revision; currently it stands at a total of further 10 pages (i.e in addition to the outline document).

2. As things usually go at such a stage (i.e., in the stages before the alpha), certain mistakes (including some basic conceptual errors too) were noticed even in the main document, but only after it was “carefully” completed. Currently, these are being addressed.

3. In case you are wondering about the nature of the inadvertent errors or lacunae:

Contrary to what many people might be expecting from me:

3.1: First, errors or lacunae were mainly found not regarding my new ideas concerning the measurement postulate, but rather with the more philosophical ideas concerning the quantum-physical ontology!

3.2: Second, perhaps then not very surprisingly, lacunae were also found on the more applied side of the QM postulates, especially regarding the many- particles systems and quantum entanglement.

The nature of the lacunae / errors somehow gives me a confidence that the basic ideas of my new approach themselves should be right!

4. Pre-release versions starting from the (upcoming) alpha version could perhaps be made available to select physicists, as a private communication. …

… Of course, it is a different matter altogether that I think that none would be interested in the same. (Indian and American physicists and others think that way, anyway!)

… But still, if interested, drop me a line, and I will consider having you on the distribution list (which is expected not to carry more than 8–10 people at the most, so as to keep my own email communications and the attendant diversions and confusions down to the minimum so that I myself the jobless could at all handle it).

5. The Release Candidate should get posted at iMechanica, but only for the purposes of securing an external “time-stamp”—not so much for the purposes of discussions. (The focus of iMechanica is obviously different; it’s much more on the classical engineering side—which fact I love.)

6. I will try to finish the alpha by this week-end.

The next milestones until the final release (or even the release candidates) will be decided once the alpha is actually at the hand.

7. I will announce the availability of the alpha at this blog via a separate post.

A song I like:

(Hindi) “teraa meraa pyaar amar, phir bhee mujh ko lagataa hai Dar…”
Singer: Lata Mangeshkar
Music: Shankar-Jaikishan
Lyrics: Shailendra

[No specific order is being implied by the order of the credits. … In other words, I can’t decide on it. Not for this song.]

History:

First written on my private machine: Wednesday 06 February 2019 08:35:32 AM IST
First finalized here: Wednesday 06 February 2019 11:31:05 PM IST

/

# A bit on Panpsychism—part 2: Why the idea is basically problematic, and what could be a different (and hopefully better) alternative

I continue from my last post. While the last post was fairly straight-forward, the subject-matter of this post itself is such that the writing becomes  meandering.

The basic trouble with panpsychism:

The primary referent for the concept of consciousness refers to one’s own consciousness. The existence of the same faculty in other beings is only an inference drawn from observations. If so, and in view of the two facts discussed in the last post, why can’t a similar inference be extended to everything material, too?

Well, consciousness is observed to exist only in those beings that are in fact alive. Consciousness is fundamental, sure. In Ayn Rand’s system, it even is a philosophical axiom. But qua a metaphysical existent, consciousness also happens to be only an attribute, and that too, of only one class of existents: the living beings.

Here, we will not get into the debate concerning which species can be taken as to be truly conscious, i.e., which species can be said to have an individualized, conscious grasp of reality. Personally, I believe that all living beings are conscious to some extent, even if it be only marginal in the more primitive species such as amoebae or plants.

However, regardless of whether plants can be taken to be conscious or not, we can always say that material entities that are not alive never show any evidence of being conscious. Your credit cards, spectacles, or T-shirts never show any evidence of being engaged in a process of grasping reality, or of having a definite, internal and individualized representation of any aspect of reality—no matter in how diluted, primitive or elementary form it may be posited to exist, or how fleetingly momentary such a grasp may be asserted to be. Consciousness is an attribute of only those beings that actually have life. You can’t tell your credit card to go have a life—it simply cannot. For the same reason, it can’t have the faculty to know anything, speaking literally.

Now, coming to the phenomenon of life, it is delimited on two different counts: (i) Life is an attribute possessed by only some beings in the universe, not all. (ii) Even those beings which are alive at some point of time must eventually die after the elapse of some finite period of time. When they do, their physical constituents are no different from the beings that never were alive in the first place. (This “forward-pass” kind of a logical flow is enough for us here; we need not look into the “backward-pass”, viz., the issue of whether life can arise out of the purely inanimate matter or not. It is a complicated question, and so, we will visit it some time later on.)

The physical constituents of a living organism continue to remain more or less the same after the event of its death. Even if we suppose that there is a permanent loss of some kind of a *physical* constituent or attribute at the time death, for our overall argument (concerning panpsychism) to progress, it is enough to observe and accept that at least **some** of the physical aspects continue to remain the same even after death. The continued existence of at least a part of physical constituents is sufficient to establish the following important conclusion:

Not all physical parts of the universe are at all times associated with living beings.

Given the above conclusion, it is easy to see that to speak of all parts of the reality as possessing consciousness is an elementary error: Not all parts of reality are alive at any point of time, and consciousness is an attribute of only those beings that are alive.

An aside related to reincarnation:

Even if reincarnation exists (and I do believe that it does), what persists in between two life-times is not consciousness, but only the soul.

In my view (derived from the ancient Indian traditions, of course, but also departing from it at places), the term “soul” is to be taken in sense of an individual (Sanskrit) “aatmaa.” An “aatmaa,” in my view is, loosely speaking, the “thing” which is neither created at birth nor destroyed at death. However, it is individual in nature, and remains in common across all the life-times of a given individual. Thus, I do not take the term “soul” in the sense in which Aristotle and Ayn Rand do. (For both Aristotle and Ayn Rand, the soul comes into being at birth, and ceases to exist at death.) Further, in my view, the soul has no consciousness—i.e., no feelings, not even just the desires even. For more details on my view of soul, see my earlier posts, especially these: [^][^][^].

The important point for our present discussion is this: Even if the soul were to be an attribute of all parts of the entire universe (including every inanimate objects contained in it), we still couldn’t ascribe consciousness to the inanimate parts of the universe. That is my main point here.

Another idea worth entertaining—but it is basically different from panpsychism:

Following the above-mentioned analysis, panpsychism can make sense only if what it calls “elements of consciousness” is something that is not in itself conscious, in any sense of the term.

The only idea consistent with its intended outcome can be something like a pre-consciousness, i.e., some feature or attribute or condition which, when combined with life, can give rise to a consciousness.

But note that such a pre-condition cannot mean having an actual capacity for being aware; it cannot represent the ability to have that individualized and internal grasp of reality which goes when actual living beings are actually conscious of something. That is the point to understand. The elements that panpsychism would like to have validated cannot be taken to be conscious the way it asserts they are. The elementary attributes cannot be conscious in the same sense in which we directly grasp our own consciousness, and also use it in our usual perceptions and mental functioning.

