Necessary Factual Truth


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If one accepts the idea of "degrees of truth", it provides a basis for comparing Newton's theory of gravity to Einstein's.

Merlin,

Thank you. If one goes by this constant repetition of Bob's in trashing Newton, we will equate Newton's theories with animal sacrifices in terms of scientific validity. I object to that. What was true in Newton before is still true today. Einstein built on it. He did not obliterate all truth from Newton's work.

Michael

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If one accepts the idea of "degrees of truth", it provides a basis for comparing Newton's theory of gravity to Einstein's.

It's called 'similarity of structure'. Einstein's theory is more similar in structure to events than Newton's. Why is this concept so difficult for people to understand?

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If one accepts the idea of "degrees of truth", it provides a basis for comparing Newton's theory of gravity to Einstein's.

It's called 'similarity of structure'. Einstein's theory is more similar in structure to events than Newton's. Why is this concept so difficult for people to understand?

One does not observe "structures of events". On observes phenomena.

The structures underlying the phenomena are precisely what is assumed or hypothesized.

Ba'al Chatzaf

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If one accepts the idea of "degrees of truth", it provides a basis for comparing Newton's theory of gravity to Einstein's.

Merlin,

Thank you. If one goes by this constant repetition of Bob's in trashing Newton, we will equate Newton's theories with animal sacrifices in terms of scientific validity. I object to that. What was true in Newton before is still true today. Einstein built on it. He did not obliterate all truth from Newton's work.

Michael

Michael,

Einstein did not build on Newton. He started with the postulate that gravitation is equivalent to uniform acceleration in an inertial reference frame and built a whole new theory. I think Newton's Law of gravitation is elegant, but it is not universal and not causally correct.

Jim

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Jim,

Maybe we could agree that Einstein started with the theory that gravity exists? Would that be OK? Or did he invent the wheel and discover fire, too?

And is it possible to admit that Newton was a tad more effective scientist than a witch doctor sacrificing a ram to the god of Uga-Uga in order to build things?

Michael

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Jim,

Maybe we could agree that Einstein started with the theory that gravity exists? Would that be OK? Or did he invent the wheel and discover fire, too?

And is it possible to admit that Newton was a tad more effective scientist than a witch doctor sacrificing a ram to the god of Uga-Uga in order to build things?

Michael

Michael,

Newton was one of the great geniuses of all time. I regard his Universal Law of Gravitation as well as his invention of calculus to be earth-shattering for his time. The point I was contesting was that Einstein's General Theory of Relavity was somehow an extrapolation of Newton.

I, too, tire of the Aristotle bashing, but I am unaware of what Bob has said about Newton previously.

Jim

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Jim,

Regardless of the mathematics and scope involved (which led to other formulations), I don't think Einstein could have come to his conclusions had Newton not made his first. Imagine Einstein trying to arrive at the general theory of relativity from a culture that believed in the flat earth (and without calculus, since you mentioned it). There was plenty in Newton that Einstein built on. Those parts that continue to be true... er... continue to be true.

According to Bob, Einstein completely invalidated Newton as if he were Uga-Uga. There is a complete lack of proportion in that constant, nonstop, repetitious, relentless, unremitting, unending, persistent, incessant, endless and invariable trashing of Newton.

That is the point I was making.

Is that clear enough or do I need more adjectives? :)

Michael

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Jim,

Regardless of the mathematics and scope involved (which led to other formulations), I don't think Einstein could have come to his conclusions had Newton not made his first. Imagine Einstein trying to arrive at the general theory of relativity from a culture that believed in the flat earth (and without calculus, since you mentioned it). There was plenty in Newton that Einstein built on. Those parts that continue to be true... er... continue to be true.

According to Bob, Einstein completely invalidated Newton as if he were Uga-Uga. There is a complete lack of proportion in that constant, nonstop, repetitious, relentless, unremitting, unending, persistent, incessant, endless and invariable trashing of Newton.

That is the point I was making.

Is that clear enough or do I need more adjectives? :)

Michael

Nothing could be further from the truth. Einstein revered Newton as one of the greatest thinkers the human race has ever produced. Einstein realized that Newton did the best he could given what he knew in his time.

