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Coherence in the Physical World

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 March 2022

Gustaf Strömberg
Gustaf Strömberg*
Affiliation:
Carnegie Institution of Washington, Mount Wilson Observatory.
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Extract

The term coherence is used in many connections. We often speak of coherent reasoning, coherent activities, coherent bodies, and coherent phenomena. In science this term is often used to indicate continuity of a structure in space and time. If many individuals can simultaneously observe similar sets of coherent phenomena, we infer with some justification, first, that the phenomena observed have some kind of correspondence with activities in an external world, that is, a world independent of the existence of the individual observers, and second, that the coherence itself is an attribute of the external world. In a recently published article, to which I shall make several references in this paper, I have called attention to the fact that the science of physics is based on the form and the changes in form of an immediately observed phenomenological world, called the physical world, which can be completely characterized as a structure in space and time. In his analysis of the foundations of the science of physics Eddington has clearly shown that theoretical physics deals exclusively with structures of the type described in the mathematical theory of groups, and that our knowledge of the physical world could have been reached by our sense of vision alone. Coherence in the physical world is that characteristic of the structure which describes the more or less permanent relationship between phenomena in different parts of space at approximately the same time, or a regular sequence in the changing phenomena at approximately the same region of space.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 9 , Issue 4 , October 1942 , pp. 323 - 334
Copyright
Copyright © Philosophy of Science Association 1942

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References

1 The Physical and the Non-Physical Worlds and their Intermediate Elements, Scientific Monthly, 54, 71; January, 1942.

2 The Philosophy of Physical Science, p. 147 and 197; Macmillan, 1939.

3 The velocity of light from the distant nebula is the same as that of starlight. Cfl Strömberg, Publ. Astron. Soc. of the Pacific, 43, 266, 1931. Van Biesbrook, Astrophysica. Journal, 75, 64, 1932.

4 The Red Shift of Spectral Lines through Interstellar Space, Nat. Acad. Proc., 15, 773, 1929.

5 Scientific Monthly, 54, 71, 1942.

6 It is sometimes claimed that the diffraction of electron beams can be fully explained by application of the Uncertainty Principle and therefore is a result of the intrusion of an observer. The Uncertainty Principle is a necessary result of the existence of probability patterns determining the place and time and amount of emergent energy and momentum.

7 There is nothing new in this statement, although nearly everybody seems to forget this obvious fact. Max Planck has said: “I regard consciousness as fundamental. I regard matter as derivative from consciousness. We cannot get behind consciousness.” The Observer, January 25, 1931.

8 The theory of appearing and disappearing particles here outlined can not be applied in this simple form when great changes in the energy pattern occur. Hence radioactive processes and the annihilation of particles (if such things actually occur) are of a different type than those here described. The probability of the emergence of energy is a product of several probability functions, some of which may be practically zero. The emergence of a photon, for instance, depends not only on the structure of the beam, but also on the structure of the atoms in the path of the beam.

9 Embryonic Development and Induction, Chapter XV; Yale University Press, 1938.

10 The Soul of the Universe, p. 90, David McKay Company, Philadelphia, 1940. This book describes in nontechnical language many of the ideas here explained.

11 The effect of the Earth's Rotation on the Velocity of Light, Astrophysical Journal, 61, 140, 1925.

12 Space Structure and Motion, Science, 76, 479, 1932.

13 Side Lights on Relativity. I. Ether and Relativity. Leiden Lecture, 1920. Einstein writes: “Newton might no less well have called his absolute space “Ether”; what is essential is merely that besides observable objects, another thing, which is not preceptible, must be looked upon as real, to enable acceleration and rotation to be regarded as something real.” The word “real” in this context means that there is a unique reference frame to which acceleration and rotation can be referred. In the present terminology rotation and acceleration are absolute when referred to this unique frame.

14 Boodin has often expressed ideas about emergence in a cosmic field. Cf. Phil. of Science, 5, 271, ff. 1938. Three Interpretations of the Universe, p. 227, 267; Macmillan, 1934.

15 “Mind and Matter,” Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research, 36, 113, July, 1942.