Why Einstein didn’t get a Nobel for relativity?

_{Denyse O'Leary

April 21, 2016

News, Philosophy, Physics

2}_{Categories
News
Philosophy
Physics}

Share: Facebook; Twitter/X; LinkedIn; Flipboard; Print; Email

Donald <em>clock</em> It was Henri Bergson’s fault, and the issue was time, says Jimena Canales at Nautilus:

According to Einstein, philosophy had been used to explain the relation between psychology and physics. “The time of the philosopher, I believe, is a psychological and physical time at the same time,” he explained in Paris. But relativity, by focusing on very fast phenomena, had shown just how off-the-mark psychological perceptions of time really were.

Psychological conceptions of time, Einstein insisted, were not only simply in error, they just did not correspond to anything concrete. “These are nothing more than mental constructs, logical entities.” Because of the enormous speed of light, humans had “instinctively” generalized their conception of simultaneity and mistakenly applied it to the rest of the universe. Einstein’s theory corrected this mistaken generalization. Instead of believing in an overlapping area between psychological and physical conceptions of time (where both were important although one was admittedly less accurate than the other), he argued that they were really two distinct concepts: a mental assessment (the psychological one) that was wholly inadequate when compared to the “objective” concept: physical time.

Bergson and Einstein accepted that an essential difference existed between psychological and physical conceptions of time, yet they made different deductions from this.More.

See also: Scientific American tells us we may live in the past of a parallel universe

Follow UD News at Twitter!

Comments

Perceptions of time change all the time. How fast is the Earth moving and how much does that slow down time? I was thinking about how they precisely adjust Global positioning satellites at 33,000 miles out. I worked in the defense aerospace field when they were building the first GPS for the military. It was a secret program. I was talking to another engineer and he was talking to me about how they had physicist's who used relativistic maths to precisely place them as the lack of gravity sped up time and the speeds they were moving at including the 64,000 mph the Earth goes around the sun that slowed time down all had to be taken into account for precision. It wasn't just Newtonian physics as at the time it wasn't considered precise enough as there were no satellites like now that they could steer by so to speak. It was the Penrose-Hawking 's expansion of General Relativity with their Singularity theorems that made the calculations possible and I think , no I'm sure the formulas were Top Secret. Working in the field during the Cold War in the late 70s and 80s there were some pretty mundane things that were considered Secret or higher that are common stuff now. Perception of time is odd. I have noticed that time is going by faster the older I get and have spoken to others who feel the same. My son when he worked in a laboratory said time just dragged by as he found the job so tedious and boring. I remember how that is. Then I read about as the Universe expands so does time I haven't read anything that said they can measure it, but it would be interesting if they could. I'll have to look and see. I especially like where BA above showed the scientist who found he couldn't produce abstract thought by stimulating the brain and had to adjust his beliefs to accommodate that fact. Time is an odd thing and a second dimension of time would explain a lot of Quantum effects that are so bizarre. I've only read one astrophysicist who had anything to say on the matter, but I haven't read widely in the field. There is so much speculation or just plain opinion it is hard to wade through the materials, especially if you don't know the math behind it. I may have been an engineer, but I'm also calculexic or more properly suffer from dyscalculia. If my calculator broke I went home and on the way stop and buy a scientific calculator. It first appeared when I had to start doing long division which I would learn and the forget how to do it. I luckily had a teacher who showed me ways to work around it, but I never got higher than a D in Algebra and I became an engineer! I wanted to be an astronomer, but I never got past Trigonometry.jimmontg_{April 23, 2016
April
04
Apr
23
23
2016
01:16 AM
1
01
16
AM
PDT}

Einsteinm should stick to bumps in the air. Our perception of time is as God created it. Its real. Not a mirage or invention of ours to walk around. Its not psychology.Robert Byers_{April 21, 2016
April
04
Apr
21
21
2016
08:41 PM
8
08
41
PM
PDT}

