A Realist view of logic and physics

 Realism: A Journey through Logic and Physics

“I know three things will never be believed - the true, the probable, and the logical.”

- John Steinbeck 

 

In a time scale of the sun's age we we can confidently say that we have not made the world, compared with the changes achieved by animals and plants. Yet we have created a new kind of artifact which promises in time to work changes in our corner of the world as great as those worked by our predecessors, the oxygen-producing plants or the islanding building corals. These new products, which are decidedly of our own making, are our myths, our ideas, especially our scientific theories: theories about the world we live in. 

I suggest that we may look upon these myths, these ideas, and theories as some of the most characteristic products of human activity ( as said by Karl Popper).  They are organs evolving outside our skins per se these are exosomatic artifacts. 

Thus we may count among these characteristics products especially what is call " human knowledge" where we take the word 'knowledge' in the objective or impersonal sense, in which it may be contained in a book, stored in a library, or in the internet. 

" Knowledge produced by a person is analogous to honey produced by bees". Bees produce, store, and consume honey, but typically, a bee does not just eat the honey it has produced. Drones, which don't make any honey, also consume it, and bees can lose their stored honey to bears or beekeepers. Interestingly, worker bees need to consume honey, often made by other bees to maintain their ability to produce honey.

This concept largely applies, with minor differences, to oxygen-producing plants and theory-producing humans. Like bees with honey, we are both producers and consumers of theories. We must consume others' theories and occasionally our own to continue generating theories. Here, 'to consume' primarily means 'to digest,' similar to bees. However, it extends further: consuming theories involves critiquing, altering, and often dismantling them to make way for better ones. These processes are essential for the advancement of our knowledge.

Humans produce not only scientific theories but also a variety of other ideas, such as religious or poetic myths and friction. What distinguishes a scientific theory from a work of fiction? It's not just that theories might be true while fictional stories are not, though truth and falsehood are relevant. The key difference is that theories and stories are embedded in different critical traditions. They are judged by distinct traditional standards, despite having some commonalities. 

A scientific theory is characterized by its purpose as a solution to a scientific problem. This problem may have emerged from previous critical discussions of tentative theories or may have been discovered by the theory's author within the realm of scientific problems and solutions. However, this is not the whole picture. The scientific tradition, until recently, has been defined by what can be termed scientific realism. This means it was driven by the idea of finding true solutions to its problems that correspond to the facts. This regulative ideal of seeking theories that match facts is what makes the scientific tradition a realist one. It differentiates between the realm of our theories and the realm of facts to which these theories pertain. Furthermore, the natural sciences, with their critical methods of problem-solving, and some social sciences like history and economics, have long represented our best efforts in problem-solving and fact-finding. By fact-finding, I mean discovering statements or theories that correspond to facts. Thus, these sciences generally contain the best statements and theories from the standpoint of truth, providing the best descriptions of the world of facts, or what we call 'reality'.

Emergence from reduction

Physics and chemistry, which deal with physical things and states, are closely related. Chemistry’s inapplicability at extreme temperatures suggests it may be reducible to physics—a significant scientific achievement, fostering unity and understanding. Assuming chemistry is fully reduced to physics, we might hope to similarly reduce biology to physics. However, living organisms differ fundamentally from non-living things, making this reduction more challenging. While progress in understanding the origin of life and creating primitive organisms may occur, true reduction requires more than control over processes. It demands theoretical integration, comprehending the new field through the principles of the old one.

The reduction of chemistry to physics, seemingly progressing well, can be seen as a prime example of a true scientific reduction that meets all the criteria for a robust scientific explanation. A 'good' or 'scientific' reduction is a process through which we gain significant insights: we come to understand and explain the theories of the field being reduced (chemistry in this case) and we also learn about the capabilities of the theories from the reducing field (physics in this instance).

I term "bad reduction" or "ad hoc reduction" as the method of reducing concepts through mere linguistic maneuvers. For instance, physicalism, which proposes the ad hoc existence of physiological states to explain behavior previously explained by mental states (without such ad hoc postulation), is an example. Another example is the linguistic device of claiming to describe a physiological state when stating that one understands the Schrödinger equation. This second type of reduction, or misuse of Ockham's razor, is problematic because it obscures the real issue. As Imre Lakatos vividly describes, it is a "degenerating problem shift" that can hinder either a good reduction or the study of emergence, or both.

Thought process and understanding

Supporting the emergent nature of theories or knowledge in an objective sense. I'll mention a few arguments against the naive and popular view that theories can be reduced to the mental states of those who create or understand them. (We won't discuss whether these mental states can, in turn, be reduced to physical states.) The notion that a theory in its objective or logical sense can be reduced to the mental states of those who hold it is typically framed as the theory simply being a thought. However, this is a fundamental mistake: it fails to distinguish between two meanings of the word 'thought'. Subjectively, 'thought' refers to a mental experience or process. But two mental experiences or processes, while possibly causally related, cannot be logically related. 

