Feynman and the philosophers and related matter

[BaalChatzaf]

See what Richard Feynman had to say of the philosphers and philosophical questions

(this interview is a honey)

and some quotes from RPF:

http://www.quotation...Richard_Feynman

Here is one quote I like.

Philosophers say a great deal about what is absolutely necessary for science, and it is always, so far as one can see, rather naive, and probably wrong. Richard Feynman

US educator & physicist (1918 - 1988)

Which is remniscent of what Karl Friedrich Gauss had to say of metaphysicians

When the metaphysicians are right they are not original and when they are original they are not right.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[Peter]

Algebraically: Fascinating@!

Thank you for the links Bob. I watched them all. He would make a great Vulcan “Spock.” What a shame he only lived to be 70.

His idea to view QM as it is, and not in relation to anything we have known before, is right on the mark. He might say QM is not deterministic or in-deterministic. Instead, QM is QM, not non QM or negative QM. The characterization of the nature of a fact is a human foible.

Semper cogitans fidele,

Peter Taylor

[dennislmay]

See what Richard Feynman had to say of the philosphers and philosophical questions

(this interview is a honey)

and some quotes from RPF:

http://www.quotation...Richard_Feynman

Here is one quote I like.

Philosophers say a great deal about what is absolutely necessary for science, and it is always, so far as one can see, rather naive, and probably wrong. Richard Feynman

US educator & physicist (1918 - 1988)

Which is remniscent of what Karl Friedrich Gauss had to say of metaphysicians

When the metaphysicians are right they are not original and when they are original they are not right.

Ba'al Chatzaf

His best quote:

The first principle is that you must not fool yourself - and you are the easiest person to fool.

Richard Feynman, Caltech commencement address, 1974

If only he had not fooled himself.

Dennis

[dennislmay]

Algebraically: Fascinating@!

Thank you for the links Bob. I watched them all. He would make a great Vulcan “Spock.” What a shame he only lived to be 70.

His idea to view QM as it is, and not in relation to anything we have known before, is right on the mark. He might say QM is not deterministic or in-deterministic. Instead, QM is QM, not non QM or negative QM. The characterization of the nature of a fact is a human foible.

Semper cogitans fidele,

Peter Taylor

He pushed a philosophy while pretending to abstain from philosophy.

Dennis

[Brant Gaede]

Philosophers say a great deal about what is absolutely necessary for science, and it is always, so far as one can see, rather naive, and probably wrong. Richard Feynman

US educator & physicist (1918 - 1988)

Which is remniscent of what Karl Friedrich Gauss had to say of metaphysicians

When the metaphysicians are right they are not original and when they are original they are not right.

Ba'al Chatzaf

Well, he's right about most philosophers and their philosophies.

What Gauss said was nonsense. He excludes "right" totally while speaking metaphysically, thus excluding himself.

--Brant

edit: a more careful reading and I accept that when they are right they are not original, unless you can find the first one who was right--so Gauss was right, but he should have said exactly what it was that was right metaphysically (and not original) because that is what he is supposed to work off of

[BaalChatzaf]

He pushed a philosophy while pretending to abstain from philosophy.

Dennis

Yes. In the trivial sense that we all start out basing our thinking on certain assumptions. But that is far from being systematically philosophical. No one can escape assuming something before concluding another thing.

Feynman had opinions on many things, as do most thinking people.

If Feynman had a Firm Belief, it was that no one could give a logical account of the two-slit experiment in terms of everyday concepts. I believe he was right on that point. Our "common sense" is forged in the man-sized world of things we can see with our eyes, hear with our ears, feel with our hands and wrap our arms about. Nothing in this domain can account for happenings at the sub-atomic level. It is a whole other world. Nature has to be dealt with on Nature's terms, not Man's terms.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[BaalChatzaf]

Algebraically: Fascinating@!

Thank you for the links Bob. I watched them all. He would make a great Vulcan “Spock.” What a shame he only lived to be 70.

His idea to view QM as it is, and not in relation to anything we have known before, is right on the mark. He might say QM is not deterministic or in-deterministic. Instead, QM is QM, not non QM or negative QM. The characterization of the nature of a fact is a human foible.

Semper cogitans fidele,

Peter Taylor

Nature has to be dealt with on her terms, not ours. The world of the very small is unlike the world we perceive and live with at man-size scales. Nothing in "ordinary" experience can fully prepare us for what we see at the atomic and subatomic level. That is why he have to resort to mathematics, models, analogies and metaphors.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[dennislmay]

He pushed a philosophy while pretending to abstain from philosophy.

Dennis

Yes. In the trivial sense that we all start out basing our thinking on certain assumptions. But that is far from being systematically philosophical. No one can escape assuming something before concluding another thing.

