John and Michael, (01)
thanks for the insightful remarks. (02)
JS
> Yes, but it's much easier to find a Little Unifying Theory (LUT)
> than a GUT. Most sciences, including physics, have many LUTs,
> but nobody has ever found an ideal GUT in any field. (03)
Suntola's intention of course is that DU is the GUT of cosmology, a
kind of a step forward like the step from the Earth-centered model
into the Sun-centered model. In any case, only a GUT can unify the LUTs. (04)
MB
> an infinite 4-dimensional space + an infinite time-dimension (past+future?)
> just to hold our closed universe for 13+ billion years? (05)
Infinite space only in the sense that you can imagine going infinitely
many rounds around the surface of a finite ball. The volume of the 3D
space is always finite: it is thought that the familiar 3D space
resides on the surface of the 4D ball. The surface of the 4D ball
counts for the 3 dimensions, and the radius of the ball is the fourth
dimension; there is nothing inside the 4D ball and nothing outside it.
The ball is just an idealisation which happens to work very well: it
is a sufficient geometry of space and the center point of the Universe
is fixed: it is the center of the 4D idealisation. The change of time
is derived from the change of the radius of the 4D ball. This way time
is not an independent entity, as it is in FLRW. (06)
And yes, the past must be supposed to be infinite and the future
potentially infinite, unless the only alternative is accepted: that
the Universe was born out of nothing and will vanish into nothingness
(or some combination of these). We must remember that the
out-of-the-blue idea was invented in the 20th century. Why not go for
the eternal bouncing Universe scenario instead? If the Universe is
eternal, then its every temporal stage is a cause of something and a
consequence of something; if it was born out of nothing and will
vanish into nothingness, then the first temporal state has a special
status: it was not a consequence of anything although it was a cause
of the second one. Likewise, the last state should be a cause but not
a consequence. Quite disunifying for my taste. Aristotle’s reasoning
in Of The Heavens bk.1 ch.10 is kind of ambiguous, but I interpret
that he meant something like this. (07)
Cheers, (08)
Avril (09)
Quoting John F Sowa <sowa@xxxxxxxxxxx>: (010)
> Avril,
>
>> If the new theory/paradigm is really unifying, it should provide
>> a unifying explanation of what were previously exceptional cases.
>
> Yes, but it's much easier to find a Little Unifying Theory (LUT)
> than a GUT. Most sciences, including physics, have many LUTs,
> but nobody has ever found an ideal GUT in any field.
>
> Note my previous comment about Einstein's "annus mirabilis" in 1905.
> In that year, he published four outstanding articles, each of which
> presented a very important LUT: Brownian motion; quantum theory of
> light (photons); special relativity; and matter-energy equivalence.
>
>> The biggest problems of the standard model of cosmology are the
>> following (the standard model is founded on [General Relativity] and
>> has evolved into [the Friedmann–Lemaître–Robertson–Walker metric]...
>
> GR was Einstein's biggest LUT. He spent the second half of his career
> in an unsuccessful attempt to expand it into a GUT.
>
>> A man called Tuomo Suntola has formulated what he calls
>> "The Dynamic Universe" model.
>>
>> http://www.physicsfoundations.org/library/The_Dynamic_Universe_e-book.pdf
>
> I wish him luck. I didn't read the whole book, but I read some of
> the opening material and browsed through the rest. I recommend it
> as a good overview and analysis of many issues in physics:
>
> Blurb on back cover by Ari Lehto, PhD in physics
>> The model is rational and can be understood by anyone with basic
>> knowledge in physics and mathematics.
>
> There is nothing wrong with having a dream of finding a GUT.
> In fact, Einstein's loosely connected LUTs of 1905 were inspired
> by his grander vision about how all those independent ideas could
> be related. And like Einstein, Suntola has a "day job":
>
> Back cover
>> Dr. Suntola has a far-reaching academic and industrial career
>> comprising pioneering work from fundamental theoretical findings
>> to successful industrial applications...
>
> Note that Marcus and Davis were not criticizing the *search* for
> a GUT. Many outstanding LUTs were discovered by people who had
> visions of GUTs. My favorite philosopher-logician-scientist,
> Charles Sanders Peirce, had a grand vision of semiotics as the
> ultimate GUT -- and I agree with him. He never completed the GUT,
> but he discovered many important LUTs along the way.
>
> Marcus and Davis were criticizing unsubstantiated claims that
> some useful LUT was a GUT that is worth billions of dollars:
> http://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/a-grand-unified-theory-of-everything
>
> One of the major problems of AI and cognitive science is that too
> many people make wild claims about GUTs, instead of integrating
> multiple useful LUTs. That's the point of the talk I presented
> in November: http://www.jfsowa.com/talks/micai.pdf
>
> Short summary: The cognitive cycle in slides 41 to 52 of micai.pdf
> is an outline of Peirce's GUT and its use in relating the many LUTs
> in AI and cognitive science.
>
> John (011)
Ystävällisin terveisin, (012)
Avril Styrman
avril.styrman@xxxxxxxxxxx
puh. +358 40 7000 589 (013)
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