Guy: "What is light?"
Chap: "Well, it's what makes something visible…"
Bloke: "Well, technically, you can have light outside the visible spectrum, like ultraviolet and infrared…"
Fellow: "Well, technically, a photon is the gauge boson associated with the U(1) symmetry of the Dirac equation…"
I am wondering if all those concepts of "photon" are valid? Curt, did you think any of them were not technically correct? ;-)
Even,
Guy: “Well, technically, light is the absence of darkness, and darkness is defined as wickedness…”
Chap: “Well, technically, wickedness is a holomorphic object on twistor space…”
had me laughing, but sure, why not extend the notion of "light" to metaphor.
Seriously, what I was interested in is the shear volume of how many alternatives were offered. Given there is an underlying reality to a physical photon, then what we have here are many languages or dialects that mathematics provides for describing the same thing. Hardly profound (it is "just Langlands" or "just Erlangen"). And yet I always think it is profound.
This is why Umberto Eco's negative realism is compelling.
Reality is a partially amorphous substance: it offers itself to experience on multiple levels, and as Aristotle said, things can be spoken of in many ways, perhaps infinite ways, all correct, all perspectival.
However, it is not a completely amorphous substance either, to be manipulated and segmented at our pleasure and discretion.
No. Reality has "lines of resistance". Hard cores that do not lend themselves to descriptions and explanations. There are hypotheses and descriptions to which reality responds with a resolute: No.
The photon can be conceived of and described, and perhaps ontologically is, in many ways. And perhaps we will never arrive at a precise, universal, and definitive definition and conception of the photon.
But this does not mean that there cannot be certainty, and agreement, and ever greater precision, about what it definitely is not.
This was enjoyable!
I am wondering if all those concepts of "photon" are valid? Curt, did you think any of them were not technically correct? ;-)
Even,
Guy: “Well, technically, light is the absence of darkness, and darkness is defined as wickedness…”
Chap: “Well, technically, wickedness is a holomorphic object on twistor space…”
had me laughing, but sure, why not extend the notion of "light" to metaphor.
Seriously, what I was interested in is the shear volume of how many alternatives were offered. Given there is an underlying reality to a physical photon, then what we have here are many languages or dialects that mathematics provides for describing the same thing. Hardly profound (it is "just Langlands" or "just Erlangen"). And yet I always think it is profound.
Too right you are.
This is why Umberto Eco's negative realism is compelling.
Reality is a partially amorphous substance: it offers itself to experience on multiple levels, and as Aristotle said, things can be spoken of in many ways, perhaps infinite ways, all correct, all perspectival.
However, it is not a completely amorphous substance either, to be manipulated and segmented at our pleasure and discretion.
No. Reality has "lines of resistance". Hard cores that do not lend themselves to descriptions and explanations. There are hypotheses and descriptions to which reality responds with a resolute: No.
The photon can be conceived of and described, and perhaps ontologically is, in many ways. And perhaps we will never arrive at a precise, universal, and definitive definition and conception of the photon.
But this does not mean that there cannot be certainty, and agreement, and ever greater precision, about what it definitely is not.