Scientific Certainty?

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

So I guess gravity has been replaced in quantum physics...

I can't wait to start floating.

Michael

[BaalChatzaf]

So I guess gravity has been replaced in quantum physics...

I can't wait to start floating.

Michael

Newton's theory of gravitation has been replaced by Einstein's theory of General Relativity. The two theories, at the level of logic and postulates are incompatible. Newton assumes Euclidean Space, Einstein does not. He assume that mass curves space-time. The gravitational field equations are completely different from each other in the respective theories.

Newton's theory of gravitation does not predict the precession of the perihelion of Mercury correctly. This was noted as early as the middle of the 19th century. Newton's theory does not account for the slowing of clocks in stronger gravitational fields compared to weaker gravitational fields nor does it account for the bending of light around a massive body, or does it account for the redshift of light in a gravitational field. Bottom line: Based on Newtonian Gravitation the GPS could not have been built. GPS requires the time variances from both Special and General Theory of Relativity to work correctly. Newtonian Gravitation does not a cannot provide that.

Newton accounted for the motions of bodies produced by the gravitation interaction of the bodies by way of a force between them. For bodies of moderate mass Newton's prediction comes out close to right. For the gravitational interaction of a massive body with other bodies, Newton's gravitation laws does not produce the right predictions nor does it account correctly for the bending of light.

No, Micheal. Neither theory predicts that massive bodies would float around any old which way. We still expect binary starts to exhibit something like Keplerian Orbits.

If you define the correctness of a theory by how well the predictions match the measurements, Einstein's theory is (1) better than Newton's and (2) assumes space and time to have a much different nature than does Newton's theory. It is Newton's erroneous understanding of space and time that accounts for its errors. Space is not Euclidean and Time is not absolute. That is an observable fact. That is what your GPS is telling you besides your correct location Einstein might have gotten it right. Newton did not.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Bob,

How about for human beings walking around on earth without any electronics whatsoever?

Newton's ideas don't work at predicting, say, 100% correct for that scope?

Like I said, I can't wait to start floating...

Heh.

I hold that it would have been impossible for ancient Egyptians worshiping Ra, the sun god, to come up with the theory of relativity. Mankind first had to go through Aristotle and all the rest.

You imply that knowledge is not hierarchically derived from fundamentals, so all an ancient Egyptian needed to do back then is be born Einstein and he would have saved mankind from centuries of all kinds of trouble.

Michael

[caroljane]

If science can become certain doesn't it cease to be science?

[BaalChatzaf]

Bob,

How about for human beings walking around on earth without any electronics whatsoever?

Newton's ideas don't work at predicting, say, 100% correct for that scope?

Like I said, I can't wait to start floating...

Heh.

I hold that it would have been impossible for ancient Egyptians worshiping Ra, the sun god, to come up with the theory of relativity. Mankind first had to go through Aristotle and all the rest.

You imply that knowledge is not hierarchically derived from fundamentals, so all an ancient Egyptian needed to do back then is be born Einstein and he would have saved mankind from centuries of all kinds of trouble.

Michael

I imply no such thing. Einstein went to rock bottom and Newton did not.

See http://en.wikipedia....vitation_theory

Einstein's insight was that gravitation was not a mechanical processe but a manifestation of the geometry of space and time. Newton looked at the motions and saw a force at work. Einstein considered the fact that in free-fall an acceleration meter measures zero. Only a geometric theory could account for this. That is how I came to believe Einstein's theory of general relativity. I spent a couple of thousand dollars learning how to parachute jump. When I took my first jump from 5000 feet I did not feel any force pulling me down. After a few seconds the only force I felt was the air pushing against me and opening the chute. Ten seconds in free fall made a believer out of me. I felt no force. Gravitation is not a force, it is a body following the shortest path through a manifold.

I believe that fits the Randian recommendation of tracing the concept back to the perception (or lack of it). No force. Got it?

I bet you never checked it out that thoroughly.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

I believe that fits the Randian recommendation of tracing the concept back to the perception (or lack of it). No force. Got it?

Bob,

Got it.

In other words, all an ancient Egyptian would have had to do, in between Ra Ra Ra sessions, was trace "the concept back to the perception," come up with the theory of relativity, and he would have saved mankind the disgrace of Aristotle and Newton.

