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What's Ultimately Possible in Physics?
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The Nature of Time
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Current Essay Contest
Contest Partners: Nanotronics Imaging, The Peter and Patricia Gruber Foundation, and The John Templeton Foundation
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
Contest Partner: The Peter and Patricia Gruber Fund.
read/discuss • winners
Trick or Truth: The Mysterious Connection Between Physics and Mathematics
Contest Partners: Nanotronics Imaging, The Peter and Patricia Gruber Foundation, and The John Templeton Foundation
Media Partner: Scientific American
read/discuss • winners
How Should Humanity Steer the Future?
January 9, 2014 - August 31, 2014
Contest Partners: Jaan Tallinn, The Peter and Patricia Gruber Foundation, The John Templeton Foundation, and Scientific American
read/discuss • winners
It From Bit or Bit From It
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Contest Partners: The Gruber Foundation, J. Templeton Foundation, and Scientific American
read/discuss • winners
Questioning the Foundations
Which of Our Basic Physical Assumptions Are Wrong?
May 24 - August 31, 2012
Contest Partners: The Peter and Patricia Gruber Foundation, SubMeta, and Scientific American
read/discuss • winners
Is Reality Digital or Analog?
November 2010 - February 2011
Contest Partners: The Peter and Patricia Gruber Foundation and Scientific American
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What's Ultimately Possible in Physics?
May - October 2009
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The Nature of Time
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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
Lorraine Ford: "So, in reply to the posts by Stefan Weckbach and Steve Dufourny above,..." in The Present State of...
Georgina Woodward: "If considering existence rather than appearances, the time dimension..." in Anatomy of spacetime and...
Georgina Woodward: "That is about the 'anatomy"" of spacetime." in Anatomy of spacetime and...
Lorraine Ford: "So what exactly is WRONG with physics, apart from the fact that physics..." in The Present State of...
Steve Dufourny: "Hello Jim, yes indeed in a sense we have these motions and we have invented..." in The Quantum Clock-Maker...
Jim Snowdon: "Hi Steve, Clearly we have motion in our Universe. It is not..." in The Quantum Clock-Maker...
Georgina Woodward: "Thank you. Good luck." in The Nature of Time
Lorraine Ford: "Rob, As you have not replied, I take it that you now concede that the..." in 16th Marcel Grossmann...
RECENT ARTICLES
click titles to read articles
The Quantum Clock-Maker Investigating COVID-19, Causality, and the Trouble with AI
Sally Shrapnel, a quantum physicist and medical practitioner, on her experiments into cause-and-effect that could help us understand time’s arrow—and build better healthcare algorithms.
Connect the Quantum Dots for a New Kind of Fuel
'Artificial atoms' allow physicists to manipulate individual electrons—and could help to reduce energy wastage in electronic devices.
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FQXi FORUM
September 17, 2021
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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