3 ms·

I would call the first half of the page facts of optics, and the second half of the page facts of aether flow theory. The former are only true if you already a

I would call the first half of the page facts of optics, and the second half of the page facts of aether flow theory. The former are only true if you already accept some theory with sufficient machinery to map the device readout to a number corresponding with the concept 'wavelength'. And the latter are only true if you accept both optics and the aether theory that was popular at the time. I see that you're trying to get something to stand on, some objective and unchanging reality to hold constant while new theories come and go--and I don't deny you its existence, but I don't see how statements about it can be encoded without making reference the theories in use by the experimenter. Suppose that later these results need to be translated into the language of a new theory in order for them to be communicated with future generations (who may not know what a wavelength is). Once translated, would they not be new facts, made of new words and new numbers and true in a new theory? There are alternatives, but they seem awfully problematic to me.

pdonis 8y ago
> I would call the first half of the page facts of optics, and the second half of the page facts of aether flow theory. There is no such thing as "facts of a theory". Theories are not facts. I don't understand why you persist in talking about these two different things as if they were the same. > I don't see how statements about it can be encoded without making reference the theories in use by the experimenter. Huh? The portions I already referred to as giving facts do just that. You don't have to have any particular theory to understand what those portions are describing. What's the problem? > Suppose that later these results need to be translated into the language of a new theory in order for them to be communicated with future generations (who may not know what a wavelength is). The word "wavelength" doesn't occur anywhere in the description of how the experimental apparatus was set up, how the observations were made, and what the observations were (as opposed to theoretical model-based descriptions). I think you're making this a lot harder than it needs to be by refusing to distinguish between factual descriptions of an experiment and theoretical interpretations of the results.
- __MatrixMan__ 8y ago
  Right below the word "results" is a table which correlates asmuths to "wavelengths" which I believe is a measure of how out-of-phase the arms of the interferometer were. Yes, it's simpler to just assume that reality as you see it is full of facts that can be made sense of directly, but that's what prompted Planck's university adviser to claim that there was essentially nothing new to discover in physics. If you allow things to be "just true" without taking into account the things that make them true, you'll never take the kind of creative step that we see in Copernicus, Einstein, or Planck (despite his adviser's recommendations). Scientific advancement happens when somebody faces a set of immutable facts and decides which one needs to become mutable in order for the rest to become more useful. If facts are flattened down to primitives, there is no underlying structure to aid in that decision. And if course there is such a thing as "a fact of". '2 + 2 = 4' is a fact of arithmetic, 'things fall towards massive other things' is a fact of gravity, and 'Harry Potter is a Wizard' is a fact of that particular universe. The dangerous notion that I'm trying to dispel is that there is any other sort--a raw fact that is portable across contexts. You yourself seem like a pretty smart cookie, so I don't worry about you, but generally speaking I find that people who prefer to deal in absolutes are susceptible to manipulation by relativists such as myself. If I can manufacture a fact and insert it into your universe, you're kind of stuck with it because you treat them as out-of-scope for reconsideration. If we allow science and authority to become synonymous--which the author of this article would have us do, we commit a similarly permanent act--one which shuts the door on advancement of the sort I've described to above. I'm not trying to convince you that you are wrong. I'm trying to show you that your faith in the persistent and portable utility of facts is unjustified and represents both a creativity damper and an unnecessary attack surface--attack surface that would be exploited by maintainers of the status quo. Or I would try to convince you of that, if I could get us past the unjustified part.