Even if you accept the more consistent idea (viz., a pre-conscious condition or a soul which may be associated with the non-living beings too), panpsychism would still have on its hands another problem to solve: if consciousness (or even just the pre-consciousness) is distributed throughout the universe, then for what reason does it get “concentrated” to such glaringly high degrees only in the living beings? For what metaphysical function? To allow for which teleological ends? And, following what kind of a process in particular? And then, what is the teleological or metaphysical function of the elements of consciousness?… From what I gather, they don’t seem to have very good ideas regarding questions and issues like these. In fact, I very much doubt if they at all have _any_ ideas in these respects.

Dr. Sabine Hossenfelder [^] notably does touch upon the animate vs. the inanimate distinction. Congratulations to her!

However, she doesn’t pursue it as much as she could have. Her main position—viz., that electrons don’t think—is reasonable, but as I will show below, this position is inevitable only when you stay within the scope of that abstraction which is the physical reality. Her argument does not become invalid, but it does become superfluous, when it comes to the entirety of existence as such (i.e., the whole universe, including all the living as well, apart from the non-living beings). To better put her position in context (as also those of others), let us perform a simple thought experiment.

The thought experiment to show why the panpsychism is basically a false idea:

Consider a cat kept in a closed wooden box. (Don’t worry; the sides of the box all carry holes, and so, the cat has no problem breathing in a normal way.) Administer some general anathesia to the cat, thereby letting her enter into a state of a kind of a deep sleep, being physically unresponsive—in particular, being unresponsive to the external physical stimuli like a simple motion of the box. Then place the cat in the wooden box, and tie its body to a fixed position using some comfortable harnesses.

If you now apply a gentle external force to the box from the outside, the cat-plus-box system can be easily described (or simulated) using physics; some simple dynamical evolution equations apply in this case. The reason is, even though the cat is a living being, the anaesthesia leads it to temporarily lose consciousness, so that nothing other than its purely physical attributes now enter the system description.

Now repeat the same experiment but when the cat is awake. As the box begins to move, the cat is sure to move its limbs and tail in response, or arch its body, etc. The *physical* attributes of her body enter the system description as before. However these physical attributes themselves are now under the influence of (or are a function of) an additional force—one which is introduced into the system description because of the actions of the consciousness of the cat. For instance, the physical attribute of any changes to the shape of its body are now governed not just by the externally applied forces, but also out of the forces generated by the cat itself, following the actions of her consciousness. (The idea of such an additional physical force is not originally mine; I got it from Dr. Harry Binswanger.) Thus, there are certain continuing physical conditions which depend on consciousness—its actions.

Can we rely on the principles or equations of physical evolution in the second case, too? Are our physical laws valid for describing the second case, too?

The answer is, yes. We can rely on the physics principles so long as we are able to bring the physical actions produced by the consciousness of the cat into our system description. We do so via that extra set of the continuing conditions. Let’s give this extra force the name: “life-physical force.”

Next, suppose the entire motion of this box+cat system occurs on a wooden table. The table (just as the wooden box) is not alive. Therefore, no special life-physical force comes into the picture while calculating the table’s actions. The table acts exactly the same way whether there is only a box, or a box with a non-responsive cat, or a box with a much meowing cat. It simply supplies reaction forces; it does not generate any active action forces.

Clearly, we can explain the actions of the table in purely physical terms. In fact doing so is relatively simpler, because we don’t have to abstract away its physical attributes the way we have to, when the object is a living and conscious being. Clearly, without any loss of generality, we can do away with panpsychism (in any of its versions) when it comes to describing the actions of the table.

Since panpsychism is a redundancy in describing the action of the table, obviously, it cannot apply to the universe as a whole. So, its basic idea is false.

Overall, my position is that panpsychism cannot be taken too seriously “as is”, because it does not discuss the intermediate aspect of life (or the distinction of living vs. non-living beings). It takes what is an attribute of only a part of the existence (the consciousnesses of all living beings), and then directly proceeds to smear it on to the entirety of existence as such. In terms of our thought experiment, it takes the consciousness of the cat and smears it onto not just the wooden box, but also onto the wooden table. But as can be seen with the thought-experiment, this is a big leap of mis-attribution. Yet a panpsychist must perform it, because an entire category of considerations is lacking in it—viz., that related to life.

What possibly would a panpsychist have to do to save his thesis? Let’s see.

Since consciousness metaphysically is only an attribute of a bigger class of entities (viz., that of living beings), the only way to rescue panpsychism would be to assert that the entire universe is always alive. This is the only way to have every part of the universe conscious.

But there are big troubles with such a “solution” too.

This formulation does away with the fact of death. If all beings are always alive, such a universe ceases to contain the fact of death. Thus, the new formulation would smear out the distinction between life and death, because it would have clubbed together both (i) the actions of life or of consciousness, and (ii) the actions of the inanimate matter, into a single, incoherent package—one that has no definition, no identity. That is the basic theoretical flaw of attempting the only way in which panpsychism could logically be saved.

Now, of course, since we have given a lifeline (pun intended) to the panpsychist, he could grab it and run with it with some further verbal gymnastics. He could possibly re-define the very life (i.e. living-ness) as a term that is not to be taken in the usual sense, but only in some basic, “elementary,” or “flavour”-some way. Possible… What would be wrong with that?

… The wrong thing is this: There are too many flavors now blurring out too many fundamental distinctions, but too few cogent definitions for all these new “concepts” of what it means to be a mere “flavour.”… Realize that the panpsychist would not be able to directly point out to a single instance of, say the table (or your T-shirt) as having some element of same kind of live which actually is present with the actual living beings.

If an alleged consciousness (or its elementary flavor or residue) cannot perform even a single action of distinguishing something consciously, but only follows the laws of physics in its actions, then what it possesses is not consciousness. Further, if an allegedly elementary form of life can have unconditional existence and never faces death, and leads to no actions other than those which follow from the laws of physics alone, then what it possesses is not life—not even in the elementary sense of the term.

In short, panpsychism is an untenable thesis.

Finally, let me reiterate that when I said that a pre-condition (or pre-consciousness, or “soul”) can remain associated with the inanimate matter too, that idea belongs to an entirely different class. It is not what panpsychists put forth.

Comments on what other bloggers have said, and a couple of relevant asides:

For the reasons discussed above, Motl[^]’s “proof” regarding panpsychism cannot be accepted as being valid—unless he, Koch, Chalmers, or others clarify what exactly they mean by terms such as “elementary” consciousness. Also, the elementary bits of “life”: can there be a $\Phi$ of life too, and if yes, how does $\Phi = 0$ differ from ordinary loss of life (i.e. death) and the attendent loss of the $\Phi$ of consciousness too.