semi related: Pioneering Neuroscientist Wilder Penfield: Why Don't We Have Intellectual Seizures? - Michael Egnor - April 21, 2016 Excerpt: Penfield began his career as a materialist, convinced that the mind was wholly a product of the brain. He finished his career as an emphatic dualist. During surgery, Penfield observed that patients had a variable but limited response to brain stimulation. Sometimes the stimulation would cause a seizure or evoke a sensation, a perception, movement of muscles, a memory, or even a vivid emotion. Yet Penfield noticed that brain stimulation never evoked abstract thought. He wrote: "There is no area of gray matter, as far as my experience goes, in which local epileptic discharge brings to pass what could be called "mindaction"... there is no valid evidence that either epileptic discharge or electrical stimulation can activate the mind... If one stops to consider it, this is an arresting fact. The record of consciousness can be set in motion, complicated though it is, by the electrode or by epileptic discharge. An illusion of interpretation can be produced in the same way. But none of the actions we attribute to the mind has been initiated by electrode stimulation or epileptic discharge. If there were a mechanism in the brain that could do what the mind does, one might expect that the mechanism would betray its presence in a convincing manner by some better evidence of epileptic or electrode activations."1 Penfield noted that intellectual function -- abstract thought -- could only be switched off by brain stimulation or a seizure, but it could never be switched on in like manner. The brain was necessary for abstract thought, normally, but it was not sufficient for it. Abstract thought was something other than merely a process of the brain.,,, http://www.evolutionnews.org/2016/04/wilder_penfield102789.htmlbornagain77_{April 21, 2016
April
04
Apr
21
21
2016
06:55 PM
6
06
55
PM
PDT}

'‘the now of the mind’ has, as mentioned previously and from many recent experiments in quantum mechanics, undermined the space-time of Einstein’s General Relativity as to being the absolute frame of reference for reality.' 'Thus, this experiment adds to the validity of the quantum theory and provides new evidence to the idea that reality doesn’t exist without an observer.' Are not both the above two statements elliptical ways of expressing my thesis, namely, that we each live in our own separate albeit integrated and coordinated worlds ? And does it not explain how light, or the agency behind light, can keep tabs on every human being qua a potential Observer, in order to adjust its speed so as to hit the observer travelling in the same direction at constant speed at its (light's) absolute speed ? Or perhaps, manipulate the observer's speed in relation to the light-beam, to the same effect ? This whole subject ties in with Planck's observation, doesn't it ? 'Science cannot solve the ultimate mystery of nature. And that is because, in the last analysis, we ourselves are part of nature and therefore part of the mystery that we are trying to solve.' It's not difficult to see how he would have discovered the theory of QM, even before he really wanted to acknowledge it, is it ?.Axel_{April 21, 2016
April
04
Apr
21
21
2016
12:33 PM
12
12
33
PM
PDT}

