Quantum Non-Linearity: Anti-Dualist Observation Number 1: The Rotation of Hyperion

Sunday, April 06, 2014

Anti-Dualist Observation Number 1: The Rotation of Hyperion

The chaotic tumbling of Hyperion during its orbit of Saturn. Watch out for the brief appearance of Saturn!

The above YouTube video shows the chaotic tumbling of Hyperion, an irregularly shaped moon of Saturn. I believe this little speck of dust in the immense tracts of space is telling us something profound about the nature of reality. I have watched the video time and again and haven't found myself getting bored with it, especially in the light of what Sir John Polkinghorne says about Hyperion:

The highly complex character of physical causality in a realistic situation is illustrated by the tale of Hyperion, one of the moons of Saturn. This irregularly shaped lump of rock, about the size of New York City, is observed to be tumbling chaotically as it encircles its planet. A simple estimate of the effectiveness of quantum physics in suppressing chaos, even when applied to a large object like Hyperion, leads to the conclusion that chaotic motion should not last for more than a finite period, in this case about thirty-seven years. While Hyperion has not been under observation for quite so long a time, no one expects that it is shortly about to return to orderly behaviour. It turns out that what will prevent this happening is a further influence, environmental in its character, which must be taken into account. The effect is called decoherence, and in its turn it suppresses typical quantum effects. Decoherence arises from the fact that Hyperion is bathed in a sea of low frequency radiation, partly coming from the Sun and partly from the universal cosmic background radiation that fills the universe. Interaction with this radiation represents a kind of repetitive 'measurement' process, continually erasing quantum fuzziness and restoring a classical-like situation, thereby preventing the quantum suppression of chaos from tightening its grip. It is rather like someone trying to get to sleep who continually asks himself 'Am I asleep yet?', thereby keeping himself away. The decoherent suppression of quantum suppression will keep Hyperion tumbling for a very long time to come. (Exploring Reality. Polkinghorne, SPCK 2005)

Now, I'm not so sure that decoherence theory is the full explanation of the apparently discontinuous jumps of the Quantum State vector (See here for some of my reasons why), but where I have common ground with the decoherence view is that whatever quantum leaps are, they happen regardless of sentient observation. It's fascinating to realise that as we look at Hyperion's tumbling rotation we are in effect watching the effects of those disordered but tiny quantum "jumps"* as they are magnified up by the butterfly effect to an observable level. These leaps keep shifting the rotation onto new rotational path histories. If these "path histories", as per chaos, diverge with time it will mean that no regular pattern of rotation will be observed. But quantum wave motion means that in time these paths start to defocus thus damping the chaos. However, before this defocusing can take effect the next quantum jump has shifted the rotation onto a new focused path history.

In some ways this fascinating observation fits in well with the anti-dualist theme of this blog: The Copenhagen interpretation of quantum observation tends to create a radical separation between mind and matter, by regarding matter as a mathematical system that, as per the calculated probabilities, throws up unambiguous observations for sentience; otherwise without the observer matter is thought to remain in a state of ambiguity. In contrast I have been coming to the view that while yes matter does throw up observations for human sentience, matter itself is a form of intelligence in action in as much as it comes to unambiguous conclusions without the need for a human observer. This is a theme I am, and am hoping, to develop. Such a view is of a piece with the realisation that human conscious cognition has a point by point conformity with brain function, a function which in the final analysis is the activity of a highly sophisticated quantum object.

Who'd believe that a lump of tumbling rock could be so telling!

Footnote:

* In decoherence theory the jumps are actually only apparent; a result of the perturbations introduced by environmental chaos cancelling out quantum wave dispersion and causing the system to remain relatively focussed.

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THE IDEAS-EXPERIENCE CONTENTION

“Ideas Versus Experience!" is a slogan expressing the uneasy relation between what we think the world to be and what our actual experience suggests it is. Experience makes or breaks ideas. But the reverse is also true: Well established ideas can influence the recognition, acceptance and even the perception of experience. In short there is a two way dialogue between ideas and experience. Sometimes that dialogue can turn into an argument, even a row.