For example, if I say that certain ideas of the Buddha align with those of Schopenhauer or contradict those of Nietzsche, I'm not referring to the mental thought processes of these individuals or their interactions. Conversely, if I say Nietzsche was influenced by Schopenhauer's ideas, I mean that Nietzsche's thought processes were causally affected by his reading of Schopenhauer. Therefore, we have two distinct realms: the realm of thought processes and the realm of the products of thought processes. The former may be causally related, while the latter are logically related. The incompatibility of certain theories is a logical fact, independent of whether anyone has recognized or understood this incompatibility. These objective logical relationships define the entities I call theories or knowledge in the objective sense. 

This distinction is evident when considering that the creators of theories often do not fully understand them. For instance, it could be argued that Erwin Schrödinger did not fully understand his own equation until Max Born provided a statistical interpretation; or that Kepler did not fully comprehend his own area law, which he reportedly disliked. Understanding a theory is akin to an infinite task, suggesting that a theory is never completely understood, although some may grasp certain theories very well. 

Understanding a theory is similar to understanding a human personality: we may predict a person's behavior in various situations but cannot fully understand all their possible responses due to the infinite variety of potential situations. Similarly, a full understanding of a theory would require grasping all its logical consequences, which are infinite. Thus, no one, not even its creator, can fully comprehend all the possibilities within a theory, highlighting that theories, in their logical sense, are objective entities that we can study and attempt to understand. It is no more paradoxical to say that theories or ideas are our creations yet not fully understood by us than to say that our children are our creations yet not fully understood by us, or that honey is a product of bees yet not fully understood by any bee.

Realism and physics

In modern physics, subjectivism has become integral in two key areas: Boltzmann's theory of entropy (the arrow of time) and Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, which define a minimum limit on the observer's influence over the observed object. Einstein also introduced subjectivity when he included the observer in various thought experiments aimed at elucidating relativity, but he subsequently removed the observer from this domain over time.

The Heisenberg formula for energy is independent of both wave mechanics and Heisenberg's matrix mechanics. It also does not rely on commutation relations. Surprisingly, it does not stem from the revolutionary quantum mechanics of 1925-1926 but directly derives from Planck's earlier quantum postulate from 1900.

The interpretation proposed here suggests viewing Heisenberg's uncertainty principles as statistical scatter relations rather than indicators of the precision of measurements or limits to our knowledge. In this view, the principles don't speak directly to the precision of measurements but rather to the limits of homogeneity in quantum-physical states, indirectly addressing predictability. 

For instance, the formula Δ𝑝⋅Δ𝑞 ≈ ℎ implies that upon determining the coordinate 𝑥 of a system, such as an electron, the momentum 𝑝 will scatter upon repetition of the experiment. This assertion can be tested by conducting a series of experiments with a fixed shutter opening Δ𝑥, measuring the momentum 𝑝​ in each case. If the measured momenta scatter as predicted, the formula survives the test. Notably, these experiments require measuring 𝑝 with a precision greater than Δ𝑝, as otherwise, speaking of Δ𝑝 ​ as the scatter of 𝑝 ​ wouldn't make sense. Such experiments are routinely conducted in physical laboratories, challenging the interpretation of Heisenberg's indeterminacy principle. While Heisenberg acknowledged the possibility of such measurements, he deemed attaching meaning to them a matter of personal belief or taste, leading to their disregard as meaningless. 

However, they serve a specific purpose: testing the formulae themselves as scatter relations. This perspective argues against accepting Heisenberg's or Bohr's subjectivist interpretation of quantum mechanics, suggesting instead that quantum mechanics is a statistical theory suited to solving statistical problems, such as spectral intensities. As such, there's no philosophical need to defend its non-causal character.

There's no reason to doubt the realism and objectivity of physics. In modern physics, the observer's role remains similar to that in classical physics – primarily testing theories. This process involves evaluating competing and auxiliary theories, highlighting that we are not so much observers as thinkers.

Realism in logic

Logic, in essence, can be seen as the theory of deduction or derivability. It involves transmitting truth from premises to conclusions, as seen in proofs, and transmitting falsity from conclusions back to premises, as seen in disproofs or rebuttals. In critical discussions, logic is frequently used to challenge assertions by demonstrating their falsehood. If a conclusion is shown to be false, and the inference is assumed to be valid, it follows that at least one premise must be false. Thus, criticism becomes a vital methodological tool. Rejecting criticism by dismissing the logic used undermines the effectiveness of critical discussion. Logic serves two main purposes: in demonstrative sciences like mathematics, it's primarily used for proofs, while in empirical sciences, it's predominantly employed for critical analysis to uncover falsity. Although applied mathematics plays a role in empirical sciences, its significance is somewhat questionable in various aspects.