Like I said, got it.

Michael

[Dennis Hardin]

If science can become certain doesn't it cease to be science?

Not quite, Daunce. Science ceases to be science when we become certain that we know everything about everything.

You were close, though.

[Dennis Hardin]

I think I may have figured out what is going on here. Bob reads a post responding to his prior post and thinks: ‘Omigod! He has a really good point. He has caught me in a contradiction. What do I do now? Admit that I’m wrong?”

Then Bob remembers that’s just a ‘ghost’ inside his physical machine talking to him. His thoughts are nonmaterial. They don’t really exist, so he can ignore them, along with the post that prompted his ethereal stream. “Ha-ha!” he says to himself. “I don’t have to waste my time with ghosts!” Then he signs back in to OL and gleefully proceeds to post more scientific mumbo-jumbo that he figures no one will understand, since he obviously doesn’t. “But what the hell? Who cares what they say? I don’t believe in ghosts!”

And so on, and so on, ad infinitum. . .ad nauseum. . .

Anyway, that’s my theory.

(No offense, Bob. You seem like a good, decent person. But exchanging posts with you tends to make a person feel as if he were a ghost.)

[BaalChatzaf]

I think I may have figured out what is going on here. Bob reads a post responding to his prior post and thinks: ‘Omigod! He has a really good point. He has caught me in a contradiction. What do I do now? Admit that I’m wrong?”

Then Bob remembers that’s just a ‘ghost’ inside his physical machine talking to him. His thoughts are nonmaterial. They don’t really exist, so he can ignore them, along with the post that prompted his ethereal stream. “Ha-ha!” he says to himself. “I don’t have to waste my time with ghosts!” Then he signs back in to OL and gleefully proceeds to post more scientific mumbo-jumbo that he figures no one will understand, since he obviously doesn’t. “But what the hell? Who cares what they say? I don’t believe in ghosts!”

And so on, and so on, ad infinitum. . .ad nauseum. . .

Anyway, that’s my theory.

(No offense, Bob. You seem like a good, decent person. But exchanging posts with you tends to make a person feel as if he were a ghost.)

Your "theory" is dreck. No offense.

My theory is physical theory backed up by decades of experimental corroboration. It is not mumbo jumbo.

I have a question for you. Why are Objectivists nearly absent from the ranks for first line physicists and mathematicians. Have you ever wondered?

Ba'al Chatzaf

Ba'al Chatzaf

[Xray]

Then he [bob aka Ba'al Chatzaf] signs back in to OL and gleefully proceeds to post more scientific mumbo-jumbo that he figures no one will understand, since he obviously doesn’t.

If you would please provide evidence supporting your claim that Bob is posting any "scientific mumbo jumbo". TIA.

[Xray]

Newton's theory of gravitation has been replaced by Einstein's theory of General Relativity. The two theories, at the level of logic and postulates are incompatible.

Can one say that Newton's theory has been (to use a Popperian term) "falsified"?

So I guess gravity has been replaced in quantum physics...

I can't wait to start floating.

Michael

What we, in our daily lives, perceive and experience in that field has remained constant over the millenia, but the explanations of the phenomena can change due to scientific progress. Which means that concepts can also change, be discarded as obsolete, or downright false.

Example: on the perceptual level, both our ancestors living in past ages and we who live today will see the sun "rise" and "move" in the course of the day..

But as opposed to our forefathers, we know that the conclusion they drew from this, that their theory about the sun revolving around the earth, was false.

Same phenomenon, same perception, but different explanation due to newly aquired knowledge.

But still we use terms like "sunrise" and "sunset" in everyday communication because language often lags behind in coining neologisms of that which we perceive.

A reason for this lies also in the fact that, if we used in everyday communication the scientifically correct explanation for what we call e. g. "sunrise", "half moon" etc., it ould be complicated to the point of being uneconomical, downright impractical.

It is therefore important to be aware of the inadequacy, the imperfection, of language in that field. (Imo this inadequacy has not sufficiently been reflected on in the Objectivist epistemology).

We can rest assured though: we won't suddenly start floating just because the current scientific explanation of the phenomenon that each time we jump up in the air, we will go down, differs from that offered by a prior theory.

