An Exceptionally Simple Theory Of Everything?, a new paper by Garrett Lisi

Yes, Majkl. Synchronicity, coined by Carl Jung, is certainly one of the implications of Garrett Lisi's theory and it is a step towards unification of mind and matter, animate and inanimate, continuum and bit string. A bit more dramatically stated with an eastern overtone:

The elephant of many parts is coming into the light.

A very good book I suggest is "Synchronicity: The Bridge Between Matter and Mind" by F. David Peat
http://www.fdavidpeat.com/bibliography/boo...nchronicity.htm

"For the sceptic, coincidences are the jokers in the deck of life. For the searcher, they are the key to synchronicity. As physicists search for a unified field theory, so Carl Jung and others searched for synchronicity -- the unifying principle behind meaningful coincidence, individual consciousness and the totality of space and time. Now, F. David Peat joins these two quests into one intriguing journey to show the connection between quantum theory and synchronicity, and to open the way to an exciting new understanding about the bridge between matter and mind."

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What is happening right now in the sciences is, in my opinion, a LOGICAL outcome of greater global forces at work, necessity being the mother of invention and I have been working on similar ideas (in heuristic fashion) from the social/psychological perspective dating back to early 2006. Below is an excerpt from a piece I posted to my blog last March. It may be of interest to you Qualitatively speaking and may shed some light on what I mean when I use the term "necessity."


"the magic forrest" by Mattijn
http://www.flickr.com/photos/mattijn/321728633/

from...

Trickle Up Economics, Conscious Capitalism & Co-Generation
http://raphie.wordpress.com/2007/03/31/tri...-co-generation/

excerpt #1
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On the other hand, perhaps a function to some extent of the resulting rapid-fire collision of cultures, the Global Mind is also in increasingly polarized conflict as worldwide reserves of renewable energy dwindle, climate change threatens to displace vast populations, policies of Preemptive Warfare frog-march pariah nations into increasingly defensive postures and the Neo-Gilded Age gap between haves and have-nots emerges into crystal clarity.

Within this Global environment, the “multiple revenue stream, outsourced” economic model brought in with the Digital Age by such New Economy stalwarts as Monster, Inc. (formerly TMP Worldwide) is “adapt or die” morphing into it’s much needed psychic / spiritual twin in a manner that might make Carl Jung and Carlos Castaneda sigh with relief, “Finally! They’re starting to figure it out!”


excerpt #2
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... people... are working to figure out ways to use the entire animal called US, all of US. They understand on an intuitive level that we are but small parts of an entirety consisting of countless parts on both sides of the “zero point” called human consciousness and that the the many parts of the self and the many parts of the other are connected not by choice, but by necessity and that if we do not serve one its just desserts we cannot serve the other.

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Or, to paraphrase Voltaire's thoughts on "God," if Lisi's theory did not exist, we'd have to create it...

All that said, it is too early too tell if Lisi's theory is "correct" or not. For myself, I believe we are yet a step or more away. Nevertheless, the "debate" within the scientific community has already shifted and I don't believe -- just an opinion -- but I don't believe there is any going back now.

Kindest Regards,
Raphie

</edit> If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him -- Voltaire
I originally attributed that quote to Nietzsche. Many thanks to Gorgeous for the catch in time to edit the post!

This post has been edited by Raphie Frank on Nov 28 2007, 12:22 PM

Actually, Nietzsche stated that: "God is Dead" - Quite a famous remark. He was alluding to the fact that the metaphor of 'God' is no longer relevant, because it is so often used for abusive purposes.

And if you would wish to know the real comments that Jung himself made upon his own theory of 'synchronicity', you could do no better than read his own work on the subject, instead of some dubious 'interpreter'.


g.

Dear Gorgeous,

My mistake on the Nietszsche misquote. Thank you for the catch. As for Carl Jung, I was a Psych major in college, as long ago as that may have been, and I studied his work in depth, reading much of it at a source level. His work was a central part of my thesis and at this point much of it is internalized. Jung's views on the "Final" vs the "Causal" perspectives is what most made an impact on me. Can't remember the specific book, but I read all about it in the basement of a dusty library, well before the Age of Wikipedia and "knowledge by link."

Best,
Raphie

P.S. Related to that Nietzsche quote you mentioned, *God is Dead*... In this pub right behind the National Theatre in Prague, sometime around winter 1994 or 1995, this bearded guy, with long stringy hair and blind drunk, gets up... he pounds one of the wooden tables and lets out this overwrought, hands-twisted in agony scream, in English no less:

"I still believe in God! But God, he does not believe in me! WHY!?! *BEAT* I think maybe it is because... he is dead."

