Creation

My experience with myself on the organ/emotion correspondences is that, say, the liver must become active for anger manifest in the present moment; in some sense anger comes through the liver. But the source does not have to have anything to do with the liver. Similar with worry-spleen, fear-kidneys, etc.

Apech kindly invited me to start a new thread in which I address some questions of Owledge on physics. The point here is how to define mass. What is mass? We have our intuitive notions, but when claims are made about a particle's mass increasing as it's velocity increases, there must be a precise definition of mass, or more exactly an operational definition: what do you do to measure it? It is experimentally observed that if you apply a force to an object, it accelerates in the direction the force is applied (Newton's second law). The acceleration induced by a force will be half as much for something twice as big. So let's define a quantity called mass that makes this precise. There is a standard of mass, say a kilogram, and if you push the kilogram standard and some other thing with the same amount of force, and the standard accelerates n times faster than the other object, say that object has a mass of n kilograms. There is a bonna fide operational definition. But of course, this requires an operational definition of force and acceleration along with the truth of Newton's second law to work. What Einstein was especially good at was really thinking deeply about things just like this: what things like mass, velocity, etc. really mean, how we measure them, just what assumptions go into that measurement, and how valid are those assumptions. He was intensely studying Mach, Hume, and Kant with his non-physicist buddies at the time he developed special relativity, and those two activities were quite related. So, as you may have heard, in special relativity it is said that a particle traveling at less than the speed of light cannot be accelerated to the speed of light or faster. According to Newton, if you keep pushing with a constant force it will accelerate at a constant rate and eventually exceed the speed of light. So does relativity contradict the second law of motion? Not if you are willing to challenge your assumptions about mass. What you see in a particle accelerator is that if you push an electron with a constant force, it does not accelerate at a constant rate, but the acceleration decreases as the electron goes faster. And as the electron gets closer and closer to the speed of light the acceleration gets smaller and smaller so that the electron never reaches the speed of light. Now by our operational definition of mass, this means that the electron's mass increases the faster it travels, becoming infinite at light speed, which is impossible. Moving along, here is one of the big causes for misunderstanding of relativity. People hear about E=mc^2 and think that because mass is a form of energy, the aforementioned mass increase is due to the increase in kinetic energy of the electron. But in the reference frame of the electron, like a person sitting in a train not considering themself as moving, the electron is not moving and has the same mass it has always had. So this mass increase is not what E=mc^2 is talking about. That is something different. The confusion is that there are two inequivalent definitions of mass. The second is this: measure the mass in a reference frame where the particle is not moving. This will be the same no matter how fast the particle is going, because you first catch up to it before measuring. This is called rest mass. What E=mc^2 is really saying is that rest mass can be converted to energy. So if a particle emits light in all directions equally so there is no recoil and therefore it stays at rest, it's mass nevertheless will change: it will lose mass to account for the emitted energy. But E=mc^2 is only valid if the particle is at rest. The general case is where p is the momentum and m is the rest mass. If p is 0 it reduces to E=mc^2. Notice that if m=0, then E=pc. This is the equation that holds for, say, a photon. Which is to say, all of light's energy comes from it's momentum, not from any mass content. I once talked to a guy who was absolutely convinced that light had to have mass because it had energy and E=mc^2. I tried to explain that E=mc^2 is only valid for particles in their rest frame (i.e. when you have caught up to them), and that particles traveling at the speed of light do not have a rest frame because you can't catch up to them, so E=mc^2 doesn't apply to light. Owledge called the idea that light doesn't have mass "weird" but I'm nor sure why. You can't accelerate or decelerate light by pushing or pulling on it, so how could it be said to have mass? Mass is defined as the resistance to pushing or pulling. Gravity is different than other forces because everything falls at the same rate in a gravitational field, no matter how heavy it is. Even things that other forces don't pull on at all, like light. This lead Einstein to the idea of gravity as the curvature of spacetime, and I might explain how that works some other time. I would also like to address the issue of the speed at which the electromagnetic force acts. That is a neat story too.

This is the real heart of the issue, at least for me. So much of the stuff out there might be good for relaxing or low impact exercise, and maybe has some beneficial effect on your energy channels, but what forms really get the qi moving in a strong palpable way? From my personal experience, Gift of the Tao and Dragon and Tiger definitely do this, and I have heard many say Flying Phoenix and Wu Ji Gong aka Primordial Qigong do this well also. [EDIT] I also remember cheya highly recommending this DVD for feeling and working with qi: http://www.masterworksinternational.com/tai-chi/tai-chi-ruler/ All of these forms are very different, I might add. I also recommend Sifu Jenny Lamb's DVD, but that form is not geared towards feeling and working with qi. Though it can have that effect.

