>Thanks for your reply. Some good comments there.<
Thank you sir!
>I've been reading New Scientist & various journals for about 25
years. I think we live in exciting times.<
Ah! A kindred spirit! Beware though: it can make you terribly impatient with
insipid, dumbed-down, diluted "science" programmes.
>There have been many discoveries and breakthroughs in my lifetime but
I'm disappointed that science hasn't conceived and proved a grand unified
theory yet (maybe it never will, but there's still hope).<
Hmmmm... I am not yet sure how meaningful TOEs and GUTs might be when they
come. Nor am I sure how we will tell that our TOEs would be anything more than a
view imposed at a certain level, in itself a long way from the bottom of the
stack of tortoises. Or if you like Pratchett cosmologies, how do you know that
your complete mapping of the upper shell of the Great Turtle even plumbs the
universal calipash?
>Understood, however, as I understand it, Einstein's equation
does still mean that Energy and Mass are interchangeable (i.e. they must be the
same 'thing' at a fundamental level, otherwise they wouldn't be
interchangeable)<
Here, though I don't want to irk Paul by perhaps misconstruing what he said,
I reckon that what is interchangeable is an aspect, rather than the whole
story. For example, he said that he was a husband. I am sure he is a very good
one, but that does not mean that he could be regarded as interchangeable with
just any other husband for just any wife. Similarly, if you ran out of petrol
or breakfast, you would not be satisfied if I simply offered you a stone for
the bread or fuel that you wanted.
>As you say, the mathematics appears to make sense, but when we try to
use everyday concepts and metaphors then we cannot find words to explain. It is
as though the mathematics hints at some underlying reality, but we cannot quite
grasp it with our current understanding and conceptualisations.<
I do have some ideas about that, though somewhat inchoate, but it would take
more space than we would have here to go into it deeply enough. It has to do
with the nature of maths as a class of aspect of our world, and its nature as a
(highly finite) physical part of physics.
> In posing the question I was simply hoping for some ideas which might
help me to get my head around this issue, because I believe an explanation for
energy seems to be the key to understanding nature.<
I can see that, but I have a
strong suspicion that there are fundamental reasons why we cannot at a deep
level understand anything completely. I already have said in various contexts
(and shall keep saying it): "I know practically nothing about practically
nothing, and absolutely nothing about everything else." It may be a
pleasantry, but it is true. Also, my
favourite quote from Bertrand Russell is: " We know very little, and yet it is astonishing that we
know so much, and still more astonishing that so little knowledge can
give us so much power.
Bertrand Russell
>I have had in my possession the book you recommended (Roger Penrose's
"The Road to Reality") for quite some time, but unfortunately I just
haven't found the time to read it yet. There just doesn't seem to be enough
time in a day to do all the things I would like to do. I will try to make time
for it.<
If you are a daily railway commuter, then in my experience that is a fine
time for such activities.
>Thanks again. Please let me know if you have any more ideas.<
Thanks again for the compliment, but that sort of hand-waving is about as
deep as my ideas go!
Cheers,
Jon