The invalidity of Newton's Law of Gravitation was not discovered until the middle of the 19th century, some 200 years after Newton publised. Finding the flaw required great advances in the resolution of telescopes. It was not until Fraunhoffer produced telescopes that could get resolutions good to 1/3600 of a degree that the anomalous motion of Mercury was seen.

In addition the mathematics that Einstein used did not exist until the 1860's when Bernhard Riemann invented tensors and the geometry of curved manifolds. Einstein found a tool ready made for his purposes invented by Riemann. Newton had to invent his tool (calculus) from scratch.

I don't trash Newton at all. I trash people who think that Einstein's theory was a mere tweak of Newton's theory. It wasn't. It was a total head to foot revolution in the way we think of space and time. Newton invented mathematical physics as we know it. Although his theories have been replaced by better theories his approach to physics is still as he invented it. Hypothesis formulated mathematically and tested empirically. Newton invented the business.

Both Newton and Einstein met the same fate. In the end both men were stopped by their philosophical presumptions and limitations. Newton believed space and time to be absolute (they aren't). Einstein believed in a distinct causality and ultimately disowned quantum physics which he helped to establish. Einstein's Nobel Prize was for the quantum characterization of the photo electric effect. This is rather ironic, because Einstein could not accept quantum physics as the ultimate characterization of reality. Einstein's pronouncement: God does not play dice, stated Einstein's refusal to accept a nondeterministic base for realty. This philosophical position diverted Einstein into a dead end and he ceased to make any significant contributions to physics from about 1927 to his death in 1955.

The moral of the story is that philosophical prejudice is the enemy of progress in physics specifically and natural science in general. And THAT is the point I am trying to make. Philosophy has been the bane of natural science almost from the git-go. Why is this important? Because our technology is based on physics, biology and other natural sciences and our prosperity is based on our technology. Any philosophical prejudice that inhibits the progress of physics and a natural science will eventually turn off the spigot of ideas that feeds our technology. Which means we will suffer. That latest quasi philosophical attack on science has come from advocates of Intelligent Design. They are trying to put Aristotelean Final Cause back into science, which will kill science dead (eventually). Teleology has been purged from physics, but it still haunts biology. But this is another story which should be discussed elsewhere. Just take home the moral. Philosophical prejudice is the Enemy of Science and it has been since Galileo was placed under house arrest.

Ba'al Chatzaf

Edited by BaalChatzaf
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Jim,

Regardless of the mathematics and scope involved (which led to other formulations), I don't think Einstein could have come to his conclusions had Newton not made his first. Imagine Einstein trying to arrive at the general theory of relativity from a culture that believed in the flat earth (and without calculus, since you mentioned it). There was plenty in Newton that Einstein built on. Those parts that continue to be true... er... continue to be true.

According to Bob, Einstein completely invalidated Newton as if he were Uga-Uga. There is a complete lack of proportion in that constant, nonstop, repetitious, relentless, unremitting, unending, persistent, incessant, endless and invariable trashing of Newton.

That is the point I was making.

Is that clear enough or do I need more adjectives? :)

Michael

Michael,

If you want to talk about Einstein's extapolation from Newton, you could make a better case for Einstein's extrapolation of the Special Theory of Relativity from Newton's second law of motion, F=ma. When you talk about gravity, Einstein is in a class by himself.

Jim

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If one accepts the idea of "degrees of truth", it provides a basis for comparing Newton's theory of gravity to Einstein's.

It's called 'similarity of structure'. Einstein's theory is more similar in structure to events than Newton's. Why is this concept so difficult for people to understand?

Huh? What events in reality can you compare to Einstein's or Newton's equations? The comparison is only in the numbers, like I said in my last paragraph (post #25). Again, reality doesn't write equations for us. We do that.

Edited by Merlin Jetton
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If one accepts the idea of "degrees of truth", it provides a basis for comparing Newton's theory of gravity to Einstein's.

It's called 'similarity of structure'. Einstein's theory is more similar in structure to events than Newton's. Why is this concept so difficult for people to understand?

Why is it so difficult for you to understand that you provide no way of ascertaining the nature of the structure of events and thus no basis for comparing the degrees of similarity of various theories to that structure? (Also, notice that you stated what Einstein's theory is.)