Well I'm still mulling over how to proceed with the geometry-physics connection. I understand that better than renormalization, which makes it somewhat harder to write an exposition that I am satisfied with.

In both cases you are only going for general predictions. If you have a one particle system, you need 3 numbers to specify it's position and 3 to specify it's velocity, 6 total. This completely characterizes the "configuration" of the system, meaning you can then apply Newton's laws of motion and predict where it will be. If you have a two particle system you need 6 for each particle, so 12. If you have an N particle system, however large N may be, you will need 6N parameters to specify it's configuration. So finite but huge number of particles = finite but huge dimension of configuration space. When you model a field or a fluid as a continuous thing, it's configurations will involve functions from space to some other space. For example, the electromagnetic field assigns each point in space electric field strength vector and a magnetic field strength vector, so you need 6 parameters at every point of space. So instead of needing 6 parameters for each of a huge but finite number of particles, you need 6 parameters for every point in space, of which there an infinite number. A finite number of parameters could only specify the values of the field at a finite number of points, or some other approximation to the exact configuration. Granted, we don't care about exact configurations in the end, because we will be taking averages, but to calculate the average in the first place you need to know in principle what the possible exact configurations you will be averaging over are. Thanks for the question!

Just found the wonderful exchange here between Walker and Ya Mu while looking for something else. I'm glad I did.

I missed this, anyone have a link?

Here are a couple that haven't been mentioned already: I have this one and have benefited from it. There is also a book that I haven't read, the DVD seemed sufficient. http://www.energyarts.com/store/products/dvds/dragon-and-tiger-medical-qigong-set-dvd I have heard lots of good things about this form, and good things about this particular presentation. http://www.amazon.com/Wu-Ji-Gong/dp/B0012BUX08/ Donald Rubbo has an ebook out that goes more into the internal energetics aspect of the form. http://www.cultivatechi.com/home/primordial.html