[BaalChatzaf]

Can one say that Newton's theory has been (to use a Popperian term) "falsified"?

Yes and in a number of ways.

1. Newtonian gravitation (his famous law) and the known masses and positions of the major celestial bodies in the solar incorrectly predict the precession of the perihelion of Mercury. This defect has been known as early as 1850.

2. Newton's gravitation implies instantaneous interaction between massive bodies regardless of distance. Look at Newtons law of gravitation. If you add delta to one or both of the masses the force immediately changes. There is no time delay due to distance.

3. Newton's law incorrectly predicts the amount by which light will bend around a massive body like the Sun. It is off by a factor of two.

4. Newton's law does not account for the "gravitational red shift" i.e. the slowing of clocks where gravitational potential is higher. That is the very gut of the GPS. In short, Newtonian physics cannot produce the GPS.

5. All of Newton's laws are locally Galilean Invariant (see http://en.wikipedia...._transformation) when by experimental observation we know the laws are Lorentz Invariant (see http://en.wikipedia...._transformation)

6. Newton's notion of time and space completely overlooks the variance of clocks within a given fiduciary inertial system as a function of the velocity. To put a point on it, Newton got time wrong, which is a very important reason his theory does not predict correctly compared to relativity.

7. Newton assumes space is Euclidean. But the bending of light rays around a massive body clearly demonstrates that it is locally non-Euclidean. In a large scale it turns out that the space of the Cosmos is nearly flat but in the immediate vicinity of massive bodies, space-time is curved (note space-time, not space AND time). Spacetime is a unified manifold. Space and time are not separate as Newton supposed.

I think I have given you sufficient material to chew on, so go and chew.

Of course I will be accused of bringing up Mumbo Jumbo. And I will be accused of bringing up minor and picky points. How minor is the deficiency of a system that could not have produced the GPS because it was logically incapable of doing so?

Physical science is empirical, it is highly precise, and it does not allow for significant measurable deviations from prediction. If the prediction is wrong then the underlying theory is wrong, (or possibly the confuting experiment is in error, but this is rare) it is as simple as that. By that very criterion, I expect the current crop of theories currently accepted to be shown to be wrong also. New facts will come to light that will falsify the theories, or so I expect. Then it is back to the drawing board. Science is a never ending quest for what is true about the world.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Dennis,

When overly-scientific people explain the nature of the universe (or the nature of epistemology, history, and all the rest for that matter), they can make some of the weirdest claims.

For example, the many-worlds interpretation of QM kicked off and defended tooth and nail by one Hugh Everett. This made Alice going through the looking glass look like a piker.

Another one is the "user illusion" of Tor Nørretranders. You cannot know with certainty that you, as a conscious self, exist, but you can know with certainty that you, as a conscious self, suffer illusions.

Or you can attribute causality to a dead person's actions instead of the living and say, for example, that Aristotle blocked the advance of science for centuries. Attributing this to the people who actually lived and did so--and look at the other stuff they believed as a possible cause--seems too far-fetched for the these folks.

After all, scientists have vanity issues of their own that must be met. And after all, they are children of God, too. Or children of QM. Or children of the big bang.

Whatever...

Michael

[BaalChatzaf]

Dennis,

When overly-scientific people explain the nature of the universe (or the nature of epistemology, history, and all the rest for that matter), they can make some of the weirdest claims.

For example, the many-worlds interpretation of QM kicked off and defended tooth and nail by one Hugh Everett. This made Alice going through the looking glass look like a piker.

Another one is the "user illusion" of Tor Nørretranders. You cannot know with certainty that you, as a conscious self, exist, but you can know with certainty that you, as a conscious self, suffer illusions.

Or you can attribute causality to a dead person's actions instead of the living and say, for example, that Aristotle blocked the advance of science for centuries. Attributing this to the people who actually lived and did so--and look at the other stuff they believed as a possible cause--seems too far-fetched for the these folks.

After all, scientists have vanity issues of their own that must be met. And after all, they are children of God, too. Or children of QM. Or children of the big bang.

Whatever...

