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So, this post got me thinking about some things I might share with the rest of you
Many are fond of the notion of the ultimate goal of science, and have put forth the idea that science ultimately has all the answers, that scientific truths and knowledge are ultimate truths and knowledge. How positively ..unscientific, in my opinion. In Aristotles time, the goal of science was mans happiness; today it is something different, though it may achieve that in some measure. Science surely doesnt have all the answers, nor will it-ever. In fact, I can make a strong case-philosophically-that science doesnt really have anything more to do with objective reality than religion does-though thats another matter.
Scientists do not discover laws of nature; they invent them. Scientists do not observe nature in the raw; our observations are filtered through layers of subjective impression and social conditioning. Scientific facts about nature are not preexisting truths; they are human constructs, the products of human minds. The models that scientists build to represent what they see in nature are not literal representations of nature, but analogies, metaphors and simulacra: mostly assumptions. One of many things that Aristotle put forth that still holds today is that a true conclusion can result from false assumption. The truth that science discovers is not objective and immutable, it is subjective and socially contingent. That is why, from time to time, there are revolutions in science that overthrow one complete set of assumptions in favor of another, in the way that Galileo and Newton overthrew Aristotle, and Einstein, in turn, overthrew Newton.
Now its Einsteins turn-has been for years, really.
A little background:
Once light and other electromagnetic phenomena were discovered to travel in waves, just like the acoustic phenomena of sound, scientists were confronted with a dilemma. Every wave phenomenon known to science required some medium of propagation, some form of matter through which the wave traveled, but science also knew that light traveled through space, which is a vacuum, and apparently devoid of matter as we know it. They rationally assumed that there had to be some form of matter existing in the vacuum as well as within the pores of other matter like glass or water that acted as the propagation medium for light. This was called the aether lumeniferous, or light bearing stuff. It was an easy enough mistake to make; they were thinking of light as if it were sound.
On that basis, a rather logical chain of reasoning evolved. If youre traveling on a train traveling at x miles per hour, and you walk toward the front of the train at rate n, then your rate is x+n miles per hour. One would subtract walking toward the back of the train. Simple vector addition, something physicists use to measure velocity.
Velocity is not the same as speed; it implies not only how fast but which direction. A vector indicates both- and, thus, true velocity.
Scientists reasoned that if they could split a beam of light, and send part of it traveling in the same direction as the earths rotation and the other part counter to it, they should be able to detect the aether by vector addition. The difference between the two beams, no matter how small, would verify the existence of the aether.
Two American scientists, Michaelson and Moreley designed an experiment to measure the phase shift of light; they were looking for lights Doppler Effect, which would be, in essence, a product of such the anticipated difference. By splitting a beam of light into two parts: one out and reflected back in line with the direction of earths orbit, and he other at right angles to the earths orbit, and recombining the two beams they would be able to detect a shift in the phases of the two beams relative to each other.
Note for now, that the apparatus itself was also traveling along with the earth.
The results: no phase shift was detected, and the speed of light remained the same in both directions. What followed was a paradigm shift in theoretical physics, the effects of which are with us today even in superstring theory, as they are based on theoretical assumptions Einstein made to interpret the experiment.
When the results of the experiment violated expectations dictated by the aether theory, two physicists, Lorentz and Fitzgerald, designed a series of equations known as the Lorentz transforms to bring the test results and the expectation into agreement. What these equations did, in effect, was to say that length shortened, mass flattened and time dilated as a body moved through the aether; hence, it was possible to detect the aether by these means.They were, in effect, one of many, many "fudge factors" that have alwaysexist in physics, chemistry, and astronomy since Ptolemy.
Length shortened, mass flattened, time dilated. Sound familiar?
The transform equations of Lorentz made their way into Einsteins theory of Special Relativity. Einstein interpreted the data of the experiment to mean that the velocity of light was a uniform constant to any observer. With that, the notion of aether was discarded for the single simple reason that it was no longer needed. What was retained in his theory, via the transforms, were the time dilations and length contractions themselves, which were now interpreted to be the result of acceleration of any mass to near light velocity. Moreover, the transforms were essential to Einsteins derivation of E=Mc2.
Einsteins failing was in declaring the velocity of light an observable limit to the velocity of any mass when it should only have been the limit to any observable wave velocity in the aether. The velocity of light is only limited in the field of space where it is being observed. Einsteindidnt remove the notion of aether; he relied upon it and "forgot" that he was doing so-an application of the beloved Ockham's Razor, no doubt. As a result, the velocity of light has been misinterpreted as a constant upper boundary limit on velocity for all masses, rather than as a boundary condition between different types of masses coexisting in the same system.
