Einstein's Method

Comment [Anonymous]: Is your whole book written as a Socratic dialogue? Why did you choose to do so?
Reply:The Foreword, which doubles as an introduction, and a short essay on Einstein and his method are not in dialog form. When you must explain and defend many new ideas a question and answer format works well as Galileo showed in his famous dialog that advanced the Copernican theory.

Comment [from the Amazon review]: "...Klevgard has written the seminal snapshot of a core analysis of quantum and relative physics, from an intuitive ontological point of view. [It]...explain[s] what's been missing in quantum uncertainty..."

Comment [from A.D., The Netherlands]: How do the Higgs field and the Higgs boson, which are thought to "cause" mass, fit into your (very interesting) vision? Is the mass created in this way then an "occurrence" and not an "existence?"
Reply: Thank you for posing a very interesting question. My (limited) understanding is that the Higgs field is assumed (in the Standard Model) to give mass to bosons (W⁺, W^-, and Z) which otherwise would be massless. But those three "particles" are incredibly short-lived: a half-life of about 3 × 10^-25 seconds. They are usually considered virtual particles which means that their mass derives from "borrowed energy" within the constraints of the uncertainty principle. As you suggest, one can argue that "particles" such as these occur rather than exist.

However, I would argue that traditional ontological terms (exist, occur) don’t even apply at the level of those elementary particles that populate the Standard Model. At that level of physical reality, energy and mass, existence and non-existence can convert back and forth, one to the other. This does not invalidate ontological categories for more stable entities of mass and energy, but it does remind us that mass and energy are so deeply related that at some level their separate identities are blurred together.

There is the additional problem of name pollution. Conceptual terms from classical physics such as "particle" have been taken over by Standard Model physicists and applied to entities that are manifestly not particles in the original sense of that word. Even the name "particle physics" refers now to a field of inquiry that includes entities that are pure energy but somehow become "particles." I have argued in these pages that photons are not particles in the usual meaning of that word, but electromagnetic energy quanta (photons) are bosons and particle physicists will forever lump all bosons together as "particles."

Comment [Anonymous]: Is the uncertainty principle the basis for all of quantum mechanics?
Reply: Heisenberg certainly thought so, whereas Bohr thought the wave-particle duality was more fundamental. Both were original thinkers, but as I point out in my book, both are open to criticism from the point of view of ontology (what exists and what occurs).

Bohr and countless others treat the particle as the conjugal opposite of a wave whereas a particle is an existing material entity/object and a wave is a form and not an entity. The opposite of the waveform (i.e., the form radiation possesses) is the field form (i.e., the form matter possesses); instances of one occur and progress in space, instances of the other exist and progress in time. Equating a particle (an entity that exists) with a wave (which is a form characterizing enties and not an entity itself) is a serious ontoligical mistake.

As for Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, it is basically limited to projectile motion such as moving electrons. The uncertainty relation does not apply to space-stationary matter, for example. Such matter has zero momentum (for an observer in its inertial system) so it is foolish to quantify an uncertainty-of-momentum for a particle that has no momentum in the first place (for the inertial observer). The equivalent is to quantify the uncertainty of the photon’s rest mass (a mass that it doesn’t have). The uncertainty principle does apply experimentally because if you are able ascertain the space location of an electron for an instant in time then its (spatial) momentum will surely be totally uncertain.

The uncertainty principle and wave-field duality can both be traced back to ontology: mass and energy entities, field and wave forms, and existence and occurrence categories.