From: snodgras@crash.cts.com (John Snodgrass)
Subject: Re: invention of time
Date: 30 Aug 92 20:55:28 GMT

In <26AUG199203454289@reg.triumf.ca> vincent@reg.triumf.ca (pete) writes:


>       (John Snodgrass) carries on his one man campaign against
>20th century physics...

       The 20th century is just about over.

>       It seems to me if you are going to object to the basic
>philosophical assumptions underlying the worldview of  modern
>physics ( which are not always implicit to its practitioners),
>you are going to have to provide a viable alternative.

       True. It may be possible to illuminate alternative viewpoints
simply by showing the fundamental problems of the current viewpoint.
When you trace back to the incorrect decision, you have obviously
arrived at the crossroads, where you can then take an alternative route.
But you cannot take an alternative route until you go back. Pointing
at the impassibility of the surrounding terrain is not an argument
against this.

>       As far as working physicists are  concerned, don't fix it
>if it ain't broke. It is well understood that the present model
>of the universe is incomplete, but that doesn't prevent it from
>providing a staggering amount of practical, useful results. 20th
>century technology springs directly from 20th century physics.

       A commonly expressed sentiment. The obvious
question is: staggering relative to what? If another point of
view had been adopted, we might now have created antigravity,
developed supercheap energy, cured cancer, fed the world, and
achieved world peace! Who knows? On the other hand, a clergyman
in the middle ages could have said the same thing about the
geocentric model of the universe, and the role of the Church in
society. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. After all, they were
perfectly happy with creationism and geocentricity, naturally.

>        [  Now if you say that your quarrel is only with
>relativity, and you have no problem with QM, from  which springs
>electronics etc., I can only say that  the QM world is at least
>as wierd, if not moreso,  as that of relativity. In fact, in many
>ways, relativity is much more comfortable than QM, in that it
>only undermines our naive notions of time, space, and motion,
>rather than the more challenging concepts like causation and
>determinacy. Certainly Einstein felt that way. ]

       QM could be called Einstein's Monster. Having created it
by profaning the the most sacred law of science -- objectivity -- it
inevitably came stalking him. Unfortunately, in this story, instead
of destroying it, the villagers have perversely decided to care for
it and even worship it. The brain-damaged creation of a deluded genius.

>       If you object to the prominent place that mathematics
>has in relativity, it seems to me that you are simply objecting
>to how the world is built. Math wasn't parachuted arbitrarily
>into physics for the gratification of some math nerds out there -
>it's there because it works so well. And math remains simply a
>tool of the physicist: just ask a mathematician about the way
>physicists abuse math. But surely you know all this. I guess I'm
>wondering whether you aren't just having us all on?

       The usefulness of mathematics as a descriptive tool is
hardly in question; it is a way to concisely describe measurement
relationships. The question is the usefulness of using
mathematics in a prescriptive sense: of formulating the math
first, then searching for support for how nature is like that.
The new physics resulted from playing with equations as though
they were the secret codes of nature, which is what many of the
turn of the century theoreticians thought. (And Roger Penrose
argues for today in _The Emperor's New Mind_.) To such
individuals, the nature of mathematics is apparently deeply
mysterious; sort of numerology with abstract variables. They searched
for truth in the often random manipulation of equations, and
felt this was a valid way to carry on science. The
result was the new physics.

>            By the way I don't see anything arcane about the
>arenas where relativity applies, though working at a particle
>accelerator might qualify me for having a bias.

       One sees the physical world and its operations in terms of the
abstract model one adopts, not the other way around. If you
believe that an electromagnetic field is non-material 'force'
then when you see the effects of such a field, that is how you
will imagine it, and that will guide the questions you ask about
it. If, on the other hand, you imagine it as a material process
but which is incidentally outside your range of perception, then
you will imagine it differently. (And ask different questions
about it, too.) QM may seem arcane not because the physical processes
it describes are remote and poorly understood, but because of the
manner in which it characterizes those processes.

>            Finally, I wonder whether you intent to bring back
>the aether? In a universe where energy can be transmitted by
>field disturbances which propagate at a finite velocity,  without
>a medium, but yet aren't observed to accelerate to  that
>velocity, special relativity must fall out of any attempt to
>model the world.

       Whether such field disturbances are propagated without a
medium is IMO still an open question, as is the question of the
relationship between photons and associated wave phenomena.
What we call light may be one or more material phenomena acting on
or through a medium which may have an indefinately complex composition.
The one-photon-at-a-time two-slit experiment could be cited to support
this view, rather than the conventional interpretation that the photon
is mystically non-localized! Which is an excellent example of how a
paradigm influences the meaning given to observations.

>       Similarly, in a universe where a centrifugal force
>distinguishes a rotating from a non rotating object, some sort of
>theory resembling general relativity must appear ( at least in
>any universe where clocks and metre sticks are dependably
>reproducible ).

       Only if you imagine the centrifugal force as arising
within Newtonian all-encompassing geometrical space. Mach's
principle can't be understood outside of this context. Acceleration
may require force, not because there is some mystical relation
between geometrical space and motion, as in a prescriptive reading
of Newton's laws of motion, but because there
is local interaction between an accelerating body and its
environment which does not occur when that body is
not accelerating. Gravity and the principle of equivalence
can be likewise explained in material terms.


>      Pete Vincent


       John E. Snodgrass
       -----------------
       snodgras@cyber.net
Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.tech