The error of the Michaelson Moreley experiment-in terms of scientific method-is that it is also valid for the case where there is an aether, and it is moving along with the same relative velocity. Imagine youre on a boat in a whirlpool, with matched velocities: if you put your hand over the side into the water, are you going to detect the motion of the water? No.
A man named Sagnac set up a rotational version of the original experiment in 1925, and the results successfully demonstrated that the velocity of light varied dependent upon direction. Because of Sagnacs experiments, Einstein formulated General Relativity, and put forth the notion that local space-time around rotating large masses curves.
Sagnacs experiment has been duplicated with lasers and more modern measuring equipment as recently as at least 1999.The results are always the same:the velocity of light is not constant.
Einstein, I'm convinced, was wrong about this and a more than a few other things-in this, I am not alone, though there are those who would hold that it's a "fringe" theory, for now.
Galileo and scientists since have held up the mathematical model as the key to the universe, but mathematical models-and their verification-rely upon circular arguments that are a sort of logical fallacy. Galileo knew this and wrote of it.Galileo argued that the mathematical hypothesis explains the phenomenon, and the phenomenon's existence verifies the hypothesis-so the conclusion is always ultimately based on its own premises, and not immutable, natural law at all.
Galileo said, well, here, in reference to his mathematical proof of the moon's influence upon tides:
Of course, we accept that the tides are caused by the moon, but the reality of the math being a map, and proof, does not rule out that at some later date we'll find that the entire thing is incorrect, and that the tides are caused by some other influence altogether, though I won't hold my breath.
Science doesn't always provide answers to underlying causes, or often explains them incorrectly. Moreover, science often draws truthful conclusions from false premises and theories. While you can ask :what are the planets?" and "why do they behave the way they do?" you cannot use anything but a model to support your answers, and any conclusions you draw, as well as experiments that you set up, are subjective in nature, as would be any consensus that a group of scientists might reach might reach.
As an example, I used to work at LANSCE -the Los Alamos Neutron Science Center, where we take protons, accelerate them to near relativistic speeds, and utilize them in various experiments in a variety of fields, as well as to generate neutrons and utilize them. This whole process begins with a bottle of protons-that is, hydrogen gas, which is turned into a plasma and stripped of electrons in a device very much like a high-voltage light bulb called a source. We have an H- source and and H+ source, H- being the more complex of the two. The process of generating H- is aided by cesium, and here's a funny thing: no one can tell you why. Put six or seven PhD. physicists in a room-especially one with alchoholic beverages being served-bring up an H- source and cesiation, and in no time you'll get a lot of "harrrumphing" and hand-waving. We know it aids the process, and we even know how to optimize it, but there is no consensus among the theories as to why it works, or what exactly happens in the source. One of my colleagues says it's "P.F.M.-as in 'pure effin' magic.' Why do you think it's called sourcery?"
As another example, science can tell us fairly conclusively what sorts of music will evoke what sorts of emotions in a listener-it can tell us what sounds good, and what sounds bad, but it can't tell us why, mathematically or otherwise-references to the Golden Mean aside- what constitutes a good melody or bad one, or good harmony or bad one,happy song or sad, should be subjective, but appears to be fairly consistent across cultures, and time, and yet, while science can tell us that this one will evoke so-and-such a response in the brain, it can't tell us why, and may never be able to.
What I really wanted to get to with this thread, is that-from the perspective of the early twenty-first century-it seems clear to me that while much was gained in the unleashing of science, much has been lost as well. For the freedom science offers through theoretical knowledge and material wealth we have paid a heavy price in the loss of spiritual context for existence and in enslavement to the day-to-day exigencies of technology. We have become commodities, shaped and molded form infancy to meet the requirements of an economy run increasingly on the purest of scientistic, materialist principles. Because science has bequeathed to us the unmitigated power to destroy our habitat, we are doing so, rapidly. Aristotle. I think it is safe to say, would have considered the vast majority of us little better than slaves. Socrates ,too, would have thought us sorry specimens, mired in base material obsessions.
