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Author Topic:   Speed of Light
Iblis
Member (Idle past 3895 days)
Posts: 663
Joined: 11-17-2005


Message 106 of 268 (538414)
12-06-2009 2:41 PM
Reply to: Message 87 by cavediver
12-05-2009 4:53 PM


Re: The funny thing is...
just keep pushing and demanding evidence, or at a minimum, predictions.
Lots of luck with that! Here's a bit of him complaining about a prior site to chase him off
Bad Astronomy and Universe Today writes:
By that same token, too much narrowed-down emphasis on presenting 'formulae' and 'experimental results' can be counter-productive, as well as highly confusing. For instance, the main difference between the Copernican sun-centred thesis of planetary motion and that of Copernicus' Ptolemaic predecessors was an issue neither of mathematics nor experiment. In fact, mathematically and experimentally, the Ptolemaic system was far more 'elegant' and exact than the system of Copernicus and Galileo, yet it was the latter, for its purely conceptual value, that won out in the end. Moreover, that was a prime case of overstepping the chalk line between 'Astronomy' and the nascent 'Physics' of Galileo, Newton, et al.
What I am saying is that for the sake of a truly adventurous ATM project the main tool of science advance has to be neither mathematics nor experiment (which of course, cannot be entirely ignored) but conceptual analysis — in short, common understanding. For example, what stopped the POAMS thread dead in its tracks toward that goal, was an insistence on providing mathematical and experimental evidence for the seminal choice of interpreting c as a dimensional constant instead of a 'velocity'. In vain does one explain that there are no relevant mathematical/experimental reasons for this choice. The only reason for choosing it is the purely logical one that the choice involves no logical contradiction, hence was, like mountains, just there to be freely explored.
But exploration along the thread in question soon hit a veritable 'brick wall' of negative criticism, based on that irrational demand for producing mathematical formulae and experimental justification for the choice. In vain, also, was it pointed out that the different interpretation of c as a constant not a 'velocity' does not in any way affect either its numerical value or its dimensions. So c remains c in all the existing relativistic and other formulae for which all the 'evidence' can be taken as read. To be bullied into reproducing all the formulae and backup evidence, therefore, for what is already known and accepted could never have been anything but an exercise in tautology.
http://www.bautforum.com/...feedback/55184-future-atm-2.html
After reading a hundred pages or so of self-pollution like this I tried to get a straight answer out of him about the existence of the photon. Unlike what he says about Relativity, his sideswipes at the Standard Model at least sound like they might entail something we don't already know. But look more closely, he's still talking about "quantum units" and pointing out that they are massless. If we are willing to waste enough pages I'm sure we can get him to agree that they don't have charges either, or a need for fractional spin.
So while he's happy to pee all over my chart and compare it to turtles-turtles-turtles-all-the-way-down, with a side whiz at classical mythology, he doesn't actually disagree with anything on it! We know that waveforms aren't really waves or particles. We know that spacetime is geometry. We know that light doesn't perceive itself as traveling.
The main selling point for his new paradigm seems to be that, if you hold C and spooky-action-at-a-distance in your head together long enough to realize that they are the same thing, this will give you a big enlightenment experience. Sounds intriguing, huh? But it isn't. If you meditate on a brick and bicycle long enough to experience their innate oneness, you will by definition have a little satori. And not even a useful one, as uniting two objects doesn't get you past dharana, it takes a subject-object experience to do that. So his yoga isn't new or significant, either!
Speaking as a great admirer of Bishop Berkeley on his own terms, I strongly suspect that this man is pretending to smoke imaginary dope ....

This message is a reply to:
 Message 87 by cavediver, posted 12-05-2009 4:53 PM cavediver has not replied

  
Viv Pope
Member (Idle past 4963 days)
Posts: 75
From: Walesw
Joined: 06-29-2008


Message 107 of 268 (538419)
12-06-2009 3:06 PM
Reply to: Message 92 by DevilsAdvocate
12-06-2009 7:53 AM