Feynman had opinions on many things, as do most thinking people.

If Feynman had a Firm Belief, it was that no one could give a logical account of the two-slit experiment in terms of everyday concepts. I believe he was right on that point. Our "common sense" is forged in the man-sized world of things we can see with our eyes, hear with our ears, feel with our hands and wrap our arms about. Nothing in this domain can account for happenings at the sub-atomic level. It is a whole other world. Nature has to be dealt with on Nature's terms, not Man's terms.

Ba'al Chatzaf

Feynman's philosophy may have been to believe that no one could give a logical account of the two-slit experiment. Of course there had been the Bohmian mechanics account available for Feynman to understand since 1952 but his philosophy was opposed to the deterministic account which also matches observation. This other view of things was buried by Feynman who pushed his own philosophy instead. He helped bury the other view so thoroughly that I didn't ever see a graphic of the Bohmian solution to the two-slit experiment until after I had already written my own computer programs generating the same kind of results. Vigier is the one who pointed me to existing solutions. The way I generated solutions used a different physics of the equivalent of guiding waves but the result was the same. Again the "scandal within physics" Bell was so worried about.

Dennis

[BaalChatzaf]

Feynman's philosophy may have been to believe that no one could give a logical account of the two-slit experiment. Of course there had been the Bohmian mechanics account available for Feynman to understand since 1952 but his philosophy was opposed to the deterministic account which also matches observation. This other view of things was buried by Feynman who pushed his own philosophy instead. He helped bury the other view so thoroughly that I didn't ever see a graphic of the Bohmian solution to the two-slit experiment until after I had already written my own computer programs generating the same kind of results. Vigier is the one who pointed me to existing solutions. The way I generated solutions used a different physics of the equivalent of guiding waves but the result was the same. Again the "scandal within physics" Bell was so worried about.

Dennis

Buried?. Bohm was publishing right up to the end of his life. I have a book full of diagrams you say do not exist.

-The Quantum Theory of Motion- by Peter R. Holland. Published in 1993 by the Cambridge University Press.

Buried? Hmmm......

Ba'al Chatzaf

[dennislmay]

Feynman's philosophy may have been to believe that no one could give a logical account of the two-slit experiment. Of course there had been the Bohmian mechanics account available for Feynman to understand since 1952 but his philosophy was opposed to the deterministic account which also matches observation. This other view of things was buried by Feynman who pushed his own philosophy instead. He helped bury the other view so thoroughly that I didn't ever see a graphic of the Bohmian solution to the two-slit experiment until after I had already written my own computer programs generating the same kind of results. Vigier is the one who pointed me to existing solutions. The way I generated solutions used a different physics of the equivalent of guiding waves but the result was the same. Again the "scandal within physics" Bell was so worried about.

Dennis

Buried?. Bohm was publishing right up to the end of his life. I have a book full of diagrams you say do not exist.

-The Quantum Theory of Motion- by Peter R. Holland. Published in 1993 by the Cambridge University Press.

Buried? Hmmm......

Ba'al Chatzaf

The book you mention was after Feynman and Bohm were dead. The first graphic I ever saw in 1991 was generated

the year Feynman died. When I say buried I mean in the way Bell meant - hidden from students - removed from the

educational process as though it never existed. Sabotaged with disinformation any time the topic came up.

Dennis

[Mark]

Better than Bohm I think is the Duane-Landé theory. This posits that along with the well-known quantization of angular momentum, linear momentum is also quantized. This simple generalization explains particle diffraction -- such as electron diffraction through crystals and diffraction through a double slit. No special forces or "pilot waves" are needed. See Alfred Landé’s last few books for details. The next to last, New Foundations of Quantum Mechanics, is his most thorough exposition.

Dennis,

Can you give a reference about the disagreement between Feynman and Bell?

Mark

[BaalChatzaf]

The book you mention was after Feynman and Bohm were dead. The first graphic I ever saw in 1991 was generated

the year Feynman died. When I say buried I mean in the way Bell meant - hidden from students - removed from the

educational process as though it never existed. Sabotaged with disinformation any time the topic came up.

Dennis

In what publication of Bell or in what talk did Bell say his work was "buried" or sabotaged? Specific references please. Thank you.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[dennislmay]

The book you mention was after Feynman and Bohm were dead. The first graphic I ever saw in 1991 was generated

the year Feynman died. When I say buried I mean in the way Bell meant - hidden from students - removed from the

educational process as though it never existed. Sabotaged with disinformation any time the topic came up.

Dennis

In what publication of Bell or in what talk did Bell say his work was "buried" or sabotaged? Specific references please. Thank you.

