String Theory of the Violin

This is a parody of reductionism in Quantum Physics. A satire if you will. Only you are the main character,and I draw your conclusions for you.

String Theory of the Violin

By Brian R Gordon

 

Suppose you are a transistor physicist. You hear music that moves you and you are especially interested in how your radio produces the sound recognizable as a violin. So you take the radio apart and put it back together trying to figure out how electricity interacts with transistors to produce sound. You may be successful in isolating how sound is produced but it may never occur to you that the radio is receiving a sound from somewhere else.

Even if you perceive the nature of radio waves you may still draw the false conclusion that the radio is still the soul source of creating music. You may see the radio waves as interference that contrary to the idea of producing music are in fact causing interference as you turn the dial. Assuming there is for some reason only one radio station to pick up it is almost intuitive to think this way. You can tune quite clearly to the signal the radio is generating and when you move the dial radio waves interfere so that you hear the music becoming fuzzy with noise.

 

Then it happens someone comes into your closed world and lays down a curiously manufactured piece of wood with strings on it and says there is your violin. Unbeknownst to you the radio station is in  a sound proofed room next to you. Now there is such a thing as sound proof windows that reduce sound 90%.

The scientist who brings you the violin cannot play the violin himself. So when he demonstrates the violin to you hear a very nasty string sound but do not recognize this as the sound of violin you hear on the radio. So he has one of these windows installed in your wall so that you can see into the radio station which broadcast live performances. Of course they cannot fit a whole orchestra but they just happen to have a violinist coming in to perform live tomorrow night.

So that night you are enjoying the final orchestra piece when you hear silence followed several minutes later by a violin being played by a soloist. You happen to look up and see the violinist playing through the sound proof window. You can not hear him and he cannot hear you. Yet when he plays faster the violin on your radio plays faster. When he plays slower the radio violin slows down. When he stops for a second so does the violin on your radio! The moment you see his bow touch the strings you hear a faint sound that becomes the complex sound of a violin as he starts playing. As you watch him you notice detail after detail how every little nuance of his movement with the bow near the strings seems to have a casual effect to the music you are listening to coming out of your radio!

 

The next day you are visited by the scientist with the violin and tell him your experience. He explains not only how the violin creates music but how the radio station can send that sound by radio waves to your radio. A violin instructor is with him who demonstrates directly to you that the violin can produce the song you heard last night by playing the real violin for you. He tells you that he could teach you the piece enough that you would be convinced that this violin is indeed producing the music you heard last night. But you are still bothered by one thing. The SPOOKY ACTION AT A DISTANCE. When you saw the performance  last night you didn't think the violin could be causing the sound emanating from your radio. Yet when you observed how what the violinist was doing affected the radio waves thereby effecting the actual sound coming from the radio you saw spooky action at a distance itself.

 

The idea of accepting that an object outside the radio itself was actually causing the sound never occurred to you. Let alone that this phenomena could cause these sounds called music without the radio even being on!

 

So finally the day comes when you meet the actual violinist and ask him how he gets the violin to play that song instead of just noise. Watching the scientist attempt to play and hearing nasty string sounds you were disappointed that when you yourself attempted to play the violin that you got the same results. Perhaps there is a radio in the violin! And the scientist was playing a joke on you.

Since you knew the radio never made musical sounds at 3pm and the scientist came over at 3 maybe that is why he couldn't demonstrate it. OR maybe it had nothing to do with the time of day but maybe the strings on this instrument are like radio dials so that if you do not know how to tune them you can not pick up the radio waves necessary to cause the interference that can be filtered down to actual music?

 

So the violinists were scientist capable of tuning the strings just right and using the bow as an antenna they knew exactly how to move the antenna for the best reception? Maybe that was why the sound was so clear from this type of radio. It seemed to never fade out or produce any static or noise. Of course when the scientist first brought it over and attempted to play it he had no idea how to tune this music in so he created so much interference that although the string sound came through it came through as discordant and noise rather than music. The static and noise produced so much interference that you could not tell one from another. Only the basic tones could come through which were then distorted. It couldn't be that the violin itself was producing music and the scientist was just incapable of playing the violin. Because then we would have to accept spooky action at a distance.

