Re: To what do the laws of physics apply?

From: Boris Borcic (borcis_at_users.ch)
Date: 01/06/05 

Date: Thu, 6 Jan 2005 22:13:07 +0000 (UTC)

Mike Helland wrote :
> Let's start with two simple postulates:
>
> 1. There is the subjective reality of our conscious experience and the
> objective reality external to our minds.

Maybe I am just fooled by my inferior mastery of English, but your first
statement is an oxymoron because of the singular "experience". We
wouldn't find any sense to contrasting "subjective" and "objective"
experience, such as appears to be your intention, if we were all sharing
a single and same conscious experience.

AFAIK, the notion of an "objective reality" may be nothing more that the
wish for a viewpoint guaranteed stable and universal - a wish that
reflects repeated trauma of having had to revise understandings one
first believed comprehensive and definitive. Naming such a viewpoint
"external to our minds", I tend to understand as an allusion to the
legitimacy of a due process that would allow adepts to force its
adoption onto others, while escaping accusation of prejudice.

>
> 2. The principles, theories, and laws of physics apply only to the
> world of our observations, the subjective reality.

One could as well say that the law of physics apply to the design of
procedures that physicists and engineers use to make accurate
predictions and reliable machines. I surmise that the purpose of
reliable engineering is the organic ancestor of that of reliable
physical predictions, and that laws of physics wouldn't exist but for
these purposes.

>
> After all, if we create our theories keeping in mind what we observe,
> and we test our theories by finding out how accurately they predict
> what we observe, what possible reason do we have to think that our
> theories are of any significance to what is beyond our observations?

What possible reason do we have to think that what is beyond our
observations has any relevance ?

> I
> know that is a philosophical question but I would like to know if I
> have erred, because these two postulates combined allow me to research
> and develop a different kind of model of the universe.
>
> Instead of modeling the phenomena we observe (subjective reality), the
> idea is to model the encompassing objective reality, which may operate
> without regard for the principles of relativity and uncertainty, so
> that we may effectively begin with an absolute and determinate model. A
> proper model of objective reality with observers present inside the
> model itself will result in the implicit modeling of the relative and
> indeterminate subjective realities of each modeled observer.

I'd much rather go the diametrically opposite way and seek an
epistemology that assumes above all, the association of an horizon to
any state of knowledge/vision/modelling. What's beyond an horizon may be
relevant, but only because it's not beyond the horizon from all viewpoints.

Your proposal, I see as one of starting from a viewpoint without
horizon. My understanding is that introductory physics classes can't
help but imply a similar promise, and that physicists tend to
self-select for a career on the basis of its appeal, so that in the end
the current state of physics is the best nature allowed a lot of smart
guys to devise in the direction you describe.

It is true that much of the progress of physics during the past century
took the form of getting closer to the phenomena by renouncing to
features of the "intuited promised" land. But what you describe, I see
100% in line with expectations natural to 19th century physicists.

>
> This allows for an interpretation of quantum mechanics that describes
> indeterminately changing systems of relative matter as observations of
> determinately evolving systems of absolute matter.

Shouldn't you use another tense or modality for the main verb ?

>
> Again, this is all philosophical of course, but since the implications
> seem to be a field of possibilities for scientific research that hasn't
> been pioneered yet,

IMO, the idea of an objective universal view predates science, and the
painters of the renaissance were first to pioneer your field by
establishing the law of perspective of localized viewpoints. Since it is
defensible to argue that most of modern math and physics is a
continuation of their work, this raises the question of
whether/how/why/when did the subsequent evolution of science depart from
what you propose.

Regards,

Boris Borcic 

--
"12 ? -- the least natural integer symbolizing all natural integers
          by itself. Successor : 123 "

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