Guess he was having a bad day...

This post has been edited by Raphie Frank on Nov 28 2007, 12:17 PM

E8 AND QUASICRYSTALS

The E8 lattice and quasicrystals: geometry, number theory and quasicrystals

J F Sadoc and R Mosseri
Lab. de Phys. des Solides, Orsay, France
J F Sadoc et al 1993 J. Phys. A: Math. Gen. 26 1789-1809 doi:10.1088/0305-4470/26/8/009
Print publication: Issue 8 (21 April 1993)

Abstract. The authors study the quasiperiodic structures which can be derived from E8. This lattice, suitably oriented, leads to a 4D quasicrystal which has (3,3,5) symmetry. They develop a modified version of the out and projection method. The high-dimensional lattice is first foliated into successive shells surrounding a vertex. The shells are embedded into 7D S7 spheres. They then use the so-called Hopf fibration of S7 to gather families of E8 shell sites into S3 fibres which contain 24 sites (or a multiple of 24) which are symmetrically disposed in S3. This has two advantages: first, in the selection process, a whole fibre is either selected or rejected, which reduces the computation; more importantly, the selection process for a fiber amounts to simple arithmetical criteria. The whole process leads to a shell-by-shell analysis of the 4D quasicrystal, which can be brought onto a 2D-1D algorithm similar to the Fibonacci chain construction. They propose an arithmetic formula which gives the number of points on the shells. This 4D quasicrystal has the interesting feature that it can be sliced into lower-dimensional quasicrystals, for example with icosahedral and tetrahedral symmetry in three dimensions.
http://www.iop.org/EJ/abstract/0305-4470/26/8/009

Related Post on another thread from the psychosocial perspective:
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THE QUANTUM GOSPEL
===================

Relevant text
-------------------

Each Gospel is one writer's "truth," but the "Truth" is in the totality and requires the observer POV, the "fifth eye" so to speak, to interpret and recognize that totality. That said, the "Truth" one discerns will always be RELATIVE to one's frame of reference. Think about that in relation to why Jesus the man, spoke in parables and allegories. He was giving shape to what one might term the "crystal," or perhaps better stated the "quasicrystal" of Man and Woman and all manner of lifeform.

Each POV, meaning each observer of life who is also a participant, views this "crystal" from an unique perspective based upon one's specific knowledge-base and life experiences.

To know that the entirety is there, however, what Jung might have called the "Final" rather than the "Causal" perspective requires a "Quantum Leap" of what the religious might term "faith." the artist "imagination" and the businessman "vision."

MORE: http://forum.physorg.com/index.php?showtop...ndpost&p=287904

This post has been edited by Raphie Frank on Dec 3 2007, 06:02 AM

a little refresher...

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cross-posted to:
'contextual' Mathematics/number Theory, Enhancing their 'Reality Correlation'
http://forum.physorg.com/index.php?showtop...ndpost&p=303049
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ABOUT E8

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Image and Text from Centripetal Notion
http://centripetalnotion.com/2007/03/22/22:31:00/
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E8


This is a 2-dimensional projection of E8, a 248-dimensional object seen here simplified into only 8-dimensions to help preserve sanity. Essentially, if I understand it correctly, it’s like a 2-D shadow of a 248-D sphere, an object so symmetrical you could theoretically rotate it in any direction in up to 248 dimensions and it still appear the same. Talk about a stick in the mud. It took 18 mathematicians four years to produce the calculation for this object, its formula weighing in at 60 gigabytes. The computation was announced at MIT by David Vogan this Monday, the 19th of March, 2007.

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Text from American Institute of Mathematics
http://www.aimath.org/E8/
==================================

Mathematicians Map E8

Mathematicians have mapped the inner workings of one of the most complicated structures ever studied: the object known as the exceptional Lie group E8. This achievement is significant both as an advance in basic knowledge and because of the many connections between E8 and other areas, including string theory and geometry. The magnitude of the calculation is staggering: the answer, if written out in tiny print, would cover an area the size of Manhattan. Mathematicians are known for their solitary work style, but the assault on E8 is part of a large project bringing together 18 mathematicians from the U.S. and Europe for an intensive four-year collaboration.