As to Hossenfelder‘s post, if a given electron does not belong to the body of a conscious (living) being, then there exist no further complications in its physical evolution; the initial and boundary conditions specified in the purely physical terms are enough to describe its actions, its dynamical evolution, to the extent that such an evolution can at all be described using physics.

However, if an electron belongs to a conscious (living) being, then the entire of consideration of whether the electron by itself is conscious or not, whether it by itself thinks or not, becomes completely superfluous. The evolution of its motion now occurs under necessarily different conditions; you now have to bring the physical forces arising due to the action of life, of consciousness, via those additional continuing conditions. Given these additional forces, the system evolution once again follows the laws of physics. The reason for that, in turn, is this: whether an elementary particle like the electron itself is conscious or not, a big entity (like a man) surely is conscious, and the extra physical effects generated by this consciousness do have to be taken into account.

An aside: Philosophy of mind is not a handmaiden to physics or its philosophy:

While on this topic, realize that you don’t have to ascribe consciousness to the electrons of a conscious (living) being. For all you know, there could perhaps be an entirely new kind of a field (or a particle) which completely explains the phenomenon of consciousness, and so, electrons (or other particles of the standard model) can continue to remain completely inanimate at all times. We don’t know if such a field exists or not.

However, my main point here is that we don’t have to exhaust this question without observation; we don’t have to pre-empt this possibility by arbitrarily choosing to hinge the entire debate only on the particles of the standard model of physics, and slapping consciousness onto them.

Realize that the abstraction of consciousness (and all matters pertaining to it or preceding it, like the soul), is fundamentally “orthogonal” to the abstractions of physics, of physical reality. (Here, see my last post.) You don’t commit the error of taking a model (even the most comprehensive model) of physics, and implicitly ask philosophy of mind to restrict its scope to this model (which itself may get revised later on!) Physics might not be a handmaiden to philosophy, but neither is philosophy a handmaiden to physics.

Finally coming to Schlafly‘s post, he too touches upon Hossenfelder’s post, but he covers it from the advance viewpoints of free-will, mind-body connection, Galen’s argument etc.[^]. I won’t discuss his post or positions in detail here because these considerations indeed are much more complicated and advanced.

Another aside: How Galen’s argument involves a superfluous consideration:

However, one point that can be noted here is that Galen fails to make the distinction of whether the atom he considers exists as a part of a conscious (living) being’s body, or whether it is a part of some inanimate object. In the former case, whether the electron itself is conscious or not (and whether there is an extra particle or field of consciousness or not, and whether there is yet another field or particle to explain the phenomenon of life or not), a description of the physical evolution of the system would still have to include the aforementioned life-physical force. Thus, the issue of whether the electron is conscious or not is a superfluous consideration. In other words, Galen’s argument involves a non-essential consideration, and therefore, it is not potent enough to settle the related issues.

Homework for you:

• If panpsychism were to be true, your credit card, spectacles, or T-shirt would be conscious in some “elementary” sense, and so, they would have to be able to hold some “elementary” items of cognition. The question is, where and through what means do you suppose it might be keeping it? That is to say, what are the physical (or physico-electro-chemical-etc.) correlates for their content of consciousness? For instance, can a tape-recorder be taken to be conscious? Can the recording on the tape be taken as the storage of its “knowledge”? If you answer “yes,” then extend the question to the tape of the tape-recorder. Can it be said to be conscious?
• Can there be a form of consciousness which does not carry a sense of self even in the implicit terms? As it so actually happens, i.e., in reality, a conscious being doesn’t have to be able to isolate and consciously hold that it has self; but it only has to act with a sense of its own life, its own consciousness. The question asks whether, hypothetically, we can do away with that implicit sense of its own life and consciousness itself, or not.
• Can there be a form of consciousness which comes without any mind-body integrating mechanisms such as some kinesthetic senses of feedback, including some emotions (perhaps even just so simple emotions such as the pleasure-pain mechanism)? Should there be medical specializations for addressing the mental health issues of tables? of electric switches? of computers?
• Could, by any stretch of imagination, the elementary consciousness (as proposed by panpsychists) be volitional in nature?
• Should there be a law to protect the rights of your credit card? of your spectacles? of your T-shirt? of a tape-recorder? of your laptop? of an artificial neural network running on your laptop?
• To those who are knowledgeable about ancient Indian wisdom regarding the spiritual matters, and wish to trace panpsychism to it: If a “yogi” could do “tapascharyaa” even while existing only as an “aatmaa” i.e. even when he is not actually alive, then why should he at all have to take a birth? Why do they say that even “deva”s also have to take a human birth in order to break the bonds of “karma” and thereby attain spiritual purity?

More than three thousand words (!!) but sometimes it is necessary. In any case, I just wanted to finish off this topic so that I could return full-time to Data Science. (I will, however, try to avoid this big a post the next time; cf. my NYRs—2019 edition [^].)

A song I like:
(Marathi) “santha vaahate krushNaa maai”
Music: Datta Davajekar

# Absolutely Random Notings on QM—Part 3: Links to some (really) interesting material, with my comments

The “pride of place” for this post goes to a link to this book:

Norsen, Travis (2017) “Foundations of Quantum Mechanics: An Exploration of the Physical Meaning of Quantum Theory,” Springer

This book is (i) the best supplementary book for a self-study of QM, and simultaneously, also (ii) the best text-book on a supplementary course on QM, both at the better-prepared UG / beginning PG level.

A bit expensive though, but extensive preview is available on Google books, here [^]. (I plan to buy it once I land a job.)

I was interested in the material from the first three chapters only, more or less. It was a delight even just browsing through these chapters. I intend to read it more carefully soon enough. But even on the first, rapid browsing, I noticed that several pieces of understanding that I had so painstakingly come to develop (over a period of years) are given quite straight-forwardly here, as if they were a matter of well known facts—even if other QM text-books only cursorily mention them, if at all.

For instance, see the explanation of entanglement here. Norsen begins by identifying that there is a single wavefunction, always—even for a multi-particle system. Then after some explanation, he states: “But, as usual in quantum mechanics, these states do not exhaust the possibilities—instead, they merely form a basis for the space of all possible wave functions. …”… Note the emphasis on the word “basis” which Norsen helpfully puts.

Putting this point (which Norsen discusses with a concrete example), but in my words: There is always a single wavefunction, and for a multi-particle system, its basis is bigger; it consists of the components of the tensor product (formed from the components of the basis of the constituent systems). Sometimes, the single wavefunction for the multi-particle system can be expressed as a result of a single tensor-product (in which case it’s a separable state), and at all other times, only as an algebraic sum of the results of many such tensor-products (in which case they all are entangled states).