Re: urgent question
Dear Devil’s Advocate,
Boy. these responses are coming thick and fast. I’m having difficulty keeping up with them whilst trying not to spread my efforts too thin!
You remark on my drawing a parallel between myself and the scientists of the past who were executed. But how do you know my history? I obviously haven’t been executed — that’s not done, these days — but how do you know that I haven’t been got at in other, similar ways? I think you’d be surprised.
As for the rest, no apologies needed, but they are appreciated all the same! I’m looking forward to your digging deeper. I only wish some others would do the same instead of just shooting off their purely superficial judgments.
As for the rest, I can find little to say, except that I find it relaxing. Are you one of the more mature members? I am now approaching my eighties but am very much a junior in this forum. I started my adult life as an ‘an angry young man’ and now I am an almost incandescent old man, sick to the back teeth with what has happened to the integrity of the Science I once knew and loved. For me, the peak of absurdity has now been reached with the ‘Big Bang’ theory of Cosmological Creation and the search for the ‘God Particle’ with the aim of ‘reading the mind of God’. Luckily, I have a very good wife who, over the last sixty or so years has managed to curb my excesses with her headmistress’s red pen. Otherwise I would surely have ended up in jail.
Perhaps, with these remarks, I haven’t wandered too far from the thread which is supposed to be about the ‘Big Bang’, anyway.
Thanks for listening,
Viv Pope.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 92 by DevilsAdvocate, posted 12-06-2009 7:53 AM DevilsAdvocate has not replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 108 by lyx2no, posted 12-06-2009 4:16 PM Viv Pope has replied

  
lyx2no
Member (Idle past 4716 days)
Posts: 1277
From: A vast, undifferentiated plane.
Joined: 02-28-2008


Message 108 of 268 (538422)
12-06-2009 4:16 PM
Reply to: Message 107 by Viv Pope
12-06-2009 3:06 PM


Re: urgent question
Sorry, jumped the gun.
Edited by lyx2no, : No reason given.

The world breaks everyone, and afterward many are strong at the broken places. But those it cannot break, it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these, you can be sure that it will kill you too, but there will be no special hurry.
Ernest Hemingway

This message is a reply to:
 Message 107 by Viv Pope, posted 12-06-2009 3:06 PM Viv Pope has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 111 by Viv Pope, posted 12-07-2009 6:55 PM lyx2no has seen this message but not replied

  
Viv Pope
Member (Idle past 4963 days)
Posts: 75
From: Walesw
Joined: 06-29-2008


Message 109 of 268 (538444)
12-07-2009 5:18 AM
Reply to: Message 97 by DevilsAdvocate
12-06-2009 9:31 AM


Re: The funny thing is...
Yes. Devil’s Advocate., that is certainly how 'Scientists and Educated lay readers' think of fundamental particles. No-one in that bracket thinks any more of these 'particles' as tiny ball-bearing-like bits of solid matter. But ‘wave-functions of space-time itself’’? No, surely! What on earth is ‘space-time itself’? And what sense is to be made of the ‘Higgs electroweak field’? What, indeed, is a ‘field’?
Now this is not a confession of ignorance on my part. It’s just that in the philosophy-of-physics paradigm called Normal Realism, which is based on the Positivist philosophy of the physics philosopher, Ernst Mach and his followers, the Linguistic Commonsense Analysts, these particles, waves and so on don’t exist in the way that even the 'Scientists and Educated lay readers' at this period of time are disposed to imagine. The reason is that these concepts of ‘waves’, ‘fields’ and so on are unempirical — that is to say, completely abstract and invisible — in other words, items of pure conjecture, or ‘jargon’ in the estimation of the Linguistic Analysts. These philosophers believe — and with some justification — that the reason why Modern Physics is so abstruse, to the extent that even scientists are puzzled by it, is that over the history of the subject, this jargon has collected around our feet, like the swarf on a machine-shop floor, so that we can hardly move for the bulk of it.
From that Normal Realist, Neo-Machian standpoint it is the duty of the philosopher — as soon as scientists begin to recognise it — to act as what John Locke described as an ‘under-laborer to science’, a sweeper-up of outworn conceptual rags and shavings that our scientific history has left lying around.
You say you are ‘still trying to understand this stuff’. Dare I suggest that you/we will never understand it until this philosophical clean-up is properly carried out, which cannot happen until the Education-conditioned barrier between Physics and Philosophy is broken down. The extent to which that this Educational Apartheid still stands is evident from some of the postings on this thread which reveal that, for the most part, scientists know no more how to deal with a philosophical point about physics than a ‘cow with a musket’.
If I have a fighting chance of subscribing anything to this forum it will be to break down this artificial barrier between Physics and Philosophy and let the understanding that the likes of you and I are seeking proceed.
What I am saying, in short, is that progress in that direction cannot take place while our minds are clogged solid with thoughts about such things as ‘light-velocity’, ‘photons’, ‘waves, ‘fields’, etc., whether or not they are regarded as ‘stand-in hyperbole’.
Thanks,
Viv Pope.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 97 by DevilsAdvocate, posted 12-06-2009 9:31 AM DevilsAdvocate has not replied