  - pdonis 8y ago
    > Right below the word "results" is a table which correlates asmuths to "wavelengths" Ah, I see; yes, the word "wavelengths" does appear there, and it also appears on the previous page, where they say: "the length of the path of a ray in our apparatus was 3224 centimetres, in which distance there are contained 5.5 x 10^7 wave-lengths of sodium light". So "wavelengths" here refers to the calculated wavelength of a particular energy level transition in sodium atoms that was used to provide the light in the interferometer. So the wavelengths in the table at the top of page 5 are measured numbers (the sizes of the interference fringes observed), translated into a particular choice of units (units of sodium energy level transition wavelengths). The numbers themselves are facts, but the choice of units is theoretically motivated, yes--a more theoretically neutral choice of units would be something like centimeters. > it's simpler to just assume that reality as you see it is full of facts that can be made sense of directly, but that's what prompted Planck's university adviser to claim that there was essentially nothing new to discover in physics I don't see this at all. It was precisely particular facts--facts that did not fit Newtonian theory--that prompted the development of relativity and quantum mechanics as better theories, that accounted for those facts. The whole idea of facts not fitting a theory requires you to have a concept of "facts" that does not depend on which theory you choose. > Scientific advancement happens when somebody faces a set of immutable facts and decides which one needs to become mutable in order for the rest to become more useful. Again, I think you are conflating "fact" with "theory" and hence you are confusing yourself. Here is how I would state what I think you are trying to say here: scientific advancement happens when somebody faces a set of facts that do not fit any currently accepted theory, and comes up with a new theory whose predictions match those facts. No facts change during this process; only theories change. > If I can manufacture a fact and insert it into your universe I have no idea how you would go about doing that except by lying about something you observed. Which you could do--people have certainly lied to other people in the past and had their lies accepted, at least for a while--but I don't think that's a problem with people being too absolutist about facts. I think it's a problem with (a) some people lying, and (b) other people not being good at detecting lies. And I certainly don't see how thinking of facts as theory-dependent helps a person to detect lies. Rather, it makes it harder to detect lies, because the whole concept of "lies" gets muddled: there is no objective truth, just different people's theories, so how can you say that this other person who manufactured a fact and inserted it into your universe was wrong? He was just telling his theory, and every theory is just as good as every other one. The only way to escape this merry-go-round and defend yourself against this kind of manipulation is to have a concept of "facts" that is independent of your choice of theory, which allows you to have the concept of "this person is lying to me so I shouldn't believe what they say". How can you even have that concept at all if facts are theory-dependent? > If we allow science and authority to become synonymous Which is certainly not what I am advocating. In fact I'm advocating precisely the opposite, as you can see from other posts I've made elsewhere in this thread. Scientists trying to present science as an authority is a problem; and the fact that the author of the article wants to do that means he's wrong.

