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... not Russel! Registered Member #1
Joined: Thu Jan 26 2006, 12:18AM
Location: Tempe, Arizona
Posts: 1052
Steve McConner wrote ...
Well, I'm asking you to consider a newborn theory before anyone has figured out how to test it. For instance, Maxwell's displacement current, or the theory of relativity, or Tesla's non-Hertzian waves. All of these were proposed and debated for at least 10 years before anyone figured out how to make experiments precise enough to actually test them. Therefore in the meantime, they had to be taken on faith. It seems obvious now that all three are testable, the first two being true and the third false, but there was no such hindsight at the time.
It follows (to me at least) that if you want to make a scientific discovery right now, the last thing you want to do is start with known experimental results. You'll be like the proverbial man who kept a diary of everything that happened to him, and left it to the Royal Society in his will, with instructions that they should examine it for any signs of scientific discoveries. You need to use an (illogical) process of creativity to stumble on a new hypothesis, the test for which will be an experiment that nobody has even thought of doing yet. And faith is the only thing that drives you through the process of thinking up this test.
I think we're just caught up in semantics. In that case, it is a hypothesis. You can take those on faith, and you can pull them from very unscientific places. Good ones make specific predictions about the behavior of the universe that can be measured or observed (though perhaps not yet) and get to climb the ladder to theory. Neither Einstein nor the scientific community took relativity on faith; they figured out how to test it and did so. Tesla's hypothesis of non-Hertzian waves was very poorly constructed, and thus, it never became a true theory. Those who accept it on faith today generally run with the same crowd who scoff at the laws of thermodynamics.
I don't think there's anything wrong with considering the "what if" type questions. What if there are parallel universes? If you can come up with an answer to that question that makes a specific, testable prediction, you get to do some science. If you can't, it remains a "what if" until you can. Advancing it to the level of theory simply because it sounds nice and solves some problems is doing a great injustice to science.
Registered Member #2040
Joined: Fri Mar 20 2009, 10:13PM
Location: Fairfax VA
Posts: 180
Chris Russell wrote ...
..... In any case, we certainly do not take theories on faith, which was the thrust of my point above. You don't believe or fail to believe a theory; you examine the evidence and come to a conclusion as to whether the theory passes muster. In the case of the concept of parallel universes, there is no evidence to examine, nor any proposed experiments or observations that would provide any conclusive evidence. In that regard, it is not worthy of the title of theory. If someone wants to put faith in the idea, that's a personal matter, not a matter of science.
I think this is what your after:
...If you are an advocate of the many worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics then...
Registered Member #543
Joined: Tue Feb 20 2007, 04:26PM
Location: UK
Posts: 4992
Steve McConner wrote ...
You need to use an (illogical) process of creativity to stumble on a new hypothesis, the test for which will be an experiment that nobody has even thought of doing yet. And faith is the only thing that drives you through the process of thinking up this test
An attractive argument.
Many - if not most - of the great Victorian scientists worked alone, often from home laboratories. They could, if they wished, move like a butterfly from one line of investigation to another, without the stultifying delays of funding proposals, peer review, and publish-or-perish professional tenure. They need only prove a point to their own satisfaction before testing it against a chosen puzzle.
A century later, this spirit of enquiry into the nature of the physical world has been subverted by the unwritten assumption that the only true science is institutional science.
No journal editor today would ever consider publishing a paper by a patents' clerk, a point ruefully admitted by Einstein before his death.
If we consider the fractal-like growth of knowledge evolving around a particular point of observation, each like a plant in a greenhouse. we see that the biggest gaps in unasked questions are those around, and immediately following the seed event. Like a triple canopy rain forest, the endless interweaving of the upper branches leave little light to see by down at the roots, where things have changed very little since the forest began.
What actually is magnetism? We have millions of words on what it does, on its effects and interactions, on how to create and destroy it, but do we really have any more understanding of what magnetism actually is than the Victorian scientist?
Science does not move on because all the knowledge in a particular lode has been quarried out. It follows the market. Thermionic valves did not give way to the solid state because everything about the ways and means for ordering electrons in a vacuum had been discovered, but because the economic opportunities created by the new technology effectively withdrew all further large-scale investigation of the thermionic effect. No one knows what there might be left to discover, (or they would already know of it! ) beyond a commercial consensus that further investment in thermionics is unlikely ever to be repaid.
The market position is like "who cares what bits were missing from yesterday's jig-saw, 'cos we've got to get our latest solution out in the stores today."
So I find myself leaning towards Steve's position - the erratic course of scientific research hanging on the coat tails of capricious markets can only result in the haphazard, chaotic and partial development of understanding, in marked contrast to the professional conceit of a sort of orderly stratigraphy of knowledge, a new line of bricks placed only when the strength and integrity of the layer below has been certified and signed off as true by peer review.
