Some Questions About The Logical Leap

[syrakusos]

I am almost through the book. I made several pages of notes. I have a few questions.

In Chapter 2 "The Experimental Method" under the subhead "Galileo's Kinematics" on page 50 (ppb) and in passing throughout, Harriman says that the path of a projectile is a parabola. Later, discussing Newton he does note that the path of an object in orbit under an inverse-square law of central force motion can be any conic section (though he leaves out the line). However, in this part he is explicit about the parabolic path of a projectile.

We all know that the path of a common projectile near the surface of the Earth (baseball, cannonball) could be a parabola, only if the Earth were flat. The path, is, in fact an ellipse (most commonly). Harriman does not distinguish this. Twenty years ago, I caught Scientific American in this same error and for them, I photocopied a page from The Wonders of Physics by Irving Adler (Golden Books, 1966). If projectile motion can be explained to a child, it should be made explicit in a technical treastise on the epistemology of science.

In Chapter 3 "The Mathematical Universe" under the subhead "The Birth of Celestial Physics" on page 85 (ppb), Harriman says that with the Ptolemaic Model, the relative sizes of the orbits of the planets could not be calculated. That leads to an interesting suggestion, that, in fact, astrologers of late antiquity and the early medieval period did not really use the Geocentric model. If it is true that the Geocentric model prevents such calcuations, then they must have used some other model, because the relative sizes of the orbits were known. On the other hand, perhaps the geometry and observations of the time did, indeed, allow them to make those calculations, even assuming the Geocentric model. My reference for that is Astronomies and Cultures in Early Medieval Europe by Stephen McCluskey (Cambridge, 1998). In fact, because of the religious viewpoint, the very scale of the measurable universe and the comparatively small size of the (spherical; not flat) Earth, were substantiating evidence to the relative unimportance of Earthly affairs. Saturn's orbit was estimated to be 72 million miles from Earth. (McCluskey, page 203).

[kiaer.ts]

I am almost through the book. I made several pages of notes. I have a few questions.

In Chapter 2 "The Experimental Method" under the subhead "Galileo's Kinematics" on page 50 (ppb) and in passing throughout, Harriman says that the path of a projectile is a parabola. Later, discussing Newton he does note that the path of an object in orbit under an inverse-square law of central force motion can be any conic section (though he leaves out the line). However, in this part he is explicit about the parabolic path of a projectile.

We all know that the path of a common projectile near the surface of the Earth (baseball, cannonball) could be a parabola, only if the Earth were flat. The path, is, in fact an ellipse (most commonly). Harriman does not distinguish this. Twenty years ago, I caught Scientific American in this same error and for them, I photocopied a page from The Wonders of Physics by Irving Adler (Golden Books, 1966). If projectile motion can be explained to a child, it should be made explicit in a technical treastise on the epistemology of science.

Note that this "mistake" is not unique to Harriman. I am willing to give the benefit of the doubt, to assume that both he and the SciAm author were aware that it is a simplification to use the parabola. Of course Harriman could have prevented such criticisms if he had just dropped a footnote. That he didn't suggests the obvious - the book was not edited by any objective (i.e., non "Objectivist") scholar worth a sheepskin.

[syrakusos]

I am almost through the book. I made several pages of notes. I have a few questions.

Note that this "mistake" is not unique to Harriman.

Ted, I read your very good review on Amazon, nicely juxtapositioned against John McCaskey's. You can view it as you wish and I do not disagree with anything you wrote. I found the book interesting and helpful and I will say more on that later. While one swallow is not a summer, so, your not addressing the technical problems is fine -- but no one did. Not on Amazon, not here, Objectivism Online or Rebirth of Reason.

Harriman is trying to explain Peikoff's theory of induction (based on Rand's), from his status as a physicist and philosopher (master's degrees in both). He does not always succeed in making technical points. I am more than willing to admit that the limit is my own, but if I don't get it, who else did not? On the other hand, for another project, I was reading God Created the Integers by Stephen Hawking and since I had it here, I checked Hawking's story of Newton: it was much clearer. And this is a book about higher mathematics. Hawking is an excellent writer. So were Carl Sagan and Isaac Asimov on similar topics.

Closer to the end now, I am reading about chemistry. As Harriman has a hard time explaining physics, how much of the chemistry can I accept, given that I am even weaker there than I am in physics.

Also, even if none of the other reviewers raised children, certainly, they must have been children. I did not see myself in his narratives of how "a child" learns. As for how a scientist works, having read Kary Mullis, or Crick & Watson, I believe that there are several ways to do things right. I also believe that Harrison misrepresents the hypothetico-deductive method. You cannot just make up any explanation. It has to be quantifiable and testable -- and following Popper, falsifiable.

Much more later.

Thanks, again.

