Conversations

0:00 We can smear this thing out as long as the volumes remain constant, and therefore the idea is that you can actually put any distribution through the iodometer. That is not so if you have a transformation which keeps the action, if you take every process as a classical action, and if you have a transformation which leaves the action invariant. ...that you cannot deform a volume p x x to below a certain... ...you can take x and y and you can deform that to a... ...you can thread that through a needle. Complementary variables can make that action go to zero and change the action of quantum mechanics. You've got in classical physics, you have a topological feature analyzing everything.

20:00 ...two copies of the same system. They put some of the variables in and they have equal names to start...

22:30 ...discretion on the algebras. ...the point, I mean, the very natural... All these are algebras, so they're homomorphisms. And then I point out, you know, there's a very few homomorphisms in these two general bimodules, some worse than Hilbert space. Are you happy with his, the Penrose time? I was kind of seeing how that I couldn't follow it. Well, if you, if Bill couldn't follow it, I, I, no, then we're, then we, then we feel quite content, because we decided we couldn't, we were discussing this the other day, and we couldn't make headway. And so I pointed out to him, well, this sort of thing can be handled quite precisely using a filter. Well, I know all about that, and it did work. These guys start running away very quickly. It was pretty clear to me he had not understood what I was saying, or how TOEFL is doing my defy. I mean, I'm not saying it has to apply, but I'm saying his dismissal of it was my way that they arrived, they started with an example.

25:00 Well, this is the criticism, of course, that we talked about, well, we talked about, you know, when we were arguing with Yanis Raptis, when he came here and talked about this, you know, his quote. Yeah, sheep, yeah, but he has some, he's patched up some kind of definition which in his book does make, yeah, well, it's connected with that stuff, it's the, you know, the road rider, you know, the example of this, I'm not functorial, I'm not functorial, actually he replied to me about that, there's some very long paper by him, none else, none else, I think, yeah, he's the expert, he's the guy who is, he's the great pope of, you know, abstract differential geometry. This is a relatively simple construct. It's functorial or not. It's simple. And I get the answer, no. This very long paper going through all sorts of weird... And they come out in the end saying, after all, you do not prove functorial. It's such an incredibly complicated... I mean, I have not checked all the churning lights, you see, to make something functorial. I mean, the thing is that you... I mean, I haven't understood your definition of functoriality. Yeah, I said I haven't understood your definition of functoriality. What is your impression of Malleus in general? Do you know his work or...? No, only that, only that. The reputation of Malleus... No, actually, I had seen several of these. They're trying to be synthetic, but in actual reality they're quite fake.

27:30 They just take one aspect of the classical theory. That's essentially what they're doing, is just to try to algebraise the structure underneath the differential geometry and say that it can all be done. That's not what I'm doing, is it? What you were saying to me this morning about how much logic one can recover without the need in code, because it's already subsumed when you understand the nature of the sub-object, I think that is absolutely fascinating. I'd like to hear more about that. There's a famous manuscript that is concealed in a sealed drawer in a safe in Buffalo that obviously he has not... it seems a great pity.

30:00 I don't like you explaining in ordinary language. There's a reason for that. Building up the understanding and not trying to descend from reason. All these things are in terms of partial order, one thing being greater than another, whereas a category has multiple maps. In adjointness, there's sort of a superseding of this characterization of it, says that there's a unique factorization, you know, you take any example, given any map, then there's a unique way of factoring uniqueness, that's the uniqueness of the adjoint, so that the given factor, which isn't one-to-one or anything, so it doesn't have a classical inverse, nonetheless could have a left adjoint, or right, it's sort of the best way of coming back. But you see that this bestness is inevitably... What were you saying there specifically about, um, yeah, yeah, so this whole business as well?