Steve's view paraphrases that of Salvador Dali, who opined that the treasure islands we long for most, must always lie in the direction we least expect them (from memory, In Dali by Dali, I think.)
Registered Member #65
Joined: Thu Feb 09 2006, 06:43AM
Location:
Posts: 1155
Science has become a collection of communities, and indeed some have suggested specialization leads to functional fixedness.
However, one may be rather interested in the difference in meaning between morality and integrity. It seems fewer people assign true denotative context as rhetoric without logic becomes culturally abundant.
There is currently no proof or provable experiment without supposition that supports the multiple time line idea. I hope Hawking and Hertog received as much spam about an idea that became a model with unicorns and ice cream...
Registered Member #72
Joined: Thu Feb 09 2006, 08:29AM
Location: UK St. Albans
Posts: 1659
What actually is magnetism?
I'm not sure that's a useful question. I don't know what the answer is, but then I suspect it's impossible to answer any question of the form "What actually is xxxxx?". Or to put it another way, I challenge you to construct such a question, and then answer it in a way that doesn't decend into an infinite regress.
but do we really have any more understanding of what magnetism actually is than the Victorian scientist?
What it does, yes, and how it's related to other phenomena, yes, but what it actually is, then still absolutely no. The symmetry of Maxwell's equations under relativistic treatment is very exciting, if you're excited by that sort of thing. The accuracy of QED to predict stuff (like alpha) is very telling, and the way you can take any static electric or magnetic situtation and recast it in terms of photons being emitted and absorbed via QED is quite breathtaking. It seems, as Hannibal didn't quite say, like a good plan coming together. Which is a good test of a jigsaw puzzle, do the left side, do the right side, then see if they fit as you slide them together. Work up relativity, work up QED, slide them together, whoa! a damned good fit and a fresh angle on magnetism.
But as for what it is, or why it is, or whether it is indeed an it, then we have to fall back on beliefs, and the scientific method leaves plenty of room for those. Starting with the null hypothesis leaves a huge area unilluminated. Personally, I'd prefer to think of that dark area as being empty until some evidence demonstrates otherwise.
I am quite comfortable stuff just being unknown. However some, for what ever reason, seem to want to fill the unexplained spaces with divers gods and various purposes or meanings. I am not saying "there is no meaning", but I am saying "of all the meanings, many contradictory, that people have advanced to me over the years, I see little merit in one over any of the others, and even less evidence, so I'll stick with null over an arbitrary one, until I get evidence to the contrary".
I would love there to be a meaning, I really would. Then I'd have some indication whether I "should" be fighting for the advancement of my family, world peace, world cooling, watching more TV, developing the perfect Tesla coil, saving one or more species of small furry animal, or praying 6 times every day or on Sundays, or even on Saturdays.
I'll take the bag-of-waterist as a compliment.
My preferred GUT is that this universe is a simulation, executed in a Victorian era steam-punk computer, existing in a classical Newtonian flat Euclidean universe, and that all this relativity, quantum and non-locaility stuff is just a silly joke programmed into the simulation by some stove-pipe-hatted gentleman programmer for a laugh. While I'm probably wrong on this one, I challenge you to prove it.
... not Russel! Registered Member #1
Joined: Thu Jan 26 2006, 12:18AM
Location: Tempe, Arizona
Posts: 1052
Dr. Slack wrote ...
I am quite comfortable stuff just being unknown. However some, for what ever reason, seem to want to fill the unexplained spaces with divers gods and various purposes or meanings. I am not saying "there is no meaning", but I am saying "of all the meanings, many contradictory, that people have advanced to me over the years, I see little merit in one over any of the others, and even less evidence, so I'll stick with null over an arbitrary one, until I get evidence to the contrary".
I would love there to be a meaning, I really would. Then I'd have some indication whether I "should" be fighting for the advancement of my family, world peace, world cooling, watching more TV, developing the perfect Tesla coil, saving one or more species of small furry animal, or praying 6 times every day or on Sundays, or even on Saturdays.
I'll take the bag-of-waterist as a compliment.
Very very well said. I've never understood why people search so hard to find meaning. To my mind, the idea that there's no absolute meaning at all is incredibly exciting. It's like starting with a blank slate. Everyone gets to decide what it all means on their own; there are no right or wrong answers, just what makes sense to you and what does not. I'm quite happy being a tiny bag of water on an insignificantly small world orbiting an unremarkable star in an average galaxy. It puts everyday things like a pizza arriving late in their proper context.
Dr. Slack wrote ...
My preferred GUT is that this universe is a simulation, executed in a Victorian era steam-punk computer, existing in a classical Newtonian flat Euclidean universe, and that all this relativity, quantum and non-locaility stuff is just a silly joke programmed into the simulation by some stove-pipe-hatted gentleman programmer for a laugh. While I'm probably wrong on this one, I challenge you to prove it.
