Dean M. Sandin

Really glad to see you on the Forum, Bob. Each of us in his own way has always wanted to find a clear path to the bottom of things in all sorts of respects -- in fact, I'm notorious among a certain crowd for bringing up the subject of "ultimate constituents". Well, TEW is clear and addresses what could be called the "contextually ultimate". I was about to do this next thing anyway, so it's nice to do it right here and now. As you of all people know (you've just published it online at Troynovant), I've done a looong, enthusiastic review essay on "The Theory of Elementary Waves" by Lewis E. Little, now uploaded to the Forum as a PDF. The navigation information for anyone interested is here for the Troynovant version and tew_review.pdf for direct access to my PDF. Anything right about it, other than what I've labeled as my own musings, is a matter of me picking up on what Dr. Little maintains. At worst, anything wrong about it damns me to heck and not anyone else.

Again you say something as if unaware of what in fact you do know. This time it’s that the TEW has a fundamental argument that there IS no possible realistic “interpretation” of the forward-wave theory. At the very least, QM inherently requires non-locality. All and all, I find this amazing. After all this time in this discussion thread, now you’re offering nothing but sheer assertion of what the TEW denies with its clear argumentation. We’re here to discuss the TEW -- and you didn’t even refer to it, let alone to any of its alternatives to your assertions. Whatever you might legitimately do, it’s NOT to repeatedly assert as settled and uncontroversial that which is radically held in question by the very nature and purpose of this thread. It really looks to me like you're not adding any value here at all.

I'm afraid that I agree with ewv's arguments against your premises about how mathematics plays its role in physics. His understanding of this, and his ability to articulate these things, are way beyond mine. I've had to content myself with repeatedly pointing out the crucial facts that the wave equation works -- describes observed phenomena -- and that the phenomena unmistakably exhibit some form of moving entities of a periodic nature. The TEW accepts this from the start. My purpose here is to deal with the issues of the TEW. You’ve asked me for comment on whatever is the better form of your thesis. It would be one part “ewv is right” and one part “your thesis doesn’t affect the validity of the TEW”.

Unquestionably the forward waves of QM are not real waves. As the TEW points out, it’s impossible to avoid the fundamental contradictions that pop up when we try to treat them as real objects that move from the particle source to the particle detector. However, the mathematical wave-equation methods used to describe the observed quantum phenomena do work. This is because the phenomena do really exhibit the periodicity that the wave formalism expresses. There is something with a periodicity in the attributes of whatever really does exist. QM is forward-wave theory. The fatal difficulties of reconciling the mathematical apparatus of QM with any objective physical meaning don’t preclude a fundamentally different physical picture from successfully working with the same mathematics. The above considerations are sufficient to focus our minds on the question of what are the physical objects that exhibit periodicity while moving in the detector-to-source direction. The TEW provides an answer. The resort to “configuration space” in QM is to mathematically express behavior. This doesn’t prevent either the wave objects or the particles from being understood in the TEW as physically real moving along specific trajectories. The form of the wave equation in QM is the form of the one in the TEW, which notes that a probability calculation of the wave motion from a source to a detector in QM also applies to the reciprocal motion of the same wave from the same detector to the same source. But this symmetry in what is mathematically the case doesn’t imply similar causes or entities. The entities in the two theories are very different. It’s not an objection that the wave equation involves both real and imaginary parts. It describes real, physical results as a proper method has to. Those results involve wave objects – objects, that is, with a periodicity in their effects. The TEW’s most basic characterization of the elementary waves is “periodic flux lines” – not anything resembling classical waves aside from the periodicity.

Replying to: The reason that forward waves can’t be taken as real is due to their forward character. As reverse waves subject to Schrödinger's time-dependent equation, the elementary waves can be understood as real. AGAIN we see that the basic issue is the direction of the waves, and that objections to the TEW that rely on the answer being “forward” are nothing but null and void question-begging.