Ellen

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[....] If one goes by this constant repetition of Bob's in trashing Newton, we will equate Newton's theories with animal sacrifices in terms of scientific validity. I object to that. What was true in Newton before is still true today. Einstein built on it. He did not obliterate all truth from Newton's work.

Bob hasn't said one word I've noticed in any of his posts -- and I think I've read all of his posts -- trashing Newton. Maybe if you would start by trying to understand the difference between trashing someone and saying that someone proposed a mistaken theory, this would help with your understanding what he is saying about Newton. Bob has sung Newton's praises quite a few times as being Granddady Genius of Physicists. To be wrong in a theory is not to be a pooh-pooh head or any of the other charges which you keep interpreting Bob as making against Newton but which Bob is not making. The charges exist in your presumptions not in what Bob is writing.

As to what "was true in Newton before," Bob keeps explaining the physics of the situation to you, but I think the explanations are blocked from penetrating because you interpret them as "trashing." Possibly you'd be able to follow the physics explanations if you could first disentangle being in error from being stupid.

Ellen

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Edited by Ellen Stuttle
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Jim,

Regardless of the mathematics and scope involved (which led to other formulations), I don't think Einstein could have come to his conclusions had Newton not made his first. Imagine Einstein trying to arrive at the general theory of relativity from a culture that believed in the flat earth (and without calculus, since you mentioned it). There was plenty in Newton that Einstein built on. Those parts that continue to be true... er... continue to be true.

According to Bob, Einstein completely invalidated Newton as if he were Uga-Uga. There is a complete lack of proportion in that constant, nonstop, repetitious, relentless, unremitting, unending, persistent, incessant, endless and invariable trashing of Newton.

That is the point I was making.

Is that clear enough or do I need more adjectives? :)

Michael

Nothing could be further from the truth. Einstein revered Newton as one of the greatest thinkers the human race has ever produced. Einstein realized that Newton did the best he could given what he knew in his time.

The invalidity of Newton's Law of Gravitation was not discovered until the middle of the 19th century, some 200 years after Newton publised. Finding the flaw required great advances in the resolution of telescopes. It was not until Fraunhoffer produced telescopes that could get resolutions good to 1/3600 of a degree that the anomalous motion of Mercury was seen.

In addition the mathematics that Einstein used did not exist until the 1860's when Bernhard Riemann invented tensors and the geometry of curved manifolds. Einstein found a tool ready made for his purposes invented by Riemann. Newton had to invent his tool (calculus) from scratch.

I don't trash Newton at all. I trash people who think that Einstein's theory was a mere tweak of Newton's theory. It wasn't. It was a total head to foot revolution in the way we think of space and time. Newton invented mathematical physics as we know it. Although his theories have been replaced by better theories his approach to physics is still as he invented it. Hypothesis formulated mathematically and tested empirically. Newton invented the business.

Both Newton and Einstein met the same fate. In the end both men were stopped by their philosophical presumptions and limitations. Newton believed space and time to be absolute (they aren't). Einstein believed in a distinct causality and ultimately disowned quantum physics which he helped to establish. Einstein's Nobel Prize was for the quantum characterization of the photo electric effect. This is rather ironic, because Einstein could not accept quantum physics as the ultimate characterization of reality. Einstein's pronouncement: God does not play dice, stated Einstein's refusal to accept a nondeterministic base for realty. This philosophical position diverted Einstein into a dead end and he ceased to make any significant contributions to physics from about 1927 to his death in 1955.

The moral of the story is that philosophical prejudice is the enemy of progress in physics specifically and natural science in general. And THAT is the point I am trying to make. Philosophy has been the bane of natural science almost from the git-go. Why is this important? Because our technology is based on physics, biology and other natural sciences and our prosperity is based on our technology. Any philosophical prejudice that inhibits the progress of physics and a natural science will eventually turn off the spigot of ideas that feeds our technology. Which means we will suffer. That latest quasi philosophical attack on science has come from advocates of Intelligent Design. They are trying to put Aristotelean Final Cause back into science, which will kill science dead (eventually). Teleology has been purged from physics, but it still haunts biology. But this is another story which should be discussed elsewhere. Just take home the moral. Philosophical prejudice is the Enemy of Science and it has been since Galileo was placed under house arrest.

