The Coming of the Light

The coming of the light
Fragile, shining, shy and sparkling
Unconquered by the dark
Chattering with all substances

****

Og was worried. The elders had already assured him many times that darkness was overcome by light each year again. But what if the light failed just once? Would the day then turn into night, forever? It gave Og a shudder of fear, only the thought of this possibility was terrible. If it was always night, it would be impossible to still hunt mammoth and reindeer. And he was responsible for the hunter group of the tribe. He would consult the elders tomorrow because he had the impression that the day had never been shorter than today. Maybe he was misled by the persistent rains, he knew this was possible. Oga, the mother of his children, had comforted him early this morning when he went out to find a new trail for hunting in the coming days. But he did not manage to calm his anxiety today. He would only feel reassured when he clearly saw that the light was coming back.

****

“Master,” Alexander asked, “what do you think of the Pythagoreans, when they claim that the center of the universe is a fire around which the earth revolves together with the planets?” Aristotle didn’t answer, it was a blisteringly hot day in Macedonia, and that student kept coming up with annoying questions.
“Well, what do you think,” and he looked Alexander straight in the eye, “and what do you think happens to the earth with that peculiar idea of Philolaus?” Alexander knew at the tone that his master was not very pleased with that question, and answered hesitantly, “I think it’s an interesting idea.”
Aristotle tapped his foot on the ground and pointed to the table in front of him. “What do you think would happen to all this stuff in here on the table and in the house if the earth were to revolve around such a fire?”
“Yes, that’s true,” Alexander replied timidly, “they wouldn’t just stand there if the earth moved.”
“Right,” Aristotle spoke in a tight voice, “those Pythagoreans were good mathematicians and astronomers, but they had little knowledge of physics and logic. It is very unwise to spread such idiotic ideas, the earth stands still, which follows from physics and logic, if astronomy indicates something else then the problem must be solved there.”
“It was only a question Master,” Alexander apologized.
“ You are forgiven, but now, study, I have here four exercises in logic for you.”

****

Rheticus knocked on the door of Johannes Petreius’ famous printing house in Nuremberg. It was opened and he was asked to wait in the main hall. He sat down and laid the voluminous work on his knees, “Dē revolutionibus orbium coelestium”, finally he had convinced Copernicus to have his opus magnum printed, after decades of doubt that nobody really understood.
“Aha, there you are,” it was Petreius who stepped into the hall. Rheticus stood up and together they entered the print shop where he handed Copernicus’ work to the master printer.
“Tell me, what’s so special about this work?” asked Petreius, “I remember that you were extremely excited when you contacted me about it”. Rheticus didn’t answer immediately and then spoke with a voice that surprised himself.
“It contains a revolutionary theory about the universe,” Petreius remained silent and listened attentively.
“Copernicus claims that the astronomical observations of the planets and the sun can be better explained if one assumes that the earth, together with the other planets, revolves around the sun, which is in the center”.
“Aha,” mumbled Petreius.