32:30 All logic in the narrow sense is what you learn in logic class. It's all about, basically about sub-objects. The relation, according to Russell, is the sub-object of X cross X. The structures are encoded as sub-objects, and then you can put things on them in terms of progress. The sub-object of X cross X contains the diagonal, or it doesn't. But to specify various kinds of structures, it isn't always necessary to sort of descend into that. The connection to what I was just saying, of course, is that once you have the sub-objects, the natural comparison between them isn't ordering, it is a partial ordering, because you localize to this object and then to the bottom work as well as to this object. Well, as you made a passing remark in the Cambridge lectures, that, I mean, Narrowson's logic looked at that from the perspective of rectometry, which is really about the past. So anyway, Rodney was able to think directly in terms of the example. Well, that's why I mentioned it, precisely because it brings in the condition of space. Yeah, I mean, you could have done it with any kind of structure you wished. Have you ever guided your work by what quantum mechanics is saying? Keep it out of my thing. In other words, when you're talking about logic, you really mean boolean logic?

35:00 Hiding, co-hiding, there's all sorts. What about quantum logic? Well, interestingly, I mean, that has been. Absolutely. And of course, the interesting thing was with Jerry Katerian, who was your student. The one person who I think has shown how to clean that stuff up and show how it does actually fit into naturally into the geometric setting. It's an almost. What does that do for us as physicists? I don't think it does anything. I don't think quantum logic does anything for you. Quantum logic is just a poverty-stricken version of polynomial algebra. I mean, why anybody ever called it that? Well, it was something to do with David Finkelstein. He was in front of them. They were the people who started using them. I mean, it's logically critical. Sweet guy, sweet and gentle guy, David Wittgenstein, he is, I think, very confused about the notion of a category because it all comes out of this idea that you can talk about processes without things. You just have to... mathematics, which is the understanding that we've built up over... I mean, just there are some people who... David Finklestein is a theologian and Hilbert is one of them as well. They're two entirely different characters. I certainly agree. I think David Finklestein would probably be quite happy with the title. He spends quite a lot of his time these days talking to the Dalai Lama. He's always invoking Buddhist metaphysics. Hilbert Putnam, I think... I don't know too much about Pond, to be honest. I don't know anything more than what I already know. Oh, I thought he said something useful. I think in the New York Times or something. He was kind of counting internal realism as garbage. No, but he said, you see, he said that he had been a Marxist, put it in a quote,

37:30 but then he realized that he'd be a Marxist. Oh, yes, he claimed to be in the 50s and 60s. Oh yes, I knew that. I knew he'd been a very active Marxist in the 50s. When did he give you that place? 60s possibly? No, no, after that. Maybe 10 years ago. 10 years ago? So what I bet he was still a Marxist. He still called himself. I don't think he ever was. I'm simply saying he said I was like... He liked to call himself a Marxist. We've noticed the choice of words, not that it was true, not that it was true, but it was the main orientation. You see, given his metaphysics of all this internal realist stuff, there is no objective, there is no objective world, in fact. He said one or two things that I approve of. You know, I have to explain who Karras is, you see. I think one of the characteristics he came out with... You've got to explain to Basil who this Karras character is, because he may not be familiar with it. Oh, well. You've heard of a journal called the Monist, Bertrand Russel, well this was founded by, nicely analyzed by Lenin actually, the journal. They are trying to establish religion on the basis of recent science. What was I going to do with this? I'm sorry, I'm sorry. The point is that they understand quantum mechanics. So anything, any new discovery of science. It's a disproved philosophical and basic movement.

40:00 You see, I'm an influential journal, but this was always its policy. So Mock published in it, so did Pearson, and any number of figures from this is around 1900. It was started around the 1890s, wasn't it? I had to mention this, and the mathematicians know this name of Keras because there's something called the Keras Monograph Series. The reason that name is on that series is not because he was a mathematician, his widow gave a few thousand dollars to sort of seed money, in return for which the president made a public speech about how infinity implies God, and you should stop at a council already. The Alephs, you know, the infinite ordinal's footsteps to the throne of God, as Pantel called them. It seems to me that's the only way you can get money for this. That, of course, is exactly, I'm afraid, why people do it, why they prostitute themselves. He's already got it because he, of course, was commissioned by the temple. You've probably heard of the Templeton Prize, which is a similar thing, which I think much more richly endowed, which I think is now worth about a million pounds a year. I mean, it's worth almost as much as the Nobel, because they invested the money in for years and built up a large fund.

