Re: SR and GR without math

From: Paul Draper (pdraper_at_yahoo.com)
Date: 10/07/04 

Date: 7 Oct 2004 09:43:31 -0700

Paul Bramscher <brams006_nospam@tc.umn.edu> wrote in message news:<ck1i15$ju3$1@lenny.tc.umn.edu>...
> I don't know who else has done this in the past here, having not kept up
> with it much over the past 5 years. I'm not speaking of tautology in
> the "begging the question" sense. I'm only referring to the simple act
> of derivation. I'll concede that any good theory may have an equation
> imbedded in it, and that this by itself does not necessarily require
> tautology.
>
> Derivations are tautologies in the sense that, while they may fill the
> real estate of your chalkboard, paper, or screen, they don't introduce
> new empirical data. What makes them vacuous is that they are
> necessarily true (if the math is done correctly), and therefore they
> don't add to the initial theory. I'm not saying they subtract anything,
> nor necessarily invalidate the initial claim (begging the question,
> etc.). I'm just saying that fiddling numbers is fun (I craft algorithm
> for a living), but it doesn't add knowledge to the initial claim since
> it appeals to a set of structures which follow necessarily from the
> original claim.
>
> So SR should be summed up in one neat equation (if it's a theory, as
> opposed to a method), and let's be done with it. No other math needs to
> be done, except in relation to raw data collected from experiment and
> how it corroborates with the theory or some derviation of it (as
> methodology here, not as something new to the theory).

You are right that all the mathematical fiddling in the world do not
add physical content other than what come from the assumptions. That
is, the theory as a whole does not grow beyond the insight in the
central concepts. Granted.

However, that's a philosophical point, not a practical one. The value
of a theory is not just based on the insight of its central concepts,
but on how USEFUL it is. That is, what can you do with it? And for
that, it is necessary to do some folding and twisting of the original
ideas, being careful (by using rigorous math) not to break anything in
the process, to save some intermediate steps and definitions, to check
certain things against reality along the way. This is how the reduced,
fundamental truth give rise to scope in complexity.

As another example, chemistry -- essentially all of it -- is entirely
founded on the electromagnetic interaction. Which is to say that it
contains no fundamental content beyond Maxwell's equations -- or, more
precisely, the quantum version of Maxwell's equations, QED. That is
certainly true. However, that doesn't diminish chemistry and its
achievements in the least. You cannot claim that chemistry is an empty
science because its fundamental basis is something that lies
elsewhere.

In short, the scope of a theory, in its application to systems
spanning the range from simple to unbelievably complex, is just as
important as the power of its fundamental tenets. The math is the TOOL
that allows you to get from the latter to the former.

>
>
> My crass two bits: REALLY high-end physics requires substantial clout to
> get major telescope time, supercollider time, an instrument package
> onboard a satellite, etc. So what can physicists "do" with regard to SR
> for the great majority of time that they don't enjoy time on high-end
> experimental equipment?

They can do what astronomers do: let nature do all the accelerating to
high speeds. The flip side is that you have less control over the
experimental conditions. Seriously, there are really excellent and
SMALL cosmic ray experiments on the ground (though maybe in
Antarctica) that are doing frontier physics.

The way that "mainstream" HEP-types compensate is that they share by
working in collaborations of hundreds or even thousands of physicists,
all on the same apparatus. The penalties for doing that are 1)
enduring internal and external politics, 2) spending a significant
fraction of time being a manager, and 3) schedule and budget pressures
that prevent you from stopping to think when you need to.

>
> On the flipside, a chemist or biologist can do quite a bit empirically
> in a modestly outfitted (~million dollars+) lab.

Though note that what most biologists do is exactly what astronomers
do: exploit a preexisting wealth of data. If biologists want to study
life at the same level of control that the HEP-types do, then they'll
spend hundreds of millions, too.

PD

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