The rationalist view is characterized by its realist perspective on logic. Firstly, it associates logic with the methodology of the natural sciences, which the rationalist view considers to be grounded in realism. Secondly, it emphasizes logical inference as a process of transmitting truth or retransmitting falsity, thus highlighting the importance of truth in logical reasoning.

Theories of Truth

There are three main theories of truth. The oldest, the correspondence theory, posits that truth corresponds to the facts or accurately describes them, as Tarski emphasized. The coherence theory views truth as coherence with existing knowledge, while the pragmatic theory defines truth in terms of its practical utility or usefulness.

The coherence theory encompasses various interpretations, two of which are notable. The first posits truth as coherence with our beliefs, implying that a statement is true if it aligns with our existing beliefs. However, this approach raises concerns about integrating beliefs into logic due to potential logical constraints conflicting with individual beliefs. The second version suggests that an uncertain statement should be deemed true if it aligns with previously accepted statements, fostering a highly conservative approach to knowledge preservation. Contrastingly, the pragmatic utility theory focuses on the utility of theories in natural sciences, particularly physics. It suggests that a physical theory should be accepted as true if it proves pragmatically useful and successful in tests and applications.

Questions and interpretations???

Eliminating verbal or definitional questions, considering them as pseudo-questions. Questions like "What is life?", "What is matter?", "What is mind?", or "What is logic?" are viewed as unfruitful. They advocate discarding the question "What is truth?" for two main reasons. First, they reject essentialism, and second, they advise against discussing the meaning of words, likening it to a game that philosophers are addicted to but which they consider unimportant.

Incorporating the concept of verisimilitude or approximation to truth into logic enhances its realism by enabling discussion of how one theory aligns better with real-world facts than another. From a realist perspective, logic serves as the tool for criticism rather than proof in our quest for true and highly informative theories. Criticism becomes the primary instrument for advancing our knowledge about the factual world, aiming to promote the growth of our understanding by refining and improving upon existing theories.

This article is inspired from the works of Sir Karl Popper, Wolfgang Yourgrau, Allen D Breck

This is a distant part of model theory - https://jjohnpaul.blogspot.com/2022/01/mt1-model-theory-how-does-our-brain.html   and https://jjohnpaul.blogspot.com/2022/05/empiricism-and-rationalism.html .

Hope this article inspires you. 

Contact me through my blog or https://www.instagram.com/phy.sci/?hl=en.

- J John Paul

Model of scientific framework

Science is a way of thinking much more than it is a body of knowledge. 

-Carl Sagan

 

This article is not a technical account. This is an attempt to understand the fundamental sciences (Physical science, chemical science, and biological science) as models of different ideas and concepts. As this is an amateur (lay) approach to these concepts any ideas or thoughts might need to be better formalized.

This is also a continuation of the "Model theory" (click here, click here) whose main objective is to understand how we think and understand things.

This is divided into four parts. A minuscule introduction to all the parts is provided in this blog. A detailed explanation of each piece will be dealt with at a later time. 

Part - 1:  Physical science

Physical science in short is the study of the fundamental ideas of non-living things. If forms the basis of all other sciences. most of the physical science is based on the mathematical formulation and the physical certainty of things around us. It broadly involves the study of the universe through cosmology, the study of atoms by quantum mechanics, the study of moving bodies by classical mechanics, the study of an ensemble of particles by statistical mechanics, the study of energy through thermodynamics, the study of subatomic particles by electrodynamics and so on. Almost everything in science can be understood through the basis and approaches of physical science. 

Part - 2: Chemical science

Chemical science is the study of materials and their properties thus it gives a good understanding of the material universe. It uses the concepts of physical science to understand how materials combine, how they exist, and how they are formed and modified. In a very broad view, they have three different branches; Organic chemistry - deals with the study of compounds that are mostly made up of carbon and hydrogen as a base otherwise an organic compound. ; Physical chemistry - deals with the study of chemical systems with the help of the concepts of physics (A specific study of chemical systems using physics). ; Inorganic chemistry - deals with the study of all other

chemical species that don't have a carbon-hydrogen compound.  Thus chemical science deals with the composition of substances and their properties and reactions.

Part - 3:  Biological science

Biological science is a bit complex field to understand. it's like a living being studying a living being. In a formal way, it is the study of life. It has several unifying themes that tie it together as a single, it is a coherent field. It is a complex blend of the above two parts and other significant small parts. Medicine is one of the most important applications of biological science. Chemically it is the atoms, molecules, water, organic compounds, and macromolecules; signaling, Inheritance, development, and self-sustaining. We can always apply any science we discover to study life. It is difficult to give a short technical overview of biological science. In a codified manner, it is the study of us. 

Part 4: Model of  system

The above parts can be combined and put under the same roof which is generally call them as natural science which is the study of everything around us. As scientifically sound, we are able to combine them all into a single system and understand things in a related way.  Mostly this model of system can be a base for engineering like mechanical, civil, biotechnology, chemical, electrical, electronics, etc. This model of system is not a constant

system it is a feedback system so as far as we know the physical world exists because the system flows in and out of itself. The way of thinking and understanding it is a task that should be provided with time, thought, and information from which we can have an emergence. 

