Deceived

Copyright 2008 by madengineer3

The ward was quiet at the moment and Dr. M. was glad for the quiet. It gave him time to think, without the distractions of the patients obsessions. He was amazed that so much of mankind had been taken in by the "grand illusion", as he called it. Most people with the delusion were relatively safe to live their lives without any overt supervision. However, this ward was full of those who had briefly seen beyond their delusion and couldn't face the true reality! Poor fools! It was the smart and brilliant ones who suffered the most. They had built up grand structures of thought based upon bad evidence. Their idea of reality was wrong, but in their mind their way was the only real way to see the world around them.

In the morning he would have to see what could be done about John, a.k.a. patient 17. He was an extreme case of what can happen when there is a major crack in a person's view of reality. He was, using the old descriptions, paranoid and almost catatonic. Since what he had believed all his life had come into question he was afraid of everything around him. He had an extreme fear that everything he knew could in fact be wrong, but at the same time could not accept this new idea. If only his mind was not so strong, he could have quickly resolved the problem. Unfortunately, such was not the case. He would have to talk to his department's chair to see if there were any new approaches to help John.

****

John woke up with a start. He had been having a nightmare. In the nightmare he had been in his study working on a complex problem involving the size of Branes in a 21 dimensional universe. The math just didn't seem to be working as he had expected. As he strove to determine the physics that would be operative on the new spaces he had a sudden vision that shook him to the core. He suddenly felt that the answer to this problem was not an answer in physics but was, instead, a proof that physics itself was the problem. That frightened him. If he couldn't depend upon physics, that purest form of physical science, then the alternative was unthinkable. Since all other sciences end back up at physics, if you dig deeply enough, that would mean that the entire structure of science itself could be built on a flawed base. His mind couldn't forget the idea but it couldn't work with the idea either. He was in a turmoil that prevented him from functioning. His mental turmoil made any physical effort seem so totally useless that he just lay there and tried to figure out where he had made his mistake. The longer he thought over his work the more he realized that he hadn't made a mistake! There was terror lurking in that realization.

John opened his eyes. As they focused across the room he thought he saw Dr. M. The problem was that what he thought he saw was Dr. M simply fading into the clear air around him. John shut his eyes again and tried to make sense of what he had been thinking. After all, people can't just dematerialize in front of you.

****

The next morning Dr. M went to see the head of his department. The meeting was not entirely successful. The advice he had received was that he could do one of two things. He could either try to convince John that the math he had been using wasn't useable in such a dimension and that he should try a different approach; or he could try to shatter John's belief in the math and the physics and suggest he look in another direction for the answer to the problem. Neither of these approaches would be easy. He thought that he might try the first suggestion, first. That it, he would try to convince John that he had applied the math outside of the range in which it could be relied upon. Yes, that was the easiest way to do it. But that didn't mean that it would work.

**** "Good morning John, how are we today?" John knew that it was Dr. M even before he opened his eyes.

"Not too good, doc. I had my nightmare again last night and this time there was a visual illusion to go with it. I thought I saw you evaporate right in front of my eyes. Something is really wrong here!"

"Hmmmmm. I was going to suggest something to you, but your comment has made me change my mind. What makes you think that I couldn't evaporate in front of your eyes?"

"It just can't happen, doc. I mean, conservation of mass-energy would have to be violated. That would attack the very base upon which much of physics stands."

"John, I'm not a physicist. May I ask you a few questions so that you can show me how physics addresses simple problems?"

"Sure, what do you want to know?"

"Well there is one problem I have had since my introduction to college physics class many years ago. We know that force equals a mass times its acceleration. That means, among other things, that no mass can change its velocity in zero time. Am I right so far?"

"Yes, keep going."

"Well, when an object is first moved, from a standstill, there has to be one instant where the mass has gone from not moving to moving in essentially zero time. Wouldn't that require an infinite force at that instant?"

"You won't like my answer doc. I'm not copping out. Acceleration is the change in velocity with respect to time. In the absolute instant an object starts to move there is, what is called, a singularity. That means that the region at that point is discontinuous. Because it is discontinuous normal calculus doesn't work. The problem you have posed is outside the range of classical physics to handle since it is outside the range of the mathematics that we use. This isn't a cop-out. It is simply the way it is."

