Hi Kathryn,
I have responses to various thrusts you made delimited by asterisks.
***
You wrote:
>>>
The complete and formal definition of energy a quantum physicist uses
today
is different from the one used by an eighteenth century physicist.
>>>
Not in the least! This is completely wrong, I'm afraid.
Nothing has changed in the definition since the 18th century. Energy
is defined only up to an irrelevant overall additive constant, and the
difference in the energy of a particle between two points in space is
(for a conservative field, like those found in nature) the line
integral across a path joining those two paths of the force
experienced by the particle.
Full stop.
To give an example, what was so profound about E = mc^2 (which is only
the leading order term, by the way) is that given the particular
non-Galiliean geometry of space-time postulated by Einstein to explain
the Michelson-Morley data, it turned out that energy *as defined in
teh 18th century way* obeyed this equation. This is a result that was
*derived*, mathematically, from the definition of energy given above,
and Einstein's postulates. Similarly for energy as it appears in
quantum mechanics.
>>>
That is, to me the term "energy" is a social
consruction that evolves, but it REFERS TO something that is "there in
reality." We could debate for decades what the preceding sentence means
and
I'd rather not get into that. But my point is, our definition of energy
keeps changing, but the "real thing" that is referred to is always what it
is.
>>>
I will bet you any amount of money you want that you will not find a
practicing physicist anywhere on the planet who agrees with this. I am
fully serious. The definition does NOT "keep changing". Nor is there
some underlying 'real thing' that everybody 'intuites'. You can
readily do the analysis using variables other than energy.
In fact, with comments about "evolving social constructions" of what
terms in science mean, I'd say you're sounding dangerously close to
the proponents of the deconstructivism view of science in the
so-called 'science wars'. :-)
***
Important aside: Far and away, the most significant advances in what
(was until the 18th century at least called) philosophy is contained
in modern physics and mathematics. Those fields contain that which we
are most sure of, by far, concerning existence in the broadest
sense. And they contain much more of what we can be sure of, by far,
than what has been produced by (what some physicists deride as) "mere
word arguments".
Let the cold sword of experiment and mathematics be one's
bullshit-sensor; nothing else is nearly as effective. That sensor is
the sole source of science's power and insight.
I find it hard to gainsay the proposition that a necessary condition
for anyone to claim to be philosophically informed is to have an
undergraduate-level understanding of physics (through relatively and
quantum mechanics) and mathematics (through set theory and number
theory).
***
>>>
I'm willing to posit a "definition" of God in the sense of a set of
attributes we all agree are characteristic of the social construct we
label
God. I expect that set of attributes to evolve over time. We posit
something "out there" that the label God applies to, and we agree that our
set of attributes does not "define" or fully characterize it, but is
rather
a characterization of what we agree by social consensus that we would
expect the world to be like if there is versus is not a God.
>>>
Ah! So what is that definition? In this thread so far, 'God' has,
implicitly at least, seemed to run the gamut from the US army's "Be
all you can be", to creativity, to spirituality, to one's personal
moral compass (whatever direction it may point), to the JCI god of the
old testament. It seems almost to be a blanket term for anything
generated from the nonverbal portions of the brain.
***
In passing, please note that there is a huge distinction between
spirituality and some monotheistic God. Zen Buddhists, to give one
example, have no need at all for the latter concept. (In fact,
non-western cultures in general have no need for it.)
And as a purely personal aside, I value spirituality very highly. As I
do non-verbal creativity. Both form large parts of my life. But
neither have anything to do with "faith", "belief", or claims
concerning aspects of nature. Which, implicitly at least, the term
"God" does to very many people.
***
>>>
It seems to me that if I were a scientist in the time of Galileo, those
might be the kinds of things I'd say in private to someone who had the
moxie to go up against the bishops.
>>>
That's an ad hominem argument. 'nuff said.
***
>>>
Let's hearken back to the point Jonathan made what seems like such a long
time ago. We are never in complete ignorance. We are not talking about
two arbitrary interchangeable labels here. We start with some knowledge.
For example:
1. How many people have risked the lives of themselves and their loved
ones for the tooth fairy?
