Collective Electrodynamics: Quantum Foundations of Electromagnetism

"In this book Carver Mead offers a radically new approach to the standard problems of electromagnetic theory. Motivated by the belief that the goal of scientific research should be the simplification and unification of knowledge, he describes a new way of doing electrodynamics--collective electrodynamics--that does not rely on Maxwell's equations, but rather uses the quantum nature of matter as its sole basis. Collective electrodynamics is a way of looking at how electrons interact, based on experiments that tell us about the electrons directly. (As Mead points out, Maxwell had no access to these experiments.)The results Mead derives for standard electromagnetic problems are identical to those found in any text. Collective electrodynamics reveals, however, that quantities that we usually think of as being very different are, in fact, the same--that electromagnetic phenomena are simple and direct manifestations of quantum phenomena. Mead views his approach as a first step toward reformulating quantum concepts in a clear and comprehensible manner.The book is divided into five sections: magnetic interaction of steady currents, propagating waves, electromagnetic energy, radiation in free space, and electromagnetic interaction of atoms. In an engaging preface, Mead tells how his approach to electromagnetic theory was inspired by his interaction with Richard Feynman."

http://books.google.com/books?id=GkDR4e2lo2MC


I got so excited when I found this. I got one of the first copies printed of the book and cannot believe the scientific community has not taken greater interest in the book. Why? I started a facebook group on it.

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=20992235532

In this book, Carver Mead has overthrown Maxwell. A student of Feynman, Mead's keen understanding of the quantum (with Lynn Conway's information systems vision) conquered Very Large Scale Integrated semiconductor physics changing our world technologically with "the book" on VSLI.

Now he has exposed the world of charge and magnetism to be false, an emergent illusion resulting from the collective action of as universe composed of potential actions composed of fluxiods (hbar) in integer multiples in a cause-cause rather than cause-effect universe based on Cramer's transactional model of the quantum. Mead shows we know better and we should stop teaching Maxwell as fact in schools!

On the one hand, Mead declares the universe to be of a wave nature, obviously. The universe conspires to have no two equal frequencies by exclusion, instantiating kinetic independent state, and all of experience.

On the other hand he exposes the reality underlying the waves is discrete, cooperative orthogonally folding discrete fluxiods instantiating kinetic momentum exchanges. In a sense, Mead's notion of waves is just as imaginary as are charge and magnetism. Nothing is waving fundamentally there is simply the repetition of arbitrary cooperative patterns at certain frequencies that exhibits existence in our realm. Our experience of energy is frequency by Planck's constant. All else that happens in the quantum is simplified in our mind to a wave at light speed alternating according to frequency. The reality can be much richer than a simple wave as Mead himself illuminates.

I do not agree with Mead's wave interpretation, since the wave notion is emergent just as electromagnetism is, but concede that is what we experience, mostly.

In any case, in my view, this is a very important book in the beginnings of a new science that is free from it's legacy of useful delusions.

energy = information
fluxoid = bit

The end of the reductionist trail is the fluxoid, discriminating 50% of quantum possibilities (Wheeler, Zieglinger, et al), instantiating one bit of existence. It is the beginning of the new science, the universe as a universal cooperative information system, with potential organization beyond our wildest dreams.