How Do We Structure the Knowledge We Accumulate?
A friend recently suggested to me, "I believe most of us have given thought to how we structure the knowledge we accumulate." [1]
For those of you who, like me, have a bent for living Socrates' examined life, that certainly is true.
A so-called tree structure of layers of increasing specificity is employed to store information contained in a computer or found online. For example, a computer folder named Time Plans may contain folders for a range of years and within that folder may be folders for each year, and so on, ending at a plan for a particular week. Without this simple and intuitive tree structure, most of the information entered in our computers would, for practical purposes, be lost since each access to information would require a probably lengthy search.[2]
The database of the mind is vastly larger and includes kinds of information that cannot be stored in a computer database or online. Consider a computer plan for the week a person meets a significant other. This plan typically will contain little of the information stored in the mind such as the sensations and emotions experienced during that week. That this type of information is very important is evidenced by the recent discovery that positive emotions can trigger the "good medicine" of nostalgia.
http://bioscience.oxfordjournals.org/content/50/10/861.full
Do some of you share the following view? If not, how do you structure information?
I organize what I know in successively more abstract layers in what seems to me a continual, largely subconscious, search for meaning. I have a great deal of very specific concrete information of a factual nature in my mind. This concrete information is collected within more abstract concepts that make sense of some of this concrete information. I then discover even more abstract ideas that pull these second tier ideas together and provide meaning for them, and so on.
This way of viewing my accumulated information has served me well, leading to insights that I could not otherwise have experienced. One such example is this: In my early life in rural America, It seemed to me that the cows, geese, and other animals owned by my family displayed affection for their young in much the same way that humans do.[3] This observation worked for me, as a way to understand much animal behavior and saved me from many a flogging as a young child that would have been occasioned by straying too close to a goose protecting her goslings. Later, I came to see this anthropomorphic view of animals as just one application of a principle: accept a theory if, and only if, it helps to understand and predict events in your world.
Exactly how do we add those layers of abstraction? Unlike the layers of specificity mentioned earlier, which tend to be built, at least in large part, from the top down, layers of abstraction are built by a process of discovery from the bottom up. We collect extensive information and one day, in an "aha" moment of insight, we discover an abstract idea that assigns meaning to some of our accumulated knowledge. A later moment of discovery may occur when we discover an even more abstract idea that assigns meaning to several of these second tier layers of abstraction. Einstein and Infeld described these discoveries as "free creations of the human mind."[4]
An interesting and important point concerning these layers of abstraction is that successive layers of more abstract information are successively less complex. Einstein and Infeld suggested this relationship in connection with their story of a man who is trying to understand the mechanism of a closed watch:
In our endeavor to understand reality we are somewhat like a man trying to understand the mechanism of such a closed watch. He sees the face and the moving hands, even hears its ticking, but he has no way of opening the case. If he is ingenious he may form some picture of a mechanism which could be responsible for all the things he observes, but he may never be quite sure his picture is the only one which could explain his observations. … But he certainly believes that, as his knowledge increases, his picture of reality will become simpler and simpler and will explain a wider and wider range of his sensuous impressions. He may also believe in the existence of the ideal limit of knowledge and that it is approached by the human mind. He may call this ideal limit the objective truth.[5]
Where do these ever-more abstract discoveries end? As Einstein and Infeld suggest in the above quotation, inquiring minds ultimately approach discovery of the first principles of thought: being, meaning, reality, and truth. These first-principle ideas are the highest tier of abstraction possible for the human mind.
Notes:
1. Much of the information contained in this post is from Donald W. Jarrell, At the Edge of Time; Reality, Time, And Meaning in a Virtual Everyday World (North Charleston, SC: CreateSpace, 2012, rev. 2014.) See At the Edge of Time.
2. We also use this tree structure to store much of the information in our minds. The information stored in this manner plays a relatively minor role in furthering advances in our knowledge.
3. That animals have emotions such as love is now a widely accepted view in science.)
4. Albert Einstein and Leopold Infeld, The Evolution of Physics; The Growth of Ideas from Early Concepts to Relativity and Quanta (New York, NY: Simon and Schuster, 1961) (Original copyright, 1938), 31.
5. Einstein and Infeld, 31.
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This post is a response to a New York Times article of October 21, 2015, entitled "Sorry, Einstein. Quantum Study Suggests ‘Spooky Action’ Is Real". The Times article reports a study conducted at Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands that questions Einstein's defense of the "locality" principle, which insists that an object can be influenced only by events in its immediate surroundings. Einstein had famously labeled any claim to the contrary as "spooky action at a distance." I feel Einstein is correct despite the findings of the Delft experiment. However, in order to understand what is involved in this difference of interpretation, it is necessary to understand three important characteristics of particles and waves: particles in superposition, entanglement of elementary particles, and collapse of a wave function.