Notice how there is no false start of going from two separate systems, and then attempting to forge a single system out of them. Notice how, therefore, there is no hand-waving at one electron being in one galaxy, and another electron in another galaxy, and so on, as if to apologize for the very idea of the separable states. Norsen achieves the correct effect by beginning on the right note: the emphasis on the single wavefunction for the system as a whole to begin with, and then clarifying, at the right place, that what the tensor product gives you is only the basis set for the composite wavefunction.

There are many neat passages like this in the text.

I was about to say that Norsen’s book is the Resnick and Halliday of QM, but then came to hesitate saying so, because I noticed something odd even if my browsing of the book was rapid and brief.

Then I ran into

Ian Durham’s review of Norsen’s book, at the FQXi blog,

which is our link # 2 for this post [^].

Durham helpfully brings out the following two points (which I then verified during a second visit to Norsen’s book): (i) Norsen’s book is not exactly at the UG level, and (ii) the book is a bit partial to Bell’s characterization of the quantum riddles as well as to the Bohmian approach for their resolution.

The second point—viz., Norsen’s fascination for / inclination towards Bell and Bohm (B&B for short)—becomes important only because the book is, otherwise, so good: it carries so many points that are not even passingly mentioned in other QM books, is well written (in a conversational style, as if a speech-to-text translator were skillfully employed), easy to understand, thorough, and overall (though I haven’t read even 25% of it, from whatever I have browsed), it otherwise seems fairly well balanced.

It is precisely because of these virtues that you might come out giving more weightage to the B&B company than is actually due to them.

Keep that warning somewhere at the back of your mind, but do go through the book anyway. It’s excellent.

At Amazon, it has got 5 reader reviews, all with 5 stars. If I were to bother doing a review there, I too perhaps would give it 5 stars—despite its shortcomings/weaknesses. OK. At least 4 stars. But mostly 5 though. … I am in an indeterminate state of their superposition.

… But mark my words. This book will have come to shape (or at least to influence) every good exposition of (i.e. introduction to) the area of the Foundations of QM, in the years to come. [I say that, because I honestly don’t expect a better book on this topic to arrive on the scene all that soon.]

Which brings us to someone who wouldn’t assign the $|4\rangle + |5\rangle$ stars to this book. Namely, Lubos Motl.

If Norsen has moved in the Objectivist circles, and is partial to the B&B company, Motl has worked in the string theory, and is not just partial to it but even today defends it very vigorously—and oddly enough, also looks at that “supersymmetric world from a conservative viewpoint.” More relevant to us: Motl is not partial to the Copenhagen interpretation; he is all the way into it. … Anyway, being merely partial is something you wouldn’t expect from Motl, would you?

But, of course, Motl also has a very strong grasp of QM, and he displays it well (even powerfully) when he writes a post of the title:

“Postulates of quantum mechanics almost directly follow from experiments.” [^]

Err… Why “almost,” Lubos? 🙂

… Anyway, go through Motl’s post, even if you don’t like the author’s style or some of his expressions. It has a lot of educational material packed in it. Chances are, going through Motl’s posts (like the present one) will come to improve your understanding—even if you don’t share his position.

As to me: No, speaking from the new understanding which I have come to develop regarding the foundations of QM [^] and [^], I don’t think that all of Motl’s objections would carry. Even then, just for the sake of witnessing the tight weaving-in of the arguments, do go through Motl’s post.

Finally, a post at the SciAm blog:

“Coming to grips with the implications of quantum mechanics,” by Bernardo Kastrup, Henry P. Stapp, and Menas C. Kafatos, [^].

The authors say:

“… Taken together, these experiments [which validate the maths of QM] indicate that the everyday world we perceive does not exist until observed, which in turn suggests—as we shall argue in this essay—a primary role for mind in nature.”

No, it didn’t give me shivers or something. Hey, this is QM and its foundations, right? I am quite used to reading such declarations.

Except that, as I noted a few years ago on Scott Aaronson’s blog [I need to dig up and insert the link here], and then, recently, also at

Roger Schlafly’s blog [^],

you don’t need QM in order to commit the error of inserting consciousness into a physical theory. You can accomplish exactly the same thing also by using just the Newtonian particle mechanics in your philosophical arguments. Really.

Yes, I need to take that reply (at Schlafly’s blog), edit it a bit and post it as a separate entry at this blog. … Some other time.

For now, I have to run. I have to continue working on my approach so that I am able to answer the questions raised and discussed by people such as those mentioned in the links. But before that, let me jot down a general update.

A general update:

Oh, BTW, I have taken my previous QM-related post off the top spot.

That doesn’t mean anything. In particular, it doesn’t mean that after reading into materials such as that mentioned here, I have found some error in my approach or something like that. No. Not at all.

All it means is that I made it once again an ordinary post, not a sticky post. I am thinking of altering the layout of this blog, by creating a page that highlights that post, as well as some other posts.

But coming back to my approach: As a matter of fact, I have also written emails to a couple of physicists, one from IIT Bombay, and another from IISER Pune. However, things have not worked out yet—things like arranging for an informal seminar to be delivered by me to their students, or collaborating on some QM-related simulations together. (I could do the simulations on my own, but for the seminar, I would need an audience! One of them did reply, but we still have to shake our hands in the second round.)

In the meanwhile, I go jobless, but I keep myself busy. I am preparing a shortish set of write-ups / notes which could be used as a background material when (at some vague time in future) I go and talk to some students, say at IIT Bombay/IISER Pune. It won’t be comprehensive. It will be a little more than just a white-paper, but you couldn’t possibly call it even just the preliminary notes for my new approach. Such preliminary notes would come out only after I deliver a seminar or two, to physics professors + students.

At the time of delivering my proposed seminar, links like those I have given above, esp. Travis Norsen’s book, also should prove a lot useful.

But no, I haven’t seen something like my approach being covered anywhere, so far, not even Norsen’s book. There was a vague mention of just a preliminary part of it somewhere on Roger Schlafly’s blog several years ago, only once or so, but I can definitely say that I had already had grasped even that point on my own before Schlafly’s post came. And, as far as I know, Schlafly hasn’t come to pursue that thread at all, any time later…

But speaking overall, at least as of today, I think I am the only one who has pursued this (my) line of thought to the extent I have [^].

So, there. Bye for now.

I Song I Like:
(Hindi) “suno gajar kya gaaye…”
Singer: Geeta Dutt
Music: S. D. Burman
Lyrics: Sahir Ludhianvi
[There are two Geeta’s here, and both are very fascinating: Geeta Dutt in the audio, and Geeta Bali in the video. Go watch it; even the video is recommended.]

As usual, some editing after even posting, would be inevitable.

Some updates made and some streamlining done on 30 July 2018, 09:10 hrs IST.

# Absolutely Random Notings on QM—Part 1: Bohr. And, a bad philosophy making its way into physics with his work, and his academic influence

TL;DR: Go—and keep—away.