OK, a bit about renormalization before getting back to geometry. Renormalization is something that you use to get a finite answer when your theory keeps spiting out infinity as the answer. These infinities can arise in several ways. Here are a couple. 1. Statistical field theory. Statistical mechanics is the study of systems with extremely large numbers of particles that behave effectively randomly, like gas in a room has an enormous number of atoms that you cannot possibly keep track of, so you just use probability and statistics to calculate large scale properties like average energy. But what if you are considering turbulent fluid, moving for all intents and purposes random? If you model the fluid as a continuous flow, and try to calculate thing like average energy, this is an example of statistical field theory. But this causes some mathematical difficulties. If you rescale a figure in the plane by a factor of two, it's area gets multiplied by 4. If you rescale a figure in 3-space by a factor of 2, it's volume gets multiplied by a factor of 8. Generally, if you rescale an n-dimensional figure by a factor of c, it's appropriate measure of n-dimensional volume will be multiplied by c^n. Now when you want to calculate the average of something, you will need to know it's n-volume, n being the number of parameters needed to specify a point a particular thing in your collection. To specify the positions and velocities of all atoms in a gas cloud, you will need a huge but finite number of parameters. So OK, no problem. Take the average. But a continuous flow of fluid requires an infinite number of components to specify: at the very least it's velocity at ever point in space. So if you want to calculate averages over all fluid flows, you will need a notion of volume on an infinite dimensional space. But if such a thing existed, it would have to have the property that if you scaled up any region, however small, by any factor k however close to 1 (say 1.0000000001), the factor of increase in ∞-volume would be k^∞ which is ∞. So when you try to take averages over all configurations of a continuous thing like a fluid or the electromagnetic field, you run into infinity at every turn. 2. Field singularities. The electromagnetic field associated to a point particle is infinite at the location of the particle, because assuming the charge is concentrated at a point means the charge density there is infinite. Now, electromagnetic fields carry energy, so to have a self-consistent theory of charged point particles, you must take into account this energy attached to the particle when calculating the mass of the particle (that old E=mc^2 thing). But upon calculating the total energy, it is infinite because of the infinite value of the field at the location of the particle. So the mass of the particle should be infinite! Since we can model many things by point particles, and these things we are modeling don't have infinite mass, we would like to have a way out of this dilemma. What you can do is to only calculate the energy of the electromagnetic field more than some distance r from the particle and get a finite answer. Then you add this to the "bare mass" that the particle has without taking the field into account. This is your "total mass". Now, you demand that the total mass is equal to the mass that you actually observe the particle having. Then, finally you take the limit as r goes to zero, demanding that the total mass stays equal to the observed mass. For this to happen, the bare mass will have to become negative infinity. But to the extent that you are a pragmatist, you will not care because the final answer for the total mass gives you the right answer. After all, only the total mass is observable. The "bare mass" is unobservable so why do we care if it is negative infinity? This is called "renormalization". In the case of the statistical field theory example you might choose to look at a finite number of points at which to consider the electromagnetic field, so it only takes a finite number of parameters to specify. Then you once again find some extra parameters in the theory to be considered "bare quantities", and let them absorb the infinities that arise when you take the limit of considering all of spacetime so that the observable quantities come out right. In the case of quantum field theory you have both of these issues and more besides causing infinities to crop up. So given a quantum field theory a big question you want answered is are there enough terms with parameters that you can shuffle around to absorb all the infinities. In quantum electrodynamics, this is possible (Feynman, Schwinger, and Tomonaga all proved this independently of each other, and shared a Nobel Prize for doing so). In the first theory of the weak interaction this was not possible. For a long time didn't think it was possible to find renormalizable quantum field theories of the weak and strong forces. But then some people figured out how to do it in each case, and got Nobel prizes for it. When you try to make general relativity into a quantum theory you find that it is also non-renormalizable. This is the "quantum gravity" problem that everyone gets so hyped up about. Should we modify general relativity or quantum field theory to make them fit together? Both? Neither, but we just need to rethink how we are trying to make a quantum field theory out of gravity? String falls into the "modify general relativity" camp, and loop quantum gravity falls into the "neither, but rethink how we are doing it" camp. Now, even if you have a renormalizable theory, you can't help but think, "wait a second, what we are doing here is crazy." For example, how do you know that renormalization is even consistent, i.e. that following different procedures to renormalize a theory give the same answers? Some things have made the procedure more respectable, though. There is some mathematical work towards proving that renormalization is in fact a mathematically consistent procedure. Also, people using renormalizaion in statistical field theory realized that perhaps non-renormalizability isn't so bad. For example, if you are using statistical field theory to study fluid turbulence, if you can't take the limit from your discretization to the continuum and absorb all the infinities, so what? Fluids are not continuous at the microscopic level anyway, but are made of molecules. This is called "effective field theory": if there is some scale at which you know new physics will emerge anyway, why bother trying to take the limit beyond this scale?

Wow Taomeow, I thought for sure that was a modern piece done in Gothic style because of the fractal. Very cool.

Interesting link dwai, but that only points out the difficulty in measuring G. G is not a fudge to make the equation work. As Apech pointed out, constants of proportionality are common in mathematics. And as Zhongyongdaoist pointed out, G is not just a mathematical constant of proportionality, but a physical one. An observation I would like to add is that if you take G out of the equation, the units don't even match. So G serves as a unit conversion factor, whose value will depend on the units you are using. In other words, it can't not be in the equation, although you could choose units such that it's value would be 1. steve, That was the coolest flash animation I have ever seen. The absolutely awe inspiring nature just how big and how small things in the universe are has never been made so explicit to me. We have come a long way since Archimedes' Sand Reckoner. Zhongyongdaoist, Sure, I can say a bit about renormalization. I'll add it to the queue.

