Things to Reject in 21st Century Physics
in [Relativity]
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From: maxwell on 13 Jul 2010 14:11 On Jul 12, 5:33 pm, Tom Roberts <tjroberts...(a)sbcglobal.net> wrote: > Robert L. Oldershaw wrote: > > [...] > > When your mind starts processing things other than thoughts, perhaps your claims > will make sense. Until then, your thoughts can at best be MODELS of the world. > So model building is all there is for us poor humans. > > Tom Roberts Agreed, Tom, it's all about models. But there are models and models. We can create mathematical models, conceptual (language) models, picture models, etc. Math models are the weakest when applied to the real world as they are simply deductive from the machinery of the math used. They rely on interpretation of the symbols, especially to mapping observables in measurements (for physics, anyway). Language models have been used for millennia - they are called natural philosophy when used to describe nature. They use a much richer modeling toolset than math (a subset of natural language) and can be applied to situations which cannot be mapped to numbers - this can still generate a shared understanding by humans. Best of all are pictures, as they appeal to the largest part of the human brain - the visual system. We, like other higher animals, have developed a rich method of mapping the real world (although macroscopic) using visual techniques; the old saw still has truth: "a picture is worth a thousand words". Unfortunately, theoretical physics has been hijacked by applied mathematicians in the last 100 years so that only the first toolset (math) is considered valid. The result has been a few very successful SWAGs (simple wild assed guesses) i.e. equations that can be applied in very simple situations, such as SpecRel, Maxwell's Equations, Schroedinger's Equation, etc. The equations came first & there is still disagreement over the meaning of the symbols. Since these equations were introduced to solve specific 'toy' problems they have been of little use for extending the engineering contributions on which our civilization is built. The problem here (if I may speak for some of your disputants) is that this process has got lost. As St Albert once said: "imagination is more powerful than knowledge" & mathematical physicists are demonstrably deficient in creative insights or new physical concepts. I agree with RLO that the state of modern physics is grossly disappointing - a revolution is needed.
From: eric gisse on 13 Jul 2010 21:36 Robert L. Oldershaw wrote: > On Jul 13, 1:53 am, eric gisse <jowr.pi.nos...(a)gmail.com> wrote: >> >> That you can't even predict the spectrum of the Hydrogen atom is amusing. > ------------------------------------------------------ > > One cannot predict that which is already known. Did you mean > retrodict? > > Sigh, what a piece of work you are, Woofster. > > RLO > www.amherst.edu/~rloldershaw You can't do it, so you hide being semantic word games.
From: Thomas Heger on 14 Jul 2010 00:19 Tom Roberts schrieb: > Thomas Heger wrote: >> Tom Roberts schrieb: ... >> Do you really believe, they are like that? > > Look at all the humans around you, including yourself. How did they (and > you) obtain their food to survive in the past week? Reflect on how much > we have modified the world in order to build farms, highways, > automobiles, trains, supermarkets, refrigerators, and all the other > components that went into providing food for you and your neighbors. > Then think about how all that is only possible because we have good and > accurate models of how the world works, that permit us to figure out how > to manipulate it in ways we desire. You apparently mean models of the social environment - 'the society' - in economical and political sense, including the human interrelations. As you also appear to mean a specific subset of the human race to be in charge of this subject to manipulate it in behalf of their own interests, I had to make clear, that we do disagree in this subject, too. TH
From: spudnik on 14 Jul 2010 23:29
first of all, there is no "empty space," in the sense of Pascal's (assumedly perfect) Plenum -- which he discovered, by experiment. second, as was told by the keynoter at the 9th Annual Conference on Nonlinear Science, Newton stole the inverse 2nd-power law from Hooke (and, anyway, it has been said, the necessary math came from Huyghens and others, algebraize Kepler's orbital constraints). > consequence. BUT Newton also had no earthly idea why the radial > dependence of the gravitational law went as the inverse of the square, > nor did he have any account of how that force could reach across empty > space without an intermediary. Thus any illusion you have of the > I think the main difficulty you suffer from is that you are > comfortable with the mental concepts surrounding Newtonian gravity > fields, but are not comfortable with the mental concepts surrounding a --les ducs d'oil! http://tarpley.net |