One of the simplest ways to illustrate these characteristics is to conduct a two-slit experiment, as described In the post of October 24, 2015. In the classic version of the two-slit experiment, first done more than 200 years ago, light rays passing through two parallel slits displayed characteristic wave behavior (think here of water waves) by interfering with each other, creating a pattern of light and dark patches on a photosensitive screen positioned behind the slits. The patches corresponded to the points on the screen where the peaks and troughs of waves diffracting out from the two slits combined with one another either constructively or destructively. Light patches occurred when the crests of two light waves came together while dark patches occurred when the crest of one wave met the trough of another wave.
Other research findings suggested that under some circumstances light consisted of elementary particles of light called photons. In the twentieth century, physicists performed a variation of the classic two-slit experiment with low-intensity light to show that this interference pattern was evident even when particles of light (photons) passed through the apparatus one at a time. This finding indicated that the photon was interfering with itself by passing through both slits at once! This phenomenon came to be called quantum superposition—the particle simultaneously existed in two possible states at once.
Surprisingly, for the time, when a variation of the two-slit experiment was performed placing detectors at the slits to determine through which slit a particle was passing the wave pattern disappeared and a single photon was observed. (This was an early indication that our world exists only when it is observed.) This interference of the light waves with each other became known as "entanglement" and the particles associated with them became known as "entangled particles". Disappearance of the wave function and the display of an elementary particle when an attempt was made to detect a particle became known as "collapse of the wave function". (These experiments can also be done with other subatomic particles such as the electron with the same results.)
A characteristic of entangled particles that defied common sense and has proven to be very difficult to explain is the central question involved in the Delft University study: when one of two such entangled particles is observed, for example its spin (a characteristic of elementary particles having nothing to do with actual spinning) is measured, the other entangled particle will Instantaneously display the opposite spin. This has proven to be true even as the distance between the entangled particles has increased. Increasing the distance between the entangled particles has been done, for example, by splitting the beam of light with a mirror and, in the Delft study, by using two diamonds with entangled photons and placing the diamonds on opposite ends of the Delft University. This separation, 1.3 km (approximately 0.81 miles) constituted a distance the scientists conducting the Delft study felt insured that the particles could not influence each other without violating fundamental laws of physics. Nevertheless, as reported in the NY Times article cited above (See New York Times), scientists involved in the Delft experiment (see Delft study) concede that other attempts to close loopholes may follow their study but they clearly feel that their study is sufficient proof that the spookiness Einstein derided is real, that action at a distance must be occurring. There is, however, a more credible and satisfactory explanation for what is happening here that does not require action at a distance and is consistent with the known laws of physics: the "many-worlds" interpretation of reality.
The Many-Worlds Interpretation of Reality
A remarkable theory developed by Hugh Everett III, is called the many-worlds interpretation (also called the many-universes interpretation) of quantum mechanics.[2] The many-worlds interpretation views reality as a many-branched tree, wherein every logically possible quantum outcome is realized. All logically possible alternative histories and futures are considered to be real, each occurring in an actual “world” (or “universe”), each with its own observer.
In lay terms, many-worlds posits that as we make certain critical choices in life, branching occurs such that a number of worlds emerge, one for each of the choices we could have made. Everything that could have happened in our future, but will not, will occur in the future of some other world and everything that could have happened in our past, but did not, has occurred in the past of some other world.
To illustrate the application of the many-worlds interpretation to the question of whether action at a distance occurs, assume that we are a group of scientists conducting an experiment. We have two entangled particles and we measure, say, the spin, of one of the entangled particles. We have made a choice and branching occurs so that one of the entangled particles is in our world and the other is in the world of a group of counterpart scientist. In our world we make one measurement—there is no action at a distance since only one measurement is made in our world. We know this, for when we measure a particle in superposition we find only one particle. And none of the fundamental laws of physics of our world are violated. Meanwhile our counterpart team of scientists in another world also make one measurement and again there is no action at a distance since only one measurement is made in their world.
Should you accept the many-worlds interpretation as physics or is it metaphysics. Max Tegmark contends:
"The frontiers of physics have gradually expanded to incorporate ever more abstract (and once metaphysical) concepts such as a round Earth, invisible electromagnetic fields, time slowdown at high speeds, quantum superpositions, curved space, and black holes. Over the past several years the concept of a multiverse has joined this list. It is grounded in well-tested theories such as relativity and quantum mechanics, and it fulfills both of the basic criteria of an empirical science: it makes predictions, and it can be falsified." [3]
You have a choice. You may believe in action at a distance and its difficulties given the fundamental laws of physics or you may believe in the many-worlds interpretation that, while it is not a widely accepted concept with the general public or with the physics community at large, it offers a credible and satisfactory explanation for the relationship between entangled particles.
Notes
1. This Post is adapted from Donald W. Jarrell, At the Edge of Time: Reality, Time, and Meaning in a Virtual Everyday World (North Charleston, South Carolina: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2012, rev 2014), 66-68. See At the Edge of Time.
2. Hugh Everett III, The Many-Worlds Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics: The Theory Of The Universal Wavefunction, doctoral dissertation, Princeton University, 1957, 9. Everett’s doctoral dissertation may be downloaded as a pdf file at www.pbs.org.
3. Max Tegmark, "Parallel Universes", Scientific American, April 14, 2003.
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