Russell, Yes, but that is crazy because it assumes all theories are equally valid with which I disagree. Science selects theories based on which best explain the observable universe. Therefore it is reasonable to assume that theories DO reflect actual reality. They are not just made up by humans willy nilly....
I would be surprised if Brent, a physicist, disagrees with that but I'll let him speak for himself. Edgar On Saturday, March 8, 2014 10:52:32 PM UTC-5, Russell Standish wrote: > > On Sat, Mar 08, 2014 at 05:10:25AM -0800, Edgar L. Owen wrote: > > Russell, > > > > You actually claim that the conservation of energy and time invariance > > depend on "how humans see the world"? > > > > If so I disagree, > > > > Edgar > > > > Yes. See Noether's theorem, and particularly Victor Stenger's > discussion thereof, which is far better than anything I've written on > it. Brent has posted quite a bit on this. > > In summary, conservation of energy is due to the time invariance of > our physical theories, which is a constraint we have chosen for our > theories. We could choose a non-time invariant theory, and such a > theory would not have an energy conservation law. It may be a rather > silly thing to do, but just like one can use Ptolemy's epicylce theory > to compute the positions of the planets, it is certainly possible. > > Cheers > > -- > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- > > Prof Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile) > Principal, High Performance Coders > Visiting Professor of Mathematics [email protected]<javascript:> > University of New South Wales http://www.hpcoders.com.au > ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- > > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