This is inspired by the work of  Barbara Minto (Pyramid Principle), N. Seshagiri, Richard Feynman, Henri Bergson (Matter and Memory), and others. 

This is an open problem to think about and analyze. My views and thoughts will be shared at a later time after getting some experience. 

HOPE YOU LEARNT A NEW THING AND CHANGE THE WAY OF LOOKING AROUND YOU.

If you have any questions regarding this you are free to express them in the comments or you can chat with me on my Instagram page to discuss this.  https://www.instagram.com/phy.sci/?hl=en.

 Vibration - Eternal motion

Everything in life is vibration 

- Albert Einstain

https://gifer.com/en/gifs/devils-tuning-fork

Our human senses are not powerful as we think. We miss many events that happen in nature. Even though we have the most evolved conscious but our sensory perception is not on par with other living organisms. 

The sense of vibration can be seen from different viewpoints. It can be viewed as a physical event and modeled it using the laws of physics and mathematics, It can be viewed as a philosophical thought of the cycle of life and even it can be viewed in spirituality as a connection to the unknown creator.

The essence of vibration can be best understood using the modern scientific formulation. This article will be a bird's eye view of vibration in our life and I will explain why I call vibration the "eternal motion".

This article will give a scientific explanation. This explanation may not be scientifically accurate but will provide a good intuition of the concept.

TO AND FRO MOTION

To and fro, back and forth or here and there all these verbal expressions mean the same thing. In a very general view, this expression indicates the movement of someone or something forward or backward followed by a return to the same position. This in general indicates many ideas such as emotional state, relationship, or a physical thing. We are only interested in the physical aspect of to and fro motion. 

As a human, we all would have seen the flapping of wings by a bird while flying this is a classical example of to and fro motion. This type of motion can be best understood by observing the wings of a bird or an insect. Now if you see the following picture you may get a visual idea of this here and there motion, or back and forth motion. 

An Introduction to Flapping Wing Aerodynamics (CHAPTER-1)

Wei Shyy, Hikaru Aono, Chang-kwon Kang, Hao Liu Cambridge University Press

From the above image, The motion of the bird is from right to left. The positions of wings at the 2nd and 4th stages are the equilibrium position or the position which is aligned to the body and this is the position of cruising flight. Now if we watch the position of the wings on stage 1 it is upward and on stage 3 it is downward. Now, this up and down motion from the equilibrium position is the to and fro motion of the bird's wings. (The curve line will be explained in the following section).

There are many such examples of this type of motion in our daily life, blinking of eyes, beating of heart, breathing, moving branches in the air, the motion of a swing, movement of clock hands, moving pistol in an automobile engine, and more. So in general this type of motion expression indicates the movement of someone or something forward or backward followed by a return to the same position.

 

REPETITIVE PERIODIC MOTION

Repeat - An action that is performed more than once (like breathing).

Periodic - An event occurring at intervals of time (like the beating of the heart).

Motion - Some movement through time which is defined using Newton's second law. 

Once we have an idea about to and fro motion the next step is to understand the essence of "repetitive periodic motion". As each word is defined it will be clear for you. A repetitive periodic motion is a motion that occurs more than one time in specific intervals of time. The best example of this is our heart. The heart has some movement as a whole so it is exhibiting repetitive periodic motion. I.e. in general a human heartbeat 60 to 100 times in a minute (This is given in a range because the heartbeat depends on many factors) and this process can be modeled using Newton's laws of motion.

Now we are clear about to and fro motion, time interval, and repetitive periodic motion (If you are not able to understand this contact me through the link provided at the end or ask your doubt in the comment).

OSCILLATION AND VIBRATION - A scientific approach to understanding repetitive periodic to and fro motion

When even we describe a thing we describe it through a physical quantity or a property, for example, we describe the movement of a car using speed or velocity, and we describe the dimensions of an object using size. In a similar way, repetitive periodic to and fro motion can be described using frequency. 

FREQUENCY -  Frequency is the number of occurrences of a repeating event per unit of time. For example, a high E string in a guitar goes up and down from the rest position 330 times in a second therefore the frequency of vibration of the high E guitar string is 330 Hz. Normally 1 Hz is the occurrence of one event in one second. 

So, frequency is an important property to understand vibration. There are many consequences of frequency in a physical understanding like wavelength and wave period. wave number etc. When we deal with a repetitive periodic motion we always express the motion in terms of waves. 

