4 ms·

Point was, math is one thing, reality is another.

paganel 7y ago
From an outsider's point of view (i.e. mine) it looks like physics has become too enamored with mathematics, "thinking" that reality can be totally described by mathematics. Which brings us to one of the author's point of views, the fact that physicists (and I guess most scientists) nowadays dismiss things like philosophy of science or epistemology, they just continue head-on on their "quest for knowledge" not realizing that for almost half a century now nothing big has been "found out".
- Koshkin 7y ago
  There's nothing wrong with the way math is used in physics. Consistency is a good thing; whether calculations possess explanatory power is another question.
  - paganel 7y ago
    I didn't say the maths is wrong, I just said it has reached its limits. And "no big discovery" for the last 40 years kind of shows that some limits have been reached. > Consistency is a good thing Lots of close but in the end ineffectual "epistemic" systems were internally consistent but in the long run they proved "deficient" (as in other, more efficient systems took their place). I confess I've never read Thomas Aquinas's work (to give just one example) but I'm pretty sure his "view of the world/reality system" is pretty consistent, don't think there are any internal contradictions in his writings. Problem is his internally consistent system wouldn't have been able to allow us to build combustion engines or modern electronics, so that we have had to come up with other internally-consistent "epistemic systems" that proved to be more efficient (because they allowed us to build and reason about combustion engines and modern electronics). In the end and in the great scheme of things I don't think this theoretical physics road-block will be of any great importance for the general public, it looks like people are content with what they already can purchase based on past physics-related discoveries. Yeah, traveling through galaxy wormholes or getting to 100% know if the Universe is finite or not would be nice things to have, but people just don't care and there's nothing wrong with that.
- Anon84 7y ago
  If the past is any guide, whenever reality isn’t adequately described by mathematics we just come up with new mathematics.
  - paganel 7y ago
    I may be in the wrong here, but afaik mathematics has not "re-invented" itself after WW2, to take it a step further, I fail to see how we're doing different mathematics compared to what Newton and Leibniz have put on the table. Even if we look at the "greatest" post-WW2 maths result, Fermat's Theory, I don't see any new reality-related insights that it has brought us, and I'll go another step further and I say that even if we were to someday prove the Riemann hypothesis I don't see how it would fundamentally bring new insights regarding "reality"/the physical world. If anything, I dare say that in a certain way maths has tainted the physical world for us, has made us believe that in the same way in which mathematics is "homogeneous" then the physical world is too, if maths has numbers and "units" and if (1002 - 1000) = (2002 - 2000) then it also means that in the physical world we have homogenous "stuff". This is why physics has started using mystical-like language like "elementary particles" which are seen as the "foundation of the physical world", with the implicit premise (if I'm wrong here, please correct me) that given a certain "elementary particle" (let's say a boson) then the boson close to it or the boson situated at the other "side" of the Universe are pretty much the same thing, almost identical, the same way as the mathematical difference I mentioned above is the same, or how two parallel lines are "the same". Basically almost all the theoretical physicists have become Platonists by embracing mathematics no-questions-asked, when in fact they should have remained closer to Hume. And when reality hits them in the face pretty hard they resort to even more mysticism by "inventing" concepts like dark energy and the like. Later edit: I see that that "homogenous reality" theory even has a name, Cosmological principle [1], and as a close-enough Hume follower Karl Popper was quick to dismiss it. By reading it you have to wonder what those physicists had in mind when they wrote it down: > Although the universe is inhomogeneous at smaller scales, it is statistically homogeneous on scales larger than 250 million light years. like, why 250 million is ok and 240 million light years is not ok? To say nothing of the fact that the "infinitely small" (the mystical-like elementary particles I mentioned above) are ignored completely from this discussion, they're also probably seen as "statistically the same". As I said, this "statistical sameness" has made us believe that more than half of the Universe we know of (68%, to quote Wikipedia) is made out of the mother of all mystical thingies, "dark energy". [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmological_principle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmological_principle
cjfd 7y ago
It has worked several times in the history of physics, though.

