Dear Jesse,
thanks for the cool and objective words.
I take it back (not what I said: I mean the topic) further. Our edifice of
physical science
is a wonderful mental construct, balanced by applied math, all on quantities
fitting the reduced models of historical observations from the hand-ax on.
Explanations grew out from all consecutive levels of our epistemic
enrichment and served as indisputable basis for later explanations (even if
they 'corrected' them, like the more than a dozen entropies and still
counting). Assumptions make good basis for thousands of level in consecutive
build-up we still use 'atoms', 'molecules' 'gravity' 'electricity', 'photon'
etc. etc. as our basis. Then comes your judgement that one theory in this
building looks finer than another. The learned
(brainwashed) scientist-mind finds them as natural as fish the nonexistence
of water. The huge amount of knowledge blocks any naive (elementary)
scrutiny of the basics.
I do not argue with your learned examples; within the system matches are
found especially quantitative ones, visualizing our select domain and
scale-restrictions.
'Observational evidence' is a belief in our up-to-date instrumental readings
explained INTO the theoretical faith as evidence. Wilson found the
"background radiation" because he had readings they were fitable and he new
about the idea of such possibility in view of the Big Bang (- assumption -
as we believe it today in our present cosmology). Eric Lerner's book (90s?)
presented some doubts (The Big Bang Never Was (title approximate) -) I added
some more upon my feeble thinking. How many "ether"s and "phlogista" do we
still have?
We got rid of "elan vitale" - but did we really?
I do not start a crusade against conventional science and understand the
reluctance of the practitioners to accept the endangerment of their wisdom.
Reductionist thinking (science) is the only one our mind is capable of
exercising (mine included), but I feel it is time to take a breath and a
wider view to elevate from the age-old concepts to the acceptance of
something else, without paradoxes, givens, axioms, in interconnection of
them all and ready for a change. Human science went through changes over the
millennia, even fundamental ones at times, there are more to come. I
remember the time when tachyon-observation was denied as false, because they
seemed FTL and this was prohibited. Theory over observed. I do not claim
that 'my views' are the call for a future, I did not invent them, just
picked up changing views (not so few on this list) and opened my mind to let
them in. Since I was not committed to the 'old' I had no problem. I allow
myself to be wrong and argue cautiously:
you may be right, I may be wrong, but I have to see that in a view broader
than the conventional physical teaching. I don't believe today my own
'macromolecules' I made and got patented, they are good within the old
theory. I saw 'effects' and applied the 'wisdom' to explain them without
scrutiny. They worked. Not perfectly, as all we have has flaws (e.g.
airplanes fall out from the sky, medicines fail, buildings collapse, etc.,)
but we are very confident in our science. Well, I am not without scrutiny.
I love assumptions: they push forward our advancement. Just do not allow
them to become facts and basis for many levels of consecutive conclusions
without a grain of salt.
Your expressions ("Most physicists believe", "they are fairly confident",
or: "general
relativity is a trustworthy theory of gravity" and I do not go into
'gravity'. nor into the words of curvature of spacetime) are carefully
chosen. Religious people talk more straightforward in their religious
argumentation.
Excuse my lengthy reply, I enjoyed your argument.
Regards
John M
On 3/10/07, Jesse Mazer <lasermazer.domain.name.hidden> wrote:
>
>
> John M:
>
> >
> >Cher Quentin,
> >let me paraphrase (big):
> >
> >so someone had an assumption: BH. OK, everybody has the right to
> fantasize.
> >Especially if it sounds helpful.
>
> Well, the basic assumption was more broad than that: it was that general
> relativity is a trustworthy theory of gravity. There's plenty of evidence
> that supports various predictions of GR which differ from Newtonian
> gravity,
> like the precession of the perihelion of Mercury's orbit, the
> gravitational
> lensing of light near stars and galaxies, and gravitational time dilation
> which can be measured at different altitudes on Earth (and it also needs
> to
> be taken into account when programming the clocks on board the orbiting
> GPS
> satellites). One of GR's predictions is that a sufficiently large
> collapsing
> star will form a black hole (another is that the universe must be either
> expanding or contracting, which lead to the Big Bang theory once redshift
> was observed). Black holes were theorized for a while, then in the last
> two
> decades they found observational evidence for a large number of likely
> black
> holes with telescopes.
>
> Most physicists believe general relativity's predictions will cease to be
> accurate at the "Planck scale" of very short distances and times and very
> high energy densities, and that at these scales it will need to be
> replaced
> by a quantum theory of gravity. So although they are fairly confident that
> GR is correct about large collapsing stars forming a black hole with an
> "event horizon" and a size proportional to its mass (given by the
> 'Swarzschild radius'), they think that the prediction of a singularity of
> infinite density at the center could be wrong, and that we'll need a
> theory
> of quantum gravity to understand what's really going on there.
>
> Jesse
>
> _________________________________________________________________
> The average US Credit Score is 675. The cost to see yours: $0 by Experian.
>
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>
> >
>
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Received on Sat Mar 10 2007 - 17:43:59 PST