4 ms·

Oh! This is one of my favorite questions about scientific progress. People seem to regard scientific progress as this kind of wave function, where some theory

Oh! This is one of my favorite questions about scientific progress. People seem to regard scientific progress as this kind of wave function, where some theory comes along and then some other theory or discovery disproves the previous one and so on and so forth. But if you want to think of scientific progress that way, then you have to think of it as a dampened sine wave (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Damped_sine_wave https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Damped_sine_wave) -- that is, discoveries and theories tend to refine previous discoveries and theories, and scientific progress over the millenia has been rapidly zeroing in on the truths of our reality. What is left at this point is mostly things at very large scales -- cosmological stuff like dark matter, dark energy -- and very small scales -- stuff like sub-subatomic particles and the Higgs boson and the nature of mass and so on -- and very complex things like biology and climate science. What isn't left at this point is a revision of the laws of conservation. It is exceedingly unlikely that anything will be discovered at any point in the future which will do anything other than add perhaps the very smallest of exceptions to those laws, and even then, I doubt very much that will happen. So, essentially, the age of physics discoveries in garages is mostly over. There will be many more discoveries in physics, but they now require the collective efforts of entire nations.

nickff 11y ago
I'm sorry, but your reasoning completely escapes me. The only things that are left are very big, and very small? In addition to this being an incredibly vague catchall (which misses all the possible discoveries of 'black swans', that is phenomena and occurrences we have never seen), your statement more importantly misses the fact that humans don't even understand what something as common and important as light (or electromagnetic radiation in general) is. Is light really big or really small? We've certainly characterized light's behavior (to some degree), though we still have basically no understanding of what it actually is (though I may be the only one who finds the circular definitions of electromagnetic fields unsatisfying). The same is true of things like matter and gravity. Once we have better understandings of what these are, I may grant that further fundamental insights will be difficult to come by; but we're not there yet. You might be correct in saying that humans have characterized particles, objects, and phenomena that are closest to their scale and location, but we have done a poor job of understanding their fundamental nature. We also don't understand and have not even characterized things we've never observed (the 'black swan' problem).
- eevilspock 11y ago
  I agree. I also take issue with > rapidly zeroing in on the truths of our reality The truths? No, humans are as likely to arrive at the truths as ants an understanding of a microwave oven.
  - thaumaturgy 11y ago
    A fair reading of that part would assume that I meant truths like, "the cosmos is expanding", not philosophical truths.
  - Analog24 11y ago
    I think it was implied that "truths" meant scientific truths, which are well defined as anything that can be verified beyond statistical doubt with experimental evidence.
- leni536 11y ago
  > We've certainly characterized light's behavior (to some degree), though we still have basically no understanding of what it actually is. As a physicist I really can't imagine what answer would satisfy you and could be falsifiable the same time. It is what it is, all we can do is to characterize its behavior.
  - nickff 11y ago
    One could say the same of a stone, a plant, a planet, or a star, yet we do not simply characterize any of these, we endeavor to understand its origins and constituent parts. In the case of the star, we could have analysed its spectrum, size, trajectory (through space), and surface characteristics, then called it a day; yet we continually try to understand the elements which make up the star, what their state of matter is, how they are reacting, and many other aspects of the star. I disagree with you when you say (of light) that "all we can do is to characterize its behavior".
    - leni536 11y ago
      Well maybe that's not all we can do. Maybe the abstraction of treating light and the rest of the Universe somewhat separately will break (of course we describe the coupling too). Maybe the abstraction of treating light as a non-dividable entity in the Universe will break. It would only create other axioms and/or other non-dividable entities, at what point would you be satisfied? It could very well be that you can't divide light any further and I would be satisfied with it if we can describe its behavior fully. If one says that light is a broken abstraction and you can describe the Universe using only "string" then you would ask "Yeah, but what strings are?". I'm not saying that asking what light is is not an important question. But there is a possibility that there is simply no answer and yet we can have fully working physics. At least nobody will question your theories just because you don't tell what exactly your elementary particles are. They are elementary, we just have them, maybe light is not one of them.
rndn 11y ago
Actually, there is still the possibility that conservation/symmetry is also just an approximation of the actual fundamental laws. Lee Smolin argues that way in his book Time Reborn: https://santitafarella.wordpress.com/2013/06/04/lee-smolins-time-reborn-physics-evolution-atheism-and-buddhism/ https://santitafarella.wordpress.com/2013/06/04/lee-smolins-...
adrianN 11y ago
Relevant essay by Asimov: The Relativity of Wrong http://chem.tufts.edu/answersinscience/relativityofwrong.htm http://chem.tufts.edu/answersinscience/relativityofwrong.htm
- thaumaturgy 11y ago
  Thank you! I had read this in the past, and it was one of two major influences on my thinking about scientific progress, but I couldn't remember exactly what it was I had read. Asimov naturally describes it much better than I could.
mdpopescu 11y ago
http://amasci.com/weird/end.html http://amasci.com/weird/end.html
- thaumaturgy 11y ago
  Yeah, that specific article was on my mind when I wrote my comment. But I didn't say there were no more discoveries left to be made; I said they weren't happening in people's garages anymore, which is true in the majority.