WAVES - Waves are the disturbance caused by repetitive periodic motion. The disturbance travel in a medium usually air, water, metal, etc. Even our human ear is working due to the disturbance caused by various events. Broadly speaking waves are the physical and mathematical consequence of vibrations and oscillations. If you see the previous image representing the flapping of wings of a bird, the bottom of the image is a curved line. This is not a random curve, mathematically it is a sine wave that is obtained from the rotating vectors. So a flapping of a bird's wing along with time represents a wave. At first, I actually felt the hoe an up-down motion (almost straight) can form a curve but it can. Try it your self take a long piece of paper and move the paper in a direction with constant velocity, on the other hand, use a pen and move your hands up and down you can see a similar pattern of flapping of a bird's wing. Physically it forms a sine curve but mathematically we can obtain many things from it like the frequency or the system which is causing it, wavelength, wavenumber, etc (this will be dealt with in detail in another blog).

The idea that we should understand here is that whenever there is a vibration, as a consequence of that vibration waves are formed and the nature of vibration can be understood by studying the waves.

OSCILLATIONS - "Oscillation is the repetitive or periodic variation, typically in time, of some measure about a central value often a point of equilibrium or between two or more different states". If someone search in Wikipedia this is the answer they get. Getting answers is not important but understanding them is important. 

Now if you take the flapping of wings the wings go up as much as they can and the wings move down as much as they can so, they are moving between two different states keeping the 2nd and 4th stage as equilibrium position so the wings of a bird are oscillating around a mean point. 

There is another example of oscillation in a non-physical way a child's mind oscillates between choosing a chocolate and ice cream. So anything that changes its state between two states can be considered oscillations.

The following show a spring and mass system (an ideal system in physics to study different phenomenon). when the spring is at rest the mass and spring remain in their stable state. when it is stretched or oppressed from the stable position it starts to oscillate between a compressed state and stretched state (You may have a question that why this happens? for now it is not our interest it will be dealt with afterward). Thus the mass and spring oscillate from their stable position. Along with it a graphical representation of the position of the mass over time is plotted, which forms a sine curve it represents a simple form of mechanical wave.

SIMULATION MADE BY J JOHN PAUL USING V PYTHON˘

https://github.com/JohnpaulJ1509/Python_for_physics/blob/main/7.(BASIC)Simple_HARMONIC_motion.py

So oscillations are also to and fro motion. Oscillations describe the to and fro motion of almost everything from mechanical systems, dynamical systems, and biological systems to mind and emotions. The oscillations can be best described using frequency and a waveform. The frequency gives the energy of the oscillation, the quality of vibration, and more similarly the waveform give the details about the origin, state, and future of the oscillations. Oscillations occur from the very atomic level to a very large level like in space-time or even a galaxy can oscillate. Almost all living and non-living bodies exhibit oscillatory motion or oscillations.

Oscillations can be of a periodic nature, non-periodic nature can be linear, or cyclic it can be anything. The mathematics of oscillation deals with the quantification of the amount that a sequence or function tends to move between extremes. In modern physics, we use oscillations to find the state of the particle. So the direct consequence of oscillations is waves. 

VIBRATION - Vibration literally means shaking, which is a Latin word. So shaking in one dimension is a to and fro motion and vibration in three dimensions is here and there motion. Mostly vibrations take place as a mechanical phenomenon. A mechanical phenomenon is a physical phenomenon associated with the equilibrium or motion of objects. A physical phenomenon is a natural phenomenon involving matter and energy. 

Some of the best examples of vibration are sound from our vocal cord, from musical instruments, the membrane of loudspeakers, vibrations of water molecules while heating, the vibration of mobile phones, and more. So vibration is also a to and fro motion that exhibits a mechanical phenomenon. 

THE CONFUSION - Are Oscillation and vibration the same or different

This confusion actually occurs for all the students but I have a good explanation to face this trick question. First, let us summarize what we know. 

• Both oscillations and vibrations are to and fro motion.
• Both oscillations and vibration can be represented as waves and their direct consequence is the formation of waves.
• Both oscillation and vibrations fundamentally represent the same thing. 

Now look at the question from a deeper point of view we can have a clear question "If oscillations and vibrations are the same phenomenon which is to and fro motion the why some to and fro motion is called vibrations and few to and fro motions are called as oscillations?"

It should not be surprising for you that there is no perfect answer for this but there is a convincing justification for this which is discussed below. 

Well these two words mean the same phenomenon but we use them in a different context. 

Scientifically speaking oscillations can mean any event that has the essence of to and fro motion. Like the movement of tires on gravel, any random to and fro motion, the to and fro motion of magnetic and electric field which forms a light, the to and fro motion of a pendulum, the motion of a swing, the motion of a sew-saw and more. Oscillations are mostly desirable which means it is done wanted like if you want to swing a swing you have to do it and it can be changed accordingly. What I mean to say is that if you want to move a swig for a certain distance you can move it according to your desire. 

Oscillations mostly occur as a whole. Consider the swing, the swing is made up of many atoms or it is made of many individual particles while oscillating the individual particles act as one single particle and exhibit an oscillation.

