Courtesy of WOWSA, Huntington Beach, California.
Ted Erikson, now 87, may be swimming a little less, less fast, and less often, but he is still one of the smartest people in the open water.
Erikson submitted an essay (see abstract below) to FQXi in a contest to be rated by the general and technically-oriented public. Ratings by the lay people and tech experts determine the 8 prizes that range upwards to US$10,000 for the FQXi Essay Contest entitled, Trick or Truth: The Mysterious Connection between Physics and Mathematics.
“I use my swimming in light of my son, Jon’s death, geometry, and thermodynamic expertise to define a working theory of panpsychism,” explains Erikson.
“I can send the complete 10-page paper as a .pdf file to those who have interest [in the FQXi contest].”
For more information, visit here. To contact Ted Erikson directly, email sdog1@sbcglobal.net.
Title: Duality, The War for Existence ©2015
(Panpsychism, defined?)
My marathon swimming1 son, Jon Erikson, passed away in July, 2014 and his death has prompted me to ponder some serious realities of Panpsychism. This is suggested as the real “mysterious connection” in the essay question. “Feelings” guide the many achievements of physicists, mathematicians, and yes, even swimmers. A relaxed feel of water is required to swim, or even to float. Whence came force and energy to swim? Activities of water and a swimmer are dual, the former being quite massive and stable, and the latter less so in motion. An inscribed sphere in a regular tetrahedron is similar as a quantitative model. Assuming such dualities as mass and it’s energy, such relationships may be written;
I. Regular tetrahedron, as energy ⇔ Inscribed sphere, as mass (as photon & electron; swimmer & water; shell & nucleus; people & government..)
Left and right sides of (I) are expressed as their respective geometrical area-to-volume ratios.
Symbolically, (A/V)T = (A/V)i.s, where A, V, T, and “i.s” represent area, volume, tetrahedron, and sphere. Geometric manipulation converts both A/V’s to a dimensionless linked Surface-to-Content ratio, S/C. Note: (I) has the sphere-tetrahedron at equal activities as a guide for a system within an environment effects. In making parenthetical dualities, Dr. Tykodi’s6,9, “thermo-staedic” and steady-state systems, and my thesis, Thermodynamics of the Steady State of some 56 years ago are helpful for dynamic definitions, i.e. at steady-rates. S/C ratios, differences, and/or percent, A/(A+V), are tabulated. These values are a property of nature links to be evaluated and tested as defining panpsychism.
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Author Bio
Ted Erikson earned a BS ChE (1952) and a MS Chem (1959) from IIT and a Gas-Surface Interaction diploma (1965) from MIT. He spent 23 years at the IIT Research Institute as a Senior Chemist resulting in 2 patents and 10 publications followed by 16 years teaching chemistry, math, and physics in public schools. Erikson is also an accomplished marathon swimmer. His beacon in life is chaos, “a state of things where chance is supreme“, all things considered.
*Roger Penrose, one of the greatest thinkers in physics says the human brain—and the universe itself—must function according to some theory we haven’t yet discovered.
Photo courtesy of the Tribune Newspaper circa 1963 shows Ted Erikson before the 1963 Jim Moran Lake Michigan Swim.
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