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Current Essay Contest
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Media Partner: Scientific American
Previous Contests
Undecidability, Uncomputability, and Unpredictability Essay Contest
December 24, 2019 - April 24, 2020
Contest Partners: Fetzer Franklin Fund, and The Peter and Patricia Gruber Foundation
read/discuss • winners
What Is “Fundamental”
October 28, 2017 to January 22, 2018
Sponsored by the Fetzer Franklin Fund and The Peter & Patricia Gruber Foundation
read/discuss • winners
Wandering Towards a Goal
How can mindless mathematical laws give rise to aims and intention?
December 2, 2016 to March 3, 2017
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read/discuss • winners
Trick or Truth: The Mysterious Connection Between Physics and Mathematics
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read/discuss • winners
How Should Humanity Steer the Future?
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read/discuss • winners
It From Bit or Bit From It
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RECENT POSTS IN THIS TOPIC
Patrick Tonin: on 4/22/15 at 19:41pm UTC, wrote Hi David, An interesting essay although I am not sure many will take it...
LLOYD OKOKO: on 4/15/15 at 9:35am UTC, wrote Dear Mr.Haight, Thanks for your Leibniz inspired essay.Your quest for a...
Joe Fisher: on 4/10/15 at 14:47pm UTC, wrote Dear David, I think Newton was wrong about abstract gravity; Einstein was...
David Haight: on 4/2/15 at 17:06pm UTC, wrote Dear George, Thank you for your appreciative, insightful, and encouraging...
Sujatha Jagannathan: on 4/1/15 at 11:40am UTC, wrote Some conjugations are seen here, from the horizons of Cosmological...
Dipak Bhunia: on 3/17/15 at 8:10am UTC, wrote Dear Dr. Haight, Thanks for a good essay. "In mathematics and physics...
George Gantz: on 3/16/15 at 20:50pm UTC, wrote Some additional references on phi: ...
George Gantz: on 3/15/15 at 14:55pm UTC, wrote David - A brilliant and beautiful essay. Why phi? You have answered that...
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Patrick Tonin: on 4/22/15 at 19:41pm UTC, wrote Hi David, An interesting essay although I am not sure many will take it...
LLOYD OKOKO: on 4/15/15 at 9:35am UTC, wrote Dear Mr.Haight, Thanks for your Leibniz inspired essay.Your quest for a...
Joe Fisher: on 4/10/15 at 14:47pm UTC, wrote Dear David, I think Newton was wrong about abstract gravity; Einstein was...
David Haight: on 4/2/15 at 17:06pm UTC, wrote Dear George, Thank you for your appreciative, insightful, and encouraging...
Sujatha Jagannathan: on 4/1/15 at 11:40am UTC, wrote Some conjugations are seen here, from the horizons of Cosmological...
Dipak Bhunia: on 3/17/15 at 8:10am UTC, wrote Dear Dr. Haight, Thanks for a good essay. "In mathematics and physics...
George Gantz: on 3/16/15 at 20:50pm UTC, wrote Some additional references on phi: ...
George Gantz: on 3/15/15 at 14:55pm UTC, wrote David - A brilliant and beautiful essay. Why phi? You have answered that...
RECENT FORUM POSTS
Steve Dufourny: "Yang Mills squared and quadrupoles, For this quantum gravitation..." in 16th Marcel Grossmann...
Steve Dufourny: "One of the important solution that I propose for the UN is ecological and..." in Global Collaboration
Steve Dufourny: "If we take, the strings, the geometrical algebras , this E8 also, the KK..." in 16th Marcel Grossmann...
Amrit Ladhani : "My preprint "The Beginning to the End of the Universe and Eternal..." in Alternative Models of...
Steve Dufourny: "It could be very relevant if FQXi make a kind of essay contest for this..." in Global Collaboration
Steve Dufourny: "I read my posts from the past on FQXi, my english which is not of course..." in Alternative Models of...
Ronnie Wassler: "DNA is the origin of the universe. We have 3 distinct brains, Left..." in Alternative Models of...
Michael Wade: "history dissertation help" in Causal Discovery in the...
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click titles to read articles
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A quantum computer composes chart-topping music, programmed by physicists striving to understand consciousness.
The Math of Consciousness: Q&A with Kobi Kremnitzer
A meditating mathematician is developing a theory of conscious experience to help understand the boundary between the quantum and classical world.
