Re: Hiley, Hilbert Space and QM

[Tim Gwinn <***>]

Hi JohnM,
See interposed.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: ROSEN Forum [mailto:*** Behalf Of John M
> Sent: Thursday, July 29, 2004 11:57 AM
> To: ***
> Subject: Re: Dr Mae-Wan Ho and i-sis.org " Definition in the SpaceTime
> of an Organism and in relation to Quantum theory?
>
>
> Tim,
>
> 1./I don't know Redei, but the Hungarian physicists (and mathematicians) I
> know are strongly in the conventional science.
> This is not a crime, but their conclusions come from reductionist mindset.
> Formalism in limited models.


I only gave the link to Redei's site because Hiley mentioned him (in
reference to von Neumann) in his paper, and Ionel also mentioned him.


> 2./ Wasn't Hiley co-author with a dead D. Bohm? I remember so.
> The book is 'posthumus' for Bohm and I missed in it Bohm, the
> world-appreciated advanced philosopher of the 60s-70s finding a talented
> physicist's work from 1952. The book is physics at its best.


By golly, you're right! According to the Preface: "Just as the final touches
were being put to the manuscript, David died suddenly." I had never noticed
that before.


> 3./ A question: was it Hilbert who withdrew his ideas at old age?
> If yes, v.Neumann's 'abandonment' could trigger it.


I don't know Hilbert's stance (or if he had one) on this point. But, as I
browse the papers by Redei, I think the issue for von Neumann was whether or
not the Hilbert space formalism was the most appropriate formalism for doing
QM. Redei ends one of his papers:
"The moral of this story of von Neumann's intellectual move from the
Hilbert space formalism towards the type II-1 (and even more general)
algebras is that what drove him was not the  desire to have a mathematically
unobjectionable theory - there was nothing wrong with Hilbert space
formalism as a  mathematical theory. What von Neumann wanted was conceptual
understanding. He was ready to leave behind any  mathematical theory -
however beautiful in itself - to achieve that."


Regards,
Tim