On Wed, 5 Nov 97 anduril@cix.compulink.co.uk (Tony Hollick) Wrote:
>John;
>This discussion would be a __lot_ easier and more fruitful if you'd
>take the trouble to read the Colloquium, "Criticism and the Growth
>of Knowledge", Lakatos and Musgrave, eds. [1976].
Tony;
This discussion would be a __lot_ easier and more fruitful if you'd take the
trouble to read any high school science book or at least a good grade school
one.
>>Me:
>>The 2 slit interference experiment.
>Popper explains this neatly with propensities. Propensities are real
>properties, albeit a little like 'hidden variables.'
But there is no way Newton or Galileo of Faraday or Maxwell can explain this: Shine a light on 2 closely spaced slits and it
will produce a complex interference pattern on a film, even if the photons
are sent out one at a time. If a photon (or an electron) goes through one
slit it wouldn't seem to matter if the other slit, the one it didn't go
though, was there or not, but it does!
Or place a polarizing filter set at 0 degrees over one slit, and one set at
90 degrees over the other, and the interference pattern disappears. Now place
a third filter set at 45 degrees between the slits and the film and wait
until AFTER the photons have passed the slits to do it. The interference
pattern comes back! Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle does not enter in any
of this, it's not that the photon goes through one slit and we just don't
know which one, it goes through both slits, and neither.
Don't tell me that all this is crazy because it's not my fault, I'm sure I could have done much better but unfortunately I was
not given the job. Tell God He's crazy.
A word about philosophers; I like them, especially Popper, I always find that
sort of stuff entertaining, but Stephen Hawking has some amusing things to
say about them that contain more than a little truth.
- From "Black Holes and Baby Universes:
"philosophers have mostly not had enough mathematical background to keep up
with modern developments in theoretical physics. There is a subspecies
called philosophers of science who ought to be better equipped. But many of
them are failed physicist who found it too hard to invent new theories and
so took to writing the philosophy of physics instead. They are still
arguing about the scientific theories of the early years of this century,
like relativity and quantum mechanics. They are not in touch with the
present frontier of physics."
>A dice has a propensity of one in six to come up 6. The _physics_ of
>dice throws is very complex.
The 2 slit experiment is not complex and complexity has nothing to do with it.
>Electrons only 'spiral into the nucleus' in aether theory.
Newton says an object moving in a circle is accelerating toward the center of
the circle. Maxwell says an accelerating charge will radiate an
electromagnetic wave and give up energy. BUT...
An electron is a charge. The electron does not usually radiate an
electromagnetic wave. The electron does not give up energy. The electron
does not spiral into the nucleus.
>In Relational Mechanics, they're held in various orbits of
>near-constant radius by electric force
The electron has a negative charge.
The nucleus has a positive charge.
The electric force pulls the electron and nucleus together.
The electron and nucleus do not come together.
Something else must be stopping them.
>Relational Mechanics handles lasing easily.
But the margin of your E mail message was too small to contain the marvelous
proof of it that you discovered.
>The Michelson-Morley experiment perfectly corroborates the ballistic
>theory of light. Doesn't everyone know this?
No, everyone doesn't know this.
>Sheesh!!! Gravitational redshift is perfectly predicted by the
>ballistic theory of light.
This said from a man who thinks a red filter produces a redshift.
>>Me:
>>The detection of gravity waves by Taylor and Hulse for which they
>>won the Nobel Prize in 1995.
>But this is an _emprirical_ matter
Rather a cavalier attitude to take toward experimental results from someone
who claims he's scientific don't you think.
>on which Relational Mechanics takes no position
Then you've been beaten by the competition because General Relativity did
take a position, it predicted the gravity waves would exist and said exactly
how intense they'd be. Taylor and Hulse proved the prediction correct.
In my last post I mentioned the orbit of Mercury and said:
" General relativity predicts 42.98, the observed value is 43.11 +- .21"
Tony responded to my comment with the following:
>The point you insist on ignoring is that the velocity of propagation
>of gravitational force (if any) is not a feature of Classical or
>Relational Mechanics. In Newton's theory, gravity acts instantaneously
>at a distance (even though he also says that it doesn't, because that
>would have been 'occult' and could have gotten him executed). Stop
>conflating incompatible propositions, fer Chrissake!!!
It's English, I recognize the words and it seems to obey the rules of
grammar, but if anybody has an idea of what the above could mean I wish
they'd drop me a line.
>Sheesh!!! Time is a _dimension_. You never studied Dimensional
>Analysis?
You say time is a dimension and you say it's a dimension that doesn't measure
anything. You might as well say time is a teapot. I'm going to repeat my
question and see if you'll answer it this time, but you'll probably just say
"ballistic theory" has it all figured out or point to another philosophy book.
If this thing you call "time" is not a measure of how particles of matter and
energy interact, such as the particles in my clock my body my brain or my
world, then why should I be the slightest bit interest in it?
>'time dilation' is positivistic. I don't buy into positivistic stuff
>it's all obsolete.
I close by quoting again from Stephen Hawking's book:
"I have been variously called a nominalist, an instrumentalist,
a positivist, a realist, and several other ists. The technique seems
to be refutation by denigration: If you can attach a label to my
approach, you don't have to say what is wrong with it. Surely everyone
knows the fatal errors of all those isms. The people who actually make
the advances in theoretical physics don't think in the categories that
the philosophers and historians of science subsequently invent for them.
I am sure that Einstein, Heisenberg, and Dirac didn't worry about whether
they were realists or instrumentalists. They were simply concerned that
the existing theories didn't fit together"
John K Clark johnkc@well.com
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