If you take vibration, it seems more random than oscillation but it is not. the vibration is mostly undesirable which means we don.t obtain what we want. For example, take a tuning fork if you hit a tuning fork it will have a to and fro motion. Now if you take a tuning fork that produces an A note on hitting it you can only get a A frequency you can't get a C frequency from it without modifying the tuning fork. Similarly in all mechanical systems like cars, the bike we don't expect vibration to take place but it happens whit a certain frequency call as natural frequency.  So vibration can't be decided for the mechanical system, the system will vibrate on its own.

Vibrations mostly occur as individual particles. So if you take vibrations all the particles vibrate in a very random fashion and provide a net vibration as a whole. If you take the tunning fork it gives an A frequency but it is provided by superimposing many rand vibrations in the material of the tuning fork. 

Another important aspect is that vibration is mostly associated with the loss of energy but in oscillations, we provide energy to perform it. This can be best understood by taking a drummer as an example. A drummer swings his hand and hits the stretched membrane of the drum, here the action of hitting the drum i.e the motion of the hand can be considered as an oscillation whereas the to and fro motion of the drum membrane is vibration. 

The vibration of a drum membrane

https://javalab.org/en/standing_waves_on_a_drum_surface_en/

 

Oscillation of the hand while playing drums

Taylor, John. (2017). Designing a Computer Model of Drumming: The Biomechanics of Percussive Performance. Human Technology. 13. 109-141. 10.17011/ht/urn.201705272520. 

So vibration and oscillation on a very basic level are the same which represent the to and fro motion but in a scientific viewpoint, they are different and use to denote the to and fro motion in different conditions. 

VIBRATION - Eternal motion

Eternal means existing or lasting forever. Each object that is visible to our eyes is made up of atoms and molecules. Mostly these particles have their own world to exist following some interesting rules. Now when you put a pollen grain on the surface and observe the interface through a microscope it will be seen that this pollen grain will jump here and there we don,t know why this happens in a macroscopic view. When we see it at a microscopic level it is clearly seen that it is because of the collisions of the washer molecules and the pollen grains, so for a collision to happen we require energy. The energy in a mass is stored via the mechanical phenomenon of vibration. So, everything in this world vibrates on its own and the reason for that is unknown. Even when the temperature is 0K (the coldest known temperature) the molecule has a vibration. So this undesired to and fro motion is kind of making the world stable by vibrating. That is why I call vibration eternal motion which is everlasting.

When anything vibrates it produces waves (a disturbance in space), so each and every object including us is emitting certain vibrations and these play an important role.  The consequence of this is resonance, natural frequency, constructive waves, destructive waves, and more (These will be dealt with in a different blog). So vibrations connect us to the cosmos. 

VIBRATION OF A GUITAR STRING

https://gfycat.com/warpedexcellenthairstreakbutterfly

DO VISIT THE ARCHIVE TO EXPLORE MORE 

Hope this article was useful and I hope you learned something from it.

If you have any theories or questions regarding this you are free to express them in the comments or you can chat with me on my Instagram page https://www.instagram.com/phy.sci/?hl=en.

 

Empiricism and Rationalism

 Empiricism and Rationalism - A connection to Model theory

“I suppose therefore that all things I see are illusions; I believe that nothing has ever existed of everything my lying memory tells me. I think I have no senses. I believe that body, shape, extension, motion, and location are functions. What is there then that can be taken as true? Perhaps only this one thing, that nothing at all is certain.”

 ― Rene Descartes

Why should we know the words Empiricism and Rationalism? People have a very different views of the world. No same person can have the same thought over a thing they observe. The approach to the emergence of thought in the homo mind follows two independent ways of process. Those ways are Empiricism and Rationalism. We humans are concerned with knowledge. Once there was a battle between these two processes but due to the emergence of the human mind now we can use this process to explain how now think and how one can have the grand knowledge of Mundus. It does not judge a mind rather it expands the mind to join with like-minded people and to understand the persona mind.

Empiricism

The word Empirical is the Greek word "empīricus" which means "based on observation". Now many things in a chaotic mind will find a link at least for minds like me. So in simple words the process of Empiricism states we process our knowledge by observation. For better understanding, we can say that we gain knowledge only by the materialistic observations that we make. To make sense of this process we need to go back to our childhood. When something is introduced to a child, the child takes it plays with it, grabs it, sees it, bites it, and does many things until it gets a sense of what it is basically the child scans the thing given to him or her. So when a teddy is given to a child it scans it and forms a model of the teddy in the mind and gets a piece of knowledge about the toy.

Rationalism 

The word rational is the Latin word "rationalis" which means " in accordance with reason and logic". The reason is simple logic and logic is a mind game that everyone performs. This logic makes us the 6 sense living entity. So the criterion of the truth is not sensory but intellectual and deductive. To understand it let us take an example, As a youth, we learn to handle money, we have a piece of prior information about money management from our parents, elders, and books. During a crisis, one can't spend the money just like that so one should make mental calculations and see which result will be suitable for him or her. So this is based on logic it is a rationalist way of linking the information and gaining the knowledge.

