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Funny, if you like this particular variety of snark. But there's a huge bait and switch in the argument. The English major doubts that we have "finally got the

by foldr 3y ago

Funny, if you like this particular variety of snark. But there's a huge bait and switch in the argument. The English major doubts that we have "finally got the basis of the Universe straight" (in Asimov's words). But Asmimov's primary example of the "relativity of wrong" is the shape of the Earth, which is a particular fact about a particular object. Being charitable, almost no-one (not even the kind of English Lit majors that HN loves to hate!) doubts that we can learn facts about the shape and size of particular objects. It doesn't necessarily follow from this that we should be optimistic about the fundamental correctness of our best theories in the physical sciences. As the English Lit major was no doubt aware, there were plenty of people at the turn of the 20th century who thought that physics was basically finished and that there was nothing left to do except add more decimal places to the results.

mistermann 3y ago
Very much agree...and furthermore: > It doesn't necessarily follow from this that we should be optimistic about the fundamental correctness of our best theories in the physical sciences. The disagreement was over the universe, so my first question is: does "the universe" include humans, or not (and: who decides the fact of the matter)? Because all one has to do is watch the news to realize we certainly don't have everything fully figured out....I often wonder if our (from my vantage point anyways) belief that we "pretty much"[1] do may exacerbate this. [1] Colloquial language, figures of speech, etc are a fantastic and endless source of delusion, that typically cannot be realized.
moefh 3y ago
I don't think that's quite right. Another example given by Asimov is Newton's equations, which are obviously not facts about a particular object. We still today accept them as right (in the right contexts), teach them in universities, and use them when they're useful. I think Asimov's point is that if someone in Newton's time said "I'm glad to live in a time when we finally understand everything there is to know about the motion of cannon balls", they'd be justified: even though technically there were relativistic corrections to be made, they're pretty much irrelevant for the stated purposes (understanding how cannonballs move). And so in the same way he thinks he's justified in saying that in the 20th century we finally understood the basics of the Universe, even though we still don't know (in his words): > the nature of the big bang and the creation of the Universe, the properties at the center of black holes, some subtle points about the evolution of galaxies and supernovas, and so on
- foldr 3y ago
  I don't think the cannon ball example quite works because 18th century fluid dynamics wasn't up to the job. (People weren't firing cannon balls in a vacuum.) Apart from that, I take your point, but I don't find Asimov's attempt to argue that Einstein's theory is just a minor correction to Newton's very convincing. If this were really the case it would make it a bit of a mystery why Einstein was a big deal. The two theories make very similar predictions in a wide range of circumstances, but they're very different conceptually. Asimov is similarly breezy about quantum mechanics, but physicists at the time didn't seem to see quantum mechanics as just a very minor adjustment to classical physics.
  - XorNot 3y ago
    Except you don't need fluid dynamics for cannon ball trajectory over sufficiently short distances, or with the constraints on barrel quality and reproducibility of the time. The same is true of quantum mechanics: physicists were excited about it, but it went going to make existing experimental results and predictions incorrect in context. The Bohr model of the atom is completely "wrong" but it's still useful enough to foundational in understanding nuclear magnetic resonance analysis.
    - foldr 3y ago
      Yes, scientific progress tends to be empirically conservative. But people outside science (like the Eng Lit major) are often less interested in specific predictions than in the overall picture of reality painted by our current best scientific theories. This picture does change quite radically from time to time. The history of different models of the atom (going back to the radically incorrect 'plum pudding' model) is a good example. To point this out is not to attack science. Indeed, science would be far less interesting and exciting if its entire history was nothing but a sequence of small and incremental refinements.

by foldr 3y ago

mistermann 3y ago

Very much agree...and furthermore: > It doesn't necessarily follow from this that we should be optimistic about the fundamental correctness of our best theories in the physical sciences. The disagreement was over the universe, so my first question is: does "the universe" include humans, or not (and: who decides the fact of the matter)? Because all one has to do is watch the news to realize we certainly don't have everything fully figured out....I often wonder if our (from my vantage point anyways) belief that we "pretty much"[1] do may exacerbate this. [1] Colloquial language, figures of speech, etc are a fantastic and endless source of delusion, that typically cannot be realized.

moefh 3y ago

I don't think that's quite right. Another example given by Asimov is Newton's equations, which are obviously not facts about a particular object. We still today accept them as right (in the right contexts), teach them in universities, and use them when they're useful. I think Asimov's point is that if someone in Newton's time said "I'm glad to live in a time when we finally understand everything there is to know about the motion of cannon balls", they'd be justified: even though technically there were relativistic corrections to be made, they're pretty much irrelevant for the stated purposes (understanding how cannonballs move). And so in the same way he thinks he's justified in saying that in the 20th century we finally understood the basics of the Universe, even though we still don't know (in his words): > the nature of the big bang and the creation of the Universe, the properties at the center of black holes, some subtle points about the evolution of galaxies and supernovas, and so on

foldr 3y ago
I don't think the cannon ball example quite works because 18th century fluid dynamics wasn't up to the job. (People weren't firing cannon balls in a vacuum.) Apart from that, I take your point, but I don't find Asimov's attempt to argue that Einstein's theory is just a minor correction to Newton's very convincing. If this were really the case it would make it a bit of a mystery why Einstein was a big deal. The two theories make very similar predictions in a wide range of circumstances, but they're very different conceptually. Asimov is similarly breezy about quantum mechanics, but physicists at the time didn't seem to see quantum mechanics as just a very minor adjustment to classical physics.
- XorNot 3y ago
  Except you don't need fluid dynamics for cannon ball trajectory over sufficiently short distances, or with the constraints on barrel quality and reproducibility of the time. The same is true of quantum mechanics: physicists were excited about it, but it went going to make existing experimental results and predictions incorrect in context. The Bohr model of the atom is completely "wrong" but it's still useful enough to foundational in understanding nuclear magnetic resonance analysis.
  - foldr 3y ago
    Yes, scientific progress tends to be empirically conservative. But people outside science (like the Eng Lit major) are often less interested in specific predictions than in the overall picture of reality painted by our current best scientific theories. This picture does change quite radically from time to time. The history of different models of the atom (going back to the radically incorrect 'plum pudding' model) is a good example. To point this out is not to attack science. Indeed, science would be far less interesting and exciting if its entire history was nothing but a sequence of small and incremental refinements.