🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <8AUG199218504153@zeus.tamu.edu> dwr2560@zeus.tamu.edu (RING, DAVID WAYNE) writes:
>andrew@rentec.com (Andrew Mullhaupt) writes...
>'Real' means non-scientist non-philosopher.

I'm glad to hear that I (being a mathematician) may remain real. I think.

>A scientist who asks this question
>is also taking for granted that the sky is dark. A philosopher maybe not. As
>Feynman used to say, Physics is just an extension of common sense.

I don't share your point of view. And neither (if memory serves) did Lord
Rayleigh. Nobody doubts that the sky is blue, yet did that stop him from
asking why? Then again he was an applied mathematician too...

Does Rayleigh scattering sound like common sense? Ask a few people in the
street. Without any knowledge of electromagnetic field theory, the idea
that air scatters blue light much more than red is hardly a commonplace.


>>                                                              This
>>kind of physics has very strange versions of things like the second law of
>>thermodynamics.
>
>Impressive insight! Do you know how many very strange versions of the
>second law we have?

Yes. Or at least I should point out that I know of quite a few. But none
of them are very satisfying unless you can apply them in a _universal_
way. Just like applying Maxwell's equations to the blue sky.

>I didn't say they should never be explained. But 'why is the sky blue?' does
>not ask that the assumptions be explained.

It does, in a way. How much satisfaction is there in the true explanation that
the sky is not blue, it just looks that way because blue light comes out of
it in most directions?

>>Note that the scientific method does not make these choices for you. The
>>scientific method is essentially intact even if you decide that 'observation'
>>means conducting an a priori computation using Conway's cellular automaton.
>
>The scientific method is just that, a method. It is useful because it helps
>one to remain objective. I think it's missing the point if you define science
>in terms of it.

Yes. This is one of the main reasons I work through the blue sky question -
most physicists have the tools to play with the explanation, so what you get
when they decide what _is_ and _is not_ in the explanation is a picture of
what choice they make, i.e. what science means to them beyond the technology
of explanation. The _goal_ of explanation becomes defined by what is and isn't
included.

>Is it really possible to achieve 'completeness?' Some people think it is 
>possible, but we're not there yet!

Is it possible to seriously hope that we're aiming at completeness? In other
words, what kind of thinking can we do that helps in this direction?

>We choose to limit our explanations to those phenomena that we _can_ explain.
>(unlike philosophers! ;)

No, they have the same problem.

>>If physicists were happy to stop, why do they want either an SSC or the money
>>to be spent in some other part of physics?

>Because the SSC can help to answer questions of the type which we know by
>experience are answerable.

Like I said. They're not happy to stop.

>Also, since the Higgs mechanism directly effects
>almost everything, then the SSC is _required_ to answer virtually any
>question _you_ might ask. 

Don't be so sure. Most of the questions I might ask are mathematical, but
the physics ones are likely to be ones which are well in the 'classical'
regime. There are lots of these lying around, some for quite a long time.

One of the ones I expect to be answered sooner rather than later is the
explanation of the inertial range of fluid turbulence. Where is the use
of the Higgs mechanism here?

We know quite a lot about physics qua observation in the regime where h_bar
is small and c is large. I can tell you today just about as much as you can
expect the succesful grand unified theory to tell you about this highly
important regime.

>Of course that's not true of questions that
>REAL people ask. ;-) Maybe that's why it's so hard to get funding.

Oh well. Everywhere I was, the physicists had a lot easier time getting
money than the mathematicians, You get _no_ sympathy from me.

When I was at U.B. the NSF decided to cut down the funding of the category
theory group because it was 'useless'. But those guys were quite good at it.
Now we hear John Baez trying to drum up interest in the subject for the sake
of physics. I don't know whether to laugh or cry. Do you have any idea how
many category theorists you can have for the cost of an SSC? That's more money
than was ever spent in all history on category theory. Maybe those CT guys
should figure out how to blow up stuff. Then they'll get the money. But maybe
that trick is going out of style...

Later,
Andrew Mullhaupt