Lee asks:
Read a review of Marcelo Gleiser's book (American Scientist) in which he argues that the belief that the universe is governed by beautiful equations is a residue of monotheism. Wow! Maybe also the search for "ultimate" particle. Other problems will probably limit that search, already the particle accelerators require multi-national resources. Gleiser claims our reasoning has been subverted by metaphysical hopes and fantasies. Why is there the drive for a unified theory or theory of everything? Physics itself does not seem to require it, this seems to be an outside goal. From where?
Lee:
The universe is not governed by equations. It is governed by univironmental determinism (UD), in which the motions of each portion of the universe are determined by the infinite matter in motion within (the microcosm) and without (the macrocosm). That generalization amounts to a “unified theory of everything” without the math. The classical mechanists notwithstanding, no one will ever devise a universal equation that will provide perfectly precise predictions for even one transformation.
In science we use equations to describe observations and experimental results. The equations may be perfectly beautiful, but the experimental results never are. This is because every microcosm is influenced by an infinite number of submicrocosms within and an infinite number of supermicrocosms without (see the neomechanics chapter in TSW). All equations, however, must necessarily be finite. The belief, particularly of modern mathematical physicists, that equations are primary and that the universe is secondary is a throwback to the indeterministic views of Plato. Perfect, ideal spheres, for example, can only exist in the heads of rank idealists. One could view this as a residue of monotheism or any other kind of theism—I like to call it indeterminism, because the residue is found today in most folks who call themselves atheists as well.
The search for the “ultimate” particle is futile, as no such thing can exist, just as neither empty space nor solid matter can exist. Will we find smaller particles until we run out of money? Of course. Will any of them be “ultimate”? No. The belief in the “ultimate” particle is based on the indeterministic assumption of finity¸ which, as you know from reading TTAOS (or Chapter 3 in TSW), runs straight from the dregs of religion to the grand foundation of the Big Bang Theory. Gleiser is surely right about being subverted by (indeterministic) metaphysical hopes and fantasy!
The drive for the theory of everything (UD) was based upon our curiosity about the world around us. Modern physics does not require it so much because modern physics, like other forms of indeterminism, has become accustomed to contradiction, paradox, and fantasy. Mathematical physicists are used to the “Twin Paradox,” “Wave-Particle Duality,” and the “SLT-Order Paradox,” just as many of their supporters are used to claims of virgin birth and living after dying. Their belief in the indeterministic assumption of disconnection (the foundation of positivism) allows these contradicitons to continue. Above all, few of them will even have heard of consupponibility, Collingwood's claim that if you hold more than one assumption it must not contradict any others that you hold.
Naturally, thinkers with a deterministic bent are bothered by contradictions manufactured by modern physics. They have the vague feeling that something is not right, that maybe we could do better. Specialists in science know this well. The frontier in a specialty often is exactly at the point where interpretations are in conflict. Much “ordinary science” is uninteresting because it stimulates little argument. On the contrary, the most important research problems often may be found where discussion turns to argument—where the contradictions are the greatest. Of course, in addition to curiosity, we have the desire to be at peace with our surroundings, to eliminate contradiction and paradox wherever we find it. When we expand this to generalizations about the entire universe, we end up with “The Scientific Worldview.”
This is a blog that takes the name of my magnum opus on scientific philosophy called "The Scientific Worldview." Reviewers have called it “revolutionary,” “exhilarating,” “magnificent,” “fascinating,” and even “a breathtaking synthesis of all understanding.” There is very little math in it, no religion, no politics, no psycho-babble, and no BS. It provides the first outline of the philosophical perspective that will develop during the last half of the Industrial-Social Revolution.
20101111
In Scientists We Trust (Or Not)
All scientists, particularly those with doubts about relativity and the Big Bang Theory, need to read this month’s Atlantic article entitled:
Lies, Damned Lies, and Medical Science
With this subheading:
"Much of what medical researchers conclude in their studies is misleading, exaggerated, or flat-out wrong. So why are doctors—to a striking extent—still drawing upon misinformation in their everyday practice? Dr. John Ioannidis has spent his career challenging his peers by exposing their bad science."
Written by David H. Freedman
Freeman quotes Ioannidis (Yo-NEE-dees) aptly:
“Even when the evidence shows that a particular research idea is wrong, if you have thousands of scientists who have invested their careers in it, they’ll continue to publish papers on it. It’s like an epidemic, in the sense that they’re infected with these wrong ideas, and they’re spreading it to other researchers through journals.”