Contrary to what Einstein thought possible for experimental physics, the 'timeless' physics of Quantum Mechanics takes precedence over the 'eternal' framework of time that is found for Relativity.
LIVING IN A QUANTUM WORLD - Vlatko Vedral - 2011 Excerpt: Thus, the fact that quantum mechanics applies on all scales forces us to confront the theory’s deepest mysteries. We cannot simply write them off as mere details that matter only on the very smallest scales. For instance, space and time are two of the most fundamental classical concepts, but according to quantum mechanics they are secondary. The entanglements are primary. They interconnect quantum systems without reference to space and time. If there were a dividing line between the quantum and the classical worlds, we could use the space and time of the classical world to provide a framework for describing quantum processes. But without such a dividing line—and, indeed, without a truly classical world—we lose this framework. We must explain space and time (4D space-time) as somehow emerging from fundamentally spaceless and timeless physics. http://phy.ntnu.edu.tw/~chchang/Notes10b/0611038.pdf
Of related interest to this undermining of the space-time of General Relativity by quantum mechanics as a 'complete' description of reality, Einstein was once asked (by a philosopher):
"Can physics demonstrate the existence of 'the now' in order to make the notion of 'now' into a scientifically valid term?"
Einstein's answer was categorical, he said:
"The experience of 'the now' cannot be turned into an object of physical measurement, it can never be a part of physics."
Quote was taken from the last few minutes of this following video and can be read in full in the article after the video.
Stanley L. Jaki: "The Mind and Its Now" https://vimeo.com/10588094 The Mind and Its Now - May 22, 2008 - By Stanley L. Jaki Excerpt: ,,, Rudolf Carnap, and the only one among them who was bothered with the mind's experience of its now. His concern for this is noteworthy because he went about it in the wrong way. He thought that physics was the only sound way to know and to know anything. It was therefore only logical on his part that he should approach, we are around 1935, Albert Einstein, the greatest physicist of the day, with the question whether it was possible to turn the experience of the now into a scientific knowledge. Such knowledge must of course be verified with measurement. We do not have the exact record of Carnap's conversation with Einstein whom he went to visit in Princeton, at eighteen hours by train at that time from Chicago. But from Einstein's reply which Carnap jotted down later, it is safe to assume that Carnap reasoned with him as outlined above. Einstein's answer was categorical: The experience of the now cannot be turned into an object of physical measurement. It can never be part of physics. http://metanexus.net/essay/mind-and-its-now
The meaning of the term 'the Now' can also be read in full context in the article:
The Mind and Its Now - Stanley L. Jaki, May 2008 Excerpts: There can be no active mind without its sensing its existence in the moment called now.,,, Three quarters of a century ago Charles Sherrington, the greatest modern student of the brain, spoke memorably on the mind's baffling independence of the brain. The mind lives in a self-continued now or rather in the now continued in the self. This life involves the entire brain, some parts of which overlap, others do not. ,,,There is no physical parallel to the mind's ability to extend from its position in the momentary present to its past moments, or in its ability to imagine its future. The mind remains identical with itself while it lives through its momentary nows. ,,, the now is immensely richer an experience than any marvelous set of numbers, even if science could give an account of the set of numbers, in terms of energy levels. The now is not a number. It is rather a word, the most decisive of all words. It is through experiencing that word that the mind comes alive and registers all existence around and well beyond. ,,, All our moments, all our nows, flow into a personal continuum, of which the supreme form is the NOW which is uncreated, because it simply IS.
i.e. 'the Now', as philosophers term it, and contrary to what Einstein thought possible for experimental physics, and according to advances in quantum mechanics, takes precedence over past events in time. Moreover, due to advances in quantum mechanics, it would now be much more appropriate to phrase Einstein's answer to the philosopher in this way:
"It is impossible for the experience of 'the now of the mind' to ever be divorced from physical measurement, it will always be a part of physics."
The statement to Carnap by Einstein, 'the now' cannot be turned into an object of physical measurement’, was an interesting statement for Einstein to make since 'the now of the mind' has, as mentioned previously and from many recent experiments in quantum mechanics, undermined the space-time of Einstein's General Relativity as to being the absolute frame of reference for reality.
Einstein vs. "The Now" of Philosophers and Quantum Mechanics – video https://www.facebook.com/philip.cunningham.73/videos/vb.100000088262100/1129789497033982/?type=2&theater
For prime example of how quantum mechanics undermines relativity is this experiment:
New Mind-blowing Experiment Confirms That Reality Doesn’t Exist If You Are Not Looking at It - June 3, 2015 Excerpt: The results of the Australian scientists’ experiment, which were published in the journal Nature Physics, show that this choice is determined by the way the object is measured, which is in accordance with what quantum theory predicts. “It proves that measurement is everything. At the quantum level, reality does not exist if you are not looking at it,” said lead researcher Dr. Andrew Truscott in a press release.,,, “The atoms did not travel from A to B. It was only when they were measured at the end of the journey that their wave-like or particle-like behavior was brought into existence,” he said. Thus, this experiment adds to the validity of the quantum theory and provides new evidence to the idea that reality doesn’t exist without an observer. http://themindunleashed.org/2015/06/new-mind-blowing-experiment-confirms-that-reality-doesnt-exist-if-you-are-not-looking-at-it.html
Here is a humorous quote on the subject
"Look, we all have fun ridiculing the creationists who think the world sprang into existence on October 23, 4004 BC at 9AM (presumably Babylonian time), with the fossils already in the ground, light from distant stars heading toward us, etc. But if we accept the usual picture of quantum mechanics, then in a certain sense the situation is far worse: the world (as you experience it) might as well not have existed 10^-43 seconds ago!" Scott Aaronson - MIT associate Professor (quantum computation)
IMHO, Einstein took the importance of mind (and free will), as to coherently explaining reality, far too lightly, since he himself would not have been able to deduce relativity unless he possessed faculties of mind that are not reducible to a materialistic basis:
Physicist George Ellis on the importance of philosophy and free will - July 27, 2014 Excerpt: And free will?: Horgan: Einstein, in the following quote, seemed to doubt free will: “If the moon, in the act of completing its eternal way around the Earth, were gifted with self-consciousness, it would feel thoroughly convinced that it was traveling its way of its own accord…. So would a Being, endowed with higher insight and more perfect intelligence, watching man and his doings, smile about man’s illusion that he was acting according to his own free will.” Do you believe in free will? Ellis: Yes. Einstein is perpetuating the belief that all causation is bottom up. This simply is not the case, as I can demonstrate with many examples from sociology, neuroscience, physiology, epigenetics, engineering, and physics. Furthermore if Einstein did not have free will in some meaningful sense, then he could not have been responsible for the theory of relativity – it would have been a product of lower level processes but not of an intelligent mind choosing between possible options. I find it very hard to believe this to be the case – indeed it does not seem to make any sense. Physicists should pay attention to Aristotle’s four forms of causation – if they have the free will to decide what they are doing. If they don’t, then why waste time talking to them? They are then not responsible for what they say. https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/physicist-george-ellis-on-the-importance-of-philosophy-and-free-will/
bornagain77_{April 21, 2016
April
04
Apr
21
21
2016
09:26 AM
9
09
26
AM
PDT}

You must be logged in to post a comment.

Leave a Reply