Are we happier in our day-to-day lives than our ancestors were in theirs, or merely more comfortable? Are the lives we lead more worthy of respect, or less? Is our world, taken all in all, a better place than theirs was? To what extent are the advances made over the past four hundred years in social and economic justice attributable to science? In what degree have they been made in spite of science, which teaches the social efficacy of natural selection and survival of the fittest ? It is worth pointing out that neither Stephen Hawking or myself would remain alive under the domination of such a scientific paradigm, as well as the fact that the recent cultural artifact of longevity, and other advances in medical science, are not necessarily within the order of things, scientifically speaking. There is a price to be paid for all technological and scientific advances, and all too often, man has not considered the cost. Case in point: the internal combustion engine, which has increased mans mobility and productivity, while also creating a need for an infrastructure to support it, pollution, death and mutilation on a truly tragic scale. When you accept a technology, you also accept its ancillaries, and it is usually the ancillaries which cause damage.
Todays science has come to a point where it insists on three things:
First, that everything that goes on can be accounted for by matter and motion.
Second, that reality consists of mathematics , numbers and formulae. Which is really a way of saying that reality is made of human invention, yes?
Lastly, and most importantly, science acknowledges a reality beyond mathematical formulae, ever since the Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum physics, of 1920, which basically is the gold standard, the orthodox dogma of modern physics, which says that quanta, the subatomic entities that make up the world, are nothing more than thickenings or concentrations in a universal electromagnetic field. Quanta have the peculiar characteristic of occurring in something called probability waves until theyre observed by a conscious observer. When that happens, the wave collapses and the quanta either exists or does not.
The observer, however, is also made of quanta, so he must also be observed before any observing can, be done, or he does not exist -to use a solipsism, but within orthodox doctrine-in other words, scientific law
But thats beside the point-the point being that science has a huge, unresolved problem that it sweeps under the rug because the model works fine on a practical, day-to-day instrumental level without having to solve it. Somewhere, there must be an ultimate observer for all this to exist. Theres no way out of it, scientifically speaking. Science says that all things can be known through matter and motion, and yet, Heisenbergs Uncertainty Principle tells us-in no uncertain terms, that you cannot observe matter and motion (Mass and momentum, speed and position, call it what you will) at the same time.
Science has declared, for more than 80 years now, that it is incapable of knowing ultimate reality.
Science cannot tell us what is right. We cannot know what right and wrong are from simple observation and data collection, nor from mathematical formulae. Wherever and however we attain this knowledge or belief, it isnt from science, though science may help to prove how we are hardwired for it-right and wrong are universal concepts with gradations that fit within various social frameworks.
Many are fond of the notion of the ultimate goal of science, and have put forth the idea that science ultimately has all the answers, that scientific truths and knowledge are ultimate truths and knowledge. How positively ..unscientific, in my opinion. In Aristotles time, the goal of science was mans happiness; today it is something different, though it may achieve that in some measure. Science surely doesnt have all the answers, nor will it-ever. In fact, I can make a strong case-philosophically-that science doesnt really have anything more to do with objective reality than religion does-though thats another matter.
Scientists do not discover laws of nature; they invent them. Scientists do not observe nature in the raw; our observations are filtered through layers of subjective impression and social conditioning. Scientific facts about nature are not preexisting truths; they are human constructs, the products of human minds. The models that scientists build to represent what they see in nature are not literal representations of nature, but analogies, metaphors and simulacra: mostly assumptions. One of many things that Aristotle put forth that still holds today is that a true conclusion can result from false assumption. The truth that science discovers is not objective and immutable, it is subjective and socially contingent. That is why, from time to time, there are revolutions in science that overthrow one complete set of assumptions in favor of another, in the way that Galileo and Newton overthrew Aristotle, and Einstein, in turn, overthrew Newton.
Now its Einsteins turn-has been for years, really.
A little background:
Once light and other electromagnetic phenomena were discovered to travel in waves, just like the acoustic phenomena of sound, scientists were confronted with a dilemma. Every wave phenomenon known to science required some medium of propagation, some form of matter through which the wave traveled, but science also knew that light traveled through space, which is a vacuum, and apparently devoid of matter as we know it. They rationally assumed that there had to be some form of matter existing in the vacuum as well as within the pores of other matter like glass or water that acted as the propagation medium for light. This was called the aether lumeniferous, or light bearing stuff. It was an easy enough mistake to make; they were thinking of light as if it were sound.
On that basis, a rather logical chain of reasoning evolved. If youre traveling on a train traveling at x miles per hour, and you walk toward the front of the train at rate n, then your rate is x+n miles per hour. One would subtract walking toward the back of the train. Simple vector addition, something physicists use to measure velocity.
Velocity is not the same as speed; it implies not only how fast but which direction. A vector indicates both- and, thus, true velocity.
