Einstein's mistakes, or what's science for, anyway??

[tradrockrat]

sci·ence
n.

1. 1. The observation, identification, description, experimental investigation, and theoretical explanation of phenomena.
   2. Such activities restricted to a class of natural phenomena.
   3. Such activities applied to an object of inquiry or study.

So science is about the attempted explanation of natural law, it has never been about dogma, though that frequently happens through the agency of pride and ego on the part of the scientific community - consider the years wasted in string theory because scientits insisted there were only 10 dimensions (leading to five different string theory's) instead of the important unifying 11th dimension.

Science is fallible? No, scientists are fallible - science is just a tool, wholly dependent on the user for its usefulness and accuracy.

The whole idea is to canstantly refine and replace what we know now with a better more comprehensive explanation. I believe the point of the origional post was a valid one, but overturning Einstien with imperfect understanding of where science has gone since his death is relatively silly - pun intended. That the speed of light isn't constant has been accepted as scientifically valid long enough to make it into high school science textbooks. Einstien has been attackable since the birth of quantum mechanics - it doesn't change the fact that his theorys are the bedrock of a great amount of current scientific thinking, but remember - his (most important) papers were published in 1905. We've had a hundred years to change, adapt and rework his theories - and we have.

What I'd like to adress is the question raised of esthetics in science - is it good in and of itself? Does increase our quality of life?

Read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintanance for a great take on this very question.

My opinion is that scientific advancment is completly neutral - neither good nor bad - but universally useful. It's up to us to make life worth living, to make our lives "Quality". Again, science is just s tool, as martial artists we should be more aware than most how ugly or beautiful a tool and it's use can be. There's a reason we strive to perfect forms and techniques - it's the art in what could otherwise be an ugly use of tools - fighting..

 

[elder999]

Einstein, I'm convinced, was wrong about thisand 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.

Yes, and if you reapply the correct emphasis on what I said, I'll still stand by it-don't think the man was wrong about everything, but he made mistakes, and they are becoming more apparent every day, as his model-and even the model of quantum mechanics-is supplanted

 

[Kacey]

I'm going to go back to these questions, as the physics is somewhat beyond me, and it seemed that this is what you really wanted answers to.

Are we happier in our day-to-day lives than our ancestors were in theirs, or merely more comfortable?

To an extent, I would say that our ancestors were happier - they did what they needed to do to survive, and could see a clear correspondence between what they did and what they got. Certainly, catastrophes happened that were outside their control - but look at many jobs today, as ask if those people see a correspondence between what they do and the ultimate outcome of their efforts... but this is a very subjective statement. And then there is the question of more comfortable... also a very subjective statement. For either of this, how would you measure it? Lifespan? But wait... my grandfather is 96, wears a diaper, can't walk, can't hear or see very well, takes umpteen medications - is that life? Or existence? To hear him tell it, his on-going existence (which is what he considers it to be, most of the time) is all the fault of a dog he had for 18 years, because he and the dog walked several miles a day for the dog's entire life... the fact that the dog has been dead for over 25 years notwithstanding in his argument. Material possessions? Uh... given the 3 hours I spent last night trying to fix my router connection so my internet would work right... instead of doing other, more pleasant things. And so on... very subjective.

Are the lives we lead more worthy of respect, or less?

This is, I think, much less related to how we live than when... and again, is very subjective.

Is our world, taken all in all, a better place than theirs was?

No, I really don't. Is it worse? That's hard to say... but certainly, the planet itself is not better off for our last several hundred years of tenancy - especially when compared to how the planet was faring more than several thousand years ago.

To what extent are the advances made over the past four hundred years in social and economic justice attributable to science?

I think that too many of those "advances" are responses to science - some good, some bad, some indifferent. The justice system comes to mind - take that any way you want.

In what degree have they been made in spite of science, which teaches the social efficacy of natural selection and survival of the fittest ?

Survival of the fittest has been losing ground for decades, perhaps longer, as medicine improves it's ability to maintain life in those who would have died in earlier times - premature infants, children with severe birth defects, people incapable of supporting themselves physically, emotionally, etc. in prior times, who are now supported by the state. The problem comes not when those people survive - but when they procreate, which they are doing in greater and greater numbers. But for the good of the species (as opposed to the good of the individual) where do you draw the line? At severe retardation? At severe physical incapacity? What about glasses? What about people who are at the top of the spectrum and choose to have few or no children, as opposed to those at the bottom, who often have more? And who decides what "fittest" really means?