Ba'al Chatzaf

http://www.amazon.com/Speakable-Unspeakable-Mechanics-Collected-philosophy/dp/0521368693

[BaalChatzaf]

The book you mention was after Feynman and Bohm were dead. The first graphic I ever saw in 1991 was generated

the year Feynman died. When I say buried I mean in the way Bell meant - hidden from students - removed from the

educational process as though it never existed. Sabotaged with disinformation any time the topic came up.

Dennis

In what publication of Bell or in what talk did Bell say his work was "buried" or sabotaged? Specific references please. Thank you.

Ba'al Chatzaf

http://www.amazon.co...y/dp/0521368693

Do you have a page number for that. I am currently reading it.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[dennislmay]

The book you mention was after Feynman and Bohm were dead. The first graphic I ever saw in 1991 was generated

the year Feynman died. When I say buried I mean in the way Bell meant - hidden from students - removed from the

educational process as though it never existed. Sabotaged with disinformation any time the topic came up.

Dennis

In what publication of Bell or in what talk did Bell say his work was "buried" or sabotaged? Specific references please. Thank you.

Ba'al Chatzaf

http://www.amazon.co...y/dp/0521368693

Do you have a page number for that. I am currently reading it.

Ba'al Chatzaf

Sorry I don't have a page number - I do recall that it is well into the book - perhaps 2/3rds of the way in or more.

After you read the book I suggest you read the comments people made in conjunction with the conference

celebrating the work of J.S. Bell after his death. The misleading things he complains about in his book are repeated in

relation to celebrating his work. Stabbed in the back after death as well.

Dennis

[BaalChatzaf]

Sorry I don't have a page number - I do recall that it is well into the book - perhaps 2/3rds of the way in or more.

After you read the book I suggest you read the comments people made in conjunction with the conference

celebrating the work of J.S. Bell after his death. The misleading things he complains about in his book are repeated in

relation to celebrating his work. Stabbed in the back after death as well.

Dennis

Comments are opinions, not facts. However I am interested in what Bell himself had to say.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[Brant Gaede]

Comments are opinions, not facts. However I am interested in what Bell himself had to say.

What you are really saying is your opinion about comments is not factual. A contradiction. Comments have factual and non-factual referents sometimes all one or the other. Why you insist on continually putting spokes into the wheels of thinking is beyond me. It seems to go hand in hand with with your continual and jejune war against philosophy as such all the while keeping your own philosophy in your back pocket. Well, everybody has a philosophy, including you. It's the brain's software.

--Brant

[BaalChatzaf]

Comments are opinions, not facts. However I am interested in what Bell himself had to say.

What you are really saying is your opinion about comments is not factual. A contradiction. Comments have factual and non-factual referents sometimes all one or the other. Why you insist on continually putting spokes into the wheels of thinking is beyond me. It seems to go hand in hand with with your continual and jejune war against philosophy as such all the while keeping your own philosophy in your back pocket. Well, everybody has a philosophy, including you. It's the brain's software.

--Brant

O.K.

Fact 1: I am not interested in the comments of persons other than Bell on the matter.

Fact 2: I am interested in what Bell himself had to say.

Clear enough?

Ba'al Chatzaf

[Brant Gaede]

Comments are opinions, not facts. However I am interested in what Bell himself had to say.

What you are really saying is your opinion about comments is not factual. A contradiction. Comments have factual and non-factual referents sometimes all one or the other. Why you insist on continually putting spokes into the wheels of thinking is beyond me. It seems to go hand in hand with with your continual and jejune war against philosophy as such all the while keeping your own philosophy in your back pocket. Well, everybody has a philosophy, including you. It's the brain's software.

--Brant

O.K.

Fact 1: I am not interested in the comments of persons other than Bell on the matter.

Fact 2: I am interested in what Bell himself had to say.

Clear enough?

Ba'al Chatzaf

So, you retract your general comment about comments?

Please understand I am not a physicist or competent in physics. Bell, Feynman and WTF are they really talking about? I don't really know. You seem to. That's not what I participate in though I try to read and understand something for it seems very interesting. But if you kick dirt on my shoes that's gross disrespect and I'll keep calling you out. Science sans philosophy is a contradiction in terms.

--Brant

[BaalChatzaf]

Comments are opinions, not facts. However I am interested in what Bell himself had to say.

What you are really saying is your opinion about comments is not factual. A contradiction. Comments have factual and non-factual referents sometimes all one or the other. Why you insist on continually putting spokes into the wheels of thinking is beyond me. It seems to go hand in hand with with your continual and jejune war against philosophy as such all the while keeping your own philosophy in your back pocket. Well, everybody has a philosophy, including you. It's the brain's software.

--Brant

O.K.

Fact 1: I am not interested in the comments of persons other than Bell on the matter.

Fact 2: I am interested in what Bell himself had to say.

Clear enough?

Ba'al Chatzaf

So, you retract your general comment about comments?