****

Michele Besso met his best friend Albert Einstein at the entrance to the Rose Garden park in Bern not far from Albert’s house. While walking in the beautiful park among the flowerbeds, their conversation was intimate as usual. However, Michele was always deeply interested in what his friend was doing in his research and Albert loved to freely discuss his ideas with him.
“I had a wonderful insight a few weeks ago and it won’t let me go,” Albert began.
“Tell me,” replied Michele.
“You remember how an inertial reference system plays a very special role in the theory of relativity.”
“Indeed,” replied Michele.
“Well, I think I know how to extend the theory of relativity to include gravitation.”
“Really,” and Michele was all attention now.
“Look,” Albert began, “you know that there are two kinds of mass, the one which manifests itself when one moves a piece of matter, and one feels the inertial resistance, let’s call this mass ‘inertial mass’, and the one which we notice as ‘weight’ under the influence of gravitation, let’s call this ‘gravitational mass’. Isn’t it curious that both have equal value?”
Michele did not answer and Albert continued. “I think I have understood that there is only one kind of mass, and that this is not an accidental equality”.
“What do you mean?” Michele asked.
“Suppose you’re standing in an elevator which starts to move upwards from standstill, what do you feel during the phase it accelerates?”
“Ahum, what do you mean?” Michel asked with increasing curiosity.
“You feel your weight increasing,” and Albert now looked Michele straight in the eyes with a mischievous gaze.
“Yes, indeed,” replied Michele, “but where do you want to go with this example?”
“Well, I think acceleration and gravitation are just the same. If we both feel the gravitation of the earth as a force walking among these flowers, it is simply because we are prevented by the matter of the earth from falling towards its center, for if we were to fall we would also be weightless”.
“Aha,” Michele reacted, and he began to feel which direction his friend’s idea was going.
“The elevator which accelerates upwards makes a gravitational force downwards,” Albert continued, “while because the matter of the earth is holding us back we are now walking around in an accelerated reference system, both are the same, and that explains that the two kinds of masses are the same”.
“I see what you mean,” Michele whispered now.
“What fascinates me enormously now,” Albert said, “is that this idea makes it possible to extend the notion of relativity to all systems of reference, inertial or not, and thus to build a theory of relativity which also contains gravitation”.
“Wow, that would be great,” Michele reacted.
“I already made some calculations,” Albert continued, “it would mean, for example, that time would run more slowly in a gravitational field. So our clocks, since we are constantly in the earths gravitational field, run more slowly than a clock in freefall. But the most amazing result would be that gravitation is not a force, but a deformation of the time-space structure by mass or energy. And what we now consider to be ‘movements under the influence of gravitation’, for example, the movements of the planets around the sun, are not. The planets simply move on the orbits which are straight lines in that curved time-space structure, the paths where their time is largest”.
Michele listened in suspense.
Albert bent down and took a pebble off the ground and threw it in a small bow in the flower bed before them.
“Look,” he continued, “do you see the path that this pebble took? In what we imagine to be the space surrounding us it is not a straight path. In the time-space in which we find ourselves, and which is the proper reality, it is a straight path”.
“ Really,” Michele asked, “can you explain to me why it is a straight path in our time-space?”
Albert thought for a moment, and then continued.
“Do you remember that the time for the pebble moving with constant speed runs faster as a consequence of the time dilation from the special theory of relativity?”
“I remember that,” replied Michele.
“In the part of the parabolic orbit of the pebble where it moves further away from the surface of the earth it enters a weaker gravitational field and the special relativistic effect of making time run faster is cancelled out by the slowing down of time by the decreasing gravitational field. If one optimizes the two effects in such a way to reach a maximum length of time one finds just that parabolic orbit in our space”.
“Is that another confirmation that it is space-time which is the proper reality and that time and space separately are illusionary, and now with matter and gravitation included?” Michele asked.
“Indeed,” Albert murmured.