42:30 This is why there's so many Buddhists in the world. I did a lot to... It doesn't surprise me, but I didn't know that there was actually a direct connection. Why do they want Hinduism? With all the sentimentality that there is about cows and cruelty to animals those days. Well, of course, Buddhism came out of Hinduism. No, I was going to say about Hilary Putnam. You see, I, for a long time, had a quite naive and far too generous reading of Hilary, Early papers on logic and I were trying to learn some real math. I regressed from philosophy to math and I had come across you know several several statements which seemed to me to you know to go to the heart of the and to echo what I had made then before coming. He was hammering this point about the domain specificity. This slogan of his there is no transcategorial notion of object. There is no notion of object which ...can make sense of the notion of all which there are. And I, thinking, seeing this as a sensible scientific insight, said, hooray, good, absolutely right, very sound, that's exactly correct, well said, good slogan.

45:00 There is no notion of object which makes sense of the notion of all the objects there are. What I didn't realise in my nudity was that this was not in fact a soundly based methodological observation, it was in fact this internal realist, kind of Kantian, subjective idealist observation, there's no notion of objects which... All the objects there are, because there isn't even one. We can, in fact, we just make up these different stories. And any notion of object is simply relative to and internal to the story that we're telling. Rather than to... I mean, that's word for word. I just met him once and... He's quite an arrogant man. And he also insulted Dave. There was a conference on... Now, he had a very sort of arrogant life. I think he certainly thought he knew a great deal more physics and mathematics than he did. Well, Abner Shimoni certainly does know, even though I don't agree with his position, certainly does know a great deal more physics and mathematics than Putnam ever did. I'm sorry, my fault. It's my fault entirely. I think it's about time. No, it's my fault because I picked up on your facial expressions. Oh, yes, that's right. We got on the subject of quantum logic. Yes. Well, I think what we were saying, what was much more interesting was what you were saying, Karl, more importantly, was what you were saying about Grotendieck and about this paper that he, not a paper in the sense of drafty paper, but just this piece of paper which he diagrammed this table. I mean, can you say a little bit more about that? It's an incredibly intuitive insight that I've had about using inverse limits and direct limits. See, because Cartier, in that paper, suggests that Tierney and I introduced logic not with the idea that it should supersede...

47:30 No, certainly not with the idea that we're putting logic underneath the total construction, showing the tremendous fertile, you know, cross-connections between the two. No, in fact, actually, you remember September 11th, 2001... I have a vague recollection of that. There was a meeting scheduled in Montreal on the history of physics in Montreal, and I went there, you see. Of course, I wouldn't have been able to go there even if I wanted to, because they wouldn't allow it. Well, in fact, I hoped to meet Anouzel there, because he was a speaker, but he was driving by car. Actually, I meant to be telling you that story. In any case, what I was presenting was the idea that somehow Le Verre had promoted this idea that geometry is the leading aspect. And hence logic should be overthrown and discarded and so forth. But if you look at my actual paper, you see that geometry is a leading aspect, but this paper is all about influences in the other direction. Logic is also, god damn, you know, failure to be dialectical. You've got two aspects. Well, let's say one of them is everything and the other one is nothing. Yeah. As opposed to, let's look at each of them and how they interact and see how they will still be asymmetrical. There's no, there's no symmetry in so many papers. It's not a perfect symmetry, but nonetheless, specifically to the way in which they are, and this leading aspect of it, is indeed an oversimplification, but a very confluent, in some contexts, a useful confluent, to attribute these misunderstandings to my, you know, it doesn't apply, because I didn't even say that, I said the opposite. It's incredible, you know. Now, if you read those papers, it's perfectly obvious that he's not saying that, that's, you know, down with logic, you know.