"This is exciting," said Peter Sarnak, Eugene Higgins Professor of Mathematics at Princeton University (not affiliated with the project). "Understanding and classifying the representations of Lie Groups has been critical to understanding phenomena in many different areas of mathematics and science including algebra, geometry, number theory, Physics and Chemistry. This project will be valuable for future mathematicians and scientists."

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Image and Text from Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E8_(mathematics)
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E8


In mathematics, E8 is the name given to a family of closely related structures. In particular, it is the name of some exceptional simple Lie algebras as well as that of the associated simple Lie groups. It is also the name given to the corresponding root system, root lattice, and Weyl/Coxeter group, and to some finite simple Chevalley groups. E8 was formulated between the years of 1888 and 1890 by Wilhelm Killing.

The designation E8 comes from Wilhelm Killing and Élie Cartan's classification of the complex simple Lie algebras, which fall into four infinite families labeled An, Bn, Cn, Dn, and five exceptional cases labeled E6, E7, E8, F4, and G2. The E8 algebra is the largest and most complicated of these exceptional cases, and is often the last case of various theorems to be proved.


RELATED BLOG POST:

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Image by Film Gaffer Sean Sheridan; Text by Raphie Frank
http://flickr.com/photos/srsheridan/1601524449/
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Toward an EXCEPTIONAL Simple Theory Of Everything :: Celestial Chiaroscuro


excerpt
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As such, in my view at least, the string theory community would do itself a service to embrace the possibility, not of the “miraculous” break through coming via the Standard Model alone, but via what Progressive Physicist David Bohm termed the implicate order (i.e. hidden or “enfolded”) that Lisi’s theory suggests.

In other words, it’s not this or that, but this and that because this is that. Not just the light and the dark — what artists might call the “positive and negative space” — but also the underlying order that threads them both together in celestial chiaroscuro.
http://raphie.wordpress.com/2007/11/24/tow...olemys-revenge/

RELATED PAPER:

An Exceptionally Simple Theory Of Everything?, a new paper by Garrett Lisi
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All fields of the standard model and gravity are unified as an E8 principal bundle connection. A non-compact real form of the E8 Lie algebra has G2 and F4 subalgebras which break down to strong su(3), electroweak su(2) x u(1), gravitational so(3,1), the frame-Higgs, and three generations of fermions related by triality. The interactions and dynamics of these 1-form and Grassmann valued parts of an E8 superconnection are described by the curvature and action over a four dimensional base manifold.

(Submitted on 6 Nov 2007 to ArXiv)
Download Paper: http://arxiv.org/abs/0711.0770


Best,
Raphie

This post has been edited by Raphie Frank on Jan 19 2008, 11:13 AM

Related/Not Related :: Perhaps of interest to some (posted in the interests of cross-pollination of ideas and approaches).

For Peer Review:

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"Yet Another Exceptionally Simple Theory of Everything"
The Cellular Lattice Model
http://ilja-schmelzer.de/clm/paper.pdf
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RELATED PHYSORG THREAD
Cellular Lattice Model, it gives SM fermions and gauge fields
http://www.physforum.com/index.php?showtopic=20726

Abstract (Note: symbols do not translate):

We present the bundle (Aff (3) ? C ? ?)(R 3 ), with a geometric Dirac equation on it, as a three-dimensional geometric interpretation of the SM fermions. Each (C ? ?)(R 3 ) describes two Dirac particles. It has a doubler-free staggered spatial discretization on the lattice space (C ? Aff (3))(Z 3 ). This space has a simple physical interpretation as a phase space of a lattice of cells.
We find the SM SU (3)c × SU (2)L × U (1)Y action on (Aff (3) ? C ? ?)(R 3 ) to be a maximal gauge action preserving E(3) symmetry, symplectic structure, and anomaly freedom, and which can be constructed using two simple types of gauge-like lattice fields: Wilson gauge fields and correction terms for lattice deformations. The lattice fermion fields we propose to quantize as low energy states of a canonical quantum theory with Z2 -degenerated vacuum state. We construct anticommuting fermion operators for the resulting Z2 -valued (spin) field theory. A metric theory of gravity compatible with this model is presented too.

EXPLANATION FOR THE LAYMAN:
http://ilja-schmelzer.de/clm/

This post has been edited by Raphie Frank on Mar 13 2008, 11:38 PM

Hi Ralphie---

I don't know if this has been pointed out at all, but most physicists are confident that this work is not correct. For a technical rebuttal of Lisi's work (complete with Lisi's own admission that the critique is correct), see Jaques Dislter's comments.

Essentially his conclusion is that the mathematical structures that Lisi needs simply don't exist in E8.