As ewv put it, “the continuum of partial differential equations is epistemological, not metaphysical”. You are mixing the mathematical treatment of space with the physical objects. Space is an invaluable abstraction, not an existing thing that is claimed to be either “in fact discrete” or in fact continuous. The formalisms of the QM and QED are not ever going to be “out”. They are methods founded on observation and they succeed as such. Both mathematically continuous continuum models and mathematically discrete lattice models are methods of dealing with the physics, where they are applicable. They have limits to their applicability, which is the opposite statement from your apparently expecting the ultimate entities of physics to comply with them as if they were an a-priori dichotomy. And as I’ve been pointing out, the ultimate, elementary level of objects is not automatically constrained to obey the physical and mathematical principles drawn solely from a “higher” level of physical objects and their actions. What constrains (so to speak) what they must be, is the fact that they produce and cause our realm of perceivable entities and their actions. The elementary entities are what they are, not what we might proclaim them to have to be in advance. Our finally correct concepts of them will have to follow upon what we finally find. In the meantime, the TEW as conceived to this point is a valid physical and mathematical approach. And that's an understatement. Its foundational principle -- the actual direction of the waves of QM -- is able to replace so much error and confusion, and explain so much without contradictions that was never physically explained before, that it's the only rationally viable physical picture available to us. It is insightful, physical, and fruitful where QM can never be, and it’s not threatened by our false expectations of continuous vs. discrete.

I think I agree with all that you've said. You've certainly expressed it with a depth and sophistication that I really appreciate. I see now that I’d likely need to greatly rephrase things in the wider epistemological picture. My use of "measurement" hasn't been intended as presupposing a human consciousness. I don't mind dropping it if hinders communication or legitimately causes confusion. My use of "size" has been assuming a level achieved in physics, since the subject is the TEW. In this context, the length of a spatial interval does equate to some number of standard unit-objects (and time intervals amount to some number of periodic actions of standard unit-objects). Special relativity depends on this in its appeal to inertial frames of reference, which can be expressed as Einstein's "rods and clocks". They needn’t everywhere exist concretely, of course, in material form (though one wonders how the elementary waves might serve). In principle they (the rods and clocks) can be regarded as present everywhere, as a method of dealing with motion (including the motion of light) over spatial distances and time intervals. General relativity generalizes this to accommodate the curvature of trajectories that gravity produces, tending to a Euclidean regime of uniform motion (no forces) on a small enough scale – this in order to retain full generality in the expression of physical laws. So I don't (intend to) say that the elementary objects – the waves and particles in the TEW – inherently can't ever be understood as having a size; that would be groundless. But physics would have to broaden the concept from its current range of applicability to objects. In the meantime, getting back to the ultimate point of my postings, projections of the concepts of "continuum" and "discrete" to the elementary level can't be made, so distrust or rejection of the TEW can't be supported on the grounds of how we understand them now. And if it does happen that we eventually extend our concepts of space and time intervals to the "ultimate constituent" level, which would be a great integration, we don't now know what we'll find. From the current physical meaning of those things, we don't know, for instance, how, or even if, the "widths" or "lengths" of elementary "segments" of elementary wave flux lines might physically combine (act as standard units) to help us deal with distances or sizes on a higher level (both between two objects and across a single object). This extends to our not now knowing everything about how the radiating lines of flux from a particle, all stamped with the same organization and phase over a spherical wavefront, might collectively behave at a distance (the "quantized solid angle" issue). Standard QM interprets space and time as breaking down completely at a small enough scale, leaving only some metaphorical "quantum foam" representing some limitlessly chaotic and powerful "vacuum energy". To me, that evokes how ancient cartographers supposedly printed "here be monsters" at the edges of their world maps. It will be nice when and if the TEW doesn't just sweep that approach aside on principle as it does, and “merely” provide the basis that it does for replacing the wrong physical content of QM –but finally goes on to a complete description of the most fundamental realm in terms of the entities there. If a characteristic of these entities emerges that comes with a dimension of length (or volume) that can be understood as the elementary size of the entities, then great, I’ll love it.

