4 ms·

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

by 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.
    - nickff 11y ago
      I think that your last point gets to the heart of the question, and you are right that we may never achieve a deeper understanding of light, matter, or gravity; but that does not mean that a deeper understanding is not desirable, or that we should stop asking the questions. Further, we will never know for certain when we have reached the bounds of our capacity to understand, so I will continue to ask "Yeah, but what strings are?". I always like to keep in mind that 'atom' means 'indivisible' in Greek, and yet we found that bound of knowledge to be surmountable (with debatable consequences). I would also like to be clear that I am not criticizing anyone for making insufficient progress; it is just that there is a lot out there left for us to understand, and not all of it is marginal stuff that's "very big or very small".
avian 11y ago
> we still have basically no understanding of what [light] actually is. Finding the true nature and, whether it exists or not, is the domain of philosophy. Science builds models. And we do have at this point extremely good models of electromagnetism which can correctly predict results of all experiments done so far. Whether these models reveal some fundamental truth or not is a matter of opinion (or perhaps religion). It has nothing to do with refining the models or finding experiments that might prove them wrong.
- nickff 11y ago
  I think you misunderstand my point. Model-building is only one aspect of science, and happens to be the most prevalent in some (though not all) of today's mathematical and statistical based studies of physics (which are often criticized as an exercise in curve-fitting). One example is how string theorists are making a valiant (though perhaps errant) effort to understand matter; they are not simply modelling well characterized behaviors. There are many physicists and other scientists who are continually trying to understand their subject matter (pun intentional) at a deeper level, such as those who discovered and described DNA. I am not interested in whether these scientists reveal "some fundamental truth or not", but we cannot say that we understand all there is to know about electromagnetic phenomena because we can make a few simple predictions. It would be tantamount to saying that we understand the sun because we know where it is relative to us, and how bright it is, and can predict both of these parameters for a while. Understanding that it is a star, how it was formed, how it will cease to be, that it is made up of a number of elements, and converts large amounts of matter to energy are all very important discoveries, and we must continue to seek this kind of advance in the frontiers of our understanding in electromagnetic phenomena, matter, gravity, and many other areas.
  - thaumaturgy 11y ago
    So, I originally argued the point that progress in the physical sciences generally doesn't involve utterly canceling out previous discoveries. The link to Asimov's article elsethread illustrates this better than I could hope to. Relativity for instance did not find that Newtonian mechanics was wrong, it simply revised it under pathological cases. The Bohr model of the atom isn't completely wrong, and it's still useful in chemistry, it's just that as physicists have learned more they've found details where it's not completely right either. This kind of constant revision is a theme throughout the history of scientific progress. So that leaves me a little bit stumped at what point you're trying to make here. Are you disagreeing with that view of science? Are you trying to say, "well, that's how it's been for hundreds of years, but at some point in the future I believe we'll all discover that physics is completely and utterly and embarrassingly wrong in every way"? I've gone back and reread your reply to me at least half a dozen times. You seem to be disagreeing with me, but none of the examples you brought up really actually disagreed with me. At best, I chose some poor metaphors and that led you to misunderstand me, but then I still can't figure out what it is that you're actually trying to say.

by nickff 11y ago

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.
  - nickff 11y ago
    I think that your last point gets to the heart of the question, and you are right that we may never achieve a deeper understanding of light, matter, or gravity; but that does not mean that a deeper understanding is not desirable, or that we should stop asking the questions. Further, we will never know for certain when we have reached the bounds of our capacity to understand, so I will continue to ask "Yeah, but what strings are?". I always like to keep in mind that 'atom' means 'indivisible' in Greek, and yet we found that bound of knowledge to be surmountable (with debatable consequences). I would also like to be clear that I am not criticizing anyone for making insufficient progress; it is just that there is a lot out there left for us to understand, and not all of it is marginal stuff that's "very big or very small".

avian 11y ago

> we still have basically no understanding of what [light] actually is. Finding the true nature and, whether it exists or not, is the domain of philosophy. Science builds models. And we do have at this point extremely good models of electromagnetism which can correctly predict results of all experiments done so far. Whether these models reveal some fundamental truth or not is a matter of opinion (or perhaps religion). It has nothing to do with refining the models or finding experiments that might prove them wrong.

nickff 11y ago
I think you misunderstand my point. Model-building is only one aspect of science, and happens to be the most prevalent in some (though not all) of today's mathematical and statistical based studies of physics (which are often criticized as an exercise in curve-fitting). One example is how string theorists are making a valiant (though perhaps errant) effort to understand matter; they are not simply modelling well characterized behaviors. There are many physicists and other scientists who are continually trying to understand their subject matter (pun intentional) at a deeper level, such as those who discovered and described DNA. I am not interested in whether these scientists reveal "some fundamental truth or not", but we cannot say that we understand all there is to know about electromagnetic phenomena because we can make a few simple predictions. It would be tantamount to saying that we understand the sun because we know where it is relative to us, and how bright it is, and can predict both of these parameters for a while. Understanding that it is a star, how it was formed, how it will cease to be, that it is made up of a number of elements, and converts large amounts of matter to energy are all very important discoveries, and we must continue to seek this kind of advance in the frontiers of our understanding in electromagnetic phenomena, matter, gravity, and many other areas.
- thaumaturgy 11y ago
  So, I originally argued the point that progress in the physical sciences generally doesn't involve utterly canceling out previous discoveries. The link to Asimov's article elsethread illustrates this better than I could hope to. Relativity for instance did not find that Newtonian mechanics was wrong, it simply revised it under pathological cases. The Bohr model of the atom isn't completely wrong, and it's still useful in chemistry, it's just that as physicists have learned more they've found details where it's not completely right either. This kind of constant revision is a theme throughout the history of scientific progress. So that leaves me a little bit stumped at what point you're trying to make here. Are you disagreeing with that view of science? Are you trying to say, "well, that's how it's been for hundreds of years, but at some point in the future I believe we'll all discover that physics is completely and utterly and embarrassingly wrong in every way"? I've gone back and reread your reply to me at least half a dozen times. You seem to be disagreeing with me, but none of the examples you brought up really actually disagreed with me. At best, I chose some poor metaphors and that led you to misunderstand me, but then I still can't figure out what it is that you're actually trying to say.