Ba'al Chatzaf

Thank you, Bob. a personal friend of mine was Dr. Petr Beckmann. He disputed Einstein fundamentally in all apparent respects (to him) and wrote a book "Einstein Plus 2" incorporating his arguments and positions. He also founded a bi-monthly or quarterly mathemathecal physics journal "Galean Electrodynamics" (sp.?) which might still be published. He died in 1993 but first he thought that Einstein had been disproved by experiment. (I don't know if it was replicated or replicatable.) I was not and am not a physicist and I was in no position to agree or disagree with him, even though I was privildged to visit him at his home in Boulder, CO in Dec. 1989 even while he knew he was dying from prostatic cancer. He was a genius, but being a genius or not does not necessarily devolved positively on questions of right and wrong. But he was not a lightweight. For instance, he was a friend of Dr Edward Teller, who disagreed witrh him about Einstein.

Not being a physicist while sympathetic to almost anything Beckmann was likely to pontificate on, I had a basic objection to his position, which I wasn't smart enough to give to him in real time: Do you have a better, transcending theory? He did not. His was only a reversion to Newton. His idea was that Einstein was superfluous. Now, it may be that Petr's real objection was "relativity." But Einstein was really not about relativity, according to Jack Wheeler, not a physicist but a smart and knowledgeable fellow, but to the constant of the speed of light. That is, it was unfortunate that he used the term "relativity" with all the negative cultural if not scientific connotations.

I have to stop now; every night or almost every night, I have a few stiff ones, and as you can probably tell, I've had a few, so good night!

--Brant

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It strkes me that both Einstein and Newton were concerned with absolutism, that they were impilicity if not absolutely for it: I mean, Einstein was not relative about relativity, now was he?

--Brant

Relativity refers to the -invariance- or constancy of physical laws under certain transformations. It has positively nothing to do with philosophical relativism or moral relativism. If the theory of relativity were properly names the theory of Lorentz Invariance (which is what it is really about) then we would not have this silliness. Since invariance means constancy under transformation, it is a kind of absolutism. I was referring in my piece to philosophic absolutism which is an insistence that one's theory is in line with his philosophy. Nature does not care one whit about our theories and beliefs. Nature is Nature. Nature Is. If our theories do not fit Nature they are wrong. If our -correct- theories (correct by empirical standards) contradict our philosophy, then we should get rid of the philosophy.* Facts rule, Philosophy doesn't.

Einstein, like any other scientist, was uncompromising on the the principle that a scientific theory predict correctly. Newton believed that also which why they both figured out how to experimentally test their theories. Newton was a better experimentalist than Einstein, in the sense, that he could formulate experimental strategies and design measuring apparatus skillfully. Newton was much more "hand's on" than Einstein. In that respect, Newton and Feynman were much more alike than Newton and Einstein. Einstein's philosophical prejudices were trumped by the success of quantum physics. Einstein was wrong about determinate causality and about the locality of reality, as experiments have shown. Einstein was also wrong about the steady state nature of the cosmos. When he saw Hubble's results Einstein kicked himself for putting a fudge factor into his General Theory of Relativity, which Einstein admitted publicly was his greatest blunder. Once again Einstein's philosophic prejudice had led him into error.

Ba'al Chatzaf

*ends and means again. If our end is to understand the truth about nature, then our means should not include adherence to philosophical principles that lead us into error about the truth about nature.

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If one accepts the idea of "degrees of truth", it provides a basis for comparing Newton's theory of gravity to Einstein's.

It's called 'similarity of structure'. Einstein's theory is more similar in structure to events than Newton's. Why is this concept so difficult for people to understand?

Huh? What events in reality can you compare to Einstein's or Newton's equations? The comparison is only in the numbers, like I said in my last paragraph (post #25). Again, reality doesn't write equations for us. We do that.

Yes, it is with our measurements of quantities that we establish structure. The measurements of the speed of light indicated a different structure than Newton's addition of velocities indicated.