A deeper understanding of Empiricism and Rationalism

In the beginning, the Empirical process of gaining information is seen to be correlated with common sense. Since we see and feel the things around us and know about them. It becomes obvious that we gain knowledge from an empirical process. One thing we do know is that our senses sometimes mislead us. White walls can appear yellow in strong sunlight. Surgeons can stimulate one's brain so that one “sees” a patch of red that isn’t there. One can have hippopotamus dreams, and so on. "My sense experiences are at least sometimes created by my mind – or somehow in my mind. These comparatively rare “mistakes” have led many philosophers to insist that all my perceptions are “mediated”. Ultimately there is a greater consequence of this thought process which believes that only we exist and nothing else exists.

Comming to Rasitionlist's way of thinking makes the knowledge very unique. It is not that the rationalist creates knowledge in their mental state rather they join the information through logic and make it a piece of unique information. It seems that rationalism is a process followed by the polymaths and the selected ones but in reality the freedom of logic makes us what we are so, we all have a piece of rationalist thinking. This rationalist process has a blasting negative consequence, As a rationalist is a mental person he or she will gain a god complex out of his or her powerful capacity to link and create knowledge. 

Finally...

This discussion is not over but has started, From this much we should understand how we are. Personally the concept of "unknown knowable mind - consciousness" still remains a private room in each of our minds and the rationalist process of gaining knowledge will help us to gain knowledge about this private room. 

No matter how much we know about wave-lengths of light and human sensory perception, science seems unable to describe or explain the total uniqueness of our perceptual experiences or “qualia”

DO VISIT THE ARCHIVE TO EXPLORE MORE 

Hope this article was useful and I hope you learned something from it.

If you have any theories or questions regarding this you are free to express them in the comments or you can chat with me on my Instagram page https://www.instagram.com/phy.sci/?hl=en.

 

What makes us do things- Force

What makes us do things - Force

Man masters nature not by force but by understanding.

- Jacob Bronowski

https://briankoberlein.com/blog/four-horsemen/

 It would be better if we were children because we would ask lots of questions to our elders which may seem silly but are essential to understand nature in is the way. Why do things move? Why do things stand? Why something stops when we catch it?..... and more. 

All motion and nonmotion, (simply to say everything) begin with a force that does some work on them. When we put forces in words we have "PUSH and PULL". People generally have an awareness of many kinds of force like contact force, non-contact force, gravitational force, electric force, nuclear force, and more.

PUSH AND PULL

Push and pull are the activities that we do in our everyday life. These two simple yet important actions make the entire universe stand as it is. When you want to carry anything you pull it. When you want something to go out of the way you puss it. These actions are our fundamental motions. This blog has been typed and while typing I push each key on the keyboard to make them appear on the screen, we use mobile while using it we puss the mobile screen so we can scroll or click on some app and we pull the mobile by lifting it this way everything that we do is push and pull so we are essentially living by exerting to taking the force.

FORCES ALWAYS COMES IN PAIRS

I would have explained push and pull separately but I did not do this because of some interesting and important reasons. Take your thumb finger and press against the wall as hard as you can after a certain time you will feel some pain in your finger which indicates that something has pressed your thumb but it was you pressing the wall. So the only possible explanation that we can give is that the wall has pressed against your finger. In simple words, you exert some force to the wall in return the wall returns the same amount of force in your hand.  So the wall is giving a reaction to your action. This is what newton's third law of motion says "Every action has an equal and opposite reaction".

So forces always come in pairs. This gives us a lot of information. Now, let's take the simple action of walking. When you walk you push (a backward action force) your foot against the ground in return the ground push (an opposite reactive force) your foot in the same amount so that you can lift and start the move, by this way you are able to walk.

IMPORTANT ASPECT OF FORCE

Now if one eat some food say garlic bread one should be concerned only about the quantity of the food that he is taking in in order to avoid indigestion but while one is driving the car only the quantity called speed is not enough because the speed will give you the time to reach a place, your mileage, the engine tolerance but you need velocity which is same as speed but in a particular direction because one can't just reach a place just by driving in 60 km/hr it requires direction to be more specific so such quantities which require the additional information of direction other than the quantity are call as vectors.

So, let us come to force. Definitely, force is expressed in a number rather than a collection of greek symbols for example weight of something is actually a number that we can comprehend. Then why it is a vector? Now take the weight, weight is fundamentally a force acting on mass i.e. the force of acceleration due to gravity acting on a mass. So, the weight is always in the direction of ground (more scientifically it is pointed to the core of the earth) this is the reason for us to pull i.e pull the mass in the opposite direction of its original direction in order to lift it. I hope this makes sense. 

