Realism is the opiate of the masses (in physics)

From: Patrick Reany (reany_at_asu.edu)
Date: 11/25/04 

Date: 25 Nov 2004 08:41:03 -0800

"AllYou!" <idaman@conversent.net> wrote in message news:<daSdndtqCcCwSzncRVn-jA@conversent.net>...
> "Patrick Reany" <reany@asu.edu> wrote in message
> news:844a1b64.0411240952.5d8947c@posting.google.com...
> > "AllYou!" <idaman@conversent.net> wrote in message
> news:<0-ydnV9wnccHFjncRVn-iA@conversent.net>...
> > > "Paul Stowe" <ps@acompletelyjunkaddress.net> wrote in message
> > > news:lup7q05nslgaq7q51u5udu4mtv0o4ihhrl@4ax.com...
> > > > On 23 Nov 2004 06:18:03 -0800, reany@asu.edu (Patrick Reany) wrote:
>
> > > > > 2) Physics is likely not much hurt by this general lack of
> > > > > appreciation concerning the abstract nature of time. Physicists tend
> > > > > to NOT keep their wits about them concerning time, yet they tend to be
> > > > > able to invent principle theories that work anyway. The single biggest
> > > > > error that the crank believes is that modern physics is not successful.
> > > > > It is!
> > > >
> > > > Of course. You can ALWAY putin placeholders for gaps in actual knowledge.
> > > > But it is, and will alway be, a lousy subsitute.
> > >
> > > Perfectly said. I could not agree more.
> >
> > I expected you to do better than to be taken in by a mere platitude.
> > The claim you gave your assent to is vacuous!
> >
> > If there is only one good thing about the study of philosophy it is
> > that it helps us from being taken in by a platitude.
>
> Notwithstanding any point you were trying to make, tell me this, if physics is about
> building models which work, what is the model for time and how does it work?

First, we aren't gods. Human knowledge is at best a placeholder
substitute for truth. Get used to it! To everything we know, we must
admit that it is part free invention from the human mind.

Second, the long answer to your question:

Every variable in a physical theory, which is a direct measurable, has
three aspects:

1) abstract concepts (conceptual and formal),
2) measuring instruments,
3) operational definitions that connect the first two.

Abstract concepts are simply what is our mind's view of them. Formal
abstract concepts are the representations of our mind's view of the
concepts codified into a formal symbolic system, such as in the theory
of continuous variables in calculus, which is how time is usually
formally modeled. Time is usually taken as an independent continuous
variable.

By use of operational definitions the theorist and the experimentalist
are forced to speak the same language, and I mean this literally, as
the operational definition contains within it a unique public
semantics of the meaning of the variable being measured. You can
personalize the meaning of a variable for private use by adding to it
any additional meaning you care to add into your personal natural
philosophy. However, for communal discourse in physics, the
operational definition is the only allowable intersubjective meaning.
This is the place where metaphysics was removed from physics. And much
of the necessity for doing that goes to the requirement that physics
be intersubjective. We don't have to be concerned about whether
electrons and atoms "really" exist so long as they "exist" relative to
theories that work.

In the case of time, we conceive of time (making it abstract in that
act alone), in which time is used to order events, possibly even
continuously, and metrically (i.e., we can assign ordering by numbers
in such as way that the comparison of pairs of events has meaning
beyond mere ordering). Thus, the short answer: time is typically
modeled in theories as a continuous metrical variable.

We invent the notion of an ideal clock and DECLARE which real
instruments come close to realizing this idealization for particular
usages. The best we can hope for here is consistency of theory and
measurment. When that is satisfied then we invent an operational
definition that completely describes how time measurements are made.

There is no absolute platform we can get into by which to judge the
Truthfulness of any operational definition or judgment about which
clock is "true in reality." Either the theory works or it doesn't.
Hopefully, by now you can see that the entire question of the
existence of a "true clock" is meaningless from the viewpoint of
verification. Instrumentalists, like myself, prefer not to deceive
ourselves that we have more truth than we can prove. Realists don't
seem to have any problem with this kind of self-deception. How many
times I have asked realists to stop making vacuous claims and prove
the claims they repeat over and over, and not one of them has
succeeded in doing so even once.

Realism is the opiate of the masses (epistemologically speaking).
Physics is NOT about reality or truth; it is about the invention of
theories that work, because physics can PROVE that it can accomplish
that much! Hoping that something is true doesn't make it true.

The meaning of a time measurement has no provable absolute status, and
is, in fact, completely under the arbitrary authority of the theory
that uses the concept of time. Different theories can have differing
meanings to time.

And if it hasn't become painfully obvious to you yet, the central
concept in physics is the theory.

Patrick

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