Michael

Aristotle, so brilliant in many ways, had an outstanding flaw. If an argument sounded good to him, he did not check it very rigorously. That was a fault among the Greek philosophers. They were smitten with the Logos. If an argument sounded good, it was sufficient for them. Plato was very much enthralled by the Forms and the Logos. In fact he considered going out to look and measure as the inferior form of knowing. (See the Parable of the Cave in The Republic). Aristotle picked that habit up from his mentor, Plato. It was a bad habit that took over a millennium to break.

That habit is creeping back into physics in some quarters. You hear defenses of String Theory and M-Theory in terms of beauty and elegance. While these are desirable characteristics of a theory they are secondary. Predicting correctly and internal consistency are far and away the most important issues. Lee Smolin wrote a book on this troubling trend -The Trouble With Physics-.

Philosophical and aesthetic defenses of a physical theory are troubling symptoms. They are what ailed the intellectual world so much between Aristotle and Galileo. Facts and Truth first. Philosophy and Principle second. Facts cannot be deduced a priori. They have to be dug, mined, milled, scraped, pulled and struggled for. The cost of knowing the facts is much sweat and strain and sometimes blood, as Bruno found out.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[Dennis Hardin]

Then he [bob aka Ba'al Chatzaf] signs back in to OL and gleefully proceeds to post more scientific mumbo-jumbo that he figures no one will understand, since he obviously doesn’t.

If you would please provide evidence supporting your claim that Bob is posting any "scientific mumbo jumbo". TIA.

Bob already took care of that. See above. And above that. And above that. And. . .

[Dennis Hardin]

Your "theory" is dreck. No offense.

My theory is physical theory backed up by decades of experimental corroboration. It is not mumbo jumbo.

I have a question for you. Why are Objectivists nearly absent from the ranks for first line physicists and mathematicians. Have you ever wondered?

Ba'al Chatzaf

Why are Objectivists nearly absent from the ranks of just about anything? Because their numbers are miniscule.

Have you ever wondered about what that "ethereal stream" is inside your mind? Have you ever noticed that it's not physical-material, yet it enables you to alter the physical-material world?

Will this be one more contradiction in your world view that you adroitly dodge by launching into a lot of meandering reductionist jargon?

[Dennis Hardin]

Aristotle, so brilliant in many ways, had an outstanding flaw. If an argument sounded good to him, he did not check it very rigorously. That was a fault among the Greek philosophers. They were smitten with the Logos. If an argument sounded good, it was sufficient for them. Plato was very much enthralled by the Forms and the Logos. In fact he considered going out to look and measure as the inferior form of knowing. (See the Parable of the Cave in The Republic). Aristotle picked that habit up from his mentor, Plato. It was a bad habit that took over a millennium to break.

That habit is creeping back into physics in some quarters. You hear defenses of String Theory and M-Theory in terms of beauty and elegance. While these are desirable characteristics of a theory they are secondary. Predicting correctly and internal consistency are far and away the most important issues. Lee Smolin wrote a book on this troubling trend -The Trouble With Physics-.

Philosophical and aesthetic defenses of a physical theory are troubling symptoms. They are what ailed the intellectual world so much between Aristotle and Galileo. Facts and Truth first. Philosophy and Principle second. Facts cannot be deduced a priori. They have to be dug, mined, milled, scraped, pulled and struggled for. The cost of knowing the facts is much sweat and strain and sometimes blood, as Bruno found out.

Ba'al Chatzaf

This really is almost unbelievably absurd, Bob. Aristotle is often described as “the first scientist.” His major distinction as a philosopher consists in his rejection of Plato’s forms and Plato’s idealism. In contrast, he displayed a single-minded devotion to using scientific experimentation to develop and verify his conclusions.

Aristotle (384–322 B.C.E.) numbers among the greatest philosophers of all time. Judged solely in terms of his philosophical influence, only Plato is his peer: Aristotle's works shaped centuries of philosophy from Late Antiquity through the Renaissance, and even today continue to be studied with keen, non-antiquarian interest. A prodigious researcher and writer, Aristotle left a great body of work, perhaps numbering as many as two-hundred treatises, from which approximately thirty-one survive. His extant writings span a wide range of disciplines, from logic, metaphysics and philosophy of mind, through ethics, political theory, aesthetics and rhetoric, and into such primarily non-philosophical fields as empirical biology, where he excelled at detailed plant and animal observation and taxonomy. In all these areas, Aristotle's theories have provided illumination, met with resistance, sparked debate, and generally stimulated the sustained interest of an abiding readership. (emphasis added)

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

“If an argument sounded good to him, he did not check it very rigorously.”

