Re: LET is on shaky ground - continued
From: Trevor Morris (tedd90_at_XXXfreeuk.com)
Date: 07/16/04
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Date: Fri, 16 Jul 2004 10:09:52 +0100
"Martin Hogbin" <goatNOSPAM1@hogbin.org> wrote in message
news:cd823o$mes$1@hercules.btinternet.com...
>
> "Trevor Morris" <tedd90@XXXfreeuk.com> wrote in message
news:1089881772.5525.0@echo.uk.clara.net...
> > "Martin Hogbin" <goatNOSPAM1@hogbin.org> wrote in message
> > news:cc8h2n$b47$1@hercules.btinternet.com...
> > >
> > > "Trevor Morris" <tedd90@XXXfreeuk.com> wrote in message
> > news:1088638350.26499.0@nnrp-t71-02.news.uk.clara.net...
> >
>
> I have deleted the previous discussion because I feel we are getting
> nowhere. However, this is one of the few civilised, on-topic, threads
> on this group and I would like to think that it is possible to
> persuade you, at last partly, to accept what I believe is the modern,
> mainstream view of the philosophy of physics.
>
> The crux of our difference is really contained in the lines
> below.
>
> > > You seem to be compelled to want to 'explain' everything
> > > in terms of the familiar. Let me ask you this question. If
> > > Newtonian gravity had proved to be in complete
> > > agreement with experiment, would you have insisted that
> > > there must be some 'explanation' for it?
>
> >
> > Absolutely (!) YES!!! How do the planets know the Sun is there, and
vice
> > versa? Kepler's Laws tell us what happens, but not WHY! That's the
> > difference between recipes and science, imho!
>
> Physics does not and cannot answer the question 'why'.
>
> By words such as 'explain' you are requiring everything
> to be described in terms of a pre-determined set of
> concepts, essentially those with which we are familiar in
> everyday life. This may, in some ways, be desirable but
> we cannot guarantee that it is possible.
>
> Newton's law of gravitation precisely describes what the
> gravitational force in all circumstances (we are ignoring GR
> here). Why is an 'explanation' required, especially when the
> 'explanation' is likely to be far more complex that the
> question?
>
> Martin Hogbin
Thank you, too, for keeping it "civilised", even though we seem to disagree
at a pretty fundamental level ... Unfortunately, though, you have now
deleted the examples I gave in an attempt to answer your question already.
Those examples referring to band theory, gas laws etc. tried to show that,
in other branches of physics than relativity, it is the norm to seek to
"explain" observed general laws and patterns in terms, not necessarily
familiar or everyday, but just in terms which relate the relevant phenomena
*to the rest of physics*. Thus, what I am arguing is that SR is better
presented as a direct, evolutionary consequence of Maxwellian physics,
extended to cover all interactions limited to the speed of light in a single
reference frame, and not as a complete, revolutionary break unrelated to
anything previously known in physics. The currently favoured
"revolutionary" approach leaves us with at best a confusing and ambiguous
model of light propagation in which "frames of reference" and "observers"
acquire spurious (and inexplicable) significances.
And explanations in science are indeed likely to lead to deeper layers of
interesting complexity and fresh understanding than the superficial initial
patterns and laws we perceive: what is so surprising about that? It would
have been simpler to consider atoms always as little elastic spheres with no
structure (but I would still ask, why are they elastic?!), and that will do
for some purposes, but tough, they ain't like that! And so it goes on,
layer after layer of underlying complexity, subject to and underpinning some
general predictive "laws". If you don't like my examples of Ohm's Law /
solid state band theory, or gas laws / kinetic theory, just look at
yesterday's announcement from Hawking that he now thinks communication is
possible from within a Black Hole, which made the TV news. He may be right,
or wrong, or Black Holes may or may not exist, but whatever, no such ideas
would be possible if noone thought about how such things might actually work
in terms of some specific conceptual models of matter, energy, radiation,
etc., and not just general principles like symmetry, relativity, etc. Yet
another example of how "what all physicists think" can be overturned in a
day (maybe!). It is surely not controversial that the Newtonian law of
gravitation alone explains nothing at all about what gravitation actually
is, or how it is communicated from one mass to another, or what "mass" is,
or that these are real gaps in knowledge which will be filled some day (and
we know that GR is a better descriptive step in that direction). So, the
answer more complex than the question? Maybe, in some ways, but who cares,
if it leads to a deeper understanding of how things work, beyond simply a
description of what we observe?
Trevor Morris
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