Dr. Little’s presentations feature all five, although #3 is better phrased as “induction of the general properties”. 1. Both his 1996 paper and his book clearly and pointedly begin with the “motivation for the need of a new theory” and the justification for “the introduction of the new concepts and ideas” – namely, reciprocal waves. 2. There’s no avoiding his straightforward “presentation of the presuppositions/premises” and of the nature of the mathematical formalism that TEW accepts. 3. There’s no question of his arrival at the “general properties” of the waves. To take one fascinating (to me) example, there’s Chapter 7, section 5 (“Picture of the Elementary Wave Flux”), and the differences in the appearance of a wave from the particle rest frame as opposed to from moving frames. 4. He deals with a number of specific cases (beyond the starting place of the double-slit experiment). There’s the neutron interferometry experiment that supposedly is only explicable by backward-in-time causation(!), polarization experiments, the “Schrodinger’s Cat” thought-experiment, and EPR-style experiments (including double-delayed choice). Then there are his uniquely physical explanations of the uncertainty principle; measurement theory; the Pauli exclusion principle; photon emission and “available states” in a resonant cavity; particle tunneling; magnetism; diffraction by crystals; atomic orbitals and decay; the seamless relation of the quantum level to the classical level; the origin of energy, momentum, and mass in the attributes of the waves – and perhaps above all, the full and automatic unification with special relativity, as if they are the same theory from different perspectives. Agree with his analyses or not, understand them well or not, it remains that there’s no denying his efforts to apply the TEW to a broad range of specific and key cases. 5. See Chapter 13.

A quick note here, then on to my next reply. “If there is no wave for a specific direction, than no particle will travel along that direction” might mean any one of several things. I can think of three. 1. There might be directions along which no line of elementary wave flux is present. 2. There might be directions along which the line of elementary wave flux does not have the power to causally control particles. 3. There might be directions along which the line of elementary wave flux does not have the power to stimulate the emission of particles. The first would be a contradiction in terms, since a physical direction from some spot would reduce to a particular line of the waves. I can’t really comment on the second, other than to say I don’t find any suggestion in the TEW of a form of elementary wave that can’t “hold onto” particles. I think only #3 is stated by the TEW. Though in a limited sense. Wave interference at a point can be totally destructive, meaning that a particular wave at that particular point would have no intensity all, thus wouldn’t cause particle creation or redirection into any direction from which a piece of the interfering wave is coming. Taken in full generality, though, it looks like #3 would fall under #2.

If some object has, say, a width, then it “stretches through space”. This actually means that various smaller objects intervene between its extremes (since there are no “gaps” in existence “where” there are no objects). So we can choose a unit-object standard (maybe the wavelength of the photons of a particular frequency) to measure this width. But an elementary object by definition doesn’t have extended parts. Or at least we can’t imagine what that would mean, since in such a case there are no objects to serve as the the things intervening between those parts. I don’t mean measurement in a primarily epistemological or act-of-consciousness sense. My references to measurement have been in the context of that process reducing to a certain physical equivalence between the target object and some series of standard unit objects. It doesn't matter whether we are the agency that puts the series in place or it happens naturally in some galaxy where no minds ever evolved. I am acutely aware that this takes us away from considering the TEW. I’ve mentioned this stuff because there’s been a certain amount of suggestion that the TEW is flawed or incomplete or whatever for not dealing with issues that it’s not intended to address and has no need to address – such as the “continuous” vs. “discrete” false alternative that I was dealing with. My idea was to shine a light that showed that these almost metaphysical issues are not the subject of the TEW and can’t be used to question or evaluate its logical validity. Its logical validity rests on voluminous evidence and its adherence to a rational philosophical foundation.

I think this fully answers what you’re asking: I didn’t mean to say that measurement bestows the property of size. Or that if we haven’t yet figured out what units or means are needed for doing the measuring then the kind of object in question lacks size. I did mean to say that the size of an object is a physical property that is in principle (repeating my words here) “measurable by a series of unit objects which themselves have a size or length”.