 

Besides we all know that human hands only move according to how the brain sends signals. This is a self-contained system. A closed system. The brain can affect any part of the human body that particular brain resides in but nothing outside of this system. The brain can affect the motion of a baseball because the brain can affect the motion of the hand which then can affect the motion of the baseball. For the same reason the brain can affect the motion of the bow which affects the motion of the strings on the violin. But those strings can not affect waves that come from the radio that produce music because that would imply the radio wasn't actually producing the music!

 

If the violin is a radio itself then it would be able to produce music just like your radio. Only it seems the dials of your radio simply are not as sophisticated or complex enough to tune in and create every nuance of sound called violin. Hence all the noise and static. Yet the superior radio with its strings can produce music fluently by tuning into tones that form the pattern of music if the antenna or bow is constantly moved around just right. Whereas simply moving dials seems to cause more interference then music causing so much noise in the data that music is impossible to sustain for long periods of time with no noise present.

 

Problem solved! OR so it would seem until you start wondering what gives the scientist known as violinist the ability to tune into radio waves so perfectly as compared to other scientist? And more importantly how did the radio/violin seem to casually affect your radio to produce music on  your radio? Why did the speed he moved his antenna along the strings affect the speed of the music coming from your radio? In fact sometimes it seemed that every nuance of movement the violinist seemed to produce a corresponding nuance to the actual sound coming from your radio! This spooky action at a distance must have some explanation. It was as if somehow his observations of the sound he was picking up on his radio were affecting the music you were picking up on your radio!

 

But then you realized the solution! You were drawing false conclusions based on the false ideas the scientist put in your head about the violinist actually directly producing the music itself only using this piece of wood with strings on it! You somehow let the fact slip that the violin was only a radio itself tuning into the same radio waves that your radio does! So of course he would hear the same music you did.

So when he heard fast music he moved his bow faster to create the illusion that he was causing the music on your radio to move faster! When he heard the music slowing down he slowed down to create the illusion that he caused the music from your radio slowing down. Somehow not only did he know everything the musical piece you heard was going to do before hand because he must have heard this piece before but he knew what time of day this particular sound called violin would be created by the radio waves!

 

Of course. So Quantum Physics is just another form of classic physics. The observer can not affect the outcome and spooky action at a distance is not possible. The sound coming from your radio is predetermined. Apparently the sounds you hear are stored on disc called records. These records create vibrations through a needle that can affect radio waves. So you go to the radio station next to your apt and watch the dj putting on records and the violinist walks in.

And you see your chance. The record being played is creating music that is all horns and no strings. When it gets to the end of the piece you request the dj to start the same record over. You have listened to the record from beginning to end and you know there is no string sound, only horns. So now you confidently turn to the violinist and demand that he play something that doesn't sound like horns. And he starts to play along with the record only his radio is producing string sounds! How can this be?

 

You know that the observer cannot possibly affect the radio waves coming from either radio. In fact you only hear horn waves coming from the djs records and your own pocket radio with one headphone in your ear. And it is all horns exactly as the record. Yet here is the violin/radio with no horn sound but only string sound.

 

Could there be other radio stations? Maybe right now there is a different station playing only violin/strings? And this is the only station the violinist tunes in. Perhaps there is a MultiStation where one dj is playing a record that only has strings on it while your dj right in front of you is playing a record with only horns?

 

Of course it is not ideal that you have to accept many radio stations to explain the violin. You know there are many records in this one radio station. You also know that the violinist has a radio he calls a violin that seems to be superior to other types of radios. Is it possible that he can recreate sounds directly from a record without that record being touched by a needle? You ask the dj to put on a record that has only violin. As you listen to this record it is music you realize you never heard before. The Dj admits he never played this record before.

