Re: Epistemology 201: The Science of Science

From: Albert Wagner (albertwagner_at_cox.net)
Date: 03/10/05 

Date: Thu, 10 Mar 2005 10:31:02 -0600

robert j. kolker wrote:
>
> Albert Wagner wrote:
>
>> That's all a pretty pitiful defense of a Theory that is obviously on
>> it last legs. Standard Theory is a Rube Goldberg contraption held
>> together with chewing gum, paper clips and Faith.
>
> 1. GTR has served and still serves us well. The GPS system is a
> practical application.

Newtonian physics also has served and still serves us well. Yet
Newton had to posit a mysterious attractive force called
'gravity'. The fact that bad theories can serve well for many
phenomena is no justification for clinging blindly to the status quo.

> 2. The issue of matter not detected electromagnetically has not lead to
> a flat out contradiction with experiment. At present it is an ad-hoc
> hypothesis which may yet be redeemed. Work is being done in that directon.

The same can be said for psychic phenomena.

> 3. There is no better theory of gravitation at hand, so whatever ad hoc
> patches are required will be made.

Yes, there is a better theory for gravity at hand. Standard
Theory is *nothing but* ad hoc patches.

> GTR may have a hole in it, but it is
> not outright false, in the sameway the Newtonian gravitation is.

You can't prove either one true or false. Both are pure fabrication.

> What
> would kill all the relativity theories and any theories based on them
> dead as a doornail is faster than light transmission of information or
> transport of matter. There is no cure for that. That is a theory killer.

Yes. That would account for the frantic search for patches to
bandage up 'entanglement'.

> Even after the anomalous motion of Mercury was known (since about 1875)
> Newtonian Gravitation was still used.

There is no such thing as Newtonian Gravitation. There never was.
  An attractive force called gravitation was merely hypothesized
and named by Newton. No such force has ever been empirically
explained. When cornered, amateur physicists like you, invite
you jump from a high building as proof that their theories are
true, when all such jumping does is prove that bodies
mysteriously grow closer together. But Neanderthals knew that much.

> In fact several ad hoc explantions
> for the anomouls precession of the perihelia were proposed. They were
> never redeemed empirically. When a better theory of gravitation was
> acheived without the ad hocary, Newtonin Gravitation was demoted from a
> fundemental theory to a heuristic.

Your 'better' theory is no closer than Newton was to explanation.

> The same fate may yet befall GTR.
> However, the matter is not settled yet. Furhter work on
> super-symmetric-partner particles may yet resolved the matter(sic!)

And wise scientists and laypersons are already questioning the
endless proliferation of invented particles and forces for which
no explanation can be given, other than: "It was needed to make
the math work." 

-- 
"I consider it quite possible that physics cannot be based
on the field concept, i. e., on continuous structures. In that
case nothing remains of my entire castle in the air,
gravitation theory included, [and of] the rest of modern physics."
	-- Albert Einstein in a 1954 letter to Michele Besso.

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