Sound familiar?
Ioannidis has been extremely successful pointing out the sloppy research that leads to highly touted “miracle drugs” one day and then to FDA recalls and lawsuits decades later. Freedman writes: “Other researchers are eager to work with him: he has published papers with 1,328 different co-authors at 538 institutions in 43 countries, he says. Last year he received, by his estimate, invitations to speak at 1,000 conferences and institutions around the world. “ After all that, Ioannidis still doubts that he has changed the system in any significant way.
I am sure that what Ioannidis documents so well for medicine infects all of science and will continue to do so until funding is no longer based on the “publish or perish” model—don’t hold your breath. Through their representatives recently conservative taxpayers should rightly challenge funding to the sloppiest of the sloppy. Maybe we can get some of our $100 billion/year of our medical research dollars back. While they are at it, let’s hope they can hack off the wasted bucks used for futile attempts to prove Einstein’s ideas that time “dilates” and that “space-time” actually exists.
Click here:
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/11/lies-damned-lies-and-medical-science/8269/
Lies, Damned Lies, and Medical Science
With this subheading:
"Much of what medical researchers conclude in their studies is misleading, exaggerated, or flat-out wrong. So why are doctors—to a striking extent—still drawing upon misinformation in their everyday practice? Dr. John Ioannidis has spent his career challenging his peers by exposing their bad science."
Written by David H. Freedman
Freeman quotes Ioannidis (Yo-NEE-dees) aptly:
“Even when the evidence shows that a particular research idea is wrong, if you have thousands of scientists who have invested their careers in it, they’ll continue to publish papers on it. It’s like an epidemic, in the sense that they’re infected with these wrong ideas, and they’re spreading it to other researchers through journals.”
Sound familiar?
Ioannidis has been extremely successful pointing out the sloppy research that leads to highly touted “miracle drugs” one day and then to FDA recalls and lawsuits decades later. Freedman writes: “Other researchers are eager to work with him: he has published papers with 1,328 different co-authors at 538 institutions in 43 countries, he says. Last year he received, by his estimate, invitations to speak at 1,000 conferences and institutions around the world. “ After all that, Ioannidis still doubts that he has changed the system in any significant way.
I am sure that what Ioannidis documents so well for medicine infects all of science and will continue to do so until funding is no longer based on the “publish or perish” model—don’t hold your breath. Through their representatives recently conservative taxpayers should rightly challenge funding to the sloppiest of the sloppy. Maybe we can get some of our $100 billion/year of our medical research dollars back. While they are at it, let’s hope they can hack off the wasted bucks used for futile attempts to prove Einstein’s ideas that time “dilates” and that “space-time” actually exists.
Click here:
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/11/lies-damned-lies-and-medical-science/8269/
20101103
Defying Logic
Hi Glenn,
Which assumption is one violating if they decide to ignore the rules of disciplined math and science?
Thanks,
Steve
Steve:
Good question. I guess that “the rules of disciplined math and science” are exactly what makes each branch of knowledge a “discipline.” Undisciplined thinkers tend to be “illogical,” that is, their conclusions do not follow from their assumptions. The violated assumption is INTERCONNECTION, which, in this case, demands that there be minimal contradiction between assumptions and conclusions. With its opposite, disconnection, indeterminists are not bothered by contradiction, either because they fail to see it or because they have been accepting great contradictions throughout their lives. Of course, the clearest thinkers carefully state their beginning assumptions and definitions so that their interpretations of data will have minimum contradiction. This tendency is not specific to math and science, as there are many religious folks (e.g., the Templeton Foundation) who seek the same thing. Of course, the Ninth Assumption of Science, RELATIVISM (All things have characteristics that make them similar to all other things as well as characteristics that make them dissimilar to all other things), assures us that the transition from assumption to conclusion is never without at least minor contradiction. How can we ever know that a particular conclusion is warranted from a particular assumption? Only science can answer this question correctly, because it begins with the First Assumption of Science, MATERIALISM, which essentially states that truth is determined through agreement between the internal and external world. Ultimately, this univironmental occurrence is necessary for survival. As an example, a predator, such as the red fox, assumes that the rabbit he is about to catch will be just as tasty as his previous quarry. Reasoning by analogy, he assumes that all rabbits are alike. A successful test of the external world allows him to survive yet another day.