nickff 11y ago

I'm sorry, but your reasoning completely escapes me. The only things that are left are very big, and very small? In addition to this being an incredibly vague catchall (which misses all the possible discoveries of 'black swans', that is phenomena and occurrences we have never seen), your statement more importantly misses the fact that humans don't even understand what something as common and important as light (or electromagnetic radiation in general) is. Is light really big or really small? We've certainly characterized light's behavior (to some degree), though we still have basically no understanding of what it actually is (though I may be the only one who finds the circular definitions of electromagnetic fields unsatisfying). The same is true of things like matter and gravity. Once we have better understandings of what these are, I may grant that further fundamental insights will be difficult to come by; but we're not there yet. You might be correct in saying that humans have characterized particles, objects, and phenomena that are closest to their scale and location, but we have done a poor job of understanding their fundamental nature. We also don't understand and have not even characterized things we've never observed (the 'black swan' problem).

eevilspock 11y ago
I agree. I also take issue with > rapidly zeroing in on the truths of our reality The truths? No, humans are as likely to arrive at the truths as ants an understanding of a microwave oven.
- thaumaturgy 11y ago
  A fair reading of that part would assume that I meant truths like, "the cosmos is expanding", not philosophical truths.
- Analog24 11y ago
  I think it was implied that "truths" meant scientific truths, which are well defined as anything that can be verified beyond statistical doubt with experimental evidence.
leni536 11y ago
> We've certainly characterized light's behavior (to some degree), though we still have basically no understanding of what it actually is. As a physicist I really can't imagine what answer would satisfy you and could be falsifiable the same time. It is what it is, all we can do is to characterize its behavior.
- nickff 11y ago
  One could say the same of a stone, a plant, a planet, or a star, yet we do not simply characterize any of these, we endeavor to understand its origins and constituent parts. In the case of the star, we could have analysed its spectrum, size, trajectory (through space), and surface characteristics, then called it a day; yet we continually try to understand the elements which make up the star, what their state of matter is, how they are reacting, and many other aspects of the star. I disagree with you when you say (of light) that "all we can do is to characterize its behavior".
  - leni536 11y ago
    Well maybe that's not all we can do. Maybe the abstraction of treating light and the rest of the Universe somewhat separately will break (of course we describe the coupling too). Maybe the abstraction of treating light as a non-dividable entity in the Universe will break. It would only create other axioms and/or other non-dividable entities, at what point would you be satisfied? It could very well be that you can't divide light any further and I would be satisfied with it if we can describe its behavior fully. If one says that light is a broken abstraction and you can describe the Universe using only "string" then you would ask "Yeah, but what strings are?". I'm not saying that asking what light is is not an important question. But there is a possibility that there is simply no answer and yet we can have fully working physics. At least nobody will question your theories just because you don't tell what exactly your elementary particles are. They are elementary, we just have them, maybe light is not one of them.

rndn 11y ago

Actually, there is still the possibility that conservation/symmetry is also just an approximation of the actual fundamental laws. Lee Smolin argues that way in his book Time Reborn: https://santitafarella.wordpress.com/2013/06/04/lee-smolins-time-reborn-physics-evolution-atheism-and-buddhism/ https://santitafarella.wordpress.com/2013/06/04/lee-smolins-...

adrianN 11y ago

Relevant essay by Asimov: The Relativity of Wrong http://chem.tufts.edu/answersinscience/relativityofwrong.htm http://chem.tufts.edu/answersinscience/relativityofwrong.htm

thaumaturgy 11y ago
Thank you! I had read this in the past, and it was one of two major influences on my thinking about scientific progress, but I couldn't remember exactly what it was I had read. Asimov naturally describes it much better than I could.

mdpopescu 11y ago

http://amasci.com/weird/end.html http://amasci.com/weird/end.html

thaumaturgy 11y ago
Yeah, that specific article was on my mind when I wrote my comment. But I didn't say there were no more discoveries left to be made; I said they weren't happening in people's garages anymore, which is true in the majority.