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 man’s 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.

The statement in bold is all too true - and again, goes back to the question of what it means to be "fittest to survive". I don't have an answer - nor do I think that society as a whole has one either - but it is a vital question that needs to be worked on for the continuing future of the species.

 

[Ray]

Not exactly. Heisenberg's uncertainty principle tells us that the more accurately we try to measure one variable (mass/momentum) the less certain we can be of another one. We can of course observe both, but not with unlimited precision.

You're right. And one of my favority "everyday" ways of thinking about the uncertainty principle is measuring the temperature of a glass of warm liquid with a cool thermometer - how warm was the liquid before some of the heat was transferred to the thermometer?

 

[elder999]

Thanks for your reply, Kacey-I was sure you were never going to "talk" to me again. As a scientist, and human being, I'm largely in agreement with you, though some of the examples you've offered are, by their very nature, subjective, while the negative effects of technology obviously are not.....

Not exactly. Heisenberg's uncertainty principle tells us that the more accurately we try to measure one variable (mass/momentum) the less certain we can be of another one. We can of course observe both, but not with unlimited precision.

Actually, having read it in German, I can pretty concretely state that what it says is that the more accurate the one is, the less accurate the other becomes-it also says that we can have both of them exactly in the past, but only one of them exactly in the present-and, in the case of mass and momentum, they are relatively useless without the other.

Of course, having read it in German, I can also say that there are a variety of words that can be applied to Heisenberg relations, but that it may not be, or have ever been or meant to b, an "Uncertainty Principle," at all-and is grossly misconstrued, even by physicists.

I'll spare you the math, but what it basically means is that if we look at an particle in motion, we can observe its path/velocity, i.e., momentum in a given moment, but the more accurate that observation becomes the less accuurate our observation of its mass, and visa versa.

The interpretation of these relations has often been debated. Do Heisenberg's relations express restrictions on the experiments we can perform on quantum systems, and, therefore, restrictions on the information we can gather about such systems; or do they express restrictions on the meaning of the concepts we use to describe quantum systems? Or else, are they restrictions of an ontological nature, i.e., do they assert that a quantum system simply does not possess a definite value for its position and momentum at the same time? The difference between these interpretations is partly reflected in the various names by which the relations are known, e.g. as ‘inaccuracy relations’, or: ‘uncertainty’, ‘indeterminacy’ or ‘unsharpness relations’, etc. The debate between these different views has been addressed by many authors, but it has never been settled completely. Let it suffice here to make only two general observations.

In Heisenberg's view, all the above questions are either true or not-you can't pick and choose.Indeed, he adopted an operational "measurement=meaning" principle according to which the meaningfulness of a physical quantity was equivalent to the existence of an experiment purporting to measure that quantity. Similarly, his "measurement=creation" principle allowed him to attribute physical reality to such quantities. Hence, Heisenberg's discussions moved rather freely and quickly from talk about experimental inaccuracies to epistemological or ontological issues and back again.

There is a passage where he discusses the idea that, behind our observational data, there might still exist a hidden reality in which quantum systems have definite values for position and momentum, unaffected by the uncertainty relations. He emphatically dismisses this conception as an unfruitful and meaningless speculation, because, as he says, the aim of physics is only to describe observable data. Similarly in the Chicago Lectures of ...1930, I think, he says:

"One should be especially careful in using the words ‘reality’, ‘actually’, etc., since these words very often lead to statements of the type just mentioned."

So, Heisenberg also endorsed an interpretation of his relations as rejecting a reality in which particles have simultaneous definite values for position and momentum.

The second observation is that although for Heisenberg experimental, informational, epistemological and ontological formulations of his relations were, so to say, just different sides of the same coin, this does not hold for those who do not share his operational principles or his view on the task of physics. Alternative points of view, in which e.g. the ontological reading of the uncertainty relations is denied, are therefore still viable.

The statement, often found in the literature of the thirties, that Heisenberg had proved the impossibility of associating a definite position and momentum to a particle is certainly wrong, but the precise meaning one can coherently attach to Heisenberg's relations depends rather heavily on the interpretation one favors for quantum mechanics as a whole.Since no agreement has been reached on this latter issue, one cannot expect agreement on the meaning of the uncertainty relations either.

Again, coupling the uncertainty relations with Bell's Theorem, it's demonstrably provable that the moon is not there when no one is looking.