"O.k., John. Let me ask you a second question. Since starting an object moving from rest is something that occurs regularly. Does that mean that classical physics doesn't apply to any of these cases at all?"

"At that instant of going from stationary to moving classical physics isn't going to help you. You see, in physics we prefer to work with models. Not the curvy, soft, easy on the eyes types of models. We work on a simplified example that in many ways represents what is happening in the real world. It is that simplified model that is being discussed."

"O.k. John, may I ask you another question?"

"Go for it, doc."

"Let's consider an experiment such as Galileo is said to perform at the tower in Pisa. He dropped two masses to prove that they would hit the ground at the same time. How does gravity 'know' to exert a stronger force on the object with the greater mass than on the small mass?"

"Doc, you've got it wrong. Each of the masses not only affect each other but each of them affect the Earth itself. It simply is the way it is."

"John, I don't want to sound stupid but what I think I'm hearing is that physics only can tell how simplified versions of reality work under some very limited conditions. It can't tell me, or you, why these things work."

"Doc, if you want the answer to 'why' you need to go to a philosophy class. Physics just addresses the relationships between matter and energy."

"John, I think you are forgetting your history. Until the nineteenth century, physics was called 'Natural Philosophy'. Its function was not only tell how things were related but to answer the question about 'how they worked', or why they acted as they did as well. It sounds like you are saying that people like Isaac Newton weren't really physicists since they were at least as concerned about the 'why' as with the how much."

"Doc, you're making me nervous. What you are saying is correct. I've spent years trying to forget the old way we did things. In the times of pre-modern physics it was much simpler to explain why and how things occurred. We started to run into trouble with quantum mechanics. As our tools became better we started realizing that in certain exclusive conditions that long held solutions to problems didn't always work. For example, under the condition of an almost infinitely fast rising electro-magnetic wave front, Maxwell's Equations don't really work very well inside a thick metal. Classical mechanics ceases to work on the sub-microscopic scale. Things just turn out to be different. In general, we demand that the new approaches must produce the same result as classical physics when the scale becomes larger, but yes, things become much less clear under some conditions. For example, an exact solution to Schroedinger's time dependent equation for the heavier elements is too difficult to solve. We can approximate the answer, but we can't actually solve the math to get useable results."

"John, do you remember the logical tool called Occam's Razor?"

"Oh, yeah, that's the one that states that if you have more than one explanation for something and one of the explanations is simpler than the others it must be the correct one; isn't it?"

"Yup, that's the one. What makes you think that the patchwork we call physics is the simplest answer to reality?"

"Come on, Doc! What other approach could compete with physics to provide good answers?"

"How about what some people call God, or the supernatural or magic?"

"You must be joking, but your face says you aren't joking. What are you trying to do, Doc?"

"What would it take for you to consider the case for the supernatural, John? How about levitation?" At that John felt himself floating a foot off his bed. "How about turning the light in the room a nice light purple?" The room was suddenly bathed in a very beautiful purple glow. "Let's make it a bit warmer in here." Suddenly the room became warm. "How does physics handle such things, John?"

John just stared with panic filled eyes as Dr. M allowed him to return to his bed, cooled the room back off, and returned the room to its normal lighting. John had gone into a full catatonic state. He was staring blankly from unseeing eyes, he was rigid on his bed, and he was screaming.

Dr. M shook his head saying "I guess I pushed too hard, too far, and too fast. I had hoped we could resolve this." At that he turned on his heel and disapperated from the doorless room.

Dr. M returned to his department head. "I think we lost him. I thought he was on the logical path I was leading him down and then he totally shut down his external input. It is so hard for these technical people to realize that the real world is a world of magic and the supernatural and that science is simply a defense mechanism that provides the deceptive illusion of control. Its so much easier with normal folks. They have never fully forgotten that magic is real. They haven't been deceived by their own minds.

With that, Dr. M went out to finish his rounds.