Further, there has been an attempt to subsume this model in the non-stringy QG community, just as you accused string theorists of doing in this thread.

In fact Lisi's work is not consistent with quantum gravity at present, and so far the only thing he thinks he's shown is that the classical structure of GR can be embedded into E8. (In fact he has not shown this, which is proved by his admission to Distler's critiques.)

Other people have looked at Lisi's paper in varying detail:

Sean Carroll: http://cosmicvariance.com/2007/11/16/garre...-of-everything/
Lubos: http://motls.blogspot.com/2007/11/exceptio...-theory-of.html

Both of them say the same thing: it violates the Colemann-Mandula theorem.

Sense a pattern?

This post has been edited by BenTheMan on Mar 30 2008, 06:08 PM

Welcome back Ben

Dear BentheMan.

Thank you so much for that feedback. What most intriques me about Lisi's theory is that it is shifting the debate. Whether Lisi is correct in the details or not, I believe he has cracked open the door to some new ways of thinking about things much as Veneziano did back in the 1960's. I believe this can only be good for physics, and frankly, for me as well (that's my own self-interest at play), as I wish to go back to school to study the intersection of physics and society (through the lens of "Consilience" in the interests of what I term "Social Cogeneration") a conversation that is just beginning to be had at the top levels of Academia.

SEE: Is There A Physics Of Society?, January 2008 Conference in Santa Fe
http://www.physforum.com/index.php?showtopic=20774

I have seen the piece Motl wrote on Lisi's theory, by the way, and mention it in the below post on my blog:

Toward an EXCEPTIONAL Simple Theory Of Everything :: Celestial Chiaroscuro

excerpt
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Whatever your personal view of the theory, it has certainly generated a fair amount of interest from such notable Physicists as Lee Smolin, Peter Woit, and John Baez, while string theorists such as Karlovy-Vary, Czech Republic-based Lubos Motl are apoplectic, already proclaiming the fiery apocalypse, not just of planet Earth, but of the entire Universe! (from Motl’s blog post: Telegraph: Cosmologists are killing the Universe on Motl’s blog “Reference Frame“).

I would suggest that what has in large part created the “ruckus” of late in the Physics community is that many believe Lisi’s theory may lead to the New Dark Ages, a reversion to the blind mysticism and ignorance of the Pre-Galileans, with attendant political consequences that could severely threaten separation of church and state, one of the most sacrosanct bedrocks of any free and pluralistic society.
http://raphie.wordpress.com/2007/11/24/tow...olemys-revenge/
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... which from a social theoretical standpoint gives my view on why I believe Lisi's views should be given a fair vetting.

I will look at the other links you posted with interest.

Best,
Raphie

This post has been edited by Raphie Frank on Mar 30 2008, 08:26 PM

Also, BentheMan, there is more than one approach to "skinning the cat." Below is one example of a recent paper by Dr. Carlos Castro Perelman, which, while I am not qualified to assess, rather underscores the point.

While some on this board have expressed a rather low opinion of Dr. Castro Perelman both personally and with regards to his work, at least one Nobel Laureate, Brian Josephson, seems to hold a different opinion and I'm just going to have to go with the Nobel Laureate for the time being.

Again, I am not suggesting I understand the below (/edit nor do I believe even Castro Perelman himself believes it complete) and this is exactly part of the problem. It took, what six years for the scientific community to understand the work of another Perelman, Grigori Perelman, who solved the Poincare Conjecture?

One poster on these boards termed that other Perelman "humble." Humble indeed. Perelman became so disiillusioned with the scientific establishment that he turned down the Fields medal and, at least at one point in time, dropped entirely out of mathematics, although perhaps he has since rejoined the scientific community. I don't know.

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ABSTRACT

A Chern-Simons E8 Gauge Theory of Gravity in D = 15, Grand Unification and Generalized Gravity In Clifford Spaces

Carlos Castro
Center for Theoretical Studies of Physical Systems
Clark Atlanta University, Atlanta, GA. 30314,
castro@ctsps.cau.edu

To appear in the Int J Geom Methods Modern Phys vol 4,
no. 8, December (2007)
(submitted March, 2007, accepted July 2007).

Abstract

A novel Chern-Simons E_8 gauge theory of Gravity in D = 15 based on an octic E_8 invariant expression in D = 16 (recently constructed by Cederwall and Palmkvist) is developed.