Scientists reasoned that if they could split a beam of light, and send part of it traveling in the same direction as the earths rotation and the other part counter to it, they should be able to detect the aether by vector addition. The difference between the two beams, no matter how small, would verify the existence of the aether.
Two American scientists, Michaelson and Moreley designed an experiment to measure the phase shift of light; they were looking for lights Doppler Effect, which would be, in essence, a product of such the anticipated difference. By splitting a beam of light into two parts: one out and reflected back in line with the direction of earths orbit, and he other at right angles to the earths orbit, and recombining the two beams they would be able to detect a shift in the phases of the two beams relative to each other.
Note for now, that the apparatus itself was also traveling along with the earth.
The results: no phase shift was detected, and the speed of light remained the same in both directions. What followed was a paradigm shift in theoretical physics, the effects of which are with us today even in superstring theory, as they are based on theoretical assumptions Einstein made to interpret the experiment.
When the results of the experiment violated expectations dictated by the aether theory, two physicists, Lorentz and Fitzgerald, designed a series of equations known as the Lorentz transforms to bring the test results and the expectation into agreement. What these equations did, in effect, was to say that length shortened, mass flattened and time dilated as a body moved through the aether; hence, it was possible to detect the aether by these means.They were, in effect, one of many, many "fudge factors" that have alwaysexist in physics, chemistry, and astronomy since Ptolemy.
Length shortened, mass flattened, time dilated. Sound familiar?
The transform equations of Lorentz made their way into Einsteins theory of Special Relativity. Einstein interpreted the data of the experiment to mean that the velocity of light was a uniform constant to any observer. With that, the notion of aether was discarded for the single simple reason that it was no longer needed. What was retained in his theory, via the transforms, were the time dilations and length contractions themselves, which were now interpreted to be the result of acceleration of any mass to near light velocity. Moreover, the transforms were essential to Einsteins derivation of E=Mc2.
Einsteins failing was in declaring the velocity of light an observable limit to the velocity of any mass when it should only have been the limit to any observable wave velocity in the aether. The velocity of light is only limited in the field of space where it is being observed. Einsteindidnt remove the notion of aether; he relied upon it and "forgot" that he was doing so-an application of the beloved Ockham's Razor, no doubt. As a result, the velocity of light has been misinterpreted as a constant upper boundary limit on velocity for all masses, rather than as a boundary condition between different types of masses coexisting in the same system.
The error of the Michaelson Moreley experiment-in terms of scientific method-is that it is also valid for the case where there is an aether, and it is moving along with the same relative velocity. Imagine youre on a boat in a whirlpool, with matched velocities: if you put your hand over the side into the water, are you going to detect the motion of the water? No.
A man named Sagnac set up a rotational version of the original experiment in 1925, and the results successfully demonstrated that the velocity of light varied dependent upon direction. Because of Sagnacs experiments, Einstein formulated General Relativity, and put forth the notion that local space-time around rotating large masses curves.
Sagnacs experiment has been duplicated with lasers and more modern measuring equipment as recently as at least 1999.The results are always the same:the velocity of light is not constant.
Einstein, I'm convinced, was wrong about this and a more than a few other things-in this, I am not alone, though there are those who would hold that it's a "fringe" theory, for now.
Galileo and scientists since have held up the mathematical model as the key to the universe, but mathematical models-and their verification-rely upon circular arguments that are a sort of logical fallacy. Galileo knew this and wrote of it.Galileo argued that the mathematical hypothesis explains the phenomenon, and the phenomenon's existence verifies the hypothesis-so the conclusion is always ultimately based on its own premises, and not immutable, natural law at all.
Galileo said, well, here, in reference to his mathematical proof of the moon's influence upon tides:
Of course, we accept that the tides are caused by the moon, but the reality of the math being a map, and proof, does not rule out that at some later date we'll find that the entire thing is incorrect, and that the tides are caused by some other influence altogether, though I won't hold my breath.
Science doesn't always provide answers to underlying causes, or often explains them incorrectly. Moreover, science often draws truthful conclusions from false premises and theories. While you can ask :what are the planets?" and "why do they behave the way they do?" you cannot use anything but a model to support your answers, and any conclusions you draw, as well as experiments that you set up, are subjective in nature, as would be any consensus that a group of scientists might reach might reach.