 

[Xue Sheng]

[/i]


Yes, and if you reapply the correct emphasis on what I said, I'll still stand by it-don't think the man was wrong about everything, but he made mistakes, and they are becoming more apparent every day, as his model-and even the model of quantum mechanics-is supplanted

Finally, when I am hyperboulously writing that "Einstein was wrong," it might be better for those of you who aren't recognizing what I meant if I said, "Einstein's model is grossly incomplete, and demonstrably false in certain applications." (For the record, though, I didn't say he was "wrong" I said it was his model's turn to follow Newton and Aristotle-and I'll stand by that, as it's only common sense and good science.)

Emphasis!?!? What emphasis? It was a direct quote from your original post!?

And I can see this is going nowhere fast.

Enjoy

 

[elder999]

Emphasis!?!? What emphasis? It was a direct quote from your original post!?

And I can see this is going nowhere fast.

Enjoy

Good grief.

Look. It's like this.

The Ptolemaic model for the universe, the one that held sway even after Kepler proved (mathematically) that Copernicus was right, had Earth at the center of the heavens, with all the celestial bodies orbiting it. Was it wrong? Yes. Did it work?Yes In fact, those familiar with celestial navigation-or astrology-will tell you that this is the model still used to navigate by the stars.

Now, to adress upnorthkyosa's counterintuitive confusion (and the reason so many of my colleagues practice Zen). The use of quantum physics and Bell's Theorem to say that the moon doesn't exist when it's not being observed is a sort of mathematical conceit. The fact (as near as we can call any of this "fact") is that the Newtonian model aptly demonstrates that the moon is always there. What applies to particles-quanta-can not really be applied to the macroverse-that is to say, real matter, rather than its myriad constituent particles. In spite of what that ridiculous movie What the &@#%$! do we know said, you cannot be in two places at once, arrive somewhere before you leave, or anything of the sort-you're just too big. Lots of particles display ...effects like these, and we're struggling with what they mean, but Newtonian physics tell us that the moon is there, whether anyone -or thing-is observing it or not.

As for light-well, it's interesting. When I say "Einstein was wrong." Sure, I mean it-quantum mechanics cannot always be resolved with relativity. The Michealson-Morley experiments failed to find a Doppler Effect for light. What does this mean?

Imagin you're a major league pitcher, with a 100 mph fastball. And imagine you're riding on the roof of a sportscar, with a pitcher's mound on top, in a vacuum (so there's no air resistance-never mind that you'd be dead, and the car wouldn't run.) Now, if you throw your fastball in the direction of travel, what's the velocity of the ball? Well, most of us can figure that it's the sum of the vectors, or something approaching 200 mph-, 'cause the ball is already traveling at 100 mph, and is accelerated an additional 100 mph.

Light does not do this,(most of the time) and the Michaelson Morley experiments proved as much-sort of. Consequently, Einstein concluded that the speed of light-in a vacuum or any other media, really-is constant. That it will travel at a certain rate in a vacuum, and a certain rate in water, or glass, and, more to the point, that if it is emitted from a moving object, like a satellite, or spaceship, or choo-choo, or sportscar, it will still be traveling at the same rate-186,000 mps in a vacuum, and a variety of other values in other media, rather than c+v,where v is the velocity of the source of emittance. A few things bear this out, except for Sagnac-truthfully, there are those who say that Sagnac supports relativity and is supported by the Newtonian model (though the Newtonian model has been aptly demonstrated in several ways to not apply to quanta)-and there are those who say that Einstein was wrong-in this, that the velocity of light is not constant.

It doesn't really matter. Sometimes the model (relativity)works, and for some things it just plain doesn't. Heck, sometimes the plain old Newtonian model works for quanta-getting back to LANSCE, if we accelerate a proton to 84% of c, and smash it into something, and use the adjusted mass of a proton for the requisite relativistic effects, we can calculate the energy it smashes into the something with plain old E=MV2, and it works, just like the Ptolemaic version of the universe works for celestial navigation. But relativity cannot be completely reconciled with quantum mechanics, no matter how we try, and there are cases where-empirically-light's speed varies (in the same media) though there are "fudge factors," and a variety of theoretical models that allow them to apparently agree-somewhat. So those in the "constant c" camp are reduced to saying that Sagnac reconciles Relativity and Newtonian physics, in spite of all the cases where Newton clearly does not apply, and those in the "variable c" camp are relegated to the "it's a mystery, and I'm still investigating," camp at best, and the "fringe" camp (the photon has mass, the photon has mass, the photon has very, very, little mass) at worst.. Someday, someone will come up with a better model.