Can We Feel What It’s Like to Be Quantum?
Underground experiments in the heart of the Italian mountains are testing the links between consciousness and collapse theories of quantum physics.
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FQXi FORUM
August 9, 2022
CATEGORY:
Trick or Truth Essay Contest (2015)
[back]
TOPIC: "Why Does the Glove of Mathematics Fit the Hand of Physics So Well? On the Origin of the Fit" by David Frederick Haight [refresh]
TOPIC: "Why Does the Glove of Mathematics Fit the Hand of Physics So Well? On the Origin of the Fit" by David Frederick Haight [refresh]
Essay Abstract
Why does the glove of mathematics fit the hand of physics so well? Is there a good reason for the good fit? Does it have anything to do with the mystery number of physics or the Fibonacci series and the golden ratio? Is there a connection between this mystery number and the question, why is there something (one) rather than nothing (zero)? The acclaimed mathematician G.H. Hardy (1877-1947) once observed: "In great mathematics there is a very high degree of unexpectedness, combined with inevitability and economy." Is this also true of great physics? If so, is there a simple "pre-established harmony" between their ultimate foundations? The seventeenth-century philosopher-mathematician, Gottfried Leibniz, who coined this phrase, believed that he had found that common foundation in calculus, a methodology he independently discovered with Isaac Newton. But what is the source of the harmonic series of the natural log that is the basis of the calculus? This essay is an answer to Leibniz's quest and questions in the light of subsequent discoveries in mathematics and physics.
Author Bio
I have degrees in philosophy from Stanford (B.A.) and Northwestern (M.A. and Ph.D.) and was a Fulbright Scholar at Oxford University. After publishing dozens of papers in philosophy I became fascinated by the "holy grail of mathematics," the unproven Riemann Hypothesis, because of its beautiful harmony. In 2008 the "Journal of Interdisciplinary Mathematics" published my proof of the Riemann Hypothesis, and in 2010 it published my disproof of the related Birch/Swinnerton-Dyer Conjecture. Both papers have been posted (e-published) online by Taylor and Francis Publishing Group in 2013 and are available at http:www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09720502.2008.10700
605.
Download Essay PDF File
Why does the glove of mathematics fit the hand of physics so well? Is there a good reason for the good fit? Does it have anything to do with the mystery number of physics or the Fibonacci series and the golden ratio? Is there a connection between this mystery number and the question, why is there something (one) rather than nothing (zero)? The acclaimed mathematician G.H. Hardy (1877-1947) once observed: "In great mathematics there is a very high degree of unexpectedness, combined with inevitability and economy." Is this also true of great physics? If so, is there a simple "pre-established harmony" between their ultimate foundations? The seventeenth-century philosopher-mathematician, Gottfried Leibniz, who coined this phrase, believed that he had found that common foundation in calculus, a methodology he independently discovered with Isaac Newton. But what is the source of the harmonic series of the natural log that is the basis of the calculus? This essay is an answer to Leibniz's quest and questions in the light of subsequent discoveries in mathematics and physics.
Author Bio
I have degrees in philosophy from Stanford (B.A.) and Northwestern (M.A. and Ph.D.) and was a Fulbright Scholar at Oxford University. After publishing dozens of papers in philosophy I became fascinated by the "holy grail of mathematics," the unproven Riemann Hypothesis, because of its beautiful harmony. In 2008 the "Journal of Interdisciplinary Mathematics" published my proof of the Riemann Hypothesis, and in 2010 it published my disproof of the related Birch/Swinnerton-Dyer Conjecture. Both papers have been posted (e-published) online by Taylor and Francis Publishing Group in 2013 and are available at http:www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09720502.2008.10700
605.
Download Essay PDF File
David - A brilliant and beautiful essay. Why phi? You have answered that question by noting it's unique self-reflective relationship with "one", the first distinction (one from the Void). From that distinction, all else structural and mathematical follows - as does the form of the physical universe. If something has to exist - it has to exist this way. Awesome!
Still does not answer the question of why something, rather than nothing, but you certainly have made that little number do an awful lot of work!
Thanks - George Gantz
report post as inappropriate
Still does not answer the question of why something, rather than nothing, but you certainly have made that little number do an awful lot of work!
