The title is Nancy Cartwright’s, from her book of the same name, and from an article which forms Chapter 3, “Do the Laws of Physics State the Facts?” No, she says, and we agree.
If only our august “climate change” scientists (and Al Gore, et Al.) realized the truth of this and appreciated how small their understanding is in the face of the Earth’s climate complexity.
Ain’t the terms we converge on—as well as language more broadly—itself the model reified? 2nd-order as it were 😉 There’s no escape from deadly embrace of this deadly sin; doomed are we to eternal wandering, blindly tripping over / bouncing from reality constraints 🤦
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PS For 'tis no good to leave the mind in dire mood ↓↓ 😊
🗨 I am sure that Adam ate the apple just to stop Eve from making a scene in front of all of Paradise. ~~Itxu Díaz
"All things being equal" versus "the whole is greater than the sum of its parts" captures well the moral calculus underlying the relentless, tragic battle between hubris and wisdom.
Some more confusion with what words mean in their different dispensations, this time description vs explanation 🙂
🗨 Newtonian physics did not truly explain the phenomena with which it dealt, but carried the day because it described them so well. We have a highly abstract mathematical description of nature that tells us very little about its intrinsic nature.
Well, one can’t be an “expert” if a layman can understand the complexity. Arcane language is the currency of “experts” in all fields. Just try reading a state statute or even a local ordinance, they may as well be written in Attic Greek.
Also true that all organised religions function this way, too. And that their idea of "being converted" is learning their theological dogmas, their peculiar jargon, and regurgitating it on demand.
This article should be printed and massively distributed, and should even be made to be read by force (I'm thinking of something along the lines of that scene of the TV's in A Clockwork Orange) to all scientists, and especially to all science teachers.
The confusion of fundamental notions such as reality vs. mental vapors is a tragedy of cataclysmic proportions.
This book is very "Nietzschean". Nietzsche had claimed that "the truth" about the "universe" simply wasn't available to us, and so his "perspectivism" wasn't so much "philosophical relativism", but rather just an honest admission about the limits of our "knowledge" (i.e. "know-the-ledge")
I must have something wrong with me. I have never thought of equations that describe physical phenomena (for example - Newtonian gravitation) as "laws", for the simple reason that they are easily falsifiable (or unreliable) in complex systems. To me they were always no more than useful approximations, if and only if the effects of other factors could be manipulated to be small enough to be ignored. If we don't like referring to them as "laws" because they are approximations, can we at least admit that these things have, to some useful level of accuracy, helped to make some damned complex systems real, like Hoover Dams and passenger aircraft. If we want to go on a philosophical binge for the sake of reinventing physics and natural philosophy, I'm all for it and wait, all agog, in anticipation. Just let's please not make a big deal of "laws" being wrong to justify where we want to go with this, lest our "new laws" also turn out to be merely useful approximations.
Having said all that, thank you sir Briggs for bringing this to our attention.
A good example, I think. Our problems often arise when we assume too much. Simple established formulas, like the referenced gravitational effect, can yield a good deal of useful information. They only become dangerous when we assume predictive value that doesn’t exist.
Sometimes I have trouble believing that there can be things as complex as a Boeing 777 and no one really knows why it just moves up there in the sky, and it takes off and it lands and all the works; and yet they know that, since it is real, it follows that laws of nature they don't understand must be true, and you can never be completely sure of anything, and you definitely need more quacksines or else people will think poorly of you.
RE: gravitation, and other forces, I think your framing is wrong here. Regardless of what else is going on in the system, gravitation does happen. There's no "ifs" involved in whether the two masses are attracted to each other in proportion to their values and the distance between them. The force applied doesn't change.
The "if" appears in *what will observably happen*. Will they move? Where to? How quickly? Will you see it? That depends on the other factors in play. Other circumstances might cancel it out, or render the effect unobservable to you. But, at least theoretically, if you can account for all the other forces, gravitation will fall out of the sum of their effects.
You can say, "well maybe that's not true, maybe sometimes gravitation just doesn't happen in the first place, and we just assume it does because every time we've tried to measure it, it was there."
Ok, I'm down with that, but now we need to design an experiment that can show that gravity isn't there if we don't look for it. Which sounds like fun, but is probably difficult.
**" “Laws” are not forces: things have causal powers. "**
I'll go further and say that no thing has causal powers. What we call laws are indeed observations of how things behave, but things cannot cause any thing. "The flesh profits nothing, only the spirit makes things move."
This is Paul's inspiration for Newton's observation that no thing moves unless it is acted upon.
But matter moving matter breaks this law. Falsifies this observation, if you will.
It's not your neurons that think. It's not your neurons that originate urges to move your body; make your heart beat, pick up that beer, hammer that keyboard in howling monkey frustration at what you're reading.
It's your spirit.
The flesh, the material, the stuff, the things; these are merely the medium by which your spirit interacts with other things that are not your body, and thus reveals itself and your character.
"Wherefore by their fruits shall ye know them."
