Philosophy is never too far from physics. It is in their overlap that I expect breakthroughs.
This essay (perhaps not right to call it a review) is inspired by Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. A modern day classic that hardly needs any more endorsement, this book is bound to change the way you look at the world, and live your life.
In this blog version of an article published in Omega, I discuss how Eastern and Western views say essentially the same things when it comes to the nature of space and time. And how that view can be interpreted as a basis for understanding Einstein’s theories. [Journal Ref: Omega – Indian Journal of Science and Religion, Vol. VI, (Dec. 2007), pp 138-150.]
God does not play dice with the universe — said Einstein. Whatever could he have meant? Here is my interpretation.
The last of my French redactions to be blogged, this one wasn’t such a hit with the class. They expected a joke, but what they got was, well, this. It was written the day after I watched an air show on TV where the French were proudly showcasing their fighter technology. This one talks about how logical conclusions can be illogical.
My impressions of George Orwell’s 1984.
[…]In 1984, the immediate story is of a completely totalitarian regime. Inwardly, 1984 is about ethics and politics. It doesn’t end there, but goes into nested philosophical inquiries about how everything is eventually connected to metaphysics. It naturally ends up in solipsism, not merely in the material, metaphysical sense, but also in a spiritual, socio-psychological sense where the only hope in life becomes death.[…]
Published in The journal of the Philosophical Society of England. The Philosopher, Vol. LXXXXVI No. 1 (Spring 2008), pp 3-7
This article examines the role of light in perception, physics and philosophy. Based on the similarities between metaphysical and spiritual or philosophical views on space and time, the article sheds new light on modern physics — the special theory of relativity, in particular.
Another discussion from an on-line forum, this post looks at space and time. […]The first question we need to ask ourselves is why space and time seem coupled? The answer is actually too simple to spot, and it is in your definition of time. Space and time mix through our concept of velocity and our brain’s ability to sense motion. There is an even deeper connection, which is that space is a cognitive representation of the photons inputs to our eyes, but we will get to it later.[…]
Another short discussion on the interpretations of Special Relativity.
A discussion on the meaning and interpretation of Special Relativity. The perceptual effects are known in physics; they are called Light Travel Time effects (LTT, to cook up an acronym). These effects are considered an optical illusion on the motion of the object under observation. Once you take out the LTT effects, you get the “real” motion of the object . This real motion is supposed to obey SR. This is the current interpretation of SR. My argument is that the LTT effects are so similar to SR that we should think of SR as just a formalization of LTT. (In fact, a slightly erroneous formalization.)
On the Daily Mail forum, one participant (called “whats-in-a-name”) started talking about my book, The Unreal Universe, on July 15, 2006. It was attacked fairly viciously there. I happened to see it during a Web search and decided to step in and defend it.
This post is a long email discussion I had with my friend Ranga. The topic was the unreality of reality of things and how this notion can be applied in physics. Going through the debate again, I feel that Ranga considers himself better-versed in the matters of philosophy than I am. I too consider him better read than me. But I feel that his assumption (that I didn’t know so much that I should be talking about such things) may have biased his opinion and blinded him to some of the genuinely new things (in my opinion, of course) I had to say. Nonetheless, I think there are quite a few interesting points that came out during the debate that may be of general interest. I have edited and formatted the debate for readability.