Book/Combinatorial Physics

Bastin, Ted; Kilmister, C. W. (1995). Combinatorial Physics. local page: World Scientific. ISBN 981-02-2212-2. 

Introduction and Summary of Chapters

The book is an essay in the foundations of physics; it presents a combinatorial approach; ideas of process fit with a combinatorial approach; quantum physics is naturally combinatorial and high energy physics is evidently concerned with process. Definition of 'combinatorial'; the history of the concept takes us back to the bifurcation in thinking at the time of Newton and Leibniz; combinatorial models and computing methods closely related.

Space

Theory-language defined to make explicit the dependence of modern physics on Newtonian concepts, and to make it possible to discuss limits to their validity; Leibniz' relational, as opposed to absolute, space discussed; the combinatorial aspect of the monads.

Complementarity and All That

Bohr's attemp to save the quantum theory by deducing the wave-particle duality, and thence the formal structure of the theory, from a more general principle (complementarity) examined: the view of complementarity as a philosophical gloss on a theory which stands up in its own right shown to misrepresent Bohr: Bohr's argument rejected -- leaving the quantum theory still incimprehensible.

The Simple Case for a Combinatorial Physics

Physics not scale-invariant; it depends on some numbers which come from somewhere outside to provide abolute scales; the classical kind of measurement cannot in the nature of the case provide them; measurement is counting' the coupling constants are the prima-facie candidates; this was Eddington's conjecture; the question is not whether we find combinatorial values for these constants, but how we do so; current physics puts the values in ad hoc.

Quantum Numbers and the Particle

Comments provided on high energy physics and the particle/quantum number concept from the standpoint regarding the basic interactions of Chapter 7; the particle is the conceptual carrier of a set of quantum numbers; the view of the particle as a Newtonian object with modifications is flawed; an alternative basis for the classification of the quantum numbers due to Noyce is described; it is compared with the Standard Model.

Toward the Continuum

We have no representation of physical space, let alone the continuum; the conventional understanding of dimensionality replaced by a 3D argument based on the hierarchy algebra; the finite velocity of light necessarily follows from the pure-number finite-structure constant; it leads to a very primitive form of relativity; this is developed; the quadratic forms which appear in the Lorentz transformation as well as in Pythagoras' theorem are discussed; measurement is defined.

Objectivity and Subjectivity - Some 'isms'.

The philosophical position of the book is assessed to see how it fits with some familiar positions -- mostly ending in "ism': subjectivism; realism; the anthropic principle; constructivism; reductionism; the critical philosophy; positivism; operatinalism; particles.