The laws of physics are observations of how the spirit of God orders all matter - from the greatest galactic supercluster to the smallest sub-atomic particle.
The constancy, the universality, the exacting rigor of these laws, are testament to His nature and character.
Our spirits are restricted in our power over things, as a practical matter of our own protection. God's spirit is not, hence "miracles"; God ordering things to behave as He requires, in keeping with that single universal underlying law, the Christian Grand Unifying Theory of Everything, i.e. Love.
Love is not a law as we understand that term. Like the Recycling Operations Manager says to Neo: Love is a word. What matters is the connection the word implies.
Science, as an attempt to discover the truth, cannot even or ever see this truth, having been self-blinded by its naturalist presumptions. Again, exactly as prophesied, "for this they are wilfully ignorant of ..."
I grok; this is somewhat tangential to the intent of your column, and for that I apologise.
It's also ultimately fundamental and thoroughly pertinent.
This is not to say there's no value in observing these constancies and describing them mathematically. No. Again, as the Word testifies, God has put it in our hearts to know the truth of things.
We are indeed, by studying His things, learning about Him who is all truth. We are, as a wiser scientist than most observed, thinking His thoughts after Him.
“I consider it quite possible that physics cannot be based on the field concept, i.e., continuous structures. In that case, nothing remains of my entire castle in the air, gravitation theory included, [and of] the rest of modern physics.” — Albert Einstein in a letter to his friend Besso, from Subtle is the Lord by Abraham Pais.
Newton's Universal Theory of Gravity has lots of holes in it.
I am amazed that you think anyone would want to read that (the linked book by Nancy Cartwright. Dude. People do NOT read stuff like that. However, since I just did for three minutes, I can tell you she does not seem like a big deal to me. Very Um..... "specialist" stuff. You are writing for some particular audience? Because we do not like to read that stuff. I see her as a troublemaker, trying to drum something up. If the theories are good, they are good. Leave others the fu*k alone.
Possibly it is a good book. I don't know, I just felt kind of insulted that "Mr. Science is Not the Answer" expected me to read it. It is an extremely specialized sort of book, isn't it? What is that the academic world? But as for what you are quoting there that does sound like something worthwhile --- like she has captured an insight. Like saying: "society will respond to events, whether thinking it through or not doing so" Whether we do the math or not, it comes out the same way
If only our august “climate change” scientists (and Al Gore, et Al.) realized the truth of this and appreciated how small their understanding is in the face of the Earth’s climate complexity.
Ain’t the terms we converge on—as well as language more broadly—itself the model reified? 2nd-order as it were 😉 There’s no escape from deadly embrace of this deadly sin; doomed are we to eternal wandering, blindly tripping over / bouncing from reality constraints 🤦
--
PS For 'tis no good to leave the mind in dire mood ↓↓ 😊
🗨 I am sure that Adam ate the apple just to stop Eve from making a scene in front of all of Paradise. ~~Itxu Díaz
Reminds me of my Freshman Physics class — to calculate the motion of an object, first assume no friction which we all dutifully did!!
"All things being equal" versus "the whole is greater than the sum of its parts" captures well the moral calculus underlying the relentless, tragic battle between hubris and wisdom.
Some more confusion with what words mean in their different dispensations, this time description vs explanation 🙂
🗨 Newtonian physics did not truly explain the phenomena with which it dealt, but carried the day because it described them so well. We have a highly abstract mathematical description of nature that tells us very little about its intrinsic nature.
Well, one can’t be an “expert” if a layman can understand the complexity. Arcane language is the currency of “experts” in all fields. Just try reading a state statute or even a local ordinance, they may as well be written in Attic Greek.
Oh, one sure *has* to differentiate from 'ems unenlightened despicable deplorables! 🤸
Sadly true.
Also true that all organised religions function this way, too. And that their idea of "being converted" is learning their theological dogmas, their peculiar jargon, and regurgitating it on demand.
This article should be printed and massively distributed, and should even be made to be read by force (I'm thinking of something along the lines of that scene of the TV's in A Clockwork Orange) to all scientists, and especially to all science teachers.
The confusion of fundamental notions such as reality vs. mental vapors is a tragedy of cataclysmic proportions.
Thank you
'By force' is never the answer 😏
Thanks, Carlitos.
This book is very "Nietzschean". Nietzsche had claimed that "the truth" about the "universe" simply wasn't available to us, and so his "perspectivism" wasn't so much "philosophical relativism", but rather just an honest admission about the limits of our "knowledge" (i.e. "know-the-ledge")
I must have something wrong with me. I have never thought of equations that describe physical phenomena (for example - Newtonian gravitation) as "laws", for the simple reason that they are easily falsifiable (or unreliable) in complex systems. To me they were always no more than useful approximations, if and only if the effects of other factors could be manipulated to be small enough to be ignored. If we don't like referring to them as "laws" because they are approximations, can we at least admit that these things have, to some useful level of accuracy, helped to make some damned complex systems real, like Hoover Dams and passenger aircraft. If we want to go on a philosophical binge for the sake of reinventing physics and natural philosophy, I'm all for it and wait, all agog, in anticipation. Just let's please not make a big deal of "laws" being wrong to justify where we want to go with this, lest our "new laws" also turn out to be merely useful approximations.