  
Viv Pope
Member (Idle past 4963 days)
Posts: 75
From: Walesw
Joined: 06-29-2008


Message 110 of 268 (538540)
12-07-2009 6:44 PM
Reply to: Message 89 by cavediver
12-06-2009 6:25 AM


Re: urgent question
Dear Cavediver,
Now how can you possibly claim that my argument ‘looks dishonest’?
I think I answered this already, but in case I didn't, here it is again, in some more detail.
I visited CERN in 1975 as editor of a philosophy-of-science journal and had many discussions with the denizens of that institution, including the Director, Victor Weisskopf, John Bell (of Bell’s Inequalities) and T. D. Lee (discoverer of the ‘meson’). In the hydrogen tank I saw a whole series of particle collisions, with their scatter-products photographed once every second. But in none of these events did I see any ‘photons’ hitting and scattering one another and leaving contrails in the liquid. All the trails were those of the accelerated ‘protons’, ‘electrons’ ‘hadrons’, and ‘leptons’ of all description.
I say all this, not for reasons of name-dropping but because of what you said about my ‘unnamed individuals’. Another name I didn’t mention was that of Professor James Lindesay, who was doing a stint at SLAC, the Super-Linear Accelerator Center, in California. In a conference at Cambridge, he reported that he and a colleague had set out to ‘prove Viv wrong’ (about the non-existence of ‘photons’) but had ended-up ‘proving Viv right’. (This was later corroborated by Professor Clive Kilmister and Dr. Ted Bastin, principals of ANPA.)
So now, you have some names. (All this is recorded, of course.) Now the reason for my saying that your evidence (for photo-photon scattering) was ‘thin’ is precisely because, as you admit, it is still, after all these years, an unfulfilled prophecy, or prediction, all evidence for which is, as you say, ‘indirect’. This is why I described your claimed evidence as ‘thin’. And I feel I have already pointed out that in scientific logic, no theory can be PROVED, however much reverence one might have for it or however much ‘evidence’ might be claimed in favour for it. The nearest that we can ever get to ‘proof’’ of a theory, in science, is for ALL its competitors, actual or possible, to be refuted. Otherwise we commit the fallacy known as post hoc, ergo propter hoc, or affirming one of the alternative theories to ‘refute another’.
So the upshot of all this — sorry, Cavediver — is that proof of photon-photon scattering is as ’thin’ now as it ever was.
Nor are there any ‘photons’ accelerated by the magnets in the new LHC at CERN. What is accelerated are ‘protons’ in proton-proton head-on collisions. ‘Photons’ simply don’t make trails. As an irreducible quantum, a ‘photon’ could have no energy to spare in interacting with anything ‘en route’ from anywhere to anywhere else. The slightest interaction with its environment would instantly consume every scrap of energy it would have. Its very first interaction with a magnet, for instance, if that were possible, would stop it dead. So it cannot possibly be detected by any interaction with any instrument or leave any contrail. In other words, it cannot possibly exist in the vacuum between any source and sink. I claim, therefore, that this particular one of the ‘ten proofs’ which you have questioned is, just like the other nine, irrefutable.
Thanks,
Viv Pope.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 89 by cavediver, posted 12-06-2009 6:25 AM cavediver has not replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 113 by AnswersInGenitals, posted 12-08-2009 1:56 AM Viv Pope has replied

  
Viv Pope
Member (Idle past 4963 days)
Posts: 75
From: Walesw
Joined: 06-29-2008


Message 111 of 268 (538544)
12-07-2009 6:55 PM
Reply to: Message 108 by lyx2no
12-06-2009 4:16 PM


Re: urgent question
Dear lyx2no
NICE ONE!!!
Thanks,
Viv Pope,

This message is a reply to:
 Message 108 by lyx2no, posted 12-06-2009 4:16 PM lyx2no has seen this message but not replied

  
Viv Pope
Member (Idle past 4963 days)
Posts: 75
From: Walesw
Joined: 06-29-2008


Message 112 of 268 (538553)
12-07-2009 8:00 PM
Reply to: Message 99 by cavediver
12-06-2009 11:30 AM


