🚀 go-pugleaf

On Apr 14, 4:18 am, Pentcho Valev <pva...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> If theoretical science resurrects some day, the concept of "theory"
> will have to be revised and perhaps even abandoned. So istead of
> comparing "Einstein's theory" and "Newton's theory" one will just
> analyse and juxtapose TWO DEDUCTIVE CHAINS: one generated by
> Einstein's 1905 light postulate, c'=c, and another generated by the
> equation c'=c+v implied in Newton's particle model of light. If all
> deductions are correct (this will be the main concern of
> theoreticians), any subjectivism will be avoided and the names of
> Einstein and Newton may not even be mentioned. One will just have:
> 1. Corollaries of the premise c'=c
> 2. Corollaries of the premise c'=c+v
> Of course, any particular deduction may involve additional premises or
> definitions but in the end at least one deductive chain will have to
> be abandoned. No red herring, e.g. Newton's absolute space or
> Einstein's idiotic explanations why the speed of light is both
> constant and variable, will be efficient.

[Reply from me, Osher Doctorow:]

I argued issues or problems without bringing in particular names or
people for many years, but there is sometimes a certain benefit to the
human attention mechanism if nothing else when names are mentioned.
Arguably, attention and perception need to be closely examined and
kept track of in science.

Definitions, axioms, postulates (which latter two can also be regarded
as definitions in a sense) also need to be kept track of in science.
To fail to do so is arguably irresponsible.   When we assign an upper
finite bound to a variable, as for example bound c to velocity or
speed, or a lower bound to something else (as for example 0 for "h"),
we have the potential of playing havoc with scales and mathematics.
Most variables that we use in research are on unrestricted real scales
from negative infinity to positive infinity (inclusive or exclusive),
or at least are either nonnegative or nonpositive.  In probability
theory and hence in statistics which uses probability as its main
tool, infinity is "replaced" by 1 and negative infinity by 0, with the
understanding that there really are no finite upper and lower bounds
assumed for the "underlying" variables or reality.

For example, to say that A has a probability of 1, P(A) = 1,
translates into rough but informative English as "I or we are "almost
infinitely sure that A occurs, except for very very rare events or
scenarios".   The very very rare events or scenarios are represented
by events B of probability 0, P(B) = 0, but this is slightly
asymmetric.   The Holographic Principle is an illustration of the fact
that there are infinitely many probability 0 and in fact Lebesgue
measure 0 events in typical spacetime.   For example, an n-1
dimensional subset of n-dimensional spacetime, for n = 1, 2, 3, ...,
has probability 0 if associated with a continuous random variable, and
its Lebesgue measure when that exists (which is quite often) is 0.
Furthermore, if we translate P(B) = 0 into "B almost never occurs",
then this is rather relative, because infinitely many and indeed
arguably uncountably infinitely many events B do occur even though
their Lebesgue measure and probability of above type are 0.  In some
sense, they occur less often than events C of probability greater than
0, but they do and can occur.

Osher Doctorow