Re: What is the Standard Model

From: Bilge (dubious_at_radioactivex.lebesque-al.net)
Date: 06/24/04 

Date: Thu, 24 Jun 2004 22:42:01 -0000

 Patrick Reany:
>dubious@radioactivex.lebesque-al.net (Bilge) wrote:
>> Patrick Reany:
>> >Physics is NOT just an activity done by one person. It is the mutual
>> >activities of multiple people who have to intercommunicated amongst
>> >each other what they have done and want to do, and also communicate to
>> >potential physicists (students), congressional money brokers, and
>> >laypeople as part of their general education in science. That
>> >communication requires well-defined basic terms. So where the hell are
>> >they?
>>
>> This seems to not be sinking in.
>
>Yeah, but applied to which one of us?
>
>> All of those multiple people to whom you refer do not have the problems
>> communicating that you seem to think must exist.
>
>
>I think that physicists have just resigned themselves to living with
>ambiguous basic terms that they really don't know how to define, or
>feel confident that they know precisely how other physicists use these
>terms.

  You only think that because you expect to judge a book by its cover,
so-to-speak. In terms of the same metaphor, physicists judge a book
by its content.

>If they did have an authoritiative source for the definitions
>of model, law, hypothesis, and theory, what is it?

  It's a sekret. If I told you, I'd have to kill you.
 
>Name it for us. Where can I find it?

  In the sekret arkivez of the physics kabal.

>Remember, it has to be a source that most physicists actually do use
>as a reference for the definitions of these terms.

  After physicists learn the sekret handshake in graduate school, they are
given a sekret dekoder ring that allows them to find the arkivez and
decode the Book of Holy and Immutable Definitions. Naturally, we have all
taken an oath not to divulge the contents under penalty of being demoted
to an existence as a science writer for People Magazine where it doesn't
matter what we might write, since none of the readers could put two and
two together, anyway.

>> >Only recently did I hear from a philosopher friend of mine that
>> >Wittgenstein held that the main duty of the philosopher is to seek the
>> >logical clarification of thoughts. I can somewhat agree with that.
>>
>> Maybe you've spent too much time hanging around the wrong kind of
>> philosophers.
>
>Who would you suggest instead?
 
One or more of the following,

  (1) Going to graduate school to study physics,

  (2) Attempting to get the point of what someone is telling
      you before repeating the same argument based upon a
      littany of misconceptions about how science has ``failed
      in the west'',

  (3) Counselling and possibly medication for the obsessive/compulse
      disorder which causes you to limit your view of the world to
      that which fits your rigid sense of structure and that which
      is completely chaotic.

[...]
>> Blame that on nature and don't do anything that involves
>> coming in contact with the unknown.
>
>Since you've set yourself up as the champion of the cause against me
>then present for us ignoramuses your expert definitions for these four
>basic terms of science:

  I'm not sure if a big enough clue bat exists to impart the clues
required to make the point. Providing some universal definition that
satisfies your compulsion to have everything packaged to suit your idea of
organization would be a contradiction to what you been told in numerous
responses by just about everyone who has responded. In particular, you
have been told repeatedly that defining the word ``law'' such that it fits
everything that has ever been and ever will be called a ``law'' SERVES NO
PURPOSE. What does it take for you comprehend that giving you a definition
that SERVES NO PURPOSE, SERVES NO PURPOSE regardless of what it is? If
you want to judge a book by its cover, you aren't going to read anything
that doesn't have a title you think is interesting and you'll often be
misled into defending the content as being more interesting than is.

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