Re: Why

John Kennaugh:
>Bilge writes

>> Actually, I know a good bit about both, although I know more about
>>physics than mathematics.
>
>You do not seem to understand the difference.

Sure I do. Math is any physics that you don't understand.
Your handicap is not my handicap.

>I have a computer program which predicts the height of the tide. It is
>an accurate mathematical model.

There's no such thing as an accurate model of a physical
system that doesn't contain physical input.

>It accurately predicts physical things
>but being able to use it does not mean I understand the physics.

I'm sure that you don't. But I'm not you. If I don't understand
how a program models something, I don't use it until I do understand
it.

>For that one has to understand the causality. The water does not go up and
>down because the maths says so.

Nice of you to discover what physicists have known all along
and have employed in developing physical theories like relativity
and relativistic quantum field theory. That begs the question of
why you are telling me this, unless you just had to announce your
discovery to the world.

>As the program works one might assume
>that whoever wrote it had a proper understanding of the physics although
>there is a remote possibility that he had a misunderstanding and still
>ended up with something which works.

And if someone sat down with nothing but a pile of transistors resistors,
inductors, capacitors, some solder and a soldering iron, he might solder
them together and have a working tv set without understanding what he is
doing. But, by employing a bit of common sense, I can also guess the
chances of that happening.

>To take a classically familiar example, in times past the motion of the
>planets across the night sky could be described to any desired degree of
>accuracy on the basis of the Earth being the dynamic centre of the
>universe. A better understanding came by questioning the underlying
>assumptions and simplification achieved by means of a Sun-centred
>theory. This surely demonstrated the importance of being able to
>recognising and being able to question the underlying assumptions of any
>theory.

Unfortunately, you have no idea what the physical importance was,
since that pointed the way to relativity.

>Relativity is a principle theory - a mathematical model.

Bzzzzt. Bull*** detected. Slogans aren't arguments. For that reason,
the rest is ignored. In case it hasn't been obvious, I'm an experiment-
alist. I've spent more time observing the physics I studied in the classroom
happen right in front of me in a real laboratory, than you've spent doing
anything related to science. Come back when you figure out that you have
no clue as to what is and isn't a physical process. If you want to
continue make that absurd claim, find at least one example of a physical
process in any branch of physics that you can explain better than I can,
including how to illustrate the process with an experiment. Try to find
something at least moderately challenging.




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