Good question! One thing I didn't make clear: When I say sphere, I mean the two dimensional surface of the sphere. Similarly, if I say circle I mean the one dimensional boundary. A mathematician calls the 3 dimensional region bounded by a sphere a ball, and the 2 dimensional region bounded by a circle a disc. If that was not the confusion, here is some more about tangent vectors: The possible velocity vectors for an ant constrained to the surface of the sphere will be 2 dimensional. Thinking of this sphere as embedded in 3 dimensional space, this space of velocity vectors will embed as a 2 dimensional subspace of the 3 dimensional space. The point here is that since the ant is constrained to the surface of the sphere, any velocity vector it can have will automatically be tangent to the sphere. So the two dimensional subspace of velocity vectors for an ant will be precisely the tangent plane. But if you want to think intrinsically, you can use this fact to safely say tangent vector = velocity vector. Right, to get a smaller circle the ant would have to feel like it is turning. If it "follows it's nose", it will always trace out a circle of maximal diameter. -- If anyone else has any feedback on my attempt to explain differential geometry, let me know. It took me years to understand this stuff. But it has been so long that some of the things I take for granted might be totally unfamiliar to you guys. So let me know. If it might help, try the one dimensional case: A smooth curve will have a tangent line at each point. For example, if a circle is "sitting" on a line, that line only touches the circle at the bottom, so it is the tangent line to the circle at the bottom point. If an ant is crawling on the circle, it's possible velocities will just specify if it is going forward or backward and at what speed, so they will form a line. And if you think about what a tangent line is a bit, it will make sense that thinking of the circle embedded in the plane, the line of velocities at a point on the circle will be the tangent line to the circle at that point. You know a curve is curved (kind of bad terminology, I know, but it is standard) if the tangent lines are not parallel. If you think about it, the tangents will only be parallel if the "curve" is actually not curved, i.e. a line. But intrinsically speaking, since there is no room to turn on a one dimensional space, it is impossible for a one dimensional space to be intrinsically curved! But even thought, say, a circle can't have intrinsic curvature in the sense I've defined, surely there is some way in which a circle is intrinsically curved because you can walk without reversing direction and get back to where you started, which is impossible on something un-curved like a line. The type of curvature I defined above is a "local" form of intrinsic curvature, because you can measure such curvature in a small region by comparing parallel transport along paths only in that small region. But to detect this other kind of intrinsic curvature that a circle does have you need to look at the whole circle; if you even remove one point on the circle you can't go all the way around. So one might say a one dimensional space cannot have local intrinsic curvature, but it can have global intrinsic curvature. The of study global properties of spaces is called topology.

I have not suggested this. For one, I am wary of using the word "is" in such a cavalier way. Secondly, a good story teller does not give away the ending, but rather hints at it. So for now all I'll say is that gravity can be related to geometry using the idea of a connection.

OK, geometry it is! I will mark with a (!) places that I recommend drawing a picture or doing a little pondering. What does it mean for a surface to be curved? From a 3rd dimensional vantage point it is easy: you look at it, and basically just know. Mathematically, you look at the tangent planes. The tangent plane of a surface at a point is the plane that, at least nearby that point, touches the surface only at that point. If the tangent planes are not parallel to each other, the space is curved. Like, say, on a sphere, the tangent plane at the north pole will be perpendicular to a tangent plane of a point on the equator (!). OK, but what if the surface is actually very thin and hollow on the inside and there is a bug crawling around in there. As far as that bug is concerned, there are only 2 dimensions, that is, there is only forward backward left and right, no up or down. What does curvature mean now? Mathematically, this is called studying a surface intrinsically. You treat the surface as it's own independent thing, not as something embedded in a larger 3 dimensional Euclidean space. So what is an intrinsic notion of curvature, i.e. how can the ant know whether or not the surface it is crawling in is curved or not? Well first, what is a tangent plane at a point, intrinsically speaking? It is the space of all the "velocity vectors" an ant can have at that point (!). (A vector is a quantity with both magnitude and direction, a velocity vector is therefore a direction and a speed, a "bearing" if you will). The next piece of the curvature puzzle is called "parallel transport". In Euclidean (i.e. flat) space, if you have a vector at one point, you can slide it to any other point without turning or stretching it. Actually, you can slide it along any path from one point to another, not just along a straight line (!). Now, suppose our ant is traveling down the 0 degrees longitude meridian, and we decide to take the tangent vector at the north pole pointing in the direction the ant is traveling and slide it down along with the ant. Now it is no longer tangent to the sphere, in fact it is completely perpendicular to it! (!) Actually, as soon as you slid the vector just a tiny bit along that meridian it was already not tangent to the sphere any more. So as far as our ant is concerned, we are not actually doing it right. What we need to do is instead of just sliding the vector along, we also need to rotate it a bit with each step to keep it tangent to the sphere. This way it always points in the same direction the ant is going. It sort of "rolls" with the sphere. But from the ant's perspective, nothing is being rotated because there is only the sphere. It is only from the 3-D perspective that something is being rotated. This keeping the vector tangent to the sphere is called parallel transport. By the way, just to get a feel for the concept, notice that if we had started with a vector perpendicular to the ant's direction of motion and rotated it a bit with each step to keep it tangent to the sphere, it would have stayed perpendicular to the ant (!). But you don't need to have the surface embedded in 3 dimensions to get a notion of parallel transport. You can just specify some data on the surface itself that tells you how to parallel transport vectors in an intrinsic way. Mathematicians call this data the connection, because it connects the different tangent spaces together. It is the connection that tells you what the analog of a straight line will be in an arbitrarily curved space. If the ant "follow it's nose" so to speak, without turning left or right, it's velocity vector is the parallel transport of itself (!). A curve whose velocity vectors are parallel transports of themselves is called a geodesic. In flat space, these are the straight lines (!). On a sphere, they are the circles of maximal diameter. OK, one more step to an intrinsic notion of curvature. Notice that parallel transport in flat space, aka sliding, has the property that if you transport/slide a vector along two different paths between the same two points, you end up with the same answer (!). But again consider the tangent vector at the north pole of the sphere pointing at the 0 degrees longitude meridian. If you parallel transport it down the meridian until you hit the equator, it will be pointing South. But if you first parallel transport it along the 90 degrees East meridian line until it hits the equator, and then parallel transport it along the equator until you hit 0 degrees longitude, it will be pointing West (!). It is this property of parallel transporting a vector along two different paths and getting two different answers that mathematicians call "intrinsic curvature". Next up is to relate all of this to physics, gravity in particular. For now, just notice that if we can talk about a 2 dimensional curved space "intrinsically", i.e. as it's own thing without a notion of a 3rd dimension it is curving in, we can do the same in any number of dimensions. Like say, 4.