Yeah. Right. LOL! He was too busy paving the way for most of the progress in the history of Western civilization.

[Dennis Hardin]

Dennis,

When overly-scientific people explain the nature of the universe (or the nature of epistemology, history, and all the rest for that matter), they can make some of the weirdest claims.

Michael

Very true, Michael. And many mathematicians are just as foggy-minded as scientists in their excursions into philosophy.

The worst was probably Gottfried Leibniz. He is credited with having developed calculus independently of Newton, yet his theory of the “windowless monads” has to be one of the weirdest rationalist concoctions in the history of human thought. If monadology was all one knew of Leibniz, you would have to conclude that this apparent genius was utterly bonkers.

[Selene]

Dennis:

Another "minor impact," read as major, was educating Alexander the Great who spread Western civilization to the shores of the Indus River, and more of the known world, at that time, with his Macedonians, than had ever been accomplished.

Additionally, we lost a lot of Aristotles work and basically have the notes of his students to tell us how brilliant the man was.

Adam

[BaalChatzaf]

Very true, Michael. And many mathematicians are just as foggy-minded as scientists in their excursions into philosophy.

The worst was probably Gottfried Leibniz. He is credited with having developed calculus independently of Newton, yet his theory of the “windowless monads” has to be one of the weirdest rationalist concoctions in the history of human thought. If monadology was all one knew of Leibniz, you would have to conclude that this apparent genius was utterly bonkers.

Newton was also a weird one. He was a God Phreak, a mystic, an alchemist, a delver into the "bible codes". But he invented mathematical physics. He also purged the science of motion and matter of the last of its Aristotelian dross.

For their invention of the infinitesimal calculus both Newton and Leibniz can be forgiven their quirks. To this day we still use the Leibniz notion as the primary notation for calculus and differential equations.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[Xray]

Why are Objectivists nearly absent from the ranks of just about anything? Because their numbers are miniscule.

What do you think is the reason for the minuscule number?

Very true, Michael. And many mathematicians are just as foggy-minded as scientists in their excursions into philosophy.

The worst was probably Gottfried Leibniz. He is credited with having developed calculus independently of Newton, yet his theory of the “windowless monads” has to be one of the weirdest rationalist concoctions in the history of human thought. If monadology was all one knew of Leibniz, you would have to conclude that this apparent genius was utterly bonkers.

Newton was also a weird one. He was a God Phreak, a mystic, an alchemist, a delver into the "bible codes". But he invented mathematical physics. He also purged the science of motion and matter of the last of its Aristotelian dross.

For their invention of the infinitesimal calculus both Newton and Leibniz can be forgiven their quirks. To this day we still use the Leibniz notion as the primary notation for calculus and differential equations.

Ba'al Chatzaf

Given the frequently observed fact of ingeniousness existing side by side with fundamental errors produced by the same ingenious mind - isn't it a rational approach, instead of endorsing a philosopher's thought system as a whole, to pick and choose from his/her work that which still stands up to current scientific knowledge, and discard the rest?

(The 'discarded rest' is certainly of historical interest for those who study a philosopher's work as a whole, but my focus is on integrating philosophers' thoughts into our contemporary thinking).

It is perfectly explainable that a lot of what philosophers/scientists in past times believed to be true will fall through the sieve because many things we know now they just could not know. Humans living in future times will look back on our time and probably say the same about us ...

It is the uncritical accepting of one philosopher as the supreme authority that can hamper scientific progress and that was indeed the case with Aristotle, who had been put on a pedestal for so many centuries.

I think that's what the two Bobs here (Bob_ Mac and Bob (Ba'al) Kolker) meant when they mentioned the blocking of scientific progress.

Quote from Bob_Mac's post:

Century after century after century, his [Aristotle's] ideas were accepted unquestioned as if they were God's own.

From an article about Galileo: (bolding mine)

At the time that Galileo arrived at the University, some debate had started up on one of Aristotle's "laws" of nature, that heavier objects fell faster than lighter objects. Aristotle's word had been accepted as gospel truth, and there had been few attempts to actually test Aristotle's conclusions by actually conducting an experiment!