Edited November 21, 2010 by Michael E. Marotta

[kiaer.ts]

Well, my bachelor's is in biology and philosophy, and linguistics, not physics, is my hobby. While I did notice myself the parabolic trajectory - and thought he is simply simplifying - I would not necessarily recognize other such "errors" unless they were pointed out, and would welcome you doing so. (Perhaps you could expand on your lever and hydrostatic pressure remark.) I did not have trouble following his remarks on Newton, but I could imagine Hawkins' books might be clearer. Nutshell is brilliantly clear and concise.

I suppose I must confess that I think the problem of induction is only a problem if you have no theory of knowledge in general, and if you think that counting white swans, rather than find causal explanations, is how science is done. As far as I am concerned, scientific induction is simply a special case of concept formation. So Harriman's solution doesn't strike me as all that surprising, or profound. The problem is that while I agree with his briefly asserted ideas, I don't find them fleshed out or as well presented as, say, Kelley's explanation of his concepts of perceptual form and the perceptual judgment. Kelley is a rigorous academic and Harriman is a cocky Objectionist in the worst sense.

As for his comments on how children implicitly learn about terrestrial dynamics, I think most of what Harriman is saying would occur before the age of speech. Children do spend an awful lot of time exploring the mechanical properties of things and are fascinated by the outliers such as Super Balls, boomerangs, silly putty, Slinkies, magnets, gyroscopes, water and helium balloons, mirrors, magnifying glasses and so forth. (You will also, no doubt, have met people who do not explore such things, who classify unfamiliar objects as dangerous, and who treat their operation, like the operation of nuclear power plants, or microwave ovens as a form of inscrutable black magic.) Much of this is automatized implicitly. Harriman seemed quite plausible to me here, although I will grant that he is short on examples and citations and just presents the argument triumphantly as if merely expressing it is its own proof.

[BaalChatzaf]

I suppose I must confess that I think the problem of induction is only a problem if you have no theory of knowledge in general, and if you think that counting white swans, rather than find causal explanations, is how science is done.

How do we manage quantum physics without knowing the -cause- of (say) electron spin? We do not even know the cause of gravitation. Newton refused to posit a hypothesis ("hypothesis non fingo") on the cause of gravitation and Einstein did not produce a cause of gravitation either. But somehow we manage gravitation without knowing a cause for it. Go figure.

ruveyn

[syrakusos]

Well, my bachelor's is in biology and philosophy, and linguistics, not physics, is my hobby. ... I would not necessarily recognize other such "errors" unless they were pointed out... (Perhaps you could expand on your lever and hydrostatic pressure remark.)

I am in the same boat. Most of us are: we are nominally intelligent and passably educated, and more or less dipsosed to accepting the message. I only have questions. I would not call them "errors" as much as oversights. The parabola thing is an example. I can accept that if he were given the problem to plot the orbit of a projectile, Harriman would not blunder, but writing exposition, he is in a hurry to make his point. The same troubles arise with Harriman's simile that a barometer lifts liquid "like a lever."

When I read that, I knew that it was wrong. Harriman does say (pp 123-124 ppb) "... the weight of the air will raise that same weight of water (per unit surface area)." That last parenthetical phrase is what put me off from holding my ground. I understand conservation of energy and the so-called "hydrostatic paradox." So, while I questioned the analogy to the lever, I allowed that maybe it was correct. When, I posted that on RoR, Mike Erickson, who is an electronics test engineer, explained the mechanical advantage of hydraulic motors. I accepted that as the wider context -- the conservation of energy principle -- to explain what Harriman meant by what he said.

However, Glenn Fletcher, who holds a doctorate in physics, and who teaches at Cornell, said that he, too, was unhappy with Harriman's simile. "But there's no mechanical advantage as you would have with a lever; it's just the weight of a column of air, going all the way up to the "top" of the atmosphere, holding up a column of water 34 ft high with the same weight." (here)

My point is that I lacked confidence in what I know, though apparently, I was right to question Harriman's statement. We are all in the same predicament. Unless you are a physicist (or later in the book, a chemist; or earlier, a historian of science), Harriman's explanations seem likely to mislead and misinform.

I have similar problems with Harrison's presentation of Sir Isaac Newton. Back in 2000, I found out that Newton had been Master and Warden of the British Royal Mint. As a numismatist that was interesting to me, and I thought it might be interesting to others. So, I got the relevant numismatic materials from the ANA Library, and other documenation from The Royal Society and Cambridge University, and even a gold mine owners' guild from South Africa that publishes a little tract on Newton's gold assays. The ANA granted me a literary award.

Last year, Prof. Thomas Levenson of MIT published a book, Newton and Counterfeiter. (William Chaloner was a clever rogue who lived like a gentleman, but his conceit and downfaill came from thinking himself the equal of Newton.) So, I revisted all the materials and placed four or five book reviews in the numismatic trades, including the ANA's Numismatist. So, OK... maybe my problem is thinking I know Newton better than Harriman does. In my original article, I called Newton not just the greatest scientist of his time, but perhaps the greatest scientist of all time. But he did spend a lot of time writing Arian tracts against Trinitarianism.