Having said all that, thank you sir Briggs for bringing this to our attention.
A good example, I think. Our problems often arise when we assume too much. Simple established formulas, like the referenced gravitational effect, can yield a good deal of useful information. They only become dangerous when we assume predictive value that doesn’t exist.
Sometimes I have trouble believing that there can be things as complex as a Boeing 777 and no one really knows why it just moves up there in the sky, and it takes off and it lands and all the works; and yet they know that, since it is real, it follows that laws of nature they don't understand must be true, and you can never be completely sure of anything, and you definitely need more quacksines or else people will think poorly of you.
RE: gravitation, and other forces, I think your framing is wrong here. Regardless of what else is going on in the system, gravitation does happen. There's no "ifs" involved in whether the two masses are attracted to each other in proportion to their values and the distance between them. The force applied doesn't change.
The "if" appears in *what will observably happen*. Will they move? Where to? How quickly? Will you see it? That depends on the other factors in play. Other circumstances might cancel it out, or render the effect unobservable to you. But, at least theoretically, if you can account for all the other forces, gravitation will fall out of the sum of their effects.
You can say, "well maybe that's not true, maybe sometimes gravitation just doesn't happen in the first place, and we just assume it does because every time we've tried to measure it, it was there."
Ok, I'm down with that, but now we need to design an experiment that can show that gravity isn't there if we don't look for it. Which sounds like fun, but is probably difficult.
**" “Laws” are not forces: things have causal powers. "**
I'll go further and say that no thing has causal powers. What we call laws are indeed observations of how things behave, but things cannot cause any thing. "The flesh profits nothing, only the spirit makes things move."
This is Paul's inspiration for Newton's observation that no thing moves unless it is acted upon.
But matter moving matter breaks this law. Falsifies this observation, if you will.
It's not your neurons that think. It's not your neurons that originate urges to move your body; make your heart beat, pick up that beer, hammer that keyboard in howling monkey frustration at what you're reading.
It's your spirit.
The flesh, the material, the stuff, the things; these are merely the medium by which your spirit interacts with other things that are not your body, and thus reveals itself and your character.
"Wherefore by their fruits shall ye know them."
The laws of physics are observations of how the spirit of God orders all matter - from the greatest galactic supercluster to the smallest sub-atomic particle.
The constancy, the universality, the exacting rigor of these laws, are testament to His nature and character.
Our spirits are restricted in our power over things, as a practical matter of our own protection. God's spirit is not, hence "miracles"; God ordering things to behave as He requires, in keeping with that single universal underlying law, the Christian Grand Unifying Theory of Everything, i.e. Love.
Love is not a law as we understand that term. Like the Recycling Operations Manager says to Neo: Love is a word. What matters is the connection the word implies.
Science, as an attempt to discover the truth, cannot even or ever see this truth, having been self-blinded by its naturalist presumptions. Again, exactly as prophesied, "for this they are wilfully ignorant of ..."
I grok; this is somewhat tangential to the intent of your column, and for that I apologise.
It's also ultimately fundamental and thoroughly pertinent.
This is not to say there's no value in observing these constancies and describing them mathematically. No. Again, as the Word testifies, God has put it in our hearts to know the truth of things.
We are indeed, by studying His things, learning about Him who is all truth. We are, as a wiser scientist than most observed, thinking His thoughts after Him.
This is right, and good, and beautiful, and true.
“I consider it quite possible that physics cannot be based on the field concept, i.e., continuous structures. In that case, nothing remains of my entire castle in the air, gravitation theory included, [and of] the rest of modern physics.” — Albert Einstein in a letter to his friend Besso, from Subtle is the Lord by Abraham Pais.
Newton's Universal Theory of Gravity has lots of holes in it.
https://ifers.forumotion.com/t353-mathematically-debunking-gravity-a-critique-of-newtons-laws
I am amazed that you think anyone would want to read that (the linked book by Nancy Cartwright. Dude. People do NOT read stuff like that. However, since I just did for three minutes, I can tell you she does not seem like a big deal to me. Very Um..... "specialist" stuff. You are writing for some particular audience? Because we do not like to read that stuff. I see her as a troublemaker, trying to drum something up. If the theories are good, they are good. Leave others the fu*k alone.
Possibly it is a good book. I don't know, I just felt kind of insulted that "Mr. Science is Not the Answer" expected me to read it. It is an extremely specialized sort of book, isn't it? What is that the academic world? But as for what you are quoting there that does sound like something worthwhile --- like she has captured an insight. Like saying: "society will respond to events, whether thinking it through or not doing so" Whether we do the math or not, it comes out the same way
Yes. Don't read it. It would do you no good.