As an example, I used to work at LANSCE -the Los Alamos Neutron Science Center, where we take protons, accelerate them to near relativistic speeds, and utilize them in various experiments in a variety of fields, as well as to generate neutrons and utilize them. This whole process begins with a bottle of protons-that is, hydrogen gas, which is turned into a plasma and stripped of electrons in a device very much like a high-voltage light bulb called a source. We have an H- source and and H+ source, H- being the more complex of the two. The process of generating H- is aided by cesium, and here's a funny thing: no one can tell you why. Put six or seven PhD. physicists in a room-especially one with alchoholic beverages being served-bring up an H- source and cesiation, and in no time you'll get a lot of "harrrumphing" and hand-waving. We know it aids the process, and we even know how to optimize it, but there is no consensus among the theories as to why it works, or what exactly happens in the source. One of my colleagues says it's "P.F.M.-as in 'pure effin' magic.' Why do you think it's called sourcery?"
As another example, science can tell us fairly conclusively what sorts of music will evoke what sorts of emotions in a listener-it can tell us what sounds good, and what sounds bad, but it can't tell us why, mathematically or otherwise-references to the Golden Mean aside- what constitutes a good melody or bad one, or good harmony or bad one,happy song or sad, should be subjective, but appears to be fairly consistent across cultures, and time, and yet, while science can tell us that this one will evoke so-and-such a response in the brain, it can't tell us why, and may never be able to.
What I really wanted to get to with this thread, is that-from the perspective of the early twenty-first century-it seems clear to me that while much was gained in the unleashing of science, much has been lost as well. For the freedom science offers through theoretical knowledge and material wealth we have paid a heavy price in the loss of spiritual context for existence and in enslavement to the day-to-day exigencies of technology. We have become commodities, shaped and molded form infancy to meet the requirements of an economy run increasingly on the purest of scientistic, materialist principles. Because science has bequeathed to us the unmitigated power to destroy our habitat, we are doing so, rapidly. Aristotle. I think it is safe to say, would have considered the vast majority of us little better than slaves. Socrates ,too, would have thought us sorry specimens, mired in base material obsessions.
Are we happier in our day-to-day lives than our ancestors were in theirs, or merely more comfortable? Are the lives we lead more worthy of respect, or less? Is our world, taken all in all, a better place than theirs was? To what extent are the advances made over the past four hundred years in social and economic justice attributable to science? In what degree have they been made in spite of science, which teaches the social efficacy of natural selection and survival of the fittest ? It is worth pointing out that neither Stephen Hawking or myself would remain alive under the domination of such a scientific paradigm, as well as the fact that the recent cultural artifact of longevity, and other advances in medical science, are not necessarily within the order of things, scientifically speaking. There is a price to be paid for all technological and scientific advances, and all too often, man has not considered the cost. Case in point: the internal combustion engine, which has increased mans mobility and productivity, while also creating a need for an infrastructure to support it, pollution, death and mutilation on a truly tragic scale. When you accept a technology, you also accept its ancillaries, and it is usually the ancillaries which cause damage.
Todays science has come to a point where it insists on three things:
First, that everything that goes on can be accounted for by matter and motion.
Second, that reality consists of mathematics , numbers and formulae. Which is really a way of saying that reality is made of human invention, yes?
Lastly, and most importantly, science acknowledges a reality beyond mathematical formulae, ever since the Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum physics, of 1920, which basically is the gold standard, the orthodox dogma of modern physics, which says that quanta, the subatomic entities that make up the world, are nothing more than thickenings or concentrations in a universal electromagnetic field. Quanta have the peculiar characteristic of occurring in something called probability waves until theyre observed by a conscious observer. When that happens, the wave collapses and the quanta either exists or does not.
The observer, however, is also made of quanta, so he must also be observed before any observing can, be done, or he does not exist -to use a solipsism, but within orthodox doctrine-in other words, scientific law
But thats beside the point-the point being that science has a huge, unresolved problem that it sweeps under the rug because the model works fine on a practical, day-to-day instrumental level without having to solve it. Somewhere, there must be an ultimate observer for all this to exist. Theres no way out of it, scientifically speaking. Science says that all things can be known through matter and motion, and yet, Heisenbergs Uncertainty Principle tells us-in no uncertain terms, that you cannot observe matter and motion (Mass and momentum, speed and position, call it what you will) at the same time.
Science has declared, for more than 80 years now, that it is incapable of knowing ultimate reality.
Science cannot tell us what is right. We cannot know what right and wrong are from simple observation and data collection, nor from mathematical formulae. Wherever and however we attain this knowledge or belief, it isnt from science, though science may help to prove how we are hardwired for it-right and wrong are universal concepts with gradations that fit within various social frameworks.
j/k A truly interesting read. You make some very profound points.