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Why is it so difficult for you to understand that you provide no way of ascertaining the nature of the structure of events and thus no basis for comparing the degrees of similarity of various theories to that structure? (Also, notice that you stated what Einstein's theory is.)

Ellen

___

It is not "the nature" of the structure, it is simply the structure that we look for by doing experiments and taking measurements. Using the map analogy with Newton and Einstein we can say that Newton took measurements and produced a map but Einstein had better instruments and better measurements and so produced a more accurate map. We can still use old maps as long as we realize their their limitations. We also need to realize that our new maps are not the end of the story, some day they will be old maps.

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Using the map analogy with Newton and Einstein we can say that Newton took measurements and produced a map but Einstein had better instruments and better measurements and so produced a more accurate map. We can still use old maps as long as we realize their their limitations. We also need to realize that our new maps are not the end of the story, some day they will be old maps.

GS,

For a change I agree with you. You just described an essential component of Objectivist concept formation.

Incidentally, speaking of maps, you might be interested to know that I have been looking into Buzan's mind mapping (and other forms of mental mapping like concept and argument mapping). Buzan claims to have been greatly influenced by Korzybski.

Michael

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Nature does not care one whit about our theories and beliefs. Nature is Nature. Nature Is. If our theories do not fit Nature they are wrong. If our -correct- theories (correct by empirical standards) contradict our philosophy, then we should get rid of the philosophy.* Facts rule, Philosophy doesn't.

Yes, and I believe this is where Peikoff derails himself. He talks as if only philosophical interpretations matter and philosophy trumps. Contra that and to physicists the numbers matter most and the numbers trump. Or paraphrasing the last sentence -- the numbers rule, philosophical interpretations don't. Of course, "the numbers rule" is a philosophical position, but not Peikoff's.

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Yes, and I believe this is where Peikoff derails himself. He talks as if only philosophical interpretations matter and philosophy trumps. Contra that and to physicists the numbers matter most and the numbers trump. Or paraphrasing the last sentence -- the numbers rule, philosophical interpretations don't. Of course, "the numbers rule" is a philosophical position, but not Peikoff's.

Only if the numbers correspond to facts. Sometimes numbers are wrong. Facts are what Are. The Facts and a clear heard determine if the numbers are right or not. Numbers are man-made artifacts. There are no numbers in Nature; only in our heads.

Ba'al Chatzaf

Edited by BaalChatzaf
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It is not "the nature" of the structure, it is simply the structure that we look for by doing experiments and taking measurements. Using the map analogy with Newton and Einstein we can say that Newton took measurements and produced a map but Einstein had better instruments and better measurements and so produced a more accurate map. We can still use old maps as long as we realize their their limitations. We also need to realize that our new maps are not the end of the story, some day they will be old maps.

What if later research shows that the land the maps portray does not exist (like Shangra La and Atlantis)? The space and time that Newton assumed was Out There was in his head. Newton had a categorically flawed concept of space and time which is why his theories turned out to be wrong. Space and time (or more accurately Space-Time) is not not an absolute rigid frame which pre-exists matter. Matter tells space how to bend and space tells matter how to move (A paraphrase of a statement Wheeler made in one of his books on Relativity). For Newton, Space and Time where the sensorum of God (Newton was a God Phreak, as is revealed in several scholia in -Principia Mathematica-).

Ba'al Chatzaf

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Only if the numbers correspond to facts. Sometimes numbers are wrong. Facts are what Are. The Facts and a clear heard determine if the numbers are right or not. Numbers are man-made artifacts. There are no numbers in Nature; only in our heads.

I'll buy that. "The numerical facts rule" better says what I intended.

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We invented numbers to express exact relations. The relations we find empirically are not exact but they are close enough to establish equivalence with mathematical relations which are exact. This equivalence of relations is what is meant by 'similarity of structure'.

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GS,

For a change I agree with you. You just described an essential component of Objectivist concept formation.

Incidentally, speaking of maps, you might be interested to know that I have been looking into Buzan's mind mapping (and other forms of mental mapping like concept and argument mapping). Buzan claims to have been greatly influenced by Korzybski.

Michael

I will look into Buzan as well, thanks.

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