In any case, the person who ultimately resolves the conflict, and says that "This is closer to the way it really is," will win a Nobel prize, accolades, hand-waving, harumphing, and general acclaim-though I'm not holding my breath. It might be super string theory, or something like it, or part of it, but, ultimately, there will still be more questions, and this is the real point, what good will it be? It won't end world hunger, eradicate AIDS, do away with poverty, or even make your teeth whiter. It will really only concern a few scientists, and, somewhat later, a few engineers who might come to exploit it to make more stuff that won't do any of those things either.

The point is that the models never adequately explain everything, and yes-in this I am convinced that Einstein was wrong. Don't mean that he wasn't a genius-certainly more creative than I am-or that his model doesn't work sometimes, just as Ptolemy's still does-just that it's in error in some places, that there are times when it isn't true, that there are situations where it's, well, ....inadequate would be a good word, but what's wrong with wrong?


Getting back to my question, though, I have a really good example: the place where I live and work shouldn't exist.Really. When the Manhattan Project began, Los Alamos was supposed to be temporary-it wasnt' supposed to develop into a secret city, with an ongoing industrial concern-it was supposed to do that one thing and fold up. And that one thing was done-in five years!-what an achievement. New ground was broken, and advances were made in chemistry, physics, material science, computing, dynamics (that's explosives to you) and a variety of other new areas, advances that continue to impact our lives-in good ways and bad-today. I'm really curious though, because, except for putting a man on the moon, there hasn't been anything approaching the concerted scientific effort since. Where's the "Manhattan Project" for AIDS, world hunger, or global warming? In the meantime, there's money for my pal Joey Martz to compete-compete!- for the opportunity to develop the next generation of U.S. nuclear weapons in a world where they really, really shouldn't exist.

I kind of hold to the view of Aristotle and Plato, that science is about making scientists (at least) happy-this is, of course, the trap that Oppenheimer and so many others have fallen into-approaching such things as an "interesting intellectual problem"-without even considering the consequences, and then being surprised and dismayed when their solution to the problem wound up being a bigger problem altogether.

 

[Xue Sheng]

Thanks for the science/history lesson, although it truly wasn’t necessary, but it all goes back to what I originally said now doesn't it, science like everything else is fallible.

 

[Martial Tucker]

Imagin you're a major league pitcher, with a 100 mph fastball. And imagine you're riding on the roof of a sportscar, with a pitcher's mound on top, in a vacuum (so there's no air resistance-never mind that you'd be dead, and the car wouldn't run.) Now, if you throw your fastball in the direction of travel, what's the velocity of the ball? Well, most of us can figure that it's the sum of the vectors, or something approaching 200 mph-, 'cause the ball is already traveling at 100 mph, and is accelerated an additional 100 mph.

In this example, the only certainty is that if you pitch for the Cubs, someone is still going to hit your 200 mph fastball out of the park to beat you, and you'll end up on the disabled list....


Regardless, I tend to agree with your sentiments. Today's cutting edge theory/model is like the Ipod. It's destined to be tomorrow's "Walk Man"

 

[Xue Sheng]

I kind of hold to the view of Aristotle and Plato, that science is about making scientists (at least) happy-this is, of course, the trap that Oppenheimer and so many others have fallen into-approaching such things as an "interesting intellectual problem"-without even considering the consequences, and then being surprised and dismayed when their solution to the problem wound up being a bigger problem altogether.

Sorry. I forgot to add this to my last post.

I agree with this.

 

[pstarr]

Man is an inherently inquisitive creature capable of reasoning, logic, and with a concept of "I." That's why science is, in my opinion...

 

[elder999]

Seen here

Recent research has found evidence that the value of certain fundamental parameters, such as the speed of light or the invisible glue that holds nuclei together, may have been different in the past.
if ("There is absolutely no reason these constants should be constant," says astronomer Michael Murphy of the University of Cambridge. "These are famous numbers in physics, but we have no real reason for why they are what they are."

The observed differences are small-roughly a few parts in a million-but the implications are huge: The laws of physics would have to be rewritten, not to mention we might need to make room for six more spatial dimensions than the three that we are used to.

 

[Flatlander]

We stand on the shoulders of giants. Thus, our giants must necessarily precede us, and their collective height grows proportionately to our curiosity and vigour.