Ravi Veeraraghavan Gomatam (born 1950, in Chennai, India) is the director of ''Bhaktivedanta Institute'' (Berkeley and Mumbai) and the newly formed ''Institute of Semantic Information Sciences and Technology'' (Berkeley and Mumbai). He teaches graduate-level courses at these institutes. He was an adjunct professor at Birla Institute of Technology & Science (BITS), Pilani, Rajasthan, India (1993–2015). He has been made a visiting professor for the year 2016–2017 at the Indian Council of Philosophical Research (ICPR), a Government of India body, under the Ministry of Human Resource Development. In January 1990, he organized a conference titled ''First International Conference on the Study of Consciousness within Science'' in San Francisco. Subsequently, in 1997 Gomatam conceived and launched the world's first M.S./Ph.D. programs in "consciousness studies", in collaboration with the Birla Institute of Technology & Science (BITS), Pilani (one of India's foremost technological universities). "Consciousness Studies" is a developing, inter-disciplinary scientific field, which Gomatam has particularly re-conceived as a new way of studying ''matter''. In 2015, the Institute of Semantic Information Sciences and Technology started offering M.A. (by research) and Ph.D. programs in collaboration with the Mumbai University, India. Gomatam’s own field of research is foundations of

quantum mechanics Quantum mechanics is a fundamental theory in physics that provides a description of the physical properties of nature at the scale of atoms and subatomic particles. It is the foundation of all quantum physics including quantum chemistr ...

, wherein he is introducing a few new ideas, including those of "Objective, Semantic Information" and a notion of "Relational Properties" that is different from that of Rovelli and others. His new ideas have received notice for their potential. He has related research interests in semantic computation, systems sciences,

artificial intelligence Artificial intelligence (AI) is intelligence—perceiving, synthesizing, and inferring information—demonstrated by machines, as opposed to intelligence displayed by animals and humans. Example tasks in which this is done include speech r ...

philosophy of science Philosophy of science is a branch of philosophy concerned with the foundations, methods, and implications of science. The central questions of this study concern what qualifies as science, the reliability of scientific theories, and the ult ...

and

philosophy of language In analytic philosophy, philosophy of language investigates the nature of language and the relations between language, language users, and the world. Investigations may include inquiry into the nature of meaning, intentionality, reference, ...

Education

* B.E. 1972 Electrical and Electronics Engineering, Annamalai University, India * M.E. 1974 Electronics Engineering, Birla Institute of Technology & Science, Pilani, India * Ph.D. 1998 Foundations of Quantum Mechanics, Mumbai University, India. Dissertation Title: ''Toward a realist interpretation of quantum theory – Integrating Bohr and Einstein.''

Early work in the industry

In the 1970s Gomatam worked with India’s international airline on their software development projects. He then moved to the USA and worked as a freelance consultant for a number of Fortune-500 companies including General Motors,

Ford Ford commonly refers to: * Ford Motor Company, an automobile manufacturer founded by Henry Ford * Ford (crossing), a shallow crossing on a river Ford may also refer to: Ford Motor Company * Henry Ford, founder of the Ford Motor Company * Ford F ...

, Chrysler, Burroughs and IBM in the areas of operating system design,

data communications Data transmission and data reception or, more broadly, data communication or digital communications is the transfer and reception of data in the form of a digital bitstream or a digitized analog signal transmitted over a point-to-point or ...

and very-large database design.

Academic career

Starting from the early 1980s, Gomatam turned to fundamental scientific research, and started contributing to the development of the Bhaktivedanta Institute (B.I.) in Mumbai and Berkeley. Along the way, based on the work he was doing at B.I., he obtained his Ph.D. in the foundations of quantum mechanics. He has been a visiting scholar at

University of Pretoria The University of Pretoria ( af, Universiteit van Pretoria, nso, Yunibesithi ya Pretoria) is a multi-campus public research university in Pretoria, the administrative and de facto capital of South Africa. The university was established in 1908 ...

, South Africa and Loyola University, New Orleans, USA.