Thanks - George Gantz
Some additional references on phi: http://swedenborgcenterconcord.org/the-golden-ratio-and-its-
special-qualities/
report post as inappropriate
special-qualities/
Dear George,
Thank you for your appreciative, insightful, and encouraging comments on my essay. If you would like more information on the question, "Why is there something rather than nothing?" give me your post office mailing address and I will send you free copies of my two mathematics papers. I have a lot of them as I had to buy them in bulk.
David F. Haight
Thank you for your appreciative, insightful, and encouraging comments on my essay. If you would like more information on the question, "Why is there something rather than nothing?" give me your post office mailing address and I will send you free copies of my two mathematics papers. I have a lot of them as I had to buy them in bulk.
David F. Haight
Dear Dr. Haight,
Thanks for a good essay.
"In mathematics and physics the middle terms are 137+ and Phi which are self-explanatory and self-justifying because they are selfderive" and also you have placed so many other common links in-between physics and mathematics. Even, there may still other such examples of self-explanatory & self-justifying parameters in nature to connect physics and mathematics. As if a hardware is linked with its software digit by digit, and all those digits are ultimately linked with (say) basic "golden" digits - 0 & 1 .
In context of whole nature, are not all those "self-explanatory and self-justifying" apparently different "golden" links collectively directing toward any grand primordial golden-logic (s) in nature? Which hints to unfold us (biologically inseparable too to such same physics & mathematics)toward a unified physics and an ultimate mathematics for same nature?
Best wishes
Dipak
report post as inappropriate
Thanks for a good essay.
"In mathematics and physics the middle terms are 137+ and Phi which are self-explanatory and self-justifying because they are selfderive" and also you have placed so many other common links in-between physics and mathematics. Even, there may still other such examples of self-explanatory & self-justifying parameters in nature to connect physics and mathematics. As if a hardware is linked with its software digit by digit, and all those digits are ultimately linked with (say) basic "golden" digits - 0 & 1 .
In context of whole nature, are not all those "self-explanatory and self-justifying" apparently different "golden" links collectively directing toward any grand primordial golden-logic (s) in nature? Which hints to unfold us (biologically inseparable too to such same physics & mathematics)toward a unified physics and an ultimate mathematics for same nature?
Best wishes
Dipak
Some conjugations are seen here, from the horizons of Cosmological expressions.
-Sincerely,
Miss. Sujatha Jagannathan
report post as inappropriate
-Sincerely,
Miss. Sujatha Jagannathan
Dear David,
I think Newton was wrong about abstract gravity; Einstein was wrong about abstract space/time, and Hawking was wrong about the explosive capability of NOTHING.
All I ask is that you give my essay WHY THE REAL UNIVERSE IS NOT MATHEMATICAL a fair reading and that you allow me to answer any objections you may leave in my comment box about it.
Joe Fisher
report post as inappropriate
I think Newton was wrong about abstract gravity; Einstein was wrong about abstract space/time, and Hawking was wrong about the explosive capability of NOTHING.
All I ask is that you give my essay WHY THE REAL UNIVERSE IS NOT MATHEMATICAL a fair reading and that you allow me to answer any objections you may leave in my comment box about it.
Joe Fisher
Dear Mr.Haight,
Thanks for your Leibniz inspired essay.Your quest for a simple "pre-established harmony" between the ultimate foundations of physics and mathematics; and your conclusive expression of it "in the number 137" the common empirically verified " gene " and binding factor between the two subjects is a significant commentary that gives credence to their nexus.
Keep on flourishing.
Lloyd Tamarapreye Okoko.
report post as inappropriate
Thanks for your Leibniz inspired essay.Your quest for a simple "pre-established harmony" between the ultimate foundations of physics and mathematics; and your conclusive expression of it "in the number 137" the common empirically verified " gene " and binding factor between the two subjects is a significant commentary that gives credence to their nexus.
Keep on flourishing.
Lloyd Tamarapreye Okoko.
Hi David,
An interesting essay although I am not sure many will take it seriously, unfortunately.
I also think that Phi is fundamental to the Universe (for the simple reason that it is the only solution to this equation: x-(1/x)=1).
You can take a look at my essay, you will find some interesting equations including Phi.
All the best,
Patrick
report post as inappropriate
An interesting essay although I am not sure many will take it seriously, unfortunately.
I also think that Phi is fundamental to the Universe (for the simple reason that it is the only solution to this equation: x-(1/x)=1).
You can take a look at my essay, you will find some interesting equations including Phi.
All the best,
Patrick
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