I am still firming up my opinions. However, there is never a harm in launching yet another series of posts on a personal blog, is there? So here we go…

Quantum Mechanics began with Planck. But there was no theory of quanta in what Planck had offered.

What Planck had done was to postulate only the existence of the quanta of the energy, in the cavity radiation.

Einstein used this idea to predict the heat capacities of solids—a remarkable work, one that remains underappreciated in both text-books as well as popular science books on QM.

The first pretense at a quantum theory proper came from Bohr.

Matter, esp. gases, following Dalton, …, Einstein, and Perin, were made of distinct atoms. The properties of gases—especially the reason why they emitted or absorbed radiation only at certain distinct frequencies, but not at any other frequencies (including those continuous patches of frequencies in between the experimentally evident sharp peaks)—had to be explained in reference to what the atoms themselves were like. There was no other way out—not yet, not given the sound epistemology in physics of those days.

Thinking up a new universe still was not allowed back then in science let alone in physics. One still had to clearly think about explaining what was given in observations, what was in evidence. Effects still had be related back to causes; outward actions still had to be related back to the character/nature of the entities that thus acted.

The actor, unquestionably by now, was the atom. The effects were the discrete spectra. Not much else was known.

Those were the days were when the best hotels and restaurants in Berlin, London, and New York would have horse-driven buggies ushering in the socially important guests. Buggies still was the latest technology back then. Not many people thus ushered in are remembered today. But Bohr is.

If the atom was the actor, and the effects under study were the discrete spectra, then what was needed to be said, in theory, was something regarding the structure of the atom.

If an imagined entity sheer by its material/chemical type doesn’t do it, then it’s the structure—its shape and size—which must do it.

Back then, this still was regarded as one of the cardinal principles of science, unlike the mindless opposition to the science of Homeopathy today, esp. in the UK. But back then, it was known that one important reason that Calvin gets harassed by the school bully was that not just the sheer size of the latter’s matter but also that the structure of the latter was different. In other words: If you consumed alcohol, you simply didn’t take in so many atoms of carbon as in proportion to so many atoms of hydrogen, etc. You took in a structure, a configuration with which these atoms came in.

However, the trouble back then was, none had have the means to see the atoms.

If by structure you mean the geometrical shape and size, or some patterns of density, then clearly, there was no experimental observations pertaining to the same. The only relevant observation available to people back then was what had already been encapsulated in Rutherford’s model, viz., the incontestable idea that the atomic nucleus had to be massive and dense, occupying a very small space as compared to an atom taken as a whole; the electrons had to carry very little mass in comparison. (The contrast of Rutherford’s model of c. 1911 was to the earlier plum cake model by Thomson.)

Bohr would, therefore, have to start with Rutherford’s model of atoms, and invent some new ideas concerning it, and see if his model was consistent with the known results given by spectroscopic observations.

What Bohr offered was a model for the electrons contained in a nuclear atom.

However, even while differing from the Rutherford’s plum-cake model, Bohr’s model emphatically lacked a theory for the nature of the electrons themselves. This part has been kept underappreciated by the textbook authors and science teachers.

In particular, Bohr’s theory had absolutely no clue as to the process according to which the electrons could, and must, jump in between their stable orbits.

The meat of the matter was worse, far worse: Bohr had explicitly prohibited from pursuing any mechanism or explanation concerning the quantum jumps—an idea which he was the first to propose. [I don’t know of any one else originally but independently proposing the same idea.]

Bohr achieved this objective not through any deployment of the best possible levels of scientific reason but out of his philosophic convictions—the convictions of the more irrational kind. The quantum jumps were obviously not observable, according to him, only their effects were. So, strictly speaking, the quantum jumps couldn’t possibly be a part of his theory—plain and simple!

But then, Bohr in his philosophic enthusiasm didn’t stop just there. He went even further—much further. He fully deployed the powers of his explicit reasoning as well as the weight of his seniority in prohibiting the young physicists from even thinking of—let alone ideating or offering—any mechanism for such quantum jumps.

In other words, Bohr took special efforts to keep the young quantum enthusiasts absolutely and in principle clueless, as far as his quantum jumps were concerned.

Bohr’s theory, in a sense, was in line with the strictest demands of the philosophy of empiricism. Here is how Bohr’s application of this philosophy went:

1. This electron—it can be measured!—at this energy level, now!
2. [May be] The same electron, but this energy level, now!
3. This energy difference, this frequency. Measured! [Thank you experimental spectroscopists; hats off to you, for, you leave Bohr alone!!]
4. OK. Now, put the above three into a cohesive “theory.” And, BTW, don’t you ever even try to think about anything else!!

Continuing just a bit on the same lines, Bohr sure would have said (quoting Peikoff’s explanation of the philosophy of empiricism):

1. [Looking at a tomato] We can only say this much in theory: “This, now, tomato!”
2. Making a leeway for the most ambitious ones of the ilk: “This *red* tomato!!”

Going by his explicit philosophic convictions, it must have been a height of “speculation” for Bohr to mumble something—anything—about a thing like “orbit.” After all, even by just mentioning a word like “orbit,” Bohr was being absolutely philosophically inconsistent here. Dear reader, observe that the orbit itself never at all was an observable!

Bohr must have in his conscience convulsed at this fact; his own philosophy couldn’t possibly have, strictly speaking, permitted him to accommodate into his theory a non-measurable feature of a non-measurable entity—such as his orbits of his electrons. Only the allure of outwardly producing predictions that matched with the experiment might have quietened his conscience—and that too, temporarily. At least until he got a new stone-building housing an Institute for himself and/or a Physics Nobel, that is.

Possible. With Herr Herr Herr Doktor Doktor Doktor Professor Professors, anything is possible.

It is often remarked that the one curious feature of the Bohr theory was the fact that the stability of the electronic orbits was postulated in it, not explained.

That is, not explained in reference to any known physical principle. The analogy to the solar system indeed was just that: an analogy. It was not a reference to an established physical principle.

However, the basically marvelous feature of the Bohr theory was not that the orbits were stable (in violation of the known laws of electrodynamics). It was: there at all were any orbits in it, even if no experiment had ever given any evidence for the continuously or discontinuously subsequent positions electrons within an atom or of their motions.

So much for originator of the cult of sticking only to the “observables.”

What Sommerfeld did was to add footnotes to Bohr’s work.

Sommerfeld did this work admirably well.

However, what this instance in the history of physics clearly demonstrates is yet another principle from the epistemology of physics: how a man of otherwise enormous mathematical abilities and training (and an academically influential position, I might add), but having evidently no remarkable capacity for a very novel, breakthrough kind of conceptual thinking, just cannot but fall short of making any lasting contributions to physics.