UNDERSTANDING FOUR BASIC FORCES IN NATURE

http://countinfinity.blogspot.com/2010/08/four-fundamental-forces.html

GRAVITATIONAL FORCE

Gravitational force is the weakest fundamental force of all forces the reason will be explained later in the upcoming topic. Think of a demon sitting inside at the center of the earth and he has attached every object including a small grain of sand to Mt. Everest with an invisible string continuously pulling them towards it. As there is the number of objects the force is little but still, it is pulling us all and keeping us in place. In a similar way, there is a demon in every object in the universe which attaches an invisible string to the other objects and pulls them. 

As the gravitational force always pull it is an attractive force. This gravitational force on earth s called gravity. As for every physical phenomenon, there is a mathematical form there is a simple mathematical expression for gravitational force among two objects. It is given as follows

Gravitational force =  Constant (Mass of one object) x (Mass of another object)  / 2 x (distance b/w them)                                                                              

So this means that if the mass is high the force is high and if the distance is small the force is high. So any two bodies in the world can exert a gravitational force. For instance, my laptop and I self which is 1 meter apart has a gravitational force of  0.00000001048 Newton which is not significant but the gravitational force between earth and the sun is 37500000000000000000000000 Newton which is very significant ad strong.

The gravitational force is the reason we stay in the place we want and the planets revolve in a peaceful manner.

https://socratease.co/content/gravity-1/intro

WEAK INTERACTIONS

Unless and until one is unfamiliar with nucleus and atoms in a deep sense it is difficult to grasp this nature of force but I will give the information about it to know about it in a basic sense.

The weak nuclear force (or just the weak force, or weak interaction) acts inside of individual nucleons, which means that it is an even shorter range than the strong nuclear force. It is the force that allows protons to turn into neutrons and vice versa through beta decay. This keeps the right balance of protons and neutrons in a nucleus. The weak force is very important in the nuclear fusion that happens in the sun. It is quite hard to understand at the beginning.

ELECTROMAGNETIC FORCE

Electric force and magnetic force are entirely different forces but are similar in many ways. The electric force acts between all charged particles, whether or not they're moving. The magnetic force acts between moving charged particles. This means that every charged particle gives off an electric field, whether or not it's moving. Moving charged particles (like those in electric current) give off magnetic fields.

Even though it looks live very small it is very essential in the structural integrity of all the objects in the universe. Solids stay solid due to this force. this force is far stronger than the gravitational force. The goosebumps that soccer, when you are excited, is also due to electrostatic force.

STRONG INTERACTION

The strong force is 'felt' between nucleons (protons and neutrons) inside of the nucleus of an atom. The strong nuclear force is sometimes referred to as just the strong force or the strong interaction. This force is strong enough that it overcomes the repulsive force between the two positively charged protons, allowing protons and neutrons to stick together in an unimaginably small space. The strong force dies off with distance much faster than gravity or the electromagnetic force, so fast that it's almost impossible to detect the strong force outside of a nucleus. A full treatment of the strong force requires many years of intensive study.

These four fundamental forces make the basic operation of puss and pull to keep the thing as they are. A greater understanding of these forces is given in general relativity (basically fancy complex topics). 

OTHER TYPES OF FORCE

CONTACT FORCE: The contact force is essentially the forces that are caused by the contact of two or more bodies like pushing a door, friction while rubbing something, pressing the keys on the keyboard, lifting objects, and more.

NON-CONTACT FORCE: The non-contact force are the force that acts without contacts like the attraction of compass needle to the north, the attraction of earth and sun and moon and earth, and many more. all the fundamental forces are the non-contact forces.

HOW FORCE IS REPRESENTED IN PAPER?

It is important to represent something that we see in the real world which is very essential for formulating the knowledge from the observations. So as all vectors, force is represented using an arrow (↗). The arrow essentially points in the direction of force and the length of the arrow in general roughly represents the magnitude of the force.

Description of force on fall in objects. Different masses experience different magnitudes of force.

(stimulation made by J John paul)

CONSEQUENCES OF FORCE IN REAL-TIME EXPERIENCE

We experience force all the time but we never take it into the account. The wired feeling when you are in a moving lift, the pain in your foot after a long walk, deformation of the tire after long use, and many more things. 

When you stand straight almost all the forces acting on us like the gravitational force, the normal force, the frictional force, and other forces will be in perfect balance and give us less pain but when you keep your hands parallel to the surface your shoulder bared some weight and causes pain after some time this is because the forces are not in balance and thus causes problems.

The beauty of projectile motion, the amazing water fountains, spider webs, and many other natural structures are a unique combination of forces. All your electrical devices work due to the electromagnetic force. The vision of the human eye is due to the fact that electromagnetic waves exert force in your eyes. There are many more things about forces that can be stated.

The mathematical aspects of force will be covered in a separate article.

  

TAKE SOME TIME EVERYDAY AND START EXPERIENCING THE THINGS AROUND YOU TO UNDERSTAND YOURSELF AND THE WORLD

HOPE THIS WAS USEFUL

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If you have any theories or questions regarding this you are free to express them in comments or you can chat with me in my Instagram page https://www.instagram.com/phy.sci/?hl=en.