****

It was a wonderful evening in the twentieth year of the third millennium. The Brussels group had come together to reflect on the nature of reality given the results achieved over the years. The edge of the forest where they gathered was peaceful and the air invited fearless courage to formulate what had grown in their midst. The plan was to make a bonfire in line with the tradition of our ancestors and to let themselves go in telling stories. There were potatoes, some meat and vegetables and chestnuts that could be roasted in the fire. However, during the preparations the conversation already started.
“It seems to me that the explanation of the quantum probabilities as being caused by the presence of fluctuations in the interactions of the measuring apparatus with the entity to be measured is perhaps the basis from which much of the rest started”, said one of the youngsters.
“I found the example of the cracking of walnuts, where a classical probability appears as a consequence of walnuts that may be moldy, and therefore the cracking fails in the sense that it does not give rise to an eatable walnut, while a quantum probability appears as a consequence of the possible failure of the cracking action itself, the smashed walnut mixing too heavily with shell also no longer being eatable, very enlightening,” said one of the others.
“Indeed, it is easy to understand that with every measurement there is this possibility, that the results become quantum probabilistic because both success and failure depend on things that happen unpredictably during the measurement,” a third youngster remarked.
“I continue to find it very odd that this obvious explanation for the quantum probabilities that we cherish in our midst is still, after more than thirty years, not generally known,” remarked the first youngster.
“That is because there is a very strong paradigm that nothing of quantum mechanics can be understood, and that is why every new insight that really introduces new understanding of one of the aspects of quantum mechanics is immediately classified as not even worth taking into account,” remarked the second youngster.
“Yes, it remains a curious phenomenon, but it has often occurred in the course of the history of science. By the way, it also explains why it is physicists, in particular, who now completely ignore this explanation, while psychologists and computer scientists, areas where quantum mechanics has also penetrated, find it a very acceptable explanation, they do not live under this paradigm”.
“This brings us to a second milestone, for it is this insight into the mechanism of quantum probabilities which made it clear that quantum probabilities occur naturally in psychological experiments, and hence the emergence of the new field of research called meanwhile ‘quantum cognition’”.
“Indeed, in almost every experiment in psychology, both success and failure depend on things that happen uncontrollably and therefore unpredictably during the experiment.”
The wood had been put in place and some small dry pieces had been prepared on the side to start the fire. The sky was completely colored red from the setting sun. Very soon now it would start to get dark.
“We should light the fire without a lighter,” someone said, and the remark was greeted with a chuckle.
“Have you seen that in the Mathematics Genealogy Project we have an ancestor line that goes directly to Copernicus?” said one of the youngsters.
“Yes, we saw it too,” the others joined in,
“Let’s talk about cosmology,” one of them suggested.
The potatoes, the meat and the vegetables were lead along the edge of the fire that was now ready to be lit.
“Introducing the non-spatiality of quantum entities seems to me a crucial step with respect to cosmology, and don’t forget that non-spatiality also follows from our explanation of quantum probability being also valid for position measurements” one of the youngsters remarked.
“Indeed, we go a step further than Einstein there, not only does time-space become contextually dependent on matter, as in the general theory of relativity, but quantum states in superposition are ontologically non-spatial and non-temporal, making macroscopic matter and time-space a context and not the whole of reality,” remarked one of the others.
“And of course our conceptuality interpretation of quantum mechanics is crucial when reflecting about cosmology,” completed the first one, “it gives a specific and intelligible explanation of this non-spatiality.”
“What was very enlightening for me,” said a third, “and still is, by the way, is our study of the conjunction and the disjunction of concepts and applying this to the conceptuality interpretation which essence is that quantum particles are concept and not objects. But more specifically, how, as a result of our modeling of concepts, the fundamental difference between an object and a concept became apparent to us. Namely, that the conjunction as well as the disjunction of two concepts is still a concept, and both are modeled by superposition in quantum cognition, while the disjunction of two objects is no longer an object, and the conjunction of two objects needs space in order to be realized as those two objects next to each other in space, and actually in time-space as we know from relativity”.
“I see,” another said, “can’t you give an example to make it clearer what you mean?”
“Well,” resumed the one who brought it up, “suppose we consider two concepts that are also objects, for example a chair and a sofa, then ‘a chair or a sofa’ as well as ‘a chair and a sofa’ are still concepts, and in quantum cognition we modeled them by superposition. However, ‘a chair or a sofa’ is not an object, whereas ‘a chair and a sofa’ as an object needs space to be realized, as two objects in that space, ‘a chair and a sofa’.”
“It does indeed indicate that there has been a symmetry breaking between disjunction and conjunction, in favor of the conjunction, which realized itself as an extension, with the consequence that macroscopic entities behave as objects in the space representing this extension.”
“Hey, we’ll be sitting on the grass around the fire, not on a chair or in a sofa,” one of them remarked, and everybody joined into a chuckle, and it also made the group aware that the fire was being lit. They all took their places around the fire that glowed in the twilight that had fallen in the meantime. The elders, who had been mainly busy with the preparation, had nevertheless listened attentively to the conversation that had unfolded.
“Things on a cosmological scale have taken humankind by surprise over and over again,” one of the elders spoke, “from the time when our ancestors lived as hunter gatherers, over Aristotle and Copernicus and Einstein, and there is little doubt that we are now facing surprises again. It is interesting to bring forward speculations that follow from our research and I agree that we need to strip the time-space filled with macroscopic matter of its status as universe, and your ‘chair and sofa’ reasoning indicates in what way”.
The bonfire was now burning well and enough glowing ash had formed so that roasting was possible. Everybody started to put some potatoes and some meat and vegetables on the places that were suitable for it. The chestnuts were kept for later.
“How can we get to know this greater reality?” one of the youngsters wondered.
“Perhaps it is that what is now explicitly going on in our scientific laboratories,” said one of the elders, “life and culture on Earth evolved in spite of an environment hostile as expressed by the second law of thermodynamics, and produced quantum coherence, so quantum cognition exists as a study of that coherence. The insight that ‘superposition’ is inherited from the logical disjunction and that the spatiality of the macroscopic material universe is only a specific way of dealing with the logical conjunction which gives rise to the usefulness of the notion of object, makes it possible to see the spatiality of the material universe of macroscopic entities only as a dimension in width while reality continues in depth in a non-spatial manner. As a consequence one has to weigh the place of biological and human life on the planet Earth not so much with respect to the wide material macroscopic spatial universe, against which it seems insignificant, but with respect to a larger totality of reality in depth, where it can possibly claim a much more central role again. Perhaps this dimension ‘in depth’ is what we explore in our laboratories. Hence extraterrestrial life should perhaps not be looked for in the macroscopic material spatiality but in the explorations we make in depth.”
There was a gentle but captivating silence around the bonfire, only disturbed by the occasional crackling of the fire. Everyone stared into the fire and felt the distant history of ancestors in this situation. After a long time, one of the elders took the word, “the Pythagoreans, whom we still admire for many reasons, thought there was a fire at the center of the universe, not the sun, they probably envisioned what makes all the stars glow. Look how we are sitting here around the fire, that proves that their hypothesis can be true in principle and maybe it wasn’t so wrong after all”.

(listen to the illustrating piece of music by pushing the following link)
The coming of the light