50:00 We said. Yeah, that's what happens. That's what happens. Yeah. All of these people who've been talking about Grossman, Doudanet, Rota, they never read it. Yeah. I know they never read it. And we've read all of it. When Chanuel and I read certain parts, we could see, well, Grossman's algebra is 16-dimensional. Theirs is 8-dimensional. This is in the paper, of course. Cannot possibly have. Right. And so on. So it's not the same, and yet they identify it. They go around saying Grossman's algebra is exterior algebra. Again, they're intimately related, but they're not at all the same. They're not saying that, all right? Yeah, that's the common... What do you mean you don't... That's the common... I've seen that in lots of textbooks, that Grassmann algebra is an exterior algebra with a minimum... It's just another way of... And it's just interchangeable with exterior algebra, just using the term... No, no, it's not. I know it's wrong, but it wasn't until... Sorry, you know, I took a long time to learn. It wasn't in fact until I learned from Bill that it wasn't so, but that's my own mathematical incompetence. Though I know there are a lot of people out there who are more mathematically gifted than me who are under that delusion because that's what it says in so many of the textbooks. Well, they all know what Grassman said. No, well, how many, yeah, but how many graduate students or let alone undergraduates actually go to the original texts of Grassman? I'm afraid not many unless they're very serious, highly motivated scholars. Don't read papers written in perfectly good English. And nonetheless... This, in fairness, may be partly because the paper in question appeared in a, you know, in a cluer volume, which costs about $150, you know, and which have to go... You know with this question, the number of papers... Oh, that's, no, I agree with your point. There's no, there's no real excuse. Even very bright people like Simon Thorne... How can it be? Yeah. Well, they keep trying to construct these scenarios in which you would get a different set of predictions out of it, particularly with the delayed action experiment. I know it doesn't work, but it is actually quite subtle to see why there are arguments. I know, isn't it? The latest one that Paavo just put on, you know, it's an Indian followed by Iranian.

52:30 I'm not sure whether I should be racist in any way. And then the Italian experiment. Sorry. I didn't say it. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. But in my position, certainly, we're in a box. Well, Bill better realize I was brought up in India. Yeah, I'm afraid he had the legacy of imperialist attitude. May I suggest we adjourn to the park? India did remain quite backward. We do a few good things, though. The railway system. This is why we've had this discussion before, and that was a very deliberate project. It is absolutely fascinating how all of this loosely associated with progressive opinion, pseudo-religion, an interest in things like theosophy and Buddhism and all the rest, did actually emanate from, I'd say, 1900, 1930, when there was this group of people, very much influenced by people like that, who were clearly influenced by people like... And some of the people who were very senior in the British movement. In fact, Younghusband was actually sent... Certainly not my father! No, I'm glad to hear that. But this is a slightly earlier generation than your dad, but this... I mean, Younghusband was sent to Lhasa as the British commissioner, rather like Tommy Franks in Iraq. The British invaded. Occupied it. Actually a very brutal, dreadful massacre. Well, they were pretty good at invading people. Well, ostensibly it was to keep the Russians out. But they went to Mars and occupied it there for about ten years and during this time the Shades of Sierra Leone and of course Mars Tierney's son were assassinated.

55:00 Well I'm more and more convinced that that was an assassination. By the way, if you have time, I don't know what you want to do tomorrow, but if you have the energy, and if you just want to spend the day reading a lot, that will start the week. I have this friend, I was wondering if you'd fancy meeting him. No, the little red book, that was my friend Charles Matheson, who's actually giving a seminar this evening in Birmingham on a historical subject, on the British attack against Denmark in 1807. There was this thing called the League of Armageddon. I have a doubt that it was one very simple... She didn't, I wasn't sure whether she did or not.

57:30 Well, your new friend Basil did, but he admits it was a mistake. The reason I went was very simple. I wanted to go to Ooty, Ooty Command, Snooty Ooty. I've never been to southern India in all my life. And there were some stories that I wanted to check out. I said I was told that I was going on a holiday. They just wanted me to come on a holiday to meet the people there with the guys. And I sort of said yes and then I changed my mind and tried to say no to Henry, the young research student that I'd seen as very insistent. Well, Chris, I shouldn't have been invited, because he had dropped out hadn't he, so you were. I said I wanted to go and see the monkeys again, but I haven't seen the monkeys in a long time. Well, this was genuine, you know. I just wanted to... To have a look at a little bit of childhood, you know, bringing it back, I mean. Because how old were you when you left? Ten, five? Twelve. And I was offered all fairs paid, all accommodation, looked after, for which I would have to do nothing. And so I thought, well, you know, I can't, I'll never be able to get this opportunity to go there again. I want to see Snoopy, you see. Let's go. And I thought, oh. But then I got there, you see, unfortunately the guy who invited me actually left the day I arrived, and Henry was still there, Henry, I trust him, but he was a young student, he was a very nice guy, I mean he was an interesting character, he was holding a 400,000 British hand, and unfortunately I got dragged in to this meeting. ...which was really intellectual, absolutely giant. It was a form of gravity of gravity, and to be quite honest with you, it was, and of course there were Indian, local Indians, trying to prove that the guru who was there, I don't even think he had his name there.

