As Brent Meeker has pointed out, physical theories are just models to make
predictions about how the world works. If physists get carried away and say
"this is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth" then they are
talking metaphysics, not physics.
Stathis Papaioannou
----------------------------------------
> From: jamikes.domain.name.hidden
> To: everything-list.domain.name.hidden
> Subject: Re: The anti-roadmap - an alternative 'Theology'
> Date: Wed, 23 Aug 2006 11:51:07 -0400
>
>
> Stathis,
>
> you touched the 'truth' (a word I put into "-" because I don't believe it).
> Matter
> cannot be an "is" - actually or virtually. Rutherford's empty atom shows the
> dichotomy between 'effects' ('affects'?) and 'explanation' (more than just
> words).
> The figment 'matter' is a product of 'mental evolution' in this universe, to
> catch imputes we cannot handle. 'We' is here the mental evolution of the
> universe. It was not man, or the old ape who decided "let there be matter in
> our thinking" - it was a zillion-stepwise development to cope with 'affects'
> we experienced without better explanation. So we (humans and animals)
> nowadays (~1b years?) accept the notion that 'there IS matter' and we can
> interact with it. Physics is a product in this development of reductionist
> efforts to 'organize' our world for ourselves.
> And then came the other sciences as well, in the same reductionism.
>
> We better do not chase a figment, as long as we are living IN IT - accept
> its use and the uncertainty of whatever we talk about. It looks like a basic
> tenet in our "percept of reality" - the "what we see is what we live with"
> from which I TRY to get to a better understanding (not yet achieved, of
> course). All our life, the base knowledge, the technology, the mental
> construct, is a product of this figment.
>
> Yes, matter is not matterly, just believed so. Energy is a cop-out - a
> 'name' for something we cannot put our finger on (mentally). And so are
> numbers.
>
> The theories you decry, or promote, all of them, are in the same circle.
>
> Regards
>
> John Mikes
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Stathis Papaioannou" <stathispapaioannou.domain.name.hidden>
> To: "1Z" <everything-list.domain.name.hidden>
> Sent: Wednesday, August 23, 2006 5:11 AM
> Subject: RE: The anti-roadmap - an alternative 'Theology'
>
>
>
> Peter Jones writes:
>
> > Bruno Marchal wrote:
> >
> > > I can agree. No physicist posit matter in a fundamental theory.
> >
> > All physical theories are theories of matter (mass/energy).
>
> True, but they are not theories of what matter *actually is*. At
> the turn of last century Rutherford showed that atoms were mostly
> empty space. Tables and chairs did not suddenly become less solid as
> a result, but it became clear that their apparent solidity was not
> actually evidence that atoms are solid all the way through. In a similar
> fashion, the apparent solidity of matter is not actually evidence that it
> isn't just fluff all the way down, or part of a computer simulation. Our
> physical theories describe the behaviour of matter without formally
> addressing this question at all, despite what prejudices and working
> assumptions physicists may have about the true basis of physical reality.
>
> Stathis Papaioannou
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Received on Wed Aug 23 2006 - 20:56:49 PDT