The success of Science is based on a formalisation of this potentially contentious relationship as it seeks to support or refute theoretical notions by systematically comparing them with experience. In the far less formalized contexts of daily living we probably are using a similar heuristic when we display a tendency to drop ideas that lose the confrontation with experience, and retain those that win. Winning ideas, like the gladiators of the Roman arenas, live to fight another day. This Darwinian slant on the struggle for ideological survival is itself ideology that must, for consistency sake, submit itself to the very process it purports to describe. For example, it should be able to give account of the resilience of traditional theories in the face of contra indicators. And in the extreme, explanation also needs to be given of how conspiracy theorists continue to hold on to a ramifying structure of untested elaborations.

Human theoretical visions are often grand and sweeping, confidently affirming states of affairs that are far beyond immediate sensation. The vast unseen domains covered by our best theories contrasts with the limitations on human perceptual resources, resources that only allow a very sparse experimental sampling of our most ambitious ideas. Even a professional scientist only ever tests a small portion of any theoretical structure. Moreover, our theoretical concepts are ambitious enough to cover unreachable areas like the center of distant stars, sub-atomic dimensions, events long past into history, and very complex inscrutable objects like the human mind and its societies. Thus, science is metaphysical in as much as it has to admit that it covers vast domains inaccessible to testing in practice if not in principle. For the intelligent layman even the keyhole view of the experimental scientist may not be available. So whence comes the authority to affirm ideas that are often so grandiose in their sweep that they make claim to impinge upon the very meaning of life the universe and everything?

The fact is that for most of us the really big ideas diffuse through to us from our societal context, and at most these big ideas are only illuminated here and there, at a very few places, with actual direct experience of the phenomenon they conceptualise. These big ideas float around in the ether-like-media of society in the form of books, lectures, programmes, and the Internet etc, objects that the postmodernist philosophers call "texts".

For someone such as myself the battle to make sense of life was joined as soon as I was aware of mystery. But looking back it is clear to me that I haven't done an honest scientific experiment in the whole of my life. For me the effort to bring sense and integration to the complexity of life boils down to grappling with the many texts of society; These texts carry both big theoretical ideas and raw data from which ideas crystallize. These texts are compared with other texts in the search for coherence and consistency. These texts take the place and role of experiments as one tests theories using texts. These texts are in effect the experience of life. My own modest attempt at grandiose theorising has already been presented to the world. (See this blog "Physics and the Wild Web") and my excuse is that I have simply inherited the theoretical hubris of the human race.

The postmodern philosopher Jacques Derrida said, "There is nothing outside the text". I think he was at least right about the primary role texts play in the life of those like myself whose instinct has been to grapple relentlessly with the riddles of life, and to seek out meaning and go where no man has gone before. But one could equally claim, "There is nothing outside the experience". For one might read the "text" of the clouds in the sky as a predictor of impending weather just as one reads socially generated symbolic configurations as the predictor of certain kinds of thought or potential experience. For the text is just as much an experience as more primeval phenomenon like thunder and lightning. Texts are part of our cosmic experience and they imperceptibly grade into the more conventional notion of experience. Where the crossover point is, is difficult to say.

Postmodernism may have got it right about the primary role of the text, but it has made one very serious mistake. Where I would radically differ from the postmodern view is that I believe the mass of social texts, if we allow them, naturally converge upon grand consistent narratives and those narratives are here to stay. And that is because these texts, I submit, are part of a world with an underlying rational integratedness and that integratedness is being revealed to us bit by bit. For revelation it is: Revelation is what we cannot discover unless God chooses that we discover it. My perceptions and reason, limited though they may be, were not self-made, they had to be discovered as gifts. These gifts are given to all of us; one can but trust and use them. Reason is a grace of Revelation. For this reason the hubris of theory making is justified.

Quantum Non-Linearity

Sunday, April 06, 2014

Anti-Dualist Observation Number 1: The Rotation of Hyperion

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THE IDEAS-EXPERIENCE CONTENTION