Math and religion have no such requirement. In each case, one can imagine all sorts of things unprovable in the external world. Contradictions appear for the more outlandish ideas only when they confront the external world in spite of themselves. The “logic” of a particular mathematical derivation or religious idea may have little or no contradiction within itself, but may not survive for a second in the external world. Thus, I am not “defying logic” to think that I can walk on water as long as that is where I leave it. I would be “defying logic” only if I tried to test that idea in the external world.
Nonetheless, neither math nor religion can escape the external world once it becomes the property of more than one person. In math, it is the duty of one’s colleagues to point out errors—the annoying but essential disease common among academics. In religion, logical errors regularly are overlooked in order to foster loyalty, which is the far more important evolutionary purpose of religion.
So logic occurs in a particular context replete with contradictions large and small. In any particular logical analysis we always choose the analogies and disparities that we are most familiar with. We tend to ignore “outlier” data that doesn’t fit the dominant trend or what we already know to be true (probably through decades within the discipline). Outlier data derived from the real world always exist because the universe is infinite. We see this in the Second Assumption of Science, CAUSALITY (All effects have an infinite number of material causes) and its cohort, the Third Assumption of Science, UNCERTAINTY (It is impossible to know everything about anything, but it is possible to know more about anything). The “rules of disciplined science,” therefore, never lead directly from assumption to conclusion in the same way they often do in mathematics. The “fuzziness” we encounter in measurements of the real world usually does not exist in math. To do math at all, we must reduce an infinite number of causes to a few that we actually can work with. Thus it is perfectly logical that 1 + 1 = 2. What we are really saying, however, is that the idea of 1 + the idea of 1 is the same as the idea of 2. But what is “1” in reality? Am I “one” person? Well, not quite—I have lost some stuff over the years (hair, teeth, maybe some brain cells). So pardon me if I don’t consider myself a complete “1”. If I am involved, maybe the equation should be 1 + 0.99 = 1.99.
It is clear that the disciplined rules of math, which do not demand an encounter with the external world, have a much better chance of not being violated than those of science, which do. Those who appear to “defy logic” in coming to conclusions in science or religion usually hold erroneous assumptions and/or emphasize the wrong data, as judged by those making that claim.
On the other hand, no one really can “defy logic” in the same way that no one really can have “free will.” This is because the nexus of assumptions used for each conclusion includes many that are subconscious presuppositions, which when included in the analysis, make the operation perfectly logical. This follows from the “Principle of Least Effort,” which states that all microcosms, including humans, will always exhibit the least amount of motion for the univironment. In other words, the object moving under Newton’s First Law of Motion will not increase its velocity on its own. Thus, if you really believe someone is violating the Principle of Least Effort by “defying logic,” then you have not included some of the important microcosmic or macrocosmic causes in your analysis. For instance, you may think that your failure to advance within a corporation is illogical because your qualifications and achievements are vastly superior to those of your office mate. But “qualifications and achievements” are not the only criteria for advancement, especially when your office mate is the boss’s son. If we want to understand the world around us, we must include as many important causes in our univironmental analysis as possible.
Thus the logic that gives us the Big Bang Theory, likewise, is perfect—providing that we are aware of all the ingredients necessary for its production. After all, most folks do not view the BBT as an absurdity. The theory follows from all that went before, including the equally absurd assumptions hidden and not so hidden. So how do we get rid of this insult to intelligence? We do it the same way that we always have: point out its contradictions, often and loudly. I have done my part with TTAOS and TSW, following suggestions of Kuhn and Collingwood that a major paradigm shift cannot occur without a change in fundamental assumptions. Nonetheless, the opposing assumptions are replete throughout society. The decline of their influence and the demise of cosmogony awaits the financial turmoil of the next four decades.
Which assumption is one violating if they decide to ignore the rules of disciplined math and science?
Thanks,
Steve
Steve:
Good question. I guess that “the rules of disciplined math and science” are exactly what makes each branch of knowledge a “discipline.” Undisciplined thinkers tend to be “illogical,” that is, their conclusions do not follow from their assumptions. The violated assumption is INTERCONNECTION, which, in this case, demands that there be minimal contradiction between assumptions and conclusions. With its opposite, disconnection, indeterminists are not bothered by contradiction, either because they fail to see it or because they have been accepting great contradictions throughout their lives. Of course, the clearest thinkers carefully state their beginning assumptions and definitions so that their interpretations of data will have minimum contradiction. This tendency is not specific to math and science, as there are many religious folks (e.g., the Templeton Foundation) who seek the same thing. Of course, the Ninth Assumption of Science, RELATIVISM (All things have characteristics that make them similar to all other things as well as characteristics that make them dissimilar to all other things), assures us that the transition from assumption to conclusion is never without at least minor contradiction. How can we ever know that a particular conclusion is warranted from a particular assumption? Only science can answer this question correctly, because it begins with the First Assumption of Science, MATERIALISM, which essentially states that truth is determined through agreement between the internal and external world. Ultimately, this univironmental occurrence is necessary for survival. As an example, a predator, such as the red fox, assumes that the rabbit he is about to catch will be just as tasty as his previous quarry. Reasoning by analogy, he assumes that all rabbits are alike. A successful test of the external world allows him to survive yet another day.