So you ask him to take this record off and stop playing it then ask the violinist to play the piece. Then something strange happens the violinist plays the piece exactly but the piece sounds strangely different. In some places it sounds completely different as if it is not even the same piece in other places it is exactly the same. Even if the violin was not a classic radio

playing classical music but instead a quantum radio that could be both waves and particles and therefore could somehow go back in time and pick up the music played from the record a few minutes ago this doesn't explain the parts that do not in any way sound like the original piece! It is as if the observer was influencing waves!

 

As you know consciousness can not directly influence reality in anyway. Even if string theory is correct and the violin strings are in hidden dimensions they should only pick up the one radio station. To avoid the absurd theory of consciousness affecting reality it seems you are back to postulating many radio stations! How is this violinist tuning in different radio stations? You ask him to play a horn sound and he admits he can not. But he claims he has a friend that can do everything he does but with a horn sound coming from an instrument called a trumpet.

 

After observing the trumpet player reproduce the same music after listening to a record of horns the dj played and also making music not on that record you must conclude that these new advanced radios pick up different radio stations from the multistation. Because you know all sounds can be traced back to a radio.

 

There is no way the consciousness of the observer can affect the radio waves your radio receives. Even if you can accept the radio isn't actually producing the sound without the interference of waves from the radio stations and that this interference is caused directly by records being played.

 

Then it happens, the violinist winks at the trumpet player and they play a duet.

They play a song you never heard and the dj has never heard. He says that he does not have that record. Not only do they seem to be responding to eachother creating a different kind of music but when the trumpet player speeds up sometimes the violinist slows down or even stops. Then later jumps in creates music that fits perfectly with what the trumpet player is playing. Sometimes it doesn't seem to fit at all but as they both play they seem to become aware of each others playing and once again it seems as if it was planned from the beginning. Worse yet sometimes they both seem to go off into to 2 different pieces and they signal eachother somehow with nodding and body language and these 2 totally different pieces begin to merge into one.

 

You no longer know what is going on. Then someone hands you a violin and you start to play. At first all you hear is noise but you have practiced trying to tune in thier radio stations better just on the off chance there is more than one and by observing the difference between noise and music you might learn to access the higher dimension of the strings. And you had experiences where the mathematical symbols on the paper you looked at started to make sense and you were able to tune into one of the radio stations and pick up the music being broadcast perfectly.

Yet now you seemed to not only be able to pick up the radio stations that the trumpet player and violinist were picking up but you actually seemed to be able to influence the waves directly with your consciousness producing music that was exactly the piece you all were playing except with subtle differences. You began to wonder if you could play something totally different that didn't fit the piece at all? So you tried to use your new found abilities to receive waves from the Multistation to find a radio station playing something totally different from what they were playing.

 

As you started to tune into one station you started to hear music not only outside coming from your radio/violin but also music inside your head in your consciousness. Sometimes it was totally different music and you tried to imagine making it up as you go along. As you didn this you noticed the music coming from your violin/radio was directly being influenced by music in your head! And even when you played music completely different that the trumpet player and violin player could match you exactly ! And even add music obviously coming from inside their head!

 

How is this possible? !!! Could consciousness be real? Is it possible that the consciousness of the observer could affect reality directly after all???

Maybe instruments are real and musicians are another form of scientist. Only instead of only observing reality they could actually influence reality by playing these instruments. Instead of waiting for radio stations to play music the musicians themselves used their consciousness to play them. Maybe radio stations themselves can not play music. In fact the records themselves could be just recordings of these instruments! But these instruments can not play themselves. Nor can the body of the musician play music by itself!

 

Many experiments were done to see if these instruments could produce music by non musician scientist with ear plugs randomly banging on them or blowing into them. But nothing but noise was produced. But when the same scientist took their ear plugs out and practiced like you did and they had the same experience as you did playing with other musicians! Of course not all of these scientist could play as good as the other musicians but eventually with time they got better and eventually many scientist were able to interact with the hidden dimension of the violins strings and all they had to do to accomplish this was to observe that consciousness can indeed directly affect reality and accept that reality itself can be affected or even changed by consciousness itself!