On 09/24/2011 06:23 PM, Stephen A. Lawrence wrote:
First, you hit a sore point here, and I'm going to address it first.
The sore point is people giving some special, unusual meaning to a
common word, and then pretending that they've done something more clever
than just introduce a monkey wrench into the discussion.
On 11-09-23 07:32 PM, Mauro Lacy wrote:
I'll probably tell you too that for me science, real science, is about
knowledge of the way things really are.
Wrong on the face of it. Language is for communication, and
communication using language requires a previously agreed to set of
meanings for the words to be used. Consequently, you are welcome to
define some word to mean "knowledge of the way things /really/ are",
along with your own personal definition of the term "really are", but
the word for that isn't science, which has rather more limited goals.
What I'm saying is that science has bias. See below.
You can pretend that "/real/ science" would have a more broad reaching
goal than what "/ordinary/ science" has, but "science" is just a word,
words are just for communication, and to have value in communication the
word must be vested with its commonly accepted meaning. By definition,
a word means what it is commonly agreed to mean -- nothing more and
nothing less.
If you use a word to mean something other than that, then you are using
it for obfuscation, not communication.
Ok, here's the obfuscated meaning I'm using: "Science is the pursuit of
knowledge about reality."
"Science", as the word is commonly used, refers to a particular
technique and the knowledge which has been gained by that technique.
The (extremely simple) technique of "science" consists of observing
reality, making guesses about what makes it all go, and then /testing/
the guesses. The knowledge which has been gained by applying that
technique is the aggregate of the guesses which have been made, and the
results of the tests which have been applied, and really, that's all
there is to it.
Anything else is outside the realm of "science", as the word is commonly
used. In particular, determining the nature of some unknown and
ultimately untestable "absolute reality" is utterly beyond its scope.
I beg to disagree. Scientists limit themselves to a subset of possible
ways of knowing, but
that's not science, but academics, establishment, power struggles,
sectarianism, and the like.
And I insist: science (real science) is much more than that.
On 11-09-23 07:32 PM, Mauro Lacy wrote:
[ ... ]
Now, looking at the picture again, I can ask you: what is moving in
the galaxy? In general, you'll answer that stars, dust clouds, etc.
are moving, and that their movement has taken a spiral form, again,
due to gravity and due to a given initial rotation of the system,
which was in the past a giant dust cloud of some kind(which was
rotating who knows why), and gradually developed stars and planets out
of the initial irregularities.
And then I'll ask you: the empty space between stars, planets, etc.
which is in the galaxy, is also moving? You'll probably answer that,
given our current understanding of the matter, only matter can move,
not empty space. Moreover, you'll cite scientific premises like
Occam's razor and the like, to announce that we shouldn't multiply the
entities, that only observables and measurable things must be
considered, etc.
No, I won't invoke Occam's Razor at all.
I'll merely point out that we can easily cast your comments about the
motion of space itself in classical terms. You are talking about an
"aether", and a sort of "reverse aether drag" where the moving aether
drags the stars along.
To date, the aether theories which are consistent with experimental
results are also consistent with the predictions of SR, which is purely
geometric and does not require an aether. Consequently, to date there's
no evidence for the existence of an aether.
That's wrong as a procedural rule. In fact, it's at the core of the problem:
The next scientific step with a purely geometric theory is to try to
assign it physical meaning.
We can say, by example, that Kepler laws are "purely geometric", and
therefore, do not need something like a physical cause to operate.
But then Newton came and derived an inverse square law from Kepler laws.
Newton erred in his theory, by the way, when assuming that
matter alone causes gravity, but nevertheless, a physical explanation, a
reason for Kepler laws, was proposed and in fact adopted.
So, the next scientific step with relativity theories, is to try to
understand them physically, or to try to find a physical cause for the
behaviour predicted by them.
As I said, that step has been missing for centuries, and that omission
has very specific reasons: A physical explanation for special relativity
rules out materialism. If we understand matter as "something having
tridimensional (spatial) extent", relativity theories clearly point to
something that is not material, i.e. is not completely "laid out" in
tridimensional space.
That missing understanding has hindered, not favoured, the development
of science. And that of course has had severe consequences in other
human realms and activities, like the social and economical spheres.
That must change, and the sooner, the better. Science must abandon its
materialistic bias if real progress is to be made. If not, the decadence
will only aggravate with time, and the consequences will be more and
more dire.
But that could change tomorrow.
If the motion of the stars in spiral galaxies can be explained by an
aether theory, then obviously that would change things rather a lot --
and the aether would move from the realm of speculation (which is what
an untestable theory is) and into the realm of theories producing
testable predictions. But to get to that point, you'd need to refine
your speculation enough to explain not just precisely what the
interaction between the aether and the stars is, but you would also need
to explain what was making the aether whirl around like that. If you
can't come up with a solid reason for the latter, then you've got no
constraints on how you can assume the aether moves, and your theory
starts looking untestable.
It is not Occam's Razor that says that any theory which produces no
testable predictions is not a valid theory. Rather, it's the basic
principle of science: You observe, you guess, and you /test your
guess/. If you can't test your guess in any way, then it's a useless
sort of guess.
Once you see something in the right way, reality confirms it all the
time. Simply because that something is real.
My tests are running all the time, and they pass.
Regards,
Mauro
And then I'll answer that it strikes me as completely self evident
that what has caused the beautiful spiral arrangement of the stars in
the galaxy arms is the movement of space itself.
As I said, quantify that, so that it makes a testable prediction, and it
becomes an interesting theory.
Absent such quantification, it's just speculation, and is outside the
realm of science, which doesn't deal with things which cannot be tested.
