Kevin's Watch

peter wrote: idea that it was the 'predictive value' of the models that was important rather than their exact correspondance to reality.

Yea, that's it. Also includes that there is no such thing as "pure" science. All science is applied science...and theories shouldn't be classed as more or less "true" than each other, because "truth" doesn't apply to theories, only to function in the system. Only the observable can be evaluated as true, all theories have non-observable elements, therefore can't be called true.

Kinda like 1+1=2 and trying to say the plus sign is "true." I'm not sure how good that analogy is, but I think it's fairly accurate at least metaphorically.

Most of the criticism IIRC is variations on the idea that the line between observable and theoretical is not clean, precise, hard [and maybe not real...a bit of a suggestion that the two are on the same continuum]
That's pretty much the limit of what I recall about it...except that Popper didn't like it at all.

As for the story, it really requires voice and body language to tell effectively. But it starts with painting a theater concept, ends with a second stop and frisk from the cops, and in between, among other things, a 10mile urban hike to UCLA to try and talk with an astronomy professor.

aliantha wrote:You guys do realize that some of us check the Watch first thing in the morning when our eyes are barely open and we haven't had any coffee yet, right?

+1

Vraith wrote:As for the story, it really requires voice and body language to tell effectively. But it starts with painting a theater concept, ends with a second stop and frisk from the cops, and in between, among other things, a 10mile urban hike to UCLA to try and talk with an astronomy professor.

It sounds like a scene that could have happened to me at various stages in my university career - exept none of my professors would be seen dead talking to me (it has to be said that my academic career was both short and sorry though I did wangle a couple of degrees out of it in the end).

re the earlier point I think Deutsch has fairly serious reservations about the role of observation as well - he certainly is adament that empiricism is dead in the water as a theory as to how scientific progress is achieved, arguing that conjecture always preceeds observation in the process of knowledge acrual. It's almost as if the words 'truth' and 'reality' are becoming impediments in our understanding of 'how the world really works' in that they carry such a 'baggage' of underlying meaning that can never be shorn from them when we try to use them objectively (though in fairness the 'language' of mathematics of which I am woefully ignorent probably allows much less 'latitude' in it's definition of these concepts and so perhaps these problems are only encountered when such ideas are attempted to be expressed in linguistic form).

Hahahaha, neither of them really exist, as I've been saying for years.

--A

We seem to have reached a point where the only thing that can be said to truly exist is the Higgs Boson - and that only on Monday's, Tuesday's and Fridays.

And even that I wouldn't be too sure of.

--A

Just now reading a book on the 1932 Copenhagen conference between Nils Bhor et al where the detail of the 'Copenhagen Interpretation' of quantum mechanics was thrashed out and the question struck me:-

Does the mathematics of the multitude of different interpretations of the theory differ to the point where the adoption of one interpretation over another is going to effect the future development of the theory, or is it in a sense 'all the same'. ie Even if the theory is viewed purely as a predictive instrument (thus with no interpretation necessary) it's development can still proceed apace without differing markedly from that which would be developed by an adherent to any one of the other interpretations. If this is indeed the case is it not the most rational position to adopt in that much uneccesary 'navel gazing' can be avoided.

That, I cannot answer. I've avoided the mathematics of the theory entirely. I'm sorta more interested in the meta-physics of it as it were.

Bohr holds a special place in my heart though, for telling somebody;

"We are all agreed that your theory is crazy. The question that divides us is whether it is crazy enough to have a chance of being correct."



--A

The book 'Faust in Copenhagen' by Gino Segra may be one to keep your eye out for Avatar. It's not so much an exposition into the Theory (though of course this comes into it) as a history of the people (Bohr in particular), the meeting and crucially the time (the rise of Nazism, anti-semitism etc [which given the Jewish background of many of them was a major personal situation]).

I am staggered by the achievements of Goethe in particular (the Scientists put on a skit each year for fun and in 32 it was Faust) - was there anything this man could not do? The book is eclectic in it's feild of vision but is giving me a pretty good insight into the development of QM from it's inception by Planc to the time of the Copenhagen interpretation, and seems to be teaching me what questions I should be asking about it.

Thanks for the recommendation. I'll keep an eye out for it.

--A