In Objectivism, we pick heroes and wave our hands to shoo away their flaws. Our villains (such as Descartes) only have accidental virtues that do not erase their evil choices. To me, it is whole hog or none. If Newton was brilliant, so was Descartes. If Newton wasted his efforts on Arianism, then (equal and opposite), Descartes must be praised for the ironically rationalist enterprise of a synthetically derived analytic geometry, in which the Pythagorean Theorem is an axiom.

Edited November 22, 2010 by Michael E. Marotta

[syrakusos]

How do we manage quantum physics without knowing the -cause- of (say) electron spin? We do not even know the cause of gravitation. Newton refused to posit a hypothesis ("hypothesis non fingo") on the cause of gravitation and Einstein did not produce a cause of gravitation either. But somehow we manage gravitation without knowing a cause for it. Go figure.

ruveyn

Bob, you will understand the context if you actually read the book. Harriman's explicit claim is that to be valid, a wider generalization must derive from a first-level empirical generalization, which of necessity originates in sensual perception. This is in contrast to the rationalist (idealist; synthetic; logical; mathematical) method of inventing a hypothesis first and then seeking evidence for it.

Myself, I have some replies on that, but they are not relevant here.

The point is that according to Harriman's presentation of the philosophy of science, Einstein's relativity and (much of) quantum physics, while workable predictors, are not valid generalizations. They are like the epicycles of the geocentric model, only rationalist claims, layering overly complex explanations on something we do not really understand.

Again, I have some replies, but I am not prepared to argue. I only point out that the word "hypothesis" had a special meaning to Newton, which Harriman insists on. We do, as you say, "manage" gravitation (and build nuclear power plants) without understanding their ultimate causal processes. Nonetheless, we do not understand.

ruveyn ?=?

Edited November 22, 2010 by Michael E. Marotta

[BaalChatzaf]

The point is that according to Harriman's presentation of the philosophy of science, Einstein's relativity and (much of) quantum physics, while workable predictors, are not valid generalizations. They are like the epicycles of the geocentric model, only rationalist claims, layering overly complex explanations on something we do not really understand.

Repeat that slowly to yourself as you use your computer and your GPS. We have excellent predictive models. The preserve the phenomena to 12 decimal places. That is as close to explanation and understanding as we can get.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[kiaer.ts]

The point is that according to Harriman's presentation of the philosophy of science, Einstein's relativity and (much of) quantum physics, while workable predictors, are not valid generalizations. They are like the epicycles of the geocentric model, only rationalist claims, layering overly complex explanations on something we do not really understand.

Yes, this is a major problem of Harriman's. He argues that induction has to rise from the bottom up, but he does not allow for the fact that once something is induced we can deduce its implications and that there is properly an up and down feedback which some unnameables like Chris Sciabarra would call a dialectic. No, Einstein didn't start with his own experiments. But he did start with the valid ideas of Maxwell and others which were themselves properly grounded. He took these ideas to their logical conclusions. Indeed, he was much like Rand in that respect.

[syrakusos]

Yes, this is a major problem of Harriman's. He argues that induction has to rise from the bottom up, but he does not allow for the fact that once something is induced we can deduce its implications and that there is properly an up and down feedback which ...

In Chapter 6 he does pass through that, stating that valid generalizations allow those wider abstractions. However, he is not as clear as I need, and I see that you did not even perceive it, not so much the fault of your inability to read plain English as the author's difficulty writing it. I think I found his thesis on page 148.

I am in Chapter 7 now, a chapter on mathematics without a single equation.

I still agree with his major premise: valid generalizations must begin with perceptions of empirical facts. Also, I agree, of course, with the objectivist (rational-empiricist) -- and note the lowercase letters -- acceptance that reason and perception work together.

But I started Chapter 7 over again, so, more on this later...

[syrakusos]

I finished the second read against my notes from the first read. I started writing book reviews. One will be just on the physics. I have two editions of Newton's Principia here and biographies by Berlinski, Westfall and White. I also have Feynman's The Character of Physical Law, Kary Mullis's Dancing Naked in the Mind Field, and a couple of books on relativity, one of which includes "On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies," by a clerk from the Swiss Patent Office. I hauled all of those out because of some questions I had while reading Harriman.

[9thdoctor]

He argues that induction has to rise from the bottom up, but he does not allow for the fact that once something is induced we can deduce its implications and that there is properly an up and down feedback which some unnameables like Chris Sciabarra would call a dialectic.

This called to mind a quote, I had to look it up so I'm sharing even if it's not completely relevant:

I want to counteract a widespread, overly empiricist point of view. But in fact one can go through the history of important experiments in physics and find many varied roles played by these experiments and many different ways that theory and experiment have interacted. It appears that anything you say about the way that theory and experiment may interact is likely to be correct, and anything you say about the way that theory and experiment must interact is likely to be wrong.

Steven Weinberg, Dreams of a Final Theory