From an outsider's point of view (i.e. mine) it looks like physics has become too enamored with mathematics, "thinking" that reality can be totally described by mathematics. Which brings us to one of the author's point of views, the fact that physicists (and I guess most scientists) nowadays dismiss things like philosophy of science or epistemology, they just continue head-on on their "quest for knowledge" not realizing that for almost half a century now nothing big has been "found out".

Koshkin 7y ago
There's nothing wrong with the way math is used in physics. Consistency is a good thing; whether calculations possess explanatory power is another question.
- paganel 7y ago
  I didn't say the maths is wrong, I just said it has reached its limits. And "no big discovery" for the last 40 years kind of shows that some limits have been reached. > Consistency is a good thing Lots of close but in the end ineffectual "epistemic" systems were internally consistent but in the long run they proved "deficient" (as in other, more efficient systems took their place). I confess I've never read Thomas Aquinas's work (to give just one example) but I'm pretty sure his "view of the world/reality system" is pretty consistent, don't think there are any internal contradictions in his writings. Problem is his internally consistent system wouldn't have been able to allow us to build combustion engines or modern electronics, so that we have had to come up with other internally-consistent "epistemic systems" that proved to be more efficient (because they allowed us to build and reason about combustion engines and modern electronics). In the end and in the great scheme of things I don't think this theoretical physics road-block will be of any great importance for the general public, it looks like people are content with what they already can purchase based on past physics-related discoveries. Yeah, traveling through galaxy wormholes or getting to 100% know if the Universe is finite or not would be nice things to have, but people just don't care and there's nothing wrong with that.
Anon84 7y ago
If the past is any guide, whenever reality isn’t adequately described by mathematics we just come up with new mathematics.
- paganel 7y ago
  I may be in the wrong here, but afaik mathematics has not "re-invented" itself after WW2, to take it a step further, I fail to see how we're doing different mathematics compared to what Newton and Leibniz have put on the table. Even if we look at the "greatest" post-WW2 maths result, Fermat's Theory, I don't see any new reality-related insights that it has brought us, and I'll go another step further and I say that even if we were to someday prove the Riemann hypothesis I don't see how it would fundamentally bring new insights regarding "reality"/the physical world. If anything, I dare say that in a certain way maths has tainted the physical world for us, has made us believe that in the same way in which mathematics is "homogeneous" then the physical world is too, if maths has numbers and "units" and if (1002 - 1000) = (2002 - 2000) then it also means that in the physical world we have homogenous "stuff". This is why physics has started using mystical-like language like "elementary particles" which are seen as the "foundation of the physical world", with the implicit premise (if I'm wrong here, please correct me) that given a certain "elementary particle" (let's say a boson) then the boson close to it or the boson situated at the other "side" of the Universe are pretty much the same thing, almost identical, the same way as the mathematical difference I mentioned above is the same, or how two parallel lines are "the same". Basically almost all the theoretical physicists have become Platonists by embracing mathematics no-questions-asked, when in fact they should have remained closer to Hume. And when reality hits them in the face pretty hard they resort to even more mysticism by "inventing" concepts like dark energy and the like. Later edit: I see that that "homogenous reality" theory even has a name, Cosmological principle [1], and as a close-enough Hume follower Karl Popper was quick to dismiss it. By reading it you have to wonder what those physicists had in mind when they wrote it down: > Although the universe is inhomogeneous at smaller scales, it is statistically homogeneous on scales larger than 250 million light years. like, why 250 million is ok and 240 million light years is not ok? To say nothing of the fact that the "infinitely small" (the mystical-like elementary particles I mentioned above) are ignored completely from this discussion, they're also probably seen as "statistically the same". As I said, this "statistical sameness" has made us believe that more than half of the Universe we know of (68%, to quote Wikipedia) is made out of the mother of all mystical thingies, "dark energy". [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmological_principle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmological_principle

cjfd 7y ago

It has worked several times in the history of physics, though.