pdonis 8y ago

> I would call the first half of the page facts of optics, and the second half of the page facts of aether flow theory. There is no such thing as "facts of a theory". Theories are not facts. I don't understand why you persist in talking about these two different things as if they were the same. > I don't see how statements about it can be encoded without making reference the theories in use by the experimenter. Huh? The portions I already referred to as giving facts do just that. You don't have to have any particular theory to understand what those portions are describing. What's the problem? > Suppose that later these results need to be translated into the language of a new theory in order for them to be communicated with future generations (who may not know what a wavelength is). The word "wavelength" doesn't occur anywhere in the description of how the experimental apparatus was set up, how the observations were made, and what the observations were (as opposed to theoretical model-based descriptions). I think you're making this a lot harder than it needs to be by refusing to distinguish between factual descriptions of an experiment and theoretical interpretations of the results.

__MatrixMan__ 8y ago
Right below the word "results" is a table which correlates asmuths to "wavelengths" which I believe is a measure of how out-of-phase the arms of the interferometer were. Yes, it's simpler to just assume that reality as you see it is full of facts that can be made sense of directly, but that's what prompted Planck's university adviser to claim that there was essentially nothing new to discover in physics. If you allow things to be "just true" without taking into account the things that make them true, you'll never take the kind of creative step that we see in Copernicus, Einstein, or Planck (despite his adviser's recommendations). Scientific advancement happens when somebody faces a set of immutable facts and decides which one needs to become mutable in order for the rest to become more useful. If facts are flattened down to primitives, there is no underlying structure to aid in that decision. And if course there is such a thing as "a fact of". '2 + 2 = 4' is a fact of arithmetic, 'things fall towards massive other things' is a fact of gravity, and 'Harry Potter is a Wizard' is a fact of that particular universe. The dangerous notion that I'm trying to dispel is that there is any other sort--a raw fact that is portable across contexts. You yourself seem like a pretty smart cookie, so I don't worry about you, but generally speaking I find that people who prefer to deal in absolutes are susceptible to manipulation by relativists such as myself. If I can manufacture a fact and insert it into your universe, you're kind of stuck with it because you treat them as out-of-scope for reconsideration. If we allow science and authority to become synonymous--which the author of this article would have us do, we commit a similarly permanent act--one which shuts the door on advancement of the sort I've described to above. I'm not trying to convince you that you are wrong. I'm trying to show you that your faith in the persistent and portable utility of facts is unjustified and represents both a creativity damper and an unnecessary attack surface--attack surface that would be exploited by maintainers of the status quo. Or I would try to convince you of that, if I could get us past the unjustified part.
- pdonis 8y ago
  > Right below the word "results" is a table which correlates asmuths to "wavelengths" Ah, I see; yes, the word "wavelengths" does appear there, and it also appears on the previous page, where they say: "the length of the path of a ray in our apparatus was 3224 centimetres, in which distance there are contained 5.5 x 10^7 wave-lengths of sodium light". So "wavelengths" here refers to the calculated wavelength of a particular energy level transition in sodium atoms that was used to provide the light in the interferometer. So the wavelengths in the table at the top of page 5 are measured numbers (the sizes of the interference fringes observed), translated into a particular choice of units (units of sodium energy level transition wavelengths). The numbers themselves are facts, but the choice of units is theoretically motivated, yes--a more theoretically neutral choice of units would be something like centimeters. > it's simpler to just assume that reality as you see it is full of facts that can be made sense of directly, but that's what prompted Planck's university adviser to claim that there was essentially nothing new to discover in physics I don't see this at all. It was precisely particular facts--facts that did not fit Newtonian theory--that prompted the development of relativity and quantum mechanics as better theories, that accounted for those facts. The whole idea of facts not fitting a theory requires you to have a concept of "facts" that does not depend on which theory you choose. > Scientific advancement happens when somebody faces a set of immutable facts and decides which one needs to become mutable in order for the rest to become more useful. Again, I think you are conflating "fact" with "theory" and hence you are confusing yourself. Here is how I would state what I think you are trying to say here: scientific advancement happens when somebody faces a set of facts that do not fit any currently accepted theory, and comes up with a new theory whose predictions match those facts. No facts change during this process; only theories change. > If I can manufacture a fact and insert it into your universe I have no idea how you would go about doing that except by lying about something you observed. Which you could do--people have certainly lied to other people in the past and had their lies accepted, at least for a while--but I don't think that's a problem with people being too absolutist about facts. I think it's a problem with (a) some people lying, and (b) other people not being good at detecting lies. And I certainly don't see how thinking of facts as theory-dependent helps a person to detect lies. Rather, it makes it harder to detect lies, because the whole concept of "lies" gets muddled: there is no objective truth, just different people's theories, so how can you say that this other person who manufactured a fact and inserted it into your universe was wrong? He was just telling his theory, and every theory is just as good as every other one. The only way to escape this merry-go-round and defend yourself against this kind of manipulation is to have a concept of "facts" that is independent of your choice of theory, which allows you to have the concept of "this person is lying to me so I shouldn't believe what they say". How can you even have that concept at all if facts are theory-dependent? > If we allow science and authority to become synonymous Which is certainly not what I am advocating. In fact I'm advocating precisely the opposite, as you can see from other posts I've made elsewhere in this thread. Scientists trying to present science as an authority is a problem; and the fact that the author of the article wants to do that means he's wrong.