1:00:00 Who had said some very simple things about the ultimate constitutions of nature. And these guys had tried to build up a theory of gravitation using it. But of course it wasn't... when the debate went on, the debate was whenever one of the Maharishi's followers scored a point. Everybody in the audience stood up and clapped and cheered, but when anybody criticised, they all went, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So there was this, you know, obvious them and us, and I sort of got dragged into it. I mean, I said I'd give a paper, but they were desperate to get me to say it. They were desperate trying to avoid saying that physics was... And I have to give the validatory talk as well. I mean, the meeting was three days, and I was asked to speak three times. Oh my goodness, you're a land backer. But suddenly, you know, suddenly, I mean, I knew, I mean, I learned that. Yeah, yeah. And so I didn't mind, but, you know, just to get back there just for a few days. And to get it out of my system, actually, I don't want to come back to it. Yeah, especially the part that you're talking about. I mean, it's a beautiful part of the country. There's no population there. There's a mountain just behind it. Yeah, from that point of view, I met some interesting people there as well. But they weren't, you know... I believe the climate change is happening. Well, if you start going up... If you go up to St. Euclid's, that's the real station.

1:02:30 We did go up on the field of tea plantations for one trip. I was glad to see this. I mean, this is my whims, just satisfied by... Well, Charles was visiting the senior of the council. Is there anyone at Bangalore at this place? Yes, yes, yes, there's not very often Bangalore. So is this the same Maharishi? Oh, I don't think so. No, you were just using the term Maharishi for me. Yeah, no, it's some guru. Some guru. It's not worth it. No, it wasn't. Well, maybe it is in order to avoid. That's a point. Actually, once in, you can usually see. Well, I mean, it wasn't, they didn't invite me. I was a plastic surgeon in Harley Street when they invited me, an Indian plastic surgeon in Harley Street. I mean, you know, already, I mean, Mike said it was through this. Student, the English, you know, the IC student was a really good guy, but he wasn't a big guy. But he's a nice student, he's a student of Chris Eichens, isn't he? No, not Chris Eichens, he's in the mechanical engineering. Oh, I see. Well, even so, he's a nice student. He's a carpenter. Aeronautical carpenter. Aeronautical carpenter. He was a nice lad, actually. Very, very impressive. But he didn't, he wasn't going to the conference. Oh, I see, he didn't want to go. He was part of this, we were going to have an elephant ride up in the Sandringham Forest. I didn't get there soon enough, because they'd already done that, you see, they'd already done some physics. Because, you see, what happened was, I said I wouldn't mind going, but they wanted me to leave on the 28th of December, but my wife had a scan in hospital on the 3rd of January, so I said, look, I can't, you know, I can't leave her, because, well, I'm serious, I still felt I should be around. And, you know, the family were all together and we were really having a Christmas and, you know, you don't just walk out having something to do. I just couldn't walk, I didn't feel it, didn't feel it right, so I went on the fourth, you know, the day after and all my parents came. And when I got there, as I say, the guy who had invited me was going to take me along with him, but on his way home. And so I then got lumbered, and all I had left around me was Henry and this conference.

1:05:00 And these weird guys were going on. The ultimate nature of everything. Yeah, I mean, I find some of the guys very interesting. Some of the people there teaching yoga and so on, they had some very interesting things to say. I mean, they were really worth listening to. Well, very general or metaphysical speculation of that kind is very useful in its time and place, which was Ionia in the 6th century BC. There it was a contribution to the development of... Thank you for your attention. Thank you for watching. Amen.