Things to Reject in 21st Century Physics
in [Relativity]
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From: Robert L. Oldershaw on 4 Jul 2010 19:20 On Jul 4, 12:02 pm, Tom Roberts <tjroberts...(a)sbcglobal.net> wrote: > It would be MUCH better to do science, than waste time on such a silly "manifesto". --------------------------------------- Hi there, Tiny Tom! The purpose of a manifesto is (1) to provoke, and (2) to make one think, hopefully in a new, open-minded and productive way. Clearly my little manifesto has provoked you! GOOOOAAAALLLL! Tonight (actually next morning) when I read your long post at a leisurely pace while I smoke a good (well, pretty good) cigar, we will see if your thoughts are useful, or just a knee-jerk reaction to anyone who challenges your sacred paradigms (read faith-based assumptions). THE GOD WHO HAS WHISPERED IN MY EAR IS NATURE (see Spinoza and Einstein for details). Keep smiling, RLO www.amherst.edu/~rloldershaw
From: Sam Wormley on 4 Jul 2010 19:24 On 7/4/10 6:12 PM, Robert L. Oldershaw wrote: > On Jul 4, 12:37 pm, Hayek<haye...(a)nospam.xs4all.nl> wrote: >>> >> Suppose we have an object traveling at an infinite speed. >> >> Where would its position be ? > ------------------------------------------- > > Sigh, that is impossible. v(max) = c. > > RLO > www.amherst.edu/~rloldershaw CORRECTION |v_object| < c
From: Robert L. Oldershaw on 4 Jul 2010 19:46 On Jul 4, 7:24 pm, Sam Wormley <sworml...(a)gmail.com> wrote: > > > Sigh, that is impossible. v(max) = c. > > CORRECTION > > |v_object| < c ----------------------------------------------------- I stand corrected. Your statement is more accurate than mine, which was a bit sloppy. RLO www.amherst.edu/~rloldershaw
From: Hayek on 5 Jul 2010 06:38 Robert L. Oldershaw wrote: > On Jul 4, 12:37 pm, Hayek <haye...(a)nospam.xs4all.nl> wrote: >> Suppose we have an object traveling at an infinite speed. >> >> Where would its position be ? > ------------------------------------------- > > Sigh, that is impossible. v(max) = c. There is an exception : uncertainty. And under those conditions particles manage to be at two places at the same time. Sounds like moving with zero travel time between two positions. Zero travel time is infinite speed. Uwe Hayek. > RLO > www.amherst.edu/~rloldershaw -- We are fast approaching the stage of the ultimate inversion : the stage where the government is free to do anything it pleases, while the citizens may act only by permission; which is the stage of the darkest periods of human history. -- Ayn Rand I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them. -- Thomas Jefferson. Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy, its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery. -- Winston Churchill.
From: Robert L. Oldershaw on 5 Jul 2010 13:32
On Jul 4, 12:02 pm, Tom Roberts <tjroberts...(a)sbcglobal.net> wrote: > The major thing to reject in physics, in this or any other > century, is --------------------------------------- Let me guess: untestable postmodern pseudophysics? And now to a discussion of your generous and thoughtful comments, which I have had time to chew up and digest. You keep saying "don't get confused by PUNs." I have no idea what you are talking about by PUN. That is not an acronym I have ever seen before, or that I can remember as having enough value to retain. Your scrupulous distinguishing between physical systems and models of physical systems is very dear to my heart. I have been advocating this crucial distinction, which the Platonists appear to be oblivious of, for decades. Sure the mathematics is reversible, but as you say: the physical systems are not. Excellent. Then why does Sean M. Carroll write a whole book on the starting premise that the laws of the microcosm are reversible and therefore the "arrow of time" is a mystery. If you consider the Arrow of Causality instead of the Arrow of Time, the mystery vanishes. We may have to differ on that. Regarding the observable features being different at different cosmological Scales, I have spent the last 3 decades demonstrating that these putative "differences" either do not exist at all, or are due to the fact that analogues differing in size scales by 17 orders of magnitude are going to obviously LOOK different even if they are totally equivalent. Hundreds of pages of research presented at www.amherst.edu/~rloldershaw attest to the correctness of discrete cosmological self-siimilarity. I know that this is very upsetting to your paradigmatic assumptions, but sooner or later you are going to have to deal with it in a more open- minded manner. There are curently no "best" theories of particle physics. They contain naive and egregious conceptual errors and are literally Ptolemaic model-building efforts. In 10 years they will be gone. Regarding the naiveness of determinism, I think it is you who is naive about what Spinoza thought us and especially about the modern physics understanding that deterministic systems need not involve a high degree of predictability, and can modify their behavior [feedback loops] without a ghost in the machine. -------------------------------------- -------------------------------------- Physics can be thought of as primarily the mathematical modeling of nature. Natural philosophy is the attempt to understand how nature actually works and how nature really is. Really great scientists combine these two endeavors. You can repeat Bohr's dictum that 'we just want to reproduce observations, and not try to understand how nature really is' BUT I SAY THAT IS PTOLEMAIC THINKING, AND I TOTALLY REJECT IT. Science is the attempt to explain how nature actually works. Quite obviously we canot have direct perfect observational knowledge, and so we always deal with approximations in science. But those approximations should successively come closer to how nature really is. That is the diffrence between a true natural philosopher and a Platonic mechanic. RLO www.amherst.edu/~rloldershaw |