2. How many symphonies have been composed for the tooth fairy?
3. How many people have retired to a safe place away from an unbelieving
society that punished them for being different, in order to have
unpressured time to learn the difficult skill of experiencing communion
with the tooth fairy?
It is extreme hubris to imagine that we can safely throw away the
accumulated wisdom of humanity when setting our priors.
>>>
On the contrary, it is extreme credulity to ascribe any significance
at all to "the accumulated wisdom of humanity".
Said 'wisdom' has included the flat earth and (almost universally
through all cultures) a heliocentric solar system. Until Darwin, in
the west, it included Bishop Usher's calculation that the earth was
formed in 4004 b.c., on a Friday (I think I have the day of the week
right).
To this day, in any culture, the vast majority of people who do not
have a physics education agree with Aristotelean physics, which
(having been arrived at without the scientific method) is completely
fallacious.
There are untold psychophysics experiments in which in laboratory
conditions people are repeatably and consistently fooled about what
they're "sure" they just saw / heard / said.
Ben Libet's experiments show that people initiate actions before
they're consciously aware of "having decided" to do them. (So much for
free will.)
On the moral front, your "accumulated wisdom" has, across all
cultures, included the legitimacy of slavery, religious wars,
misogyny, and white-superior bigotry. (Interestingly, the latter holds
even outside of white Europeans - social preferance for light skin
holds in Afro-americans and in the Indian subcontinent as well, for
example.) Hardly a winning record.
I'd say that if something is adhered to by the vast majority of
humans, it's almost a reason to assign it a *low* prior.
***
>>>
David, you have set up a straw-man definition of God by taking literally
the mythology of one particular religious tradition. What you have done
would be as if I based my view of physics on my son's seventh grade
science
textbook. Then you proceed to debunk that straw man. Well, I agree with
you. That straw man should be debunked. But we've known that for
centuries. You're fighting an old war, one that was won by Galileo
although it took a few centuries for the fighting to die down.
>>>
Kathryn, certainly in the US, nothing has "died down". Read the papers
- don't only talk to your highly educated colleagues (like those
following this thread). The majority of Americans believe in the
*literal* heaven and hell. And believe literally in angels. The US
congress just voted to force the moral dictates of a minor
late-Bronze-age tribe to be emblazoned in all public institutions,
creationists don't perceive the Epic of Gilgamesh appearing in other
parts of that tribe's lore, and wish said Epic to be forced down our
children's throats, etc., etc., etc.
All while the middle east, Kashmir, the Balkans, Indonesia, etc., have
waves of strife that are in large part motivated by people who take
various "straw men" very literally, and in opposing ways.
This is why I find it to be downright dangerous to use terms like
"God" loosely, to apply to things other than those "straw men" -
because those straw men are on the loose.
***
Eric Neufeld writes:
>>>
Doesn't our belief in 'science' (whatever that is) rest on a kind of
faith? Most of what science does is measure things and try to tease
a few axioms out of a (usually narrow) domain consistent with those
measurements and with some predictive power? The whole enterprise of
measurement is fraught with philosophical difficulties. To count objects,
we need to decide that two objects are of the same class, a human
artififact. And to quote Henry Kyburg, we were taught in high school
that if we get the same result twice when measuring some quantity, we
aren't trying hard enough? And doesn't the mathematics we use to formalize
these domains rest on theories not proven to be consistent? (e.g.
set theory).
>>>
All true. In fact, in Neural Computation several years ago I published
a set of "No Free Lunch" theorems which consist in part of a formal
proof (and extensions) of Hume's statements on the impossibility of
induction, substantiating what you say.
None of which changes the fact that every day, we all literally put
our lives in the hands of science, trusting it to (for example) have
gotten the equations right concerning the explosive power of gasoline
oxidizing a meter beyond our feet.
(Which, by the way is one of the *really* deep mysteries, as
underscored by the NFL theorems - just why induction does, in some
sense, appear to work so well, at least as implemented in science. But
that's off topic.)
We accord this respect to science - and no other field - not because
the scientific priesthood has us hoodwinked, or because we trust
science's *conclusions* per se. But because we trust the field's
*methodology* so thoroughly.
Anyone willing to put such trust in the "methodology" of personal
religious revelation?
David Wolpert
