Washington’s First State of the Union Address: “Knowledge…is the surest basis of public happiness.”

Liberal Arts Learning Goal:  Know facts, terms, and person important to an art or discipline

“Nothing can better deserve your patronage than the promotion of Science and Literature. Knowledge is in every Country the surest basis of public happiness. In one, in which the measures of Government recieve their impression so immediately from the sense of the Community as in our’s, it is proportionably essential.

To the security of a free Constitution it contributes in various ways: By convincing those, who are entrusted with the public administration, that every valuable end of Government is best answered by the enlightened confidence of the people: And by teaching the people themselves to know and to value their own rights; to discern and provide against invasions of them; to distinguish between oppression and the necessary exercise of lawful authority; between burthens proceeding from a disregard to their convenience and those resulting from the inevitable exigencies of Society; to discriminate the spirit of liberty from that of licentiousness, cherishing the first, avoiding the last, and uniting a speedy, but temperate vigilence against encroachments, with an inviolable respect to the laws.”

George Washington, 1st State of the Union Address, January 8, 1790

Hossein Alizadeh: A Universe where time runs backward? What sets apart one plausible mathematical solution from another is…Reality

Writes Professor Hossein Alizadeh:

In just published research, theoretical physicists are asking Is there a universe where time runs backward?

Any serious theory in theoretical physics is based on a rigorous mathematical framework. At the core of the mathematical language of these physical theories lie what are called differential equations. For instance, Einstein’s General Relativity, with all its elegance and profoundness, is a set of differential equations that could have numerous possible solutions. Any acceptable mathematical solution to these equations could be the representative of a physical reality in outside world. For instance, black holes, with all their bizarreness and unimaginable characteristics, were first conceived not as an amusement for an avid sci-fi reader, but as a mathematical solution to the differential equations of General Relativity. Naturally, one may wonder what criterion sets apart one plausible mathematical solution from another equally plausible solution. The answer is the “Reality”. When an experiment is conducted or observation is done, the nature tells us which model is rooted in the outside reality, and which is merely a mathematical solution without a physical representation.

Often, the articulated physical implications of such mathematics sound quite farfetched and incredible. One of the prime examples of such propositions is the idea of extra dimensions conceived in string theory, and in multiple theories of quantum gravity. For instance, some variations of string theory hypothesize up to twenty-six extra dimensions. For a theoretical physicist, these extra dimensions, first and foremost, are a tool to make the theory’s math work. Then if the math checks out, it is time to think what implications these mathematical tools would have in outside world. Yet, the ultimate judge in physics is the observation. If these extra dimensions could be observed in a certain experiment, and they are not, then no matter how elegant or profound a theory is, it has to be replaced by a better one.

Another example of this nature, which has garnered a lot of attention recently, is the hypothesis of Multiverse, that hypothesizes about the existence of a vast number of universes other than ours. This hypothesis primarily tries to solve one of the biggest unsolved questions of modern physics, that is, the cosmological constant problem. One may wonder about the testability of this hypothesis. After all, how can we have access to other universes, while there are parts of our own universe, which are outside our causal cone and will never be accessible to us? Doesn’t this violate one of the major tenets of modern philosophy of science, which considers falsifiability as a must for any serious scientific theory? Before one gets caught up in this question, we should point out that this hypothesis does indeed produce testable predictions, such as the existence of certain elementary particles with precisely predicted masses, spins, etc. Of course, no such particles have been found yet, but they have not been ruled out either.

In the newly published work, Boyle, Finn, and Turok present a theory, whose main purpose is to solve the mystery of dark matter, which is another major open question in the physics of 21st century. In this work the authors extend CPT symmetry to a universe other than the current universe. CPT symmetry (Charge, Parity, Time) is a fundamental symmetry of physical laws that implies if in a system contained in our universe, all the electric charges change their sign, i.e. matter becomes anti-matter, and if the said system is replaced with its mirror image, and if time reversal occurs, i.e. time becomes negative, then all the physical laws would remain intact under such transformations. CPT symmetry is profoundly fundamental, and it has never been observed to be violated in any experiment.

Boyle, et al. extend CPT symmetry to a universe other than our universe. More specifically, the authors propose another universe which is the CPT symmetric version of ours. This hypothesized universe would be filled with anti-matter, the arrow of time would be backwards there, i.e. in the direction of decreasing entropy, and it would be connected to our universe via Big Bang. Anti-matter has all the usual properties of normal matter, including mass, charge, and quantum spin, with the difference that it has the opposite charge of normal matter. For instance, positron, the anti-matter of electron, shares all its properties, with the only difference that it has positive electric charge.

One may find such proposal of a mirror universe quite implausible, but one should remember that the ultimate judge in physics is observation. This theory predicts several observable characteristics of early universe perturbations. If these predictions are observed in relevant experiments, then the idea of a mirror universe would be a surprise turn of events.

To Pursue Human Good…

Writess Rooaevlet Montas in Why the Great Books Still Speak for Themselves and For Us

Liberal education is an approach to learning that foregrounds our existential condition. It takes seriously the idea that rational enquiry into the fundamental questions of life is a worthwhile endeavour for each of us. There is probably no more powerful tool for such an enquiry than open discussion, in small groups of dedicated readers, of seminal works from our literary and philosophical past.

Photo: Gerst, Majors Registration Day, November 8, 2017

In the US, most bachelor’s degrees include a nod to liberal education in the form of general education requirements – a set of courses outside of a student’s major or concentration that is meant to provide a common foundation of knowledge and skills for all. General education is liberal in that it is not subordinate to any specific professional or vocational aim, but focuses on the general competencies required in all fields. But following the theoretical developments in the humanities that I have described above, general education programmes at most US colleges have devolved into a hodgepodge of distribution requirements, often aimed at little more than introducing students to a variety of academic disciplines outside the major. Yet liberal education is precisely an education that is not pursued in the service of disciplinary, professional or occupational goals. A disciplinary approach to liberal education comes close to an oxymoron, and all the more so when the humanities disciplines have largely abandoned the idea of rational enquiry into the human good as a form of education.

If the approach to liberal education that I am describing sounds like the traditional education of social elites, it is because liberal education does significantly resemble that. And this, by itself, is no grounds for rejecting it. In fact, to cast liberal education as a mere affect of privilege is precisely to perpetuate the structures of social power that have long plagued our unequal society, and to put crucial tools for social, political and personal agency beyond the reach of those who need it most.

My point is simple: give the ‘underprivileged’ access to the cultural wealth that has long been the exclusive purview of the elite, and you will have given them the tools with which to subvert the social hierarchies that have kept them down. Beyond equipping them with marketable skills and the means for economic self-advancement, this deeper work of education is the most valuable gift that colleges and universities can give to young people. It is also the most valuable contribution they can make to a democratic society.