Math and religion have no such requirement. In each case, one can imagine all sorts of things unprovable in the external world. Contradictions appear for the more outlandish ideas only when they confront the external world in spite of themselves. The “logic” of a particular mathematical derivation or religious idea may have little or no contradiction within itself, but may not survive for a second in the external world. Thus, I am not “defying logic” to think that I can walk on water as long as that is where I leave it. I would be “defying logic” only if I tried to test that idea in the external world.
Nonetheless, neither math nor religion can escape the external world once it becomes the property of more than one person. In math, it is the duty of one’s colleagues to point out errors—the annoying but essential disease common among academics. In religion, logical errors regularly are overlooked in order to foster loyalty, which is the far more important evolutionary purpose of religion.
So logic occurs in a particular context replete with contradictions large and small. In any particular logical analysis we always choose the analogies and disparities that we are most familiar with. We tend to ignore “outlier” data that doesn’t fit the dominant trend or what we already know to be true (probably through decades within the discipline). Outlier data derived from the real world always exist because the universe is infinite. We see this in the Second Assumption of Science, CAUSALITY (All effects have an infinite number of material causes) and its cohort, the Third Assumption of Science, UNCERTAINTY (It is impossible to know everything about anything, but it is possible to know more about anything). The “rules of disciplined science,” therefore, never lead directly from assumption to conclusion in the same way they often do in mathematics. The “fuzziness” we encounter in measurements of the real world usually does not exist in math. To do math at all, we must reduce an infinite number of causes to a few that we actually can work with. Thus it is perfectly logical that 1 + 1 = 2. What we are really saying, however, is that the idea of 1 + the idea of 1 is the same as the idea of 2. But what is “1” in reality? Am I “one” person? Well, not quite—I have lost some stuff over the years (hair, teeth, maybe some brain cells). So pardon me if I don’t consider myself a complete “1”. If I am involved, maybe the equation should be 1 + 0.99 = 1.99.
It is clear that the disciplined rules of math, which do not demand an encounter with the external world, have a much better chance of not being violated than those of science, which do. Those who appear to “defy logic” in coming to conclusions in science or religion usually hold erroneous assumptions and/or emphasize the wrong data, as judged by those making that claim.
On the other hand, no one really can “defy logic” in the same way that no one really can have “free will.” This is because the nexus of assumptions used for each conclusion includes many that are subconscious presuppositions, which when included in the analysis, make the operation perfectly logical. This follows from the “Principle of Least Effort,” which states that all microcosms, including humans, will always exhibit the least amount of motion for the univironment. In other words, the object moving under Newton’s First Law of Motion will not increase its velocity on its own. Thus, if you really believe someone is violating the Principle of Least Effort by “defying logic,” then you have not included some of the important microcosmic or macrocosmic causes in your analysis. For instance, you may think that your failure to advance within a corporation is illogical because your qualifications and achievements are vastly superior to those of your office mate. But “qualifications and achievements” are not the only criteria for advancement, especially when your office mate is the boss’s son. If we want to understand the world around us, we must include as many important causes in our univironmental analysis as possible.
Thus the logic that gives us the Big Bang Theory, likewise, is perfect—providing that we are aware of all the ingredients necessary for its production. After all, most folks do not view the BBT as an absurdity. The theory follows from all that went before, including the equally absurd assumptions hidden and not so hidden. So how do we get rid of this insult to intelligence? We do it the same way that we always have: point out its contradictions, often and loudly. I have done my part with TTAOS and TSW, following suggestions of Kuhn and Collingwood that a major paradigm shift cannot occur without a change in fundamental assumptions. Nonetheless, the opposing assumptions are replete throughout society. The decline of their influence and the demise of cosmogony awaits the financial turmoil of the next four decades.