Really? I subscribe to the "bunch of rocks" model of the universe: . I hope our disparate beliefs in something that can never be proved isn't cause for future conflict.
Registered Member #15
Joined: Thu Feb 02 2006, 01:11PM
Location:
Posts: 3068
I think consciousness and the ability humans have to think and reason is just another example of evolution. By being able to think and reason, humans can build devices which allow them to spread across vast oceans to produce more offspring, and to also eventually (well maybe) colonize space, and therefore continue to spread the human genetic code.
Registered Member #30
Joined: Fri Feb 03 2006, 10:52AM
Location: Glasgow, Scotland
Posts: 6706
wrote ... Starting with the null hypothesis leaves a huge area unilluminated. Personally, I'd prefer to think of that dark area as being empty until some evidence demonstrates otherwise.
Well, I like to think of it as teeming with things yet to be discovered and thought up. As I argued earlier, if you waited for evidence before making hypotheses, you'd be waiting a long time: you have to take the initiative, have crazy ideas, and then go stumbling into that dark area looking for evidence to confirm or refute them.
Maybe as an engineer, who is just expected to be an applier of existing scientific knowledge in the interest of profit, it's OK to consider that area empty, since it's certainly off limits as far as your day job is concerned. (I don't mean yours personally: mine too!) But as a personal philosophy, I find that pretty dull.
wrote ... I've never understood why people search so hard to find meaning. To my mind, the idea that there's no absolute meaning at all is incredibly exciting.
Maybe the search for meaning was also an evolutionary adaptation. It could come from empathy, at least the crude Darwinist sort of empathy where you try to figure out what your potential enemy/dinner/mate is thinking and feeling in order to predict their actions and gain an advantage. I'm sure many people couldn't bear the idea that Chris expresses, they prefer a nice clear-cut belief system like Christian morality or the law of karma. After all, don't these systems read like books of rules that you can play to gain an advantage? Thou shalt this, thou shalt not that, blessed are those who do X. And maybe they actually worked to an extent, and hung around as memes for that reason.
But I must admit that I find this idea exciting too, of meaning being a personal and emergent thing, or even nothing at all. And maybe these belief systems only hung around because they gave believers the good feeling that they were somehow playing the game of life better than their fellow heathen, but that's all it is, a good feeling.
That XKCD comic was awesome. I recognize the patterns that he uses in some frames, I bet he photocopied them from Wolfram's "A New Kind Of Science".
... not Russel! Registered Member #1
Joined: Thu Jan 26 2006, 12:18AM
Location: Tempe, Arizona
Posts: 1052
Dr. GigaVolt wrote ...
I think consciousness and the ability humans have to think and reason is just another example of evolution. By being able to think and reason, humans can build devices which allow them to spread across vast oceans to produce more offspring, and to also eventually (well maybe) colonize space, and therefore continue to spread the human genetic code.
Certainly our inherent cleverness evolved over time as an advantage -- likely because it allowed us to gather more food or hunt more animals than the other hominids. Our technological civilization, though, has always seemed kind of accidental to me. We went from being simple hunter gatherers to a space-age civilization with almost no real genetic change at all. We seem to have achieved some critical mass of intelligence and population that's allowed us to do things that no single human is clever enough to do -- build ships that can cross oceans, and even the vastness of space.
Steve McConner wrote ...
I'm sure many people couldn't bear the idea that Chris expresses, they prefer a nice clear-cut belief system like Christian morality or the law of karma. After all, don't these systems read like books of rules that you can play to gain an advantage? Thou shalt this, thou shalt not that, blessed are those who do X. And maybe they actually worked to an extent, and hung around as memes for that reason.
Quite possible. Even to this day, people seem to be willing to violently defend ideas about man's role on Earth, who or what has human rights, and so on. A lot of people seem to scoff at the idea that there can be a right or a wrong without a big dude in the sky that casts bad people into a lake of fire. It will be interesting to see if, over time, more people embrace the idea of meaning and purpose coming from within, rather than from without.
Registered Member #72
Joined: Thu Feb 09 2006, 08:29AM
Location: UK St. Albans
Posts: 1659
I'm sure many people couldn't bear the idea that Chris expresses, they prefer a nice clear-cut belief system like Christian morality or the law of karma.
... and my daughter is one of them. We've always brought our children up to think and to question, and if later they wanted to follow any particular belief system, then we'd accept their choice happily. Now at the age of 15, she's informed us that she wished she'd been brought up going to church. "It's too late, I can't believe that stuff now, but if I'd been brought up with it without question, it would have been a lot easier to just do it like some of my friends. You've robbed me of a comfortable belief."
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) beyond a commercial consensus that further investment in thermionics is unlikely ever to be repaid.
