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That saying is wrong. Newton’s Laws are absolute in a typical human context. A better model must explain everything covered by newton and more. Discovering tha
by abtinf 7y ago
That saying is wrong.
Newton’s Laws are absolute in a typical human context. A better model must explain everything covered by newton and more. Discovering that better model doesn’t make newton wrong.
- FabHK 7y agoWell, the saying is a model for the relationship between a model and reality. Being a model, it's wrong, but it is useful.
- TeMPOraL 7y agoNo, the saying is not wrong here. Newton's Laws are wrong, period. They explain some observational evidence to some degree of accuracy. That they're "absolute in a typical human context" is literally the point of the saying I quoted.
- javert 7y agoThis is the wrong way to think about models. Newton's laws captured part of what he observed at the time. And that's all a model is supposed to do. That doesn't make it wrong. It makes it limited. You could say it's a "low resolution" view of reality. If we limited our knowledge only to perfect models, we would be holding ourselves to a standard of omniscience, and we would never know anything. We clearly have good enough models to design hypersonic aircraft, to pick a semi-random example. But our models are not complete; we don't know everything. But our models are not wrong. Other commenters who warn that saying "all models are wrong" encourages anti-intellectualism and exactly right. That leads to a bad place.
- tomp 7y agoThe opposite of wrong is correct. Newton's Laws are not correct, therefore they are wrong. Technically. I agree though that saying they're "wrong" has limited utility... Perhaps the more useful way of thinking about models is "give sensible predictions up to certain amount of accuracy in certain contexts".
- javert 7y ago> The opposite of wrong is correct. I agree. > Newton's Laws are not correct, therefore they are wrong. They are correct as long as they are stated with the caveat that they are only known to apply to Netwon's observations, and then, only with a limited amount of fidelity. I haven't read Newton's original source material, so I don't know if he overstated the universality of his laws.
- TeMPOraL 7y agoI feel we're arguing a very minor point here. You seem to be hung up on this "models can be correct when stated with appropriate caveats". Sure. The "all models are wrong" saying has an implicit "at representing the observable reality in full fidelity".
- javert 7y ago"All models are wrong" is the same as saying "All knowledge is wrong." That's technically incorrect and philosophically disastrous. Ideas like this have a huge impact on people in myriad ways. > The "all models are wrong" saying has an implicit "at representing the observable reality in full fidelity". No, it doesn't. This is exactly like saying "All knowledge is wrong" has an implicit "as knowing everything in full fidelity, i.e., being omniscient." You are holding models (or knowledge) to a completely ridiculous standard. They are not supposed to work the way you are implicitly asking them to work.
- __MatrixMan__ 7y ago> That's technically incorrect and philosophically disastrous How can taking a particular epistemic stance be wrong? What non-epistemic basis would you use to judge it? It might be inconsistent with the stance you have chosen, but that doesn't make it wrong. And as far as it being disastrous, I know a number of very competent people that take that view--what disasters should I look for in their lives to see how disastrous their stance is?
- chongli 7y agoNo, they're also wrong in a typical human context. Most people have a phone with GPS these days. GPS would flat-out fail to work entirely without correcting for time dilation effects in the satellites. Newton had no concept of time dilation (nor should he have, given his context).
- dwaltrip 7y agoThey are wrong in _that one example_. For most other day to day scenarios, Newton's laws are plenty accurate. I disagree with the poster about that saying. I think it's a fantastic saying.
- bardworx 7y agoI'm not sure I follow your argument, perhaps you can help me understand. If you're saying that Newtonian Gravity breakdown in a specific case but are fairly accurate in other cases does that mean they're still universally correct?
- dwaltrip 7y agoI'm saying that for most everyday situations, Newton's equations provide sufficient accuracy for people to achieve their goals. However, in the case of GPS, the system wouldn't work reliably if it was only using Newton's equations. Einstein's theory of gravity is much more robust and is highly accurate across a far wider domain. It can be used to implement a reliable GPS system.
- User23 7y agoInteresting description of “relativistic” effects in the GPS system. http://www.tuks.nl/pdf/Reference_Material/Ronald_Hatch/Hatch-Relativity_and_GPS-II_1995.pdf http://www.tuks.nl/pdf/Reference_Material/Ronald_Hatch/Hatch....
- __MatrixMan__ 7y agoPointing out that Newton sill isn't wrong doesn't mean he was ever right in the first place. It's simply not about right and wrong. He spun a good tale about the universe. Later somebody else spun a good tale that was better in at least one way. That's all.