I strongly believe you’ve jumped to an unjustified conclusion. There’s no implicit “very bold” assumption that “solid angles are quantized”. Dr. Little has “boldly” gone where no man has gone before, but not in that way. “Physical space” is a very problematic idea. Space is an abstraction from the physical world. What concretely exists in a collective spatial form is whatever entities that are collectively filling the universe. In the TEW, those things are the elementary waves. Just as we don’t have a rational need to posit something prior to existence to understand existence, we don’t have a rational need to posit some prior, independent thing called space to hold, or be a framework for, the physical entities of existence. (I’m not claiming you don’t understand this already, but in general it needs underscoring for any audience.) The TEW says nothing about any quantized solid angles with regard to directions out from a particle or a wave vertex. And I can’t see how it might need such a premise to accomplish what it has accomplished – which is to physically explain the full range of observations that only QM has dealt with up to now. The TEW simply treats the elementary waves and particles as, well, elementary: not made up of even more basic objects. (This is provisional in the sense that there’s no cause to dig deeper, no hints that we ought to do so in order to account for known phenomena. There’s no proof that I know of saying that these objects can only be at the absolute rock-bottom.) To treat the waves as elementary is to simply accept them for what actions or phenomena that they cause to happen. To treat them as elementary is to recognize that there’s nothing underlying them that explains them, and that whatever they do, they simply do, and whatever they are, they simply are: the given base of physics. As long as the theory that employs them successfully conceives of them as having a specific identity and therefore specific causal properties (including locality in their actions), then we have no grounds for requiring more before accepting the theory. Questions of quantized angles and the like might or might not someday be resolved in the theory. Either way, they don’t come to bear in accepting or rejecting the theory as logically valid. -------------------- The rest of this posting is not anything that the TEW addresses, so it’s entirely my own ideas that are on the line. I’m adding it because I’ve seen a recurring issue of “continuum” versus “discrete” being raised as if it were a settled or axiomatic basis for evaluating a theory of elementary objects. If we’re dealing with the entities that lie at the base of things, then we can’t rely on certain common concepts such as “size” and “boundary”. We can’t automatically carry them over to a realm of objects that has not contributed to those concepts. We have no clear idea of what it would mean for the elementary waves to have either sizes or boundaries. At least I can’t come up with any. To have a size or length is to be measurable by a series of unit objects which themselves have a size or length. And to have a boundary is to first have a size, such that everything “inside” the boundary is a particular object. But a truly elementary object isn’t “sizal”, it doesn’t “stretch across space”. There’s no such physical thing as space, only a plenum of elementary objects that is extended indefinitely in every direction.. The lesson in all of this is that “continuum versus discrete” is a false alternative when we’ve reached the elementary level. Neither applies. We can say that the plenum of waves is a continuum – but only in the sense that there are no gaps in it, and not in any sense that calls for infinitesimal measurement (which would be a contradiction). Likewise we can say that an individual line of wave flux is discrete – but only in the sense that we can distinguish it as an object by what it causes at a specific location, and not in any sense that calls for gaps between it and other flux lines (which likewise would be a contradiction).

I wasn't intending to oppose the two. Sorry if it read that way. Dr. Little often uses "parameters" in discussing this, and I was going with that wording too.

Part of my point was that the TEW does give a physical explanation of the transition. There is no missing step that I've noticed. Another part is that it's not a case of something coming from nothing. It's something (the particles) coming from something (the interacting waves). By this very fact, these several somethings are intimately connected. The TEW already explains particle masses as "fundamental characteristics of the plenum". Mass in the TEW is actually a parameter of the waves that particles are born into and follow.

This is a complex subject and I know all too well that I can get things about it wrong. Perhaps I did. But let me try, sticking with the double-slit case for now, with whatever understanding I have. Whether the detector screen is there or not, the source will be emitting photons in various directions into lines of elementary wave flux. With no local objects present (e.g., particles in a screen) to “emit” a uniform wave organization in the form of a spherical wave, there will be only disorganized, non-interfering waves reaching the source. But the photons will be emitted anyhow and the ones reaching the slits will scatter in following their wave that scattered there on its way to the source. Adding the local screen means that some of the lines of wave flux reaching the source will now interfere with each other (having started from the same detector location but having reached the source by dual paths, due to scattering at the dual slits). This will amplify or diminish their power to stimulate photons into those wave states. The interference at the source is newly present, because no local objects to serve as wave-organizers were previously present in the direction of the screen. Now – as I see it, the EPR case is somewhat different. It doesn’t involve wave interference. It involves oppositely located polarizers acting on correlated photons emitted in a joint process by waves that passed through each of them to get to the dual-emission source. But you asked that we focus first on the double-slit case, so I won’t follow up on this other one (at least for now). (And anyway, the best way of following up on it is to first digest Dr. Little’s EPR material in Chapter 6 of the book.)