Re: The funny thing is...
To CaveDiver,
You're nowhere near understanding my point about language and how it classifies phenomena into 'particles', 'fields', 'gluons', 'tachyons' or whatever. Things don't come labelled by nature. It is WE who label, classify, divide and name things and describe their charitarstics in language, and these arbitrary classifyings and namings may well go spectacularly wrong. If that weren't so, then we would still be calling whales 'fish' and virus particles 'animals'.
To make my point, here is a little joke about language. A guy goes to a hospital demanding that he be castrated. 'Are you sure?' the surgeon asked him. 'Of course I'm sure,' said the guy,'I'm rich and can well afford it.'
So the surgeon did the operation. When he awoke, the patient looked down and cried out 'What HAVE you done?'(in a falsetto voice). 'We castrated you, like you said,' replied the surgeon.
The patient looked aross the ward and said 'What I wanted is what that guy had over there!'
'He's been circumcised,' said the surgeon.
'THAT's the word,' squeaked the patient.'THAT's the word'.
I rest my case.
Please study the answer I gave to you earier.
Thanks,
Viv Pope

This message is a reply to:
 Message 99 by cavediver, posted 12-06-2009 11:30 AM cavediver has not replied

  
AnswersInGenitals
Member (Idle past 151 days)
Posts: 673
Joined: 07-20-2006


(1)
Message 113 of 268 (538579)
12-08-2009 1:56 AM
Reply to: Message 110 by Viv Pope
12-07-2009 6:44 PM


Nature abhors a vacuous mind.
Dear Prof. Pope:
I'm wondering if in your extensive wanderings and interactions with physics illuminaries you had the opportunity to have discussions with a certain Dr. Arthur Compton. His thoughts on photons seems to be very scattered and I am curious to know if you have any opinion on his work. I was talking to him just the other day and he didn't recall having met you.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 110 by Viv Pope, posted 12-07-2009 6:44 PM Viv Pope has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 115 by Viv Pope, posted 12-08-2009 7:22 AM AnswersInGenitals has replied

  
Viv Pope
Member (Idle past 4963 days)
Posts: 75
From: Walesw
Joined: 06-29-2008


Message 114 of 268 (538594)
12-08-2009 5:37 AM
Reply to: Message 103 by Son Goku
12-06-2009 12:14 PM


Re: Special Relativity and geometry
Dear Son Goku.
In this glut of questions I'm losing sense oc the sequence of my replies. So forgive me if some of this turns out to be repetion.
Your dogged attempts to trivialise my work are failing badly. You keep missing the point, here. If what you say about Minkowski were true, then by now we would have the whole ‘New Physics’ that John Anderson of NASA calls for to solve the mystery of the Pioneer Anomaly, Nor would we have any talk of ‘dark matter, ‘dark energy’, and so on. There would be billions of pounds and dollars saved from not having to build great machines like the abortive LHD at CERN and the Super-linear Accelerator at SLAC in California. The teaching of relativity and quantum theory would be vastly different. All talk of ‘light-velocity’ would long since have been dropped. So would all talk of ‘electromagnetic waves’ and ‘fields’. There would be no talk of ‘gravity’ as a ‘field force’, this having been replaced by talk, solely about angular momentum. The time-dilation formula would have been derived directly from Pythagoras, leaving all talk of ‘Einstein’ as an historical side-issue, There would be no mention of the alleged ‘Big Bang’, ‘black holes’ ‘wormholes’ or the like. All this would have been forestalled by an entirely new language of physics. The divided modern Physics and Philosophy would have merged into a single discipline, in the Grand Manner of Natural Philosophy, which would mean that the Educational gulf between Arts and Science would, by now, have disappeared completely.
None this has happened, of course, which means that ‘Minkowski’, although he showed the connection between Einstein and Pythagoras, put the 'cart' of Einsteinian Relativity before the 'horse' of the geometrical relativity of Pythagoras, which is correct, historically, but not logically. Besides, although Minkowski was, as you say, the first to make that Pythagorean connection, he never followed it through to its logical conclusion in the way that the Neo-Machian relativism of Normal Realism has done. So if, as you say, you read my website, then how come you missed all that? Is it a case, perhaps, of ‘There’s none so blind as will not see?’
As for what you say about Special and General Relativity not being separate, that may be trivially true, but what is more important is that both of these theories, whether combined or separate, are separate from quantum theory. If what you say about Minkowski were true, then that division would have long ago disappeared and both relativity and quantum theory would be taught as a single, integrated, philosophically founded package, based on the quantum relativity of Mach instead of on the separatist relativity of Einstein (witness the long-standing and still unresolved ‘EPR’ conflict between Bohr and Einstein).
Thanks,
Viv Pope.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 103 by Son Goku, posted 12-06-2009 12:14 PM Son Goku has not replied

  
Viv Pope
Member (Idle past 4963 days)
Posts: 75
From: Walesw
Joined: 06-29-2008


Message 115 of 268 (538605)
12-08-2009 7:22 AM
Reply to: Message 113 by AnswersInGenitals
12-08-2009 1:56 AM


Re: Nature abhors a vacuous mind.
Dear 'Anwers in Genitals' (if that is correct)
No, I haven't had the pleasure of meeting Profesor Compton.
In the current state of physics there are so many so busily 'plouging their own furrows' that they sarcely have time to see over the hedges. One looks forward to the time when it all comes together. If you see that gentleman again, please give him my best wishes.
By the way, I am not a card-carrying 'Professor'. So any bids for qualifications I have made in that particular area have been cloaked in controversy. This was from the time when my mentors discovered that I was a heretic. It is certainly a truism that society doesn't encourage heretics, far less fund them.
Thereby hangs a tale, which might provide some insight into what I said in an earlier posting, about Socrates being executed and so on. I'd love to tell that tale, but hardly on this particular forum thread, even though that tale is all about my views on light and relativity.
Thanks.
Viv Pope

This message is a reply to:
 Message 113 by AnswersInGenitals, posted 12-08-2009 1:56 AM AnswersInGenitals has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 116 by AnswersInGenitals, posted 12-08-2009 12:32 PM Viv Pope has replied

  
AnswersInGenitals
Member (Idle past 151 days)
Posts: 673
Joined: 07-20-2006


Message 116 of 268 (538636)
12-08-2009 12:32 PM
Reply to: Message 115 by Viv Pope
12-08-2009 7:22 AM


Re: Nature abhors a vacuous mind.
I'd love to tell that tale,...
Dear Dr. Pope:
You have my sincerest sympathy and empathy. I know what it is like to have someone totally miss my point. May we both have more success in future endeavors.
By the by, I think you have made a slight error in calling SLAC the "Super-Linear Accelerator Center". I believe it is actually named for its location and the acronym stands for Subterranean-Linear Accelerator Center. Just a nit.
Edited by AnswersInGenitals, : No reason given.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 115 by Viv Pope, posted 12-08-2009 7:22 AM Viv Pope has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 117 by JonF, posted 12-08-2009 2:58 PM AnswersInGenitals has not replied
 Message 118 by Viv Pope, posted 12-09-2009 6:29 AM AnswersInGenitals has not replied

  
JonF
Member (Idle past 168 days)
Posts: 6174
Joined: 06-23-2003


Message 117 of 268 (538648)
12-08-2009 2:58 PM
Reply to: Message 116 by AnswersInGenitals
12-08-2009 12:32 PM


Re: Nature abhors a vacuous mind.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 116 by AnswersInGenitals, posted 12-08-2009 12:32 PM AnswersInGenitals has not replied

  
Viv Pope
Member (Idle past 4963 days)
Posts: 75
From: Walesw
Joined: 06-29-2008


Message 118 of 268 (538683)
12-09-2009 6:29 AM
Reply to: Message 116 by AnswersInGenitals
12-08-2009 12:32 PM


Re: Nature abhors a vacuous mind.
Dear 'AnswersInGenitals.
Many thanks for your kind and supportive comments. It seems as though you have experienced these sorts of difficulties yourself, when it feels as though the discussion is taking place under water. Indeed, sometimes the mismatch between what one is saying and what is heard/read is so huge that it is as if one is from a different planet.
The trouble is that in putting any new idea forward, that idea has somehow to navigate through a minefield of precepts. In my view, the fault lies with our system of Education. A colleague of mine remarks that in her teaching she is appalled to find so many, even adult students, who scarcely know what logic means, who cannot distinguish a logical argument from a string of mere opinions. Some of these people talk about ‘my’ logic and ’your’ logic and respond to a well-formed argument with pure rhetoric — or else just noise. But, of course, logic has not been taught in schools nor even universities — not in provincial ones at any rate — for some generations. The worst offenders, I find, are Physicists who cannot follow a logical argument that is not full of mathematical formulae. I have known some who, if you said that a bachelor is an unmarried man would surely demand mathematical and experimental proof of that statement. In a discussion with one person, he challenged me to describe what I meant by ‘logic’. I said to him, If I tell you that the biscuits are in the tin and then say that the tin is in the cupboard, then you can deduce from that that the biscuits are in the cupboard. Right? He looked at me uncomprehendingly for a full minute. Then, clutching his forehead, he said: Gee, that does my head in! And, believe it or not, this guy was studying a book on String Theory!
Thanks for correcting me about SLAC. I now understand that this is the acronym for the Subterranean Linear Accelerator Centre. Strange that I have been in touch, for many years, with someone from SLAC without knowing that! (This gentleman, by the way is Professor Pierre Noyes.)
Thanks again,
Viv Pope.
PS.
Thanks, by the way, for giving me the opportunity, here, of saying something of which I think all members of this forum should take note. This is that there is a very common logical fallacy which all too many Physicists commit. It is to assume that P implies Q, necessarily implies Q implies P. One prime example of this fallacy is to assume that because all velocities are distances divided by time, all distances divided by time (such as c) are velocities. Another example is to assume that because all receding galaxies are redshifted, seeing a galaxy redshifted is the same as seeing that galaxy receding. This is like saying that because all dogs have four legs, anything with four legs is a dog. These fallacies are far from trivial. All current light-theory and Big Bang cosmology are based on this sort of fallacy, which is surely worrisome for the state of Modern Physics and Cosmology..

This message is a reply to:
 Message 116 by AnswersInGenitals, posted 12-08-2009 12:32 PM AnswersInGenitals has not replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 119 by Bolder-dash, posted 12-09-2009 10:27 AM Viv Pope has replied

  
Bolder-dash
Member (Idle past 3630 days)
Posts: 983
From: China
Joined: 11-14-2009


Message 119 of 268 (538706)
12-09-2009 10:27 AM
Reply to: Message 118 by Viv Pope
12-09-2009 6:29 AM


Re: Nature abhors a vacuous mind.
The worst offenders, I find, are Physicists who cannot follow a logical argument that is not full of mathematical formulae.
If physicists are the worst offenders, biologist are attempting to give them a good run for their money.
Although I can't hope to be able to make any conclusions about who is an authority worth believing when it comes to particle physics and the like, I can certainly tell you that the lack of being able to follow a progressive line of logical points, from simple to complex, without needing to gum up the works with unnecessary clutter is not the unique skill of physicists. Understanding the role of theories in evolution, and being able to map out how things came to be requires seeing a much bigger picture than most biologists seem to be able to discern. Evolutionary thought requires as much philosophy as it does science, but it seems the rare man who can combine the two in his brain.
Someday we may find the actual reason for that. My theory is that people who either enjoy, or are more capable of learning about things at the molecular level, are perhaps less interested, or less capable of seeing a field then they are the blades of grass. I know some people who are obviously quite knowledgeable about many biological functions-yet struggle grasping some of the most simple sentences and analogies truly blow their mind.
Sorry to say, cavediver and a few others here who have great interest in science appear to be these kinds of people to me-obviously smart guys and have a great grasp of math equations, but perhaps because their minds are so in tune to these numbers, there isn't a lot of room left in there for intellectual imagination.
Just one question which I admit to knowing little about- How does one believe in string theory, while acknowledging that in order to make sense of the numbers we must first create fictitious other dimensions of varying amounts to compensate for the discrepancies, as well as admitting that it is completely untestable? Isn't that much more philosophy than science? Or perhaps not philosophy, but at least fairy tale?

This message is a reply to:
 Message 118 by Viv Pope, posted 12-09-2009 6:29 AM Viv Pope has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 121 by Viv Pope, posted 12-10-2009 11:01 AM Bolder-dash has replied
 Message 128 by cavediver, posted 12-12-2009 7:32 AM Bolder-dash has not replied

  
Admin
Director
Posts: 12998
From: EvC Forum
Joined: 06-14-2002
Member Rating: 2.3


Message 120 of 268 (538711)
12-09-2009 11:01 AM


Moderator Back On Duty
I'm going to resume moderating this thread. Initially, off topic posts and portions of posts will be hidden.
The topic is issues related to the speed of light.

--Percy
EvC Forum Director

  
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