From: crb7q@kelvin.seas.Virginia.EDU (Cameron Randale Bass)
Subject: Re: STRUCTURE OF TIME
Organization: University of Virginia
Date: Thu, 8 Oct 1992 17:16:39 GMT

In article <1992Oct8.154736.680@CSD-NewsHost.Stanford.EDU> pratt@Sunburn.Stanford.EDU (Vaughan R. Pratt) writes:
>In article <1992Oct8.004124.5221@murdoch.acc.Virginia.EDU> crb7q@kelvin.seas.Virginia.EDU (Cameron Randale Bass) writes:
>>     Faith is very powerful, and I hope we can keep it far far away from
>>     physics.
>>
>
>Too late.  Feynman, Vol. III, Ch. 1, sect. 1-4:  "This experiment has
>never been done in just this way.  The trouble is that the apparatus
>would have to be made on an impossibly small scale to show the effects
>we are interested in.  We are doing a `thought experiment,' which we
>have chosen because it is easy to think about.  We know the results
>that *would* be obtained because there *are* many experiments that have
>been done, in which the scale and the proportions have been chosen to
>show the effects we shall describe."
>
>Asking the student to believe that *had* this experiment been done
>things would have turned out as described, *even though this particular
>experiment has never been done*, is without a shadow of doubt asking
>the student to have faith.  And it shows the great faith of physicists
>in QM: they can predict with sufficient confidence the outcome of a
>gedanken experiment that they are comfortable describing it in great
>detail even though it has not been done.

     Faith is certainly not the foundation of this belief.  This is
     an inference from previous experimental results, and if the
     experiment were performed and the results were different than
     our expectation, faith in the expected result would not matter
     diddly.

     You are confusing the colloquial definition of 'faith' as the expectation
     derived or derivable from experience (and hence admitting falsifiability)
     with the 'Faith' that admits no falsifiability.

>A gedanken experiment is an act of faith.

     A gedanken experiment is a construct that admits falsifiability if
     it is physics.  It is not an act of Faith.

>I do not mean here to find fault with faith in physics.  Faith has all
>the advantages and disadvantages of an optimizing compiler, most
>notably efficiency and inflexibility.  A compiler produces efficient
>code because, unlike interpreted code, compiled code does not have to
>reason about each situation as it arises.  It is inflexible because it
>cannot cope with any situation that the compiled code doesn't test for
>when the interpreter would have, e.g. array bounds checking and type
>checking.  Optimized code has to go on faith that it is working inside
>the array, and cannot recover as gracefully from a bounds check as can
>the interpreter.

     Once again you are implicitly including logic and falsifiability 
     in your definition of Faith.  It does not belong there.

>Faith in religion is the same.  It permits the faithful to cope with
>moral dilemmas as they arise without having to duplicate the years of
>deliberation invested by some of the best minds in the business.  But
>it prevents the faithful from recognizing when the limits within which
>the faith has been worked out have been violated by new circumstances
>and new insights not catered for or anticipated by the clerics.

     This is an atheistic way to look at things, but not the only way.

     If you accept the existence of a higher power (a concept that
     you cannot falsify), then the goals of religion become much different
     than you have stated here.  Keep in mind that most religions *do*
     posit a higher power.

     If you understand the meaning of Faith as being separate from
     falsifiability, then you can not comment on Faith from your perspective.

>>To deny faith is to deny that you ever take the easy way out by just
>>following the formula blindly instead of reasoning things out from
>>scratch.  But to come to rely on faith altogether is to inhibit your
>>ability to adapt.

     There is a great deal of difference between Faith and blindly
     treading down the path.  Faith is actually the antithesis of
     blind treading.  However the discussion of such issues
     is certainly best left elsewhere.

>Faith is a good thing, but like all good things it should be taken in
>moderation.

     Like all non-scientific concepts, Faith should be kept out of 
     science.

                              dale bass

-- 
C. R. Bass                                           crb7q@virginia.edu
Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering
University of Virginia
Charlottesville, Virginia                            (804) 924-7926
Newsgroups: sci.physics,sci.astro,sci.math,sci.philosophy.tech