Nick, If Hywel is correct we know a great deal about how gravity "behaves" but not what causes it. No one has ever observed a graviton, he said.
Frank The quote marks are because we know how objects behave in a gravitational field. ----------------------------------- Frank Wimberly My memoir: https://www.amazon.com/author/frankwimberly My scientific publications: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Frank_Wimberly2 Phone (505) 670-9918 On Tue, Apr 30, 2019, 9:15 PM Nick Thompson <[email protected]> wrote: > Hi, Eric, and interlocutors, > > > > I knew I would get my ears boxed for this: > > > > *I was in a forum with a bunch of physicists last year many of whom were > wedded to the notion that nature was determined by things beyond experience > that we would never know. That's both a tautology AND an oxymoron. * > > > > Others have met you at the high level of your response, so I will now > confess that I was making a small logical point. In the first place, > “things beyond experience that we could never know” IS a tautology, right. > So, that expression is merely to say that there are things we may never > know. Ok. That’s fine. But when you go on to say that nature is > determined by unknowable causes that’s an oxymoron. To the extent that > anything is caused, by whatever means, it reveals its causes in its > behavior. To the extent that events are random, no cause is revealed and > no cause exists. > > > > Now the discussion which followed your post was so far above my head, that > I wasn’t sure the extent to which it addressed the following: To what > extent do you-all think the vagaries of quantum phenomena are properly > generalized to the macro level? I hear a lot of talk among social > scientists to the effect that now that we have quantum theory, we can’t do > psychology, which talk I take to be obscurantist blather. Do I need to be > pistol-whipped on that point, too? > > > > Nick > > > > > > Nicholas S. Thompson > > Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology > > Clark University > > http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/ > > > > > > -----Original Message----- > From: Friam [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Eric Smith > Sent: Tuesday, April 30, 2019 2:22 PM > To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[email protected]> > Subject: Re: [FRIAM] A Question For Tomorrow > > > > > I was in a forum with a bunch of physicists last year many of whom were > wedded to the notion that nature was determined by things beyond experience > that we would never know. That's both a tautology AND an oxymoron. > > > > I think this requires care. Never wanting to defend the positions of > people I don’t know in a conversation I wasn’t in, it would be helpful to > know what topic the conversation was about, in the terms the participants > applied to it. > > > > > > Since physics has existed as a mathematical science (let’s say, since > Newton?), it has employed a notation of “state” of a system. > > > > Also since that time, it has employed a notion of the “observable > properties” (shortened to just “observables”) somehow associated with the > system’s states. > > > > In classical physics, the concept of state was identical to that of a > collection of values assigned to some sufficiently complete set of > observables, and which observables made up the set could be chosen without > regard to which particular state they were characterizing. > > > > aka in common language, anything inherent in the concept of a state was > just the value of an observable, meaning something knowable by somebody who > bothered to measure it. > > > > > > In quantum mechanics, physics still has notions of states and observables. > > > > Now, however, the notion of state is _not_ coextensive with a set of > values assigned to a complete (but not over-complete) set of observables, > which one could declare in advance without regard to which state is being > characterized. > > > > To my view, the least important consequence of this change is that the > state may not be knowable by us, even in principle, though that is the > case. (To many others, this is its most important consequence. But the > reason I shake that red cape before a herd of bulls is so that I can say…) > > > > The important consequence of this understanding is that we have > mathematical formalizations of the concept of state and of observable, and > they are two different kinds of concept. It is precisely that both can be > defined, that the theory needs both to function in its complete form, and > that the definitions are different, that expands our understanding of > concepts of state and observable. A state still does the main things > states have always done in quantitative physical theories, and in the sense > that they characterize our “attainable knowledge”, observables do what they > have always done. Before, the two jobs had been coextensive; now they are > not. > > > > > > I assume Shakespeare wrote the “There are more things in heaven and earth, > Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy” line about the same > phenomenon as the thing that makes the Copernical revolution a revolution: > people fight to give up importance they believed they had, or control they > believed they had. Once the fight is in the culture, there may not be that > emotional motive in all the combatants; they may believe they have a > logical problem with the revolution. But how can there be a logical > problem with the Copernican revolution? It is a statement about the > alignments of beliefs and facts. Likewise the concepts of state and > observable in quantum mechanics. > > > > It feels like a Copernican revolution to me, every time physics shows that > new operational understandings are required, and tries to give us new > language habits in which to coordinate our minds (singly or jointly) around > them, to pose the question how this was known all along in our folk > language and thus can be logically analyzed with its categories. There is > only very limited reason for our folk language to furnish “a description” > of the nature of the world. It is a collection of symbols that are part of > “the system of us”, which when exchanged or imagined mediate coordination > of our states of mind (and yes, I know this term can be objected to from > some behaviorist points of view, but it seems to require much less > flexibility to use provisionally than the state of a quantum system, even > though it is also much less well-understood at present). If a collection > of robot vacuum cleaners exchange little pulse sequences of infrared light > to coordinate, so they don’t re-vacuum the same spot, we might anticipate > that there is a limited implicit representation of the furniture of the > room and its occupants in the pulse sequences, but we would not expect them > to furnish a description of the robots’ engineering, or the physical world, > or much else. Human language is somewhat richer than that, but it seems to > me the default assumption should be that its interpretation suffers the > same fundamental hazard. Signals exchanged as part of a system should not > be expected to furnish a valid empirical description _of_ the system. > > > > Common language is fraught with that hazard in unknown degrees and > dimensions; technical language can also be fraught, but we try to build in > debuggers to be better at finding the errors or gaps and doing a > better-than-random job of fixing them. > > > > The fluidity and flexibility with which the mind can take on new habits of > language use, and the only-partial degree to which that cognitive > capability is coupled to emotional comfort or discomfort in different > habits, seems important to me in trying to understand how people argue > about science. > > > > Eric > > > > > > > > > > ============================================================ > > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe > http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com > > archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/ > > FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com > archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/ > FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove >
============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/ FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove
