🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <Nov.5.18.26.40.1992.16405@ruhets.rutgers.edu> bweiner@ruhets.rutgers.edu (Benjamin Weiner) writes:
>dave@prim.demon.co.uk (Dave Griffiths) writes:
>>>  ... 
>>>This is not a statement of any physics that *I* know.  As a matter of fact,
>>>I'm willing to go further and say that it's total rubbish.  Can you 
>>>point to a textbook which contains any statement resembling what you have
>>>claimed?
>
>>Think for yourself! I've no idea what he was talking about either, but just
>>because it's not in a textbook doesn't make it rubbish.
>
>You have no idea, Scott has no idea, I have no idea.  When someone
>tells me about wild and crazy physics (eg renormaliztion, inflationary
>cosmology, etc.), and I have no idea what he/she's talking about, I
>try to go and find a textbook to learn more about the subject (instead
>of just posting inanity to Usenet, OK?)  On the other hand I don't
>imagine I'll do that this time, 'cause my bullshit detector is going off.
>

Hmmm. Well I'm pretty keen to read _alternative_ theories of physics, so I
don't like to see someone put down when they dare to suggest their crazy
ideas, unless they're obviously a crackpot. Paul Koloc's article didn't set
off my crackpot detector - he just seemed to be quoting fragments of some
possibly well thought out theory.

Now I've only just started studying physics (for pleasure :), but it seems to
me to be an essentially _conservative_ field. There have been very few
revolutions in physics. At no (?) point has everything that went before
been chucked out in favour of new model. Even QM was a compromise forced on
physicists by experimental results - when they noticed that an electron
could pass through two slits at the same time, rather than chuck out the
well established idea that "an electron" exists, they modified the classical
theory by introducing the probability wave.

I'm a computer programmer by trade, and I've often come across the situation
where a suite of programs has become large and unwieldy, so much new 
functionality has been added that the structure is unstable. To make real
progress you need to chuck the code away and redesign from scratch.

It's just conceivable that physics has now reached that stage. That it's
present form is no more than an historical accident. I'd love to see the
theories of physics developed by alien civilizations.

There is no such thing as infinity. Physicists are going to have to bite
the bullet and develop a discrete TOE at some time or other. To do so
may require going right back to basics to develop an information based
theory. But with so much momentum in current theories, so much resistance
to the radically new, so little money to be made from such a reformulation,
I wonder if it will ever happen.

Sorry, seem to have strayed from the subject!

Dave Griffiths