Yes I'm sure. If you would like to elaborate on how it is relevant to the relationship between epistemology and ontology in the quantum formalism be my guest. Lubos himself says "From that moment on, Einstein avoided attempts to prove that quantum mechanics was wrong; instead, he only tried to argue that quantum mechanics was an incomplete description." The issue of completeness is a major part what I am calling the relationship between epistemology and ontology, and it was after Borh's answer to Einstein at the 1930 Solvay conference that the Bohr-Einstein debates went in that direction. However picturesque the notion that everything is made of strings vibrating in 10 dimensions sounds, the classical action must be quantized just like in any other quantum field theory. String theory does not solve the mystery of what that means; it takes it for granted.

I am not sure what you mean by this. While that is a nice exposition, it has absolutely nothing to do with the quote about Bohr and Einstein I mentioned, which referred to understanding the relationship between the epistemological and ontological aspects of the quantum formalism (Bohr emphasizing epistemology and Einstein emphasizing ontology). This thread was started for exposition, so feel free to explain how Maxwell showed us this. It is on my list, but I was going to talk about general relativity first, since zerostao likes geometry.

I think Newton would agree. He was the first to explain the 9.81 I think. As it turns out, gravity does not accelerate things at a constant rate. The strength of the gravitational field generated by a spherical mass will vary by an inverse square law: if you double your distance from the center of the sphere, the field will be four times weaker. If you triple your distance, nine times weaker, etc. As it happens, changing altitude by a few hundred or even a few thousand meters is actually a tiny change compared to the diameter of the Earth, so for all practical purposes, everywhere ordinary people find themselves the acceleration due to gravity will be 9.81 m/s^2. If you are on top of Mt. Everest or in a jet airliner, it will actually be slightly less (just looked it up: about 9.78 m/s^2 on Everest).

Thanks for reminding me about that one. I had misfiled it into the "jealousy inducing" folder of my mind rather than the "successful case studies" folder.

Thanks for filling in some of those blanks. I do remember one case of depression you mentioned (a girl who couldn't even leave the house, treatment + qigong practice worked wonders). And someone mentioned Kempomaster's distance healing on a depressed relative. I was curious if there were others.

