Re: Leibniz vs Newton


Michael Hell wrote:
Eric Gisse wrote:

[snip]
But regardless, Leibniz is ignorant of three centuries of progress.

On the other hand, there are a few that hold we are still catching up
to Leibniz:

From the wikipedia:

"Until the discovery of subatomic particles and the quantum mechanics
governing them, many of Leibniz's speculative ideas about aspects of
nature not reducible to statics and dynamics made little sense. For
instance, he anticipated Einstein by arguing, against Newton, that
space, time and motion are relative, not absolute. Leibniz's rule in
interacting theories plays a role in supersymmetry and in the lattices
of quantum mechanics. His principle of sufficient reason has been
invoked in recent cosmology, and his identity of indiscernibles in
quantum mechanics, a field some even credit him with having anticipated
in some sense. Those who advocate digital philosophy, a recent
direction in cosmology, claim Leibniz as a precursor."

Throw enough *** at the wall and some of it will stick.

The Greek knew nothing about the 20th century meaning of atoms, yet the
word for atom comes from them. Do we credit them for the discovery of
the atom?




[snip]
What you are missing is that *both* Newton and Einstein were
well-versed in the state of physics at their respective points in time.
Newton built off the works of Tycho and Kepler - Einstein built off the
works of Maxwell, Michaelson & Morley, Lorentz, Poincare`, Hilbert,
Riemann, and god knows how many others.

Neither of them were producing ideas from a vacuum. Do you think your
idol, Feynman, was doing what he was doing while being completely
ignorant of where physics was?


No.

Then why do you think *you* are exempt from the learning that even
Newton and Einstein had to do?


But I should mention that my idol is Frank Zappa, not Feynman.



However, there is no proof that it is impossible.

You just believe it to be the case.

Damn right I do.

Someone who doesn't even have a firm grasp of what is taught in high
school has no hope in hell in replacing *anything* in physics short of
performing an experiment that shits all over current theory.

Or desire it, anyways.

You snipped this:

This is the issue: You don't know what the *** you are talking about.

You think you can re-invent physics even though your last exposure to
physics was from high school.

You haven't seen modern physics in any capacity other than whatever you
read in popularizations. You have no idea why physics is where it is
today. Hell, you don't even know *where* physics is.


I have a very good idea of where physics is.

No - you don't.

Your understanding of modern physics is limited to catchphrases like
"mass-energy" and "space-time".

Let's look at the concept of the observer - the concept of which you
are struggling with.

In classical mechanics, the observer plays no role. The observer can,
in theory, see everything that there is to see if the observer has good
enough equipment.

In relativity, the role of the observer is altered significantly. What
an observer can see is entirely dependent on where the observer is. An
observer moving with a particle sees something different than from an
observer at rest with the particle. Not even the ordering of events is
the same between two observers. There is even a fundamental limit on
what an observer can see - two observers that have non-intersecting
lightcones will never see eachother.

In quantum mechanics, the observer becomes a fundamental part of the
theory. The uncertainty between two conjugate observables [position,
time | energy, momentum | etc] fundamentally limits how much the
observer can see.

The mere act of observing fundamentally alters the system! One example
is an electron - in certain situations it can be in a superposition of
being both spin up and spin down. Observing the electron forces it to
pick a particular spin state. There is no way to make the observer play
no part in the theory - you can't say the electron was in a specific
state before the observation.

I understand this.

No. You don't.


I've been on the side that says the act of observation ultimately
defines the state of the system.

That's why creating the neuronal network with optical instruments
inside the model of the system is the most accurate way of recreating
the act of observation.

See? You don't understand.

You are assuming the most complex definition of "observation" possible
while completely ignoring the simple fact that quantum mechanics
doesn't give a *** about how the state is observed. Something as
simple as throwing an an atom with an unpaired electron through a
strong magnetic field is enough to force the issue - ever heard of the
Zeeman effect?

You mistakenly assume you can model away the effects of the observer to
understand what is actually going on. YOU CAN'T. Study some physics
instead of making *** up.



And I know roughly how it got there.

In the beginning, someone had this idea about demons and fairies that
made things work.

Then Aristotle started mumbling something a little less demon haunted.

After a long time of sitting around and looking at things, a bunch of
people were wondering if they could really decide how the solar system
really worked.

After looking at things a little longer, and a little more carefully, a
man named Kepler put forward some formulas that seemed to describe the
motion of the bodies of the solar system really well.

Kepler set of a fire storm of thought and imagination that blazed
through the Enlightenment, Newton, Leibniz, Kant, Descartes, Spinoza.

Newton of course was the odd ball. His ideas were pretty different from
the others, which would be well represented by Spinoza.

After the discovery of the electron plenty of unanswered questions were
around.

Einstein was highly influenced by Spinoza, and thanks to his
imagination, was able to see clearly where Newton's model was limited
in dealing with the modern observations like the photoelectric effect.

A hundred years later physics as a body of knowledge is represented by
the theories of relativity and quantum mechanics at its core, and many
fringe conjectures like loop quantum gravity and m-theory, bloodily
fighting for survival and acceptance at the edges.

Close enough.

You can act as if those trained in Newton and Einstein are the only
ones who will have good ideas, but that doesn't make it necessarily so.

The low hanging fruit in physics is gone.


I thought that when I was a boy.

But the tree of physics is such a mess right now, that maybe it'll just
die, and leave seeds for a new tree. With new low hanging fruit.

You don't know what the *** you are talking about, as usual.

Just because you lack the mathematics to understand the deep
relationships, or the physics to even understand the context, does not
mean physics is a mess. Physics has a system - and it works.





If you operate in a vacuum,
ignorant of all that has been done, you will be reinventing the wheel
until the day you die.

You want to throw physics for a loop? Do an experiment that modern
physics can't explain [good luck], or learn the subtleties of modern
physics so you can pit them against each other and make sparks fly.

Ignorance is not an asset. The sooner you figure that out, the better.

.

Quantcast