A tennis match eh? I'm not sure if it's fair for one of the players to also be the umpire. I'm sure I saw chalk dust on one of those points. Anyway, I guess it's my turn now.
I'm not paying this one. Not all foundational principles have equal sense value. Our intuitive comprehension of the world around us has evolved by natural selection. It must be pretty good because if it were that far wrong we would be out of the gene pool. We are in fact as smart as we think we are (if not smarter) , but because of this we run the risk of outsmarting ourselves. I am aware of this potential flaw in my own reasoning but see it all too prevalent in others. 15 -all.
Yes, our intuitive common sense is good for helping us to
survive. This is not necessarily the same thing as understanding the workings of the universe. When you've previously said that the models of physics "don't make sense" I didn't think you meant that they don't conform to our intuitive common sense. I wouldn't for one moment expect them to. The parts of physics that tend to conform most closely to our intuition are naturally those that are based on everyday experience - such as the dynamics of human-scale objects moving at human-scale speeds.
Even there, our intuition can mislead us: Newton's insight that an object continues to move at constant velocity unless acted on by an external force is deeply counter-intuitive and therefore eluded Aristotle. The reason it is counter-intuitive is because we live on a great big object and are almost always surrounded by frictional forces. So "rest" rather than "constant velocity" seemed to Aristotle to be a more natural default state, leading him to believe that there is no
motion without a force. It takes specially controlled conditions in which friction is minimized to demonstrate the error here. And yet this is still a situation that is relatively easily accessible. When dealing with quarks and quasars, the intuition that helped us to evade predators and find food is of even less use.
No, when you've talked before about physics "not making sense" I didn't think you simply meant intuitive common-sense. I presumed you were referring to it not conforming to the first principles that you regard as self-evident. This is why I keep trying, with little success, to pin you down to exactly what reasoning you are using to conclude that they
are self-evident. I keep trying to get you to admit that it's the same form of logic as the anthropic principle. But you're not biting!
Double fault, Steve. Working backwards from an equation is no different from drawing conclusions from a belief. We have to start at the bottom and work up or else we become victims of our own hubris. Physics has done this over and over again and reached a different conclusion every time. 15-all
This and your previous reply suggest that we seem to be talking at crossed purposes. My point was not about first principles. If you recall, it resulted from your comment about the physicists you'd observed bickering over various interpretations of General Relativity. GR is not a first principle. It's an inductive generalization - a law of physics. My point was simply that it is perfectly valid to try to work out the consequences of a law of physics using deductive reasoning. And a correct use of mathematics can form part of a deductive argument. I was questioning why you would dispute that.
You have to work out the logical consequences of the propositions that arise from induction in order to be able to test them. If I were to declare: "the Earth sits still and the universe rotates around it" then I would obviously have to do some reasoning, probably using some maths, to consider the consequences of that statement and whether it results in something that contradicts another principle, law or observation.
Physics and I start from equivalent baselines but from opposite sides of the net. This cannot be otherwise because we all have to serve from somewhere. However the a priori principles we adopt are unequal in their logical sustainability. Leibniz aced Newton from the very beginning and the physical space was never valid. Michelson and Morley were the umpires and wouldn't call the result. Einstein went with Newton but he made an error of judgement. Time and space are not interwoven but mutually exclusive. These are two entirely different ways of thinking the world and can't both be right. Space makes no sense with a constant speed of light so Albert made a bad call. 30-15.
If you think that modern physics takes the physical reality of space as a first principle, I think you're wrong. Your thesis that the Realism of the age of Newton has pervaded all of physics ever since is not what I observe. I've restarted the "Mach-Zehnder Interferometer" topic in the Science section to discuss this further in that context, if you're interested. (I know you'd prefer a topic on Physics to be in the Religion section, but humour me!)
I see no evidence of deduction from first principles in physics. All I see is induction from observation and a succession of unreachable lobs from me and others. . My opponent isn't even trying to hit them. 40-15.
I agree that there is induction from observation, and then deduction from the propositions that result from that process. Although Popper would disagree as to the central role given to Induction. But there's a topic on Popper in the science section too.
I'll take the game because I can see you've had to concede with an injury. However the match is not over yet and I stand ready to receive. It's your serve and it's actually now nearly 10am in NZ and I have other matters to attend to. Listen to Arnie. I'll be back but I reckon your serve is for pussies.
Well, it's nearly 11pm here now so my turn to take a break. Then back at work tomorrow so may be a little slow returning serve. But I'll do my best.