A grand unification model of gravity with the other forces is very plausible within the framework of a supersymmetric extension (to incorporate spacetime fermions) of this Chern-Simons E_8 gauge theory. We review the construction showing why the ordinary 11D Chern-Simons Gravity theory (based on the Anti de Sitter group) can be embedded into a Clifford-algebra valued gauge theory and that an E_8 Yang-Mills field theory is a small sector of a Clifford (16) algebra gauge theory.

An E_8 gauge bundle formulation was instrumental in understanding the topological part of the 11-dim M-theory partition function. The nature of this 11-dim E_8 gauge theory remains unknown. We hope that the Chern-Simons E_8 gauge theory of Gravity in D = 15 advanced in this work may shed some light into solving this problem after a dimensional reduction.

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I found out about Lisi's theory, truth be told, through Carlos Castro Perelman himself. He was rather beside himself at the time as his work has been censored by ArXiv for years.

Incidentally, Frank Tony Smith, cited in Lisi's paper, has a 30 million dollar lawsuit against the Cornell Archives for similar suppression of work.

Best,
Raphie

This post has been edited by Raphie Frank on Mar 30 2008, 09:51 PM

I think Lisi has accomplished none of this. It is quite clear to those who understand these ideas that his ideas are interesting, but probably wrong. He built an E8 grand unified theory (which is not new, anyone who works on heterotic string phenomenology can probably build ten a day). The novel thing is that he claims that his E8 theory contains SO(3,1), which Dister showed is not the case.

To say that he is ``shifting the debate'' is nonsense, because most people in Academia ignore his work. The only people who seem to think that it is important are Lee Smolin, Garrett Lisi's mom, and Discover Magazine.

Ben, we've been around the block 5 times with Raphie. He doesn't want to know. He just wants to claim he's part of some shift in thinking in science to do with 'social string theory' (which has nothing to do with string theory, he just wants to think he's involved with it). He claims to 'concept mine' things like Polchinski's textbook but cannot actually get a single concept from the book, due to having no understanding of the maths. Pages on RG runnings, conformal invariance and even just residues of contour integrals were over his head. He thought a picture of a contour integral (pg 55, volume 1) related to the G2 or F4 weight diagram from this thread's topic!

He's a nut who gets upset when someone asks "Do you actually understand the concepts you keep name dropping?" Juist see how much he cries about Euler and I ganging up on him in http://www.physforum.com/index.php?showtopic=16195 . Apparently we'll be the subject of some publication on social interaction when he gets into Harvard or Yale And his reference? Someone he's only interacted with via email whose well known as a crank in physics and whose website does nothing but complain he's banned from posting papers to ArXiv!

http://archivefreedom.org/

(significantly edited)

Suit yourself with the name calling, AN. You consistently attack a social theorist on mathematical grounds and it's just plain silly. As I have mentioned before, I am operating on an interdisciplinary level in the interests of cross-correlating concepts across disciplines.

A few examples of influences, not at all complete and subject to revision:

Evolving Points of Reference - Cognitive Physics (Part IV: Conceptual Influences)
http://raphie.wordpress.com/2007/10/21/evo...l-influences-2/

As for my specific interest in numbers, right along with music, mathematics is a Universal Language. It is to the mind what music is to the heart. And just like music, there is more than one kind of mathematics. And just as different types of music evoke different emotions, different ways of framing numbers inspire different manners of thinking and allow one to perceive patterns otherwise not easily discernible:

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EXAMPLES:

Ulam's spiral
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ulam_spiral

Goldbach Comet
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goldbach's_comet
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As for Page 55 of Polchinski, Alphanumeric, you can map both the Circle of Fifths and 3 standard deviations of the Normal Gaussian distribution directly on to that three tiered circle which I conceive of as a "conformal mapping tool," obviously a loose interpretation. The point in the middle and everything outside can be thought of as anyone more than three standard deviations from the mean.

In human terms, pretty much anyone in that category constitutes a HIDDEN POPULATION, hidden populations being, as you know, a passion of mine. Just because you can't see it, that does not mean it's not there.

'It's a small world' becomes a scientific method for finding people, from jazz musicians to drug addicts
http://www.news.cornell.edu/releases/Nov00...mpling.ssl.html

matthew salganik :: respondent-driven sampling
http://www.princeton.edu/~mjs3/rds.shtml

Best,
Raphie

This post has been edited by Raphie Frank on Mar 31 2008, 12:17 AM

What the *** is a ``social theorist'' anyway? And if we can't talk about ``social theory'' on mathematical grounds, what the *** makes you that you can talk about quatnum gravity on social grounds?