“Math” by itself simply isn’t enough for physics.

What came to be known as the old quantum theory, thus, faced an impasse.

Under Bohr’s (and philosophers’) loving tutorship, the situation continued for a long time—for more than a decade!

A Song I Like:

(Marathi) “sakhi ga murali mohan mohi manaa…”
Music: Hridaynath Mangeshkar
Singer: Asha Bhosale
Lyrics: P. Savalaram

PS: Only typos and animals of the similar ilk remain to be corrected.

# “Philosophical Orientation”

An update on 27 April 2018 06:30 HRS IST, noted at the end:

Here is a beginning of a passage, a section, from a book on QM (now-a-days available through the Dover). The section was the very first one from the very first chapter, and was aptly called “Philosophical Orientation.” It began thus:

$\dots$ For what purpose, dear reader, do you study physics?

To use it technologically? Physics can be put to use; so can art and music. But that’s not why you study them.

It isn’t their social relevance that attracts you. The most precious things in life are the irrelevant ones. It is a meager life, indeed, that is consumed only by the relevant, by the problems of mere survival.

You study physics because you find it fascinating. You find poetry in conceptual structures. You find it romantic to understand the working of nature. You study physics to acquire an intimacy with nature’s way.

Our entire understanding of nature’s way is founded on the subject called quantum mechanics. No fact of nature has ever been discovered that contradicts quantum mechanics. $\dots$

A good passage to read, that one was. $\dots$. It was (I guess originally) published as late as in 1987. $\dots$

An update on 27 April 2018 06:30 HRS IST:

Initially, when I put this post online, I had thought that, sure, people would be able to copy-paste the quote, and thereby get to the book. But looks like they won’t. Hence this update.

The book in question is this:

Chester, Marvin (1987) “Primer of Quantum Mechanics,” Wiley; reproduced as a Dover ed. (2003) from the corrected Krieger ed. (1992).

If you ask for my opinion about the book: It’s a (really) good one, but despite being “philosophical,” like all texts on QM, it still tends to miss the forest for the trees. And it doesn’t even mention entanglement (not in the index, anyway). Entanglement began to appear in the text-books only after the mid-90’s, I gather. Also another thing: It’s not a primer. It’s a summary, meant for the graduate student. But it’s written in a pretty neat way. If you have already had a course on QM, then you should go through it. Several issues (say those related to measurement, and the QM machinery) are explained very neatly here.

A Song I Like:

[Yet another song I liked as a school-boy child; one of those which I still do. $\dots$ Not too sure about the order of the credits though $\dots$]

(Hindi) “meraa to jo bhi kadam hai…”
Music: Laxmikant-Pyarelal
Lyrics: Majrooh Sultanpuri

# Yes I know it!

Note: A long update was posted on 12th December 2017, 11:35 IST.

This post is spurred by my browsing of certain twitter feeds of certain pop-sci. writers.

The URL being highlighted—and it would be, say, “negligible,” but for the reputation of the Web domain name on which it appears—is this: [^].

I want to remind you that I know the answers to all the essential quantum mysteries.

Not only that, I also want to remind you that I can discuss about them, in person.

It’s just that my circumstances—past, and present (though I don’t know about future)—which compel me to say, definitely, that I am not available for writing it down for you (i.e. for the layman) whether here or elsewhere, as of now. Neither am I available for discussions on Skype, or via video conferencing, or with whatever “remoting” mode you have in mind. Uh… Yes… WhatsApp? Include it, too. Or something—anything—like that. Whether such requests come from some millionaire Indian in USA (and there are tons of them out there), or otherwise. Nope. A flat no is the answer for all such requests. They are out of question, bounds… At least for now.

… Things may change in future, but at least for the time being, the discussions would have to be with those who already have studied (the non-relativistic) quantum physics as it is taught in universities, up to graduate (PhD) level.

And, you have to have discussions in person. That’s the firm condition being set (for the gain of their knowledge 🙂 ).

Just wanted to remind you, that’s all!

Update on 12th December 2017, 11:35 AM IST:

I have moved the update to a new post.

A Song I Like:

(Western, Instrumental) “Berlin Melody”
Credits: Billy Vaughn

[The same 45 RPM thingie [as in here [^], and here [^]] . … I was always unsure whether I liked this one better or the “Come September” one. … Guess, after the n-th thought, that it was this one. There is an odd-even thing about it. For odd ‘n” I think this one is better. For even ‘n’, I think the “Come September” is better.

… And then, there also are a few more musical goodies which came my way during that vacation, and I will make sure that they find their way to you too….

Actually, it’s not the simple odd-even thing. The maths here is more complicated than just the binary logic. It’s an n-ary logic. And, I am “equally” divided among them all. (4+ decades later, I still remain divided.)… (But perhaps the “best” of them was a Marathi one, though it clearly showed a best sort of a learning coming from also the Western music. I will share it the next time.)]

[As usual, may be, another revision [?]… Is it due? Yes, one was due. Have edited streamlined the main post, and then, also added a long update on 12th December 2017, as noted above.]

# Blog-Filling—Part 3

Note: A long Update was added on 23 November 2017, at the end of the post.

Today I got just a little bit of respite from what has been a very tight schedule, which has been running into my weekends, too.

But at least for today, I do have a bit of a respite. So, I could at least think of posting something.

But for precisely the same reason, I don’t have any blogging material ready in the mind. So, I will just note something interesting that passed by me recently:

1. Catastrophe Theory: Check out Prof. Zhigang Suo’s recent blog post at iMechanica on catastrophe theory, here [^]; it’s marked by Suo’s trademark simplicity. He also helpfully provides a copy of Zeeman’s 1976 SciAm article, too. Regular readers of this blog will know that I am a big fan of the catastrophe theory; see, for instance, my last post mentioning the topic, here [^].
2. Computational Science and Engineering, and Python: If you are into computational science and engineering (which is The Proper And The Only Proper long-form of “CSE”), and wish to have fun with Python, then check out Prof. Hans Petter Langtangen’s excellent books, all under Open Source. Especially recommended is his “Finite Difference Computing with PDEs—A Modern Software Approach” [^]. What impressed me immediately was the way the author begins this book with the wave equation, and not with the diffusion or potential equation as is the routine practice in the FDM (or CSE) books. He also provides the detailed mathematical reason for his unusual choice of ordering the material, but apart from his reason(s), let me add in a comment here: wave $\Rightarrow$ diffusion $\Rightarrow$ potential (Poisson-Laplace) precisely was the historical order in which the maths of PDEs (by which I mean both the formulations of the equations and the techniques for their solutions) got developed—even though the modern trend is to reverse this order in the name of “simplicity.” The book comes with Python scripts; you don’t have to copy-paste code from the PDF (and then keep correcting the errors of characters or indentations). And, the book covers nonlinearity too.
3. Good Notes/Teachings/Explanations of UG Quantum Physics: I ran across Dan Schroeder’s “Entanglement isn’t just for spin.” Very true. And it needed to be said [^]. BTW, if you want a more gentle introduction to the UG-level QM than is presented in Allan Adam (et al)’s MIT OCW 8.04–8.06 [^], then make sure to check out Schroeder’s course at Weber [^] too. … Personally, though, I keep on fantasizing about going through all the videos of Adam’s course and taking out notes and posting them at my Web site. [… sigh]
4. The Supposed Spirituality of the “Quantum Information” Stored in the “Protein-Based Micro-Tubules”: OTOH, if you are more into philosophy of quantum mechanics, then do check out Roger Schlafly’s latest post, not to mention my comment on it, here [^].