Yes. I overstated the matter. Some comments actually express facts and others merely express opinions.

In the context of what we were discussing prior, the attitude of third parties is not relevant to my query. I am looking for

a. a specific instance where Feynman bad-mouthed Bell (I exclude respectful disagreement from "bad-mouthing"). I am not aware of any, but I haven't read everything Feynman wrote or heard every word he said in public.

b. a specific instance where Bell stated that he had been wrong or misrepresented by anything Feynman said or wrote.

In short I want quotes or references to talks given by Bell and Feynman.

Here is something that may be of interest. Both Feynman and Bell wrote papers praising David Bohm. Feynman had no personal animosity toward Bohm. In Feynman's famous three volumes on physics Feynman describes the Bohm-Aharonov effect, a non-local interaction.

On the other hand Feynman said some uncomplimentary things about String Theory and he is quoted in Woite's book -Not Even Wrong- which a panning of String Theory. So Feynman was no shrinking violet or bashful man. If he had something to say, he said it. He is what Feynman said:

Now I know that other old men have been very foolish in saying things like this, and, therefore, I would be very foolish to say this is nonsense. I am going to be very foolish, because I do feel strongly that this is nonsense! I can't help it, even though I know the danger in such a point of view. So perhaps I could entertain future historians by saying I think all this superstring stuff is crazy and is in the wrong direction....

I don't like that they're not calculating anything. I don't like that they don't check their ideas. I don't like that for anything that disagrees with an experiment, they cook up an explanation -- a fix-up to say, "Well, it still might be true." For example, the theory requires ten dimensions. Well, maybe there's a way of wrapping up six of the dimensions. Yes, that's possible mathematically, but why not seven? When they write their equation, the equation should decide how many of these things get wrapped up, not the desire to agree with experiment. In other words, there's no reason whatsoever in superstring theory that it isn't eight of the ten dimensions that get wrapped up and that the result is only two dimensions, which would be completely in disagreement with experience. So the fact that it might disagree with experience is very tenuous, it doesn't produce anything; it has to be excused most of the time. It doesn't look right.If

If Feynman had anything bad to say about Bell I am sure he would have been just as plain-spoken.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[BaalChatzaf]

The book you mention was after Feynman and Bohm were dead. The first graphic I ever saw in 1991 was generated

the year Feynman died. When I say buried I mean in the way Bell meant - hidden from students - removed from the

educational process as though it never existed. Sabotaged with disinformation any time the topic came up.

Dennis

In what publication of Bell or in what talk did Bell say his work was "buried" or sabotaged? Specific references please. Thank you.

Ba'al Chatzaf

http://www.amazon.co...y/dp/0521368693

Do you have a page number for that. I am currently reading it.

Ba'al Chatzaf

Sorry I don't have a page number - I do recall that it is well into the book - perhaps 2/3rds of the way in or more.

After you read the book I suggest you read the comments people made in conjunction with the conference

celebrating the work of J.S. Bell after his death. The misleading things he complains about in his book are repeated in

relation to celebrating his work. Stabbed in the back after death as well.

Dennis

Are you aware that Feynman died in 1988 and Bell died in 1990 (I had it as 1992, my bad)?

Ba'al Chatzaf

[syrakusos]

... It seems to go hand in hand with with your continual and jejune war against philosophy as such all the while keeping your own philosophy in your back pocket. Well, everybody has a philosophy, including you. It's the brain's software. --Brant

Science sans philosophy is a contradiction in terms.

--Brant

I agree. I enjoy Feynman, of course. I used to read Surely You're Joking as bedtime stories to my daughter. Later in life, when his Lectures were already evidence of a cult and certainly after Challenger, he just as easily fed off his role as an iconoclast and it was easy because he was. But he was clearly a rational-empiricist (objectivist) who sought comprehensive and coherent theories to explain facts and who demanded facts in support of theories. For him, both were necessary, of course, and his biographies supoort that as do his own lectures, such as The Nature of Scientific Law and the "Six Pieces" lectures, and etc. No doubt that Feynman was a small-o objectivist in action and principle.

And I agree with the deeper point that everyone has a philosophy, even if it is only implicit and not consciously chosen.

[BaalChatzaf]

For those who wish to know more about Feynman you might want to watch this lecture by Lawrence Krauss (a first rate physicist himself) on a Feynman biography he wrote: -Quantum Man-. The lecture is a bit long but around 30 minutes it gets into the physics and also the quality of the man.

You can see and hear it at:

Eugene Wigner said of Feynman -- He is another Dirac, but Human -- That is very high praise.

Feynman had a worldview and a mindset. If you wish to call that a philosophy, then do so. But it was not like the philosophy of any philosopher any of you have encountered.

Ba'al Chatzaf