Research

Gomatam’s primary area of research is in non-relativistic quantum mechanics (QM), which emerged in 1925 with Erwin Schrödinger's derivation of the "

wave equation The (two-way) wave equation is a second-order linear partial differential equation for the description of waves or standing wave fields — as they occur in classical physics — such as mechanical waves (e.g. water waves, sound waves and seism ...

". Gomatam is developing his own approach to macroscopic quantum mechanics (MQM, applying the wave equation to the macroscopic regime), which is distinct from the ideas of ‘macroscopic dissipative systems’ and ‘macroscopic quantum coherence’, developed in the early 80s by

Anthony James Leggett Sir Anthony James Leggett (born 26 March 1938) is a British-American theoretical physicist and professor emeritus at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Leggett is widely recognised as a world leader in the theory of low-temperatu ...

. In general, Leggett's attempt is to ''indirectly'' observe superposition at the macroscopic level by ''extending'' current microscopic quantum physics to the macroscopic level. In contrast, Gomatam is attempting to develop MQM ''independent of the application of the Schrödinger equation to the micro regime'', in such a manner that quantum superposition can be ''directly'' observed at the macroscopic level. This involves introducing a new notion of macroscopic objects as quantum ''kinds'', instead of classical ''objects''. In this regard, he is also developing two further new ideas within physics: the ontology of "Objective, Semantic Information" (OSI) and corresponding "Relational Properties" (RPs). As part of developing his version of MQM, Gomatam has related interests in exotic

manifolds In mathematics, a manifold is a topological space that locally resembles Euclidean space near each point. More precisely, an n-dimensional manifold, or ''n-manifold'' for short, is a topological space with the property that each point has a ne ...

, semantic information processing, quantum computation, and philosophy of ordinary language.

Selected papers

* Niels Bohr's Interpretation and the Copenhagen Interpretation—Are the two incompatible?" Here Gomatam contrasts Bohr's Interpretation with

Copenhagen Interpretation The Copenhagen interpretation is a collection of views about the meaning of quantum mechanics, principally attributed to Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg. It is one of the oldest of numerous proposed interpretations of quantum mechanics, as feat ...

(where Bohr is a co-author). This paper was a required reading in a course in Quantum Mechanics at Brown University. * Quantum Theory and the Observation Problem. Michael Turvey credits Gomatam for labeling a key problem in quantum mechanics as "observation problem" which he says were only "implicit in deliberations of Bohr, Einstein,

Bell A bell is a directly struck idiophone percussion instrument. Most bells have the shape of a hollow cup that when struck vibrates in a single strong strike tone, with its sides forming an efficient resonator. The strike may be made by an inte ...

and others: to identify a quantum-compatible nonclassical conception of everyday objects, one consonant with the principle of superposition." Wolfgang Prinz, M.W. Stuckey and Panos Pardalos cite this paper for its key contribution in the field of macroscopic quantum mechanics. * How Do Classical and Quantum Probabilities Differ? * Macroscopic Quantum Mechanics and System of Systems Design Approach. * Quantum Theory, the Chinese Room Argument and the Symbol Grounding Problem. * Quantum Realism and Haecceity. * Popper’s Propensity Interpretation and Heisenberg’s Potentia Interpretation — A comparative assessment. * Do Hodgson's Propositions Uniquely Characterize Free Will? Invited commentary on a target paper, "A Plain Person's View of Free Will" by David Hodgson. * Physics and Common Sense: Relearning the Connections in the Light of Quantum Theory.

Activities and societies

* Member of American Association for Artificial Intelligence * Member of

American Philosophical Society The American Philosophical Society (APS), founded in 1743 in Philadelphia, is a scholarly organization that promotes knowledge in the sciences and humanities through research, professional meetings, publications, library resources, and communit ...

References

External links

Gomatam’s Scientific Blog: PostQuantum
{{DEFAULTSORT:Gomatam, Ravi Quantum physicists Theoretical physicists Communication theorists Philosophers of science Philosophers of language Living people University of Mumbai alumni 1950 births Annamalai University alumni Burroughs Corporation people Birla Institute of Technology and Science, Pilani faculty