According to legend, Galileo decided to try. He needed to be able to drop the objects from a great height. The perfect building was right at hand--the Tower of Pisa, 54 meters tall. Galileo climbed up to the top of the building carrying a variety of balls of varying size and weight, and dumped them off of the top. They all landed at the base of the building at the same time (legend says that the demonstration was witnessed by a huge crowd of students and professors). Aristotle was wrong. http://inventors.abo...leo_Galilei.htm

Here's another example:

In his book "PI in the Sky", the physicist and mathematician John D. Barrow quotes an Oxford University statute of the 14th century where it says (translated by me because I have Barrow's book only in German):

"Baccalaurei and magistri who are no supporters of Aristotle's philosophy have to pay a fine of five shillings if they make statements contradicting the philosophy."

[BaalChatzaf]

Will this be one more contradiction in your world view that you adroitly dodge by launching into a lot of meandering reductionist jargon?

The computer on which you typed your rant is the result of "reductionist jargon". Quantum electrodynamics. The ultimate in reductionist physics.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[Dennis Hardin]

Why are Objectivists nearly absent from the ranks of just about anything? Because their numbers are miniscule.

What do you think is the reason for the minuscule number?

That’s a question that would require a lengthy essay to answer, but I would say this goes a long way toward explaining it. . .

. . .The coda for the Objectivist mass movement would be played when Rand demanded that her followers denounce her second-in-command for reasons she refused to divulge. Ironically, followers of a creed of selfishness were asked to sacrifice their own judgment in favor of blind faith in the judgment of one woman. Many did.

Intellectual Morons by Daniel J. Flynn (p. 198)

Coda is a term used in music to designate a passage that brings a piece or movement to an end.

[Dennis Hardin]

Will this be one more contradiction in your world view that you adroitly dodge by launching into a lot of meandering reductionist jargon?

The computer on which you typed your rant is the result of "reductionist jargon". Quantum electrodynamics. The ultimate in reductionist physics.

Ba'al Chatzaf

Or, in other words: 'Yes.'

[Ellen Stuttle]

post #150; my 3,257 = 17

http://www.objectivistliving.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=11503&st=140&p=150800entry150800

I only have time for a quick omnibus reply. (I have a non-negotiable January 1 deadline to meet on a project.)

Michael, re my "timely warning to mankind" (your post #93), I'm operating under no illusion that "mankind" is reading this thread. The warning was meant for you, though I suppose I should have known better than to think that you'd reconsider your accusation against Popper. No, I don't find your redone version any better.

I don't understand what you see as the relevance of your point (post #91) about the difficulties of translating from one language to another to the issue of the difference between words and concepts.

Re George Soros and his claiming to have based his views on Popper (see your post #89), I'm hard pressed to decide which I think is the worst affront, Soros' misuse of Popper or Peikoff/Harriman's misuse of Rand. The former is playing out on a world stage at the moment. The latter might be more significant long-range, depending on how many Objectivists accept the idea that *The Logical Leap* really is an extension of Rand's theory of concepts.

---

Re Davy's post #121:

[...] the fascinating thing is that just as the equations of relativity 'collapse' to Newton's laws as speeds reduce to those well below the speed of light, so do the equations of QM reduce to the those which govern our familiar 'macroscopic' world as the size of objects increase beyond the atomic level. The process of science (ideally) is one of greater inclusion.

As Bob Kolker has well explained, there isn't a reduction of the first-named theories to the second. For instance, in the case of Einstein's theory of gravitation versus Newton's, although the mathematical results are the same within narrow boundary conditions, the theories can't both be right. Einstein's theory disagrees with Newton's in major ways. It isn't an extension of Newton's.

---

Bob K., I think your answer about the tree frog (post #92) illustrates why the scientific world actually does have something to learn from (the good stuff in) Rand's theory of concepts. What is a tree frog? What is a human being? Don't you have some definitive characteristics whereby you'd assign a creature to one versus the other category? You definitively say that Einstein's and Newton's theories are different theories. Yet you allow that you might be wrong that you aren't a tree frog. On what basis do you think you could be wrong?

Ellen