Freedom of Science

John Baez and Mike Stay have a new paper called Physics, Topology, Logic and Computation: A Rosetta Stone. I believe that Mike Stay is writing the Computation section which is not yet available. In this post I have some general comments to make about the comparison of physics and computation as studied in the introductory section of the paper and therefore I write as if the introductory section was written by John Baez and not by Mike Stay. This fits well with the theme of this post because then I can criticize John Baez as a physicist. My apologies to the authors for this simplification.

Rosetta Stone analogy

In the pocket Rosetta Stone (Table 1.1) Baez identifies objects and morphisms used in physics, topology, logic and computation. These fields as Baez notes are not independent fields but different branches of a “science yet to be built.” The goal of the paper is to use the category theory as the morphism between different academic objects mentioned in the title.

These are the objects and morphisms listed by Baez:

Objects:

system
manifold
proposition
data type

Morphisms:

process
cobordism
proof
program

Objects and morphisms

I don’t know what manifold and cobordism mean here and I did not read the rest of the paper yet to understand them better. I leave alone proposition and proof¹ as well. Here I only want to look at “system/process” and “data type/program” pairs.

In the original Rosetta Stone we have two languages (not three languages as Baez says, we have two scripts of Egyptian language and Greek) so we have two things of the same type. The original Rosetta Stone compares things of the same type: languages.

For the Rosetta Stone itself the object is language and morphism is translation.

System, process, data type and program

In Baez’ Rosetta Stone system and data type are not of the same kind. There are data types in physics too but they are not well-defined as data types in computer science. Like everything else in physics data types too are corrupt polemical symbols and puns that can mean anything physicists want them to mean. In other words, data types in physics are meaningless.²

From this point of view I doubt that there can be a Rosetta Stone involving physics. If each data type is meaningless it cannot be translated into anything else.

On the other hand, process and program are of the same type. But more than being of the same type, they are synonyms. The first step in any unification attempt must be the elimination of synonyms.

• physics = not translatable because its data types are meaningless
• process and program = synonyms; no need to translate

But the main point I want to make is that physics and computation are synonyms too. Maybe physics and computation are two scripts and not two different languages.

• physics and computation = synonyms or different scripts of same language

Atomic materialism is the fundamental hidden assumption of physics

As a physicist Baez is a Newtonian and he believes in the Newtonian atomic materialism as his fundamental worldview. This is so fundamental in physics that it goes without saying. Atomic materialism is implied every time a physicist uses the word physics.

Rosetta Stone for physics:

Physics = Newtonian = Atomic materialism

Therefore atomic materialism is the hidden assumption which defines physics.

John Baez assumes an atomic materialist world in which Google, where his co-author works, is not a “physical” system. But Google is a “physical” system.

There is no difference between Google search engine and a steam engine. There is no difference between “mechanics” invented by physicists to describe “systems” and software designed by computer scientists.

• Software is as physical as any physical system.

Database is the fundamental unit of science

What ties these systems is the concept of database, not category theory. Google is a database. Their MapReduce maps a search into the database of the web. Physicists’ mechanics too supposedly maps a database of observations but it does this with archaic and proprietary symbolism and laws of the Newtonian legal code. “Mechanics” is a mapping program stuck in the 17th century occult notions.

So in physics “state” is a state of database not of a system. Physicists call a different row in a database a state.

Physics is legal mysticism

Physics is basically computer science envelopped with an immense layer of philosophical mysticism invented by generations of Doctors to cover up the fact that they are database administrators. Mystical part of physics is the academic part ignored in practice. You can also think mysticism in physics as comments in a computer program. In physics there are millions of lines of comments for each line of code. This is not surprising since Doctors of Philosophy make their living by writing comments, or as it was called previously, commentary. Physicists made commentary sacred and defined it as the substance of science. In fact, it is the other way around.

Physicists are not doing anything different than database work. But as Doctors of Philosophy stuck as glorified database administrators they created a legal system of commentary that they keep making more and more complex to mystify their methods in order to establish authority.

That physics is a legal system explains why physics is fundamentally different than a science such as computation. Physics is legal therefore it is not science.

Computation is not a legal system. It is a scientific database. It has to work because stakes are high. Money is involved. In academic physics stakes are practically zero. Therefore anything goes. Physics is full of absurdities because it is an academic legal system with no connection to database of observations.³

Clean slate physics

Instead of trying to unify physics with computer science let’s dump the entire physics and start with a clean slate using modern methods of computer science.

But Baez has just the opposite in mind. His “science yet to be built” is nothing other than physics. This new science is a “general science of systems and processes.”

“System” and “processes” are the object and morphism of phyics as listed in Baez’ pocket Rosetta Stone. In other words the new science is the old physics which will include topology, logic and computation as its branches.

This will never happen. Computation is live science, physics is dead academicism.

Physicists are still using a dead language which is hard-wired to Newtonian atomic materialism. We don’t need a Rosetta Stone. We need physicists to dump the Newtonian religion and its symbolism and its legal code and atomic materialism and move to the 21st century. Science means questioning this dead language called physics marketed by physicists as the true laws of nature.

1. Proposition and proof too has technical meanings. They are the object and morphism of logic. But logic is an academic field initially invented by Doctors of Philosophy to say things with great authority without saying much. This was recognized as far back as Descartes who did not trust Doctors’ logic and proposed to question it as part of his Method: “But, on examination, I found that, as for logic, its syllogisms and the majority of its other precepts are of avail- rather in the communication of what we already know, or even as the art of Lully, in speaking without judgment of things of which we are ignorant, than in the investigation of the unknown; and although this science contains indeed a number of correct and very excellent precepts, there are, nevertheless, so many others, and these either injurious or superfluous, mingled with the former, that it is almost quite as difficult to effect a severance of the true from the false as it is to extract a Diana or a Minerva from a rough block of marble.” I don’t know the state of the art today. [↩]
2. For example, in every computer language a fundamental symbol such as the equality sign would have one definite meaning. The equality sign in physics is in the core of the fundamental atomic statement of physics, the equation, and the equality sign is a meaningless polemical tool with at least four context sensitive meanings. So just like the balance of justice, physicists’ balance is loaded and false. [↩]
3. In collider physics no one knows where simulation starts or ends. In physics data is the child of legal and simul. This child lives in a black box not in the holy of holy of a marble temple but in the helter skelter of cables in radioactive underground tunnels. Just like the oracles of Delphi, Oracles of CERN let us know the state of the universe as revealed to them from the black box. Not Apollon but Hilbert whispers to their ears the secrets of the universe. [↩]

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