The point no. 4. above was added in lieu of the usual “A Song I Like” section. The reason is, though I could squeeze in the time to write this post, I still remain far too rushed to think of a song—and to think/check if I have already run it here or not. But I will try add one later on, either to this post, or, if there is a big delay, then as the next “blog filler” post, the next time round.

[Update on 23 Nov. 2017 09:25 AM IST: Added the Song I Like section; see below]

OK, that’s it! … Will catch you at some indefinite time in future here, bye for now and take care…

A Song I Like:

(Western, Instrumental) “Theme from ‘Come September'”
Credits: Bobby Darin (?) [+ Billy Vaughn (?)]

[I grew up in what were absolutely rural areas in Maharashtra, India. All my initial years till my 9th standard were limited, at its upper end in the continuum of urbanity, to Shirpur, which still is only a taluka place. And, back then, it was a decidedly far more of a backward + adivasi region. The population of the main town itself hadn’t reached more than 15,000 or so by the time I left it in my X standard; the town didn’t have a single traffic light; most of the houses including the one we lived in) were load-bearing structures, not RCC; all the roads in the town were of single lanes; etc.

Even that being the case, I happened to listen to this song—a Western song—right when I was in Shirpur, in my 2nd/3rd standard. I first heard the song at my Mama’s place (an engineer, he was back then posted in the “big city” of the nearby Jalgaon, a district place).

As to this song, as soon as I listened to it, I was “into it.” I remained so for all the days of that vacation at Mama’s place. Yes, it was a 45 RPM record, and the permission to put the record on the player and even to play it, entirely on my own, was hard won after a determined and tedious effort to show all the elders that I was able to put the pin on to the record very carefully. And, every one in the house was an elder to me: my siblings, cousins, uncle, his wife, not to mention my parents (who were the last ones to be satisfied). But once the recognition arrived, I used it to the hilt; I must have ended up playing this record for at least 5 times for every remaining day of the vacation back then.

As far as I am concerned, I am entirely positive that appreciation for a certain style or kind of music isn’t determined by your environment or the specific culture in which you grow up.

As far as songs like these are concerned, today I am able to discern that what I had immediately though indirectly grasped, even as a 6–7 year old child, was what I today would describe as a certain kind of an “epistemological cleanliness.” There was a clear adherence to certain definitive, delimited kind of specifics, whether in terms of tones or rhythm. Now, it sure did help that this tune was happy. But frankly, I am certain, I would’ve liked a “clean” song like this one—one with very definite “separations”/”delineations” in its phrases, in its parts—even if the song itself weren’t to be so directly evocative of such frankly happy a mood. Indian music, in contrast, tends to keep “continuity” for its own sake, even when it’s not called for, and the certain downside of that style is that it leads to a badly mixed up “curry” of indefinitely stretched out weilings, even noise, very proudly passing as “music”. (In evidence: pick up any traditional “royal palace”/”kothaa” music.) … Yes, of course, there is a symmetrical downside to the specific “separated” style carried by the Western music too; the specific style of noise it can easily slip into is a disjointed kind of a noise. (In evidence, I offer 90% of Western classical music, and 99.99% of Western popular “music”. As to which 90%, well, we have to meet in person, and listen to select pieces of music on the fly.)

Anyway, coming back to the present song, today I searched for the original soundtrack of “Come September”, and got, say, this one [^]. However, I am not too sure that the version I heard back then was this one. Chances are much brighter that the version I first listened to was Billy Vaughn’s, as in here [^].

… A wonderful tune, and, as an added bonus, it never does fail to take me back to my “salad days.” …

… Oh yes, as another fond memory: that vacation also was the very first time that I came to wear a T-shirt; my Mama had gifted it to me in that vacation. The actual choice to buy a T-shirt rather than a shirt (+shorts, of course) was that of my cousin sister (who unfortunately is no more). But I distinctly remember she being surprised to learn that I was in no mood to have a T-shirt when I didn’t know what the word meant… I also distinctly remember her assuring me using sweet tones that a T-shirt would look good on me! … You see, in rural India, at least back then, T-shirts weren’t heard of; for years later on, may be until I went to Nasik in my 10th standard, it would be the only T-shirt I had ever worn. … But, anyway, as far as T-shirts go… well, as you know, I was into software engineering, and so….

Bye [really] for now and take care…]

# Is something like a re-discovery of the same thing by the same person possible?

Yes, we continue to remain very busy.

However, in spite of all that busy-ness, in whatever spare time I have [in the evenings, sometimes at nights, why, even on early mornings [which is quite unlike me, come to think of it!]], I cannot help but “think” in a bit “relaxed” [actually, abstract] manner [and by “thinking,” I mean: musing, surmising, etc.] about… about what else but: QM!

So, I’ve been doing that. Sort of like, relaxed distant wonderings about QM…

Idle musings like that are very helpful. But they also carry a certain danger: it is easy to begin to believe your own story, even if the story itself is not being borne by well-established equations (i.e. by physic-al evidence).

But keeping that part aside, and thus coming to the title question: Is it possible that the same person makes the same discovery twice?

It may be difficult to believe so, but I… I seemed to have managed to have pulled precisely such a trick.

Of course, the “discovery” in question is, relatively speaking, only a part of of the whole story, and not the whole story itself. Still, I do think that I had discovered a certain important part of a conclusion about QM a while ago, and then, later on, had completely forgotten about it, and then, in a slow, patient process, I seem now to have worked inch-by-inch to reach precisely the same old conclusion.

In short, I have re-discovered my own (unpublished) conclusion. The original discovery was may be in the first half of this calendar year. (I might have even made a hand-written note about it, I need to look up my hand-written notes.)

Now, about the conclusion itself. … I don’t know how to put it best, but I seem to have reached the conclusion that the postulates of quantum mechanics [^], say as stated by Dirac and von Neumann [^], have been conceptualized inconsistently.