In physics lingo, "theory" is the mathematical part, so it would be more like "forget the interpretation and do the calculation." An actual quote that gets tossed around in physics circles is "Shut up and calculate". Usually attributed to Richard Feyman, but actually from David Mermin's "If I were forced to sum up in one sentence what the Copenhagen interpretation says to me, it would be 'Shut up and calculate!'" Thanks. Unfortunately, being able to make something simple doesn't mean you understand it. Every time I try to write explanations like this I am confronted by all the gaps in my knowledge. I just try to make sure that nothing I say is demonstrably wrong. Yes! I completely agree. Speaking of quantum mechanics, here is a relevant quote from Edwin Jaynes: "Although Bohr's whole way of thinking was very different from Einstein's, it does not follow that either was wrong. In the writer's present view, all of Einstein's thinking - in particular the EPR argument - remains valid today, when we take into account its ontological purpose and character. But today, when we are beginning to consider the role of information for science in general, it may be useful to note that we are finally taking a step in the epistemological direction that Bohr was trying to point out sixty years ago. But our present [Quantum Mechanical] formalism is not purely epistemological; it is a peculiar mixture describing in part realities of Nature, in part incomplete human information about Nature - all scrambled up by Heisenberg and Bohr into an omelette that nobody has seen how to unscramble. Yet we think that the unscrambling is a prerequisite for any further advance in basic physical theory. For, if we cannot separate the subjective and objective aspects of the formalism, we cannot know what we are talking about; it is just that simple." He specifically is talking about the meaning of the wavefunction. The two interpretations of Quantum Mechanics that I am most interested in take this in precisely opposite directions. The Causal or Ontological interpretation of David Bohm takes the ontological aspects of the wave function part as far as possible, and the Quantum Bayesian interpretation takes the epistemological aspects of the wave function as far as possible. I am watching research in both directions intently. For some cutting edge research that indirectly gives insight into how the ontological interpretation works: Yes indeed, a classical system that reproduces the effects of the double slit experiment and other phenomenon long thought to belong exclusively to the quantum domain. Mind blowing. The idea that the both the particle and the wave are real and the wave guides the particle was exactly Louis de Broglie's idea about the meaning of quantum mechanics, and David Bohm independently came up with the same idea later. Now, Couder has shown that there is a macrosopic analogy of such a situation that does indeed reproduce many effect of quantum mechanics. So the question begs to be asked, "If quantum mechanics is closer to classical mechanics than we thought, then just what exactly is non-classical about it?" Bohm's later work was trying to understand exactly this. Some of his former collaborators have recently published on how his ideas about the meaning of quantum mechanics might explain the interface between mind an matter.

Jetsun's question is one which I am very interested in also. This is rather general. I would love to hear cases of healing people suffering from chronic psychological dysfunction. Also, there are specific treatment methodologies for various physical aliments in your book. Are there specific treatment methodologies for psychological aliments?

Oh come now, you are one of the only people around here who knows some real physics. I don't see how I could reply to Owledge's question without making a monster post on relativistic mechanics and electrodynamics, which probably wouldn't be very appreciated anyway. That's why I don't post much about physics anymore...

If I understand what you are saying, phrased differently it could be said that there is a strong continuity between the inner science of attaining moksha and the rites and rituals of Hinduism for the "common person". Correct? Whereas in Christianity, there were those pursuing spiritual perfection through various esoteric practices, but it was in some sense incidental or tangential to exoteric Christianity, and indeed was all but eliminated in the Protestant tradition.

Hi Apech. As it turns out, the Higgs mechanism was first proposed as a way for gauge bosons to acquire mass. Before people started talking about Higgs, "acquiring mass" was not an issue, the mass of the particle was already in the equation of motion (f=ma or whatever). The most general equation for a boson has an "m" in it that may or may no be zero. But the equations for gauge bosons require m=0, and are therefore long range forces like electromagnetism. So when physicists wanted to model the nuclear forces, which are short range, as gauge bosons, they had to find a way around this. For the weak force, they "broke" the proposed electroweak gauge symmetry using the Higgs mechanism, so that the part of the symmetry that remained unbroken was precisely the photon's gauge symmetry, and the bosons coming from the broken part of the symmetry "ate" Higgs particles to acquire mass. And indeed the W and Z bosons are observed to have mass. So, in terms of the mathematics, the Higgs mechanism is necessary to explain the mass of bosons carrying the weak force, and not things like electrons. EDIT: I was just reading up on the Higgs mechanism, and this might not be true. The ordinary mass terms for fermions (used in, say, QED) interfere with the required chiral symmetry properties of the electroweak theory, and need to be generated by Higgs. Particle physicist is so confusing... For the strong force, they did something completely different to get around the "long range" problem: the bosons are still massless and the symmetry is unbroken, but quantum effects asymptotically confine the force.

dwai, Christian inner practices were not mainstream among the common people, but they were well known and practiced among the monks. Was it not the same in India? What proportion of all Hindus that have ever lived actually took to the practice of yoga?