Please note the issue and the statement I am making, carefully. As you know, more than 9 interpretations of QM [^][^][^] have been acknowledged right in the mainstream studies of QM [read: University courses] themselves. Yet, none of these interpretations, as far as I know, goes on to actually challenge the quantum mechanical formalism itself. They all do accept the postulates just as presented (say by Dirac and von Neumann, the two “mathematicians” among the physicists).

Coming to me, my positions: I, too, used to say exactly the same thing. I used to say that I agree with the quantum postulates themselves. My position was that the conceptual aspects of the theory—at least all of them— are missing, and so, these need to be supplied, and if the need be, these also need to be expanded.

But, as far as the postulates themselves go, mine used to be the same position as that in the mainstream.

Until this morning.

Then, this morning, I came to realize that I have “re-discovered,” (i.e. independently discovered for the second time), that I actually should not be buying into the quantum postulates just as stated; that I should be saying that there are theoretical/conceptual errors/misconceptions/misrepresentations woven-in right in the very process of formalization which produced these postulates.

Since I think that I should be saying so, consider that, with this blog post, I have said so.

Just one more thing: the above doesn’t mean that I don’t accept Schrodinger’s equation. I do. In fact, I now seem to embrace Schrodinger’s equation with even more enthusiasm than I have ever done before. I think it’s a very ingenious and a very beautiful equation.

A Song I Like:

(Hindi) “tum jo hue mere humsafar”
Music: O. P. Nayyar
Singers: Geeta Dutt and Mohammad Rafi
Lyrics: Majrooh Sultanpuri

Update on 2017.10.14 23:57 IST: Streamlined a bit, as usual.

# Off the blog. [“Matter” cannot act “where” it is not.]

I am going to go off the blogging activity in general, and this blog in most particular, for some time. [And, this time round, I will keep my promise.]

The reason is, I’ve just received the shipment of a book which I had ordered about a month ago. Though only about 300 pages in length, it’s going to take me weeks to complete. And, the book is gripping enough, and the issue important enough, that I am not going to let a mere blog or two—or the entire Internet—come in the way.

I had read it once, almost cover-to-cover, some 25 years ago, while I was a student in UAB.

Reading a book cover-to-cover—I mean: in-sequence, and by that I mean: starting from the front-cover and going through the pages in the same sequence as the one in which the book has been written, all the way to the back-cover—was quite odd a thing to have happened with me, at that time. It was quite unlike my usual habits whereby I am more or less always randomly jumping around in a book, even while reading one for the very first time.

But this book was different; it was extraordinarily engaging.

In fact, as I vividly remember, I had just idly picked up this book off a shelf from the Hill library of UAB, for a casual examination, had browsed it a bit, and then had began sampling some passage from nowhere in the middle of the book while standing in an library aisle. Then, some little time later, I was engrossed in reading it—with a folded elbow resting on the shelf, head turned down and resting against a shelf rack (due to a general weakness due to a physical hunger which I was ignoring [and I would have have to go home and cook something for myself; there was none to do that for me; and so, it was easy enough to ignore the hunger]). I don’t honestly remember how the pages turned. But I do remember that I must have already finished some 15-20 pages (all “in-the-order”!) before I even realized that I had been reading this book while still awkwardly resting against that shelf-rack. …

… I checked out the book, and once home [student dormitory], began reading it starting from the very first page. … I took time, days, perhaps weeks. But whatever the length of time that I did take, with this book, I didn’t have to jump around the pages.

The issue that the book dealt with was:

[Instantaneous] Action at a Distance.

The book in question was:

Hesse, Mary B. (1961) “Forces and Fields: The concept of Action at a Distance in the history of physics,” Philosophical Library, Edinburgh and New York.

It was the very first book I had found, I even today distinctly remember, in which someone—someone, anyone, other than me—had cared to think about the issues like the IAD, the concepts like fields and point particles—and had tried to trace their physical roots, to understand the physical origins behind these (and such) mathematical concepts. (And, had chosen to say “concepts” while meaning ones, rather than trying to hide behind poor substitute words like “ideas”, “experiences”, “issues”, “models”, etc.)

But now coming to Hesse’s writing style, let me quote a passage from one of her research papers. I ran into this paper only recently, last month (in July 2017), and it was while going through it that I happened [once again] to remember her book. Since I did have some money in hand, I did immediately decide to order my copy of this book.

Anyway, the paper I have in mind is this:

Hesse, Mary B. (1955) “Action at a Distance in Classical Physics,” Isis, Vol. 46, No. 4 (Dec., 1955), pp. 337–353, University of Chicago Press/The History of Science Society.

The paper (it has no abstract) begins thus:

The scholastic axiom that “matter cannot act where it is not” is one of the very general metaphysical principles found in science before the seventeenth century which retain their relevance for scientific theory even when the metaphysics itself has been discarded. Other such principles have been fruitful in the development of physics: for example, the “conservation of motion” stated by Descartes and Leibniz, which was generalized and given precision in the nineteenth century as the doctrine of the conservation of energy; …

Here is another passage, once again, from the same paper:

Now Faraday uses a terminology in speaking about the lines of force which is derived from the idea of a bundle of elastic strings stretched under tension from point to point of the field. Thus he speaks of “tension” and “the number of lines” cut by a body moving in the field. Remembering his discussion about contiguous particles of a dielectric medium, one must think of the strings as stretching from one particle of the medium to the next in a straight line, the distance between particles being so small that the line appears as a smooth curve. How seriously does he take this model? Certainly the bundle of elastic strings is nothing like those one can buy at the store. The “number of lines” does not refer to a definite number of discrete material entities, but to the amount of force exerted over a given area in the field. It would not make sense to assign points through which a line passes and points which are free from a line. The field of force is continuous.

See the flow of the writing? the authentic respect for the intellectual history, and yet, the overriding concern for having to reach a conclusion, a meaning? the appreciation for the subtle drama? the clarity of thought, of expression?

Well, these passages were from the paper, but the book itself, too, is similarly written.

Obviously, while I remain engaged in [re-]reading the book [after a gap of 25 years], don’t expect me to blog.

After all, even I cannot act “where” I am not.

A Song I Like:

[I thought a bit between this song and another song, one by R.D. Burman, Gulzar and Lata. In the end, it was this song which won out. As usual, in making my decision, the reference was exclusively made to the respective audio tracks. In fact, in the making of this decision, I happened to have also ignored even the excellent guitar pieces in this song, and the orchestration in general in both. The words and the tune were too well “fused” together in this song; that’s why. I do promise you to run the RD song once I return. In the meanwhile, I don’t at all mind keeping you guessing. Happy guessing!]

(Hindi) “bheegi bheegi…” [“bheege bheege lamhon kee bheegee bheegee yaadein…”]
Music and Lyrics: Kaushal S. Inamdar
Singer: Hamsika Iyer