Subject: It's not our fault - they're all at sea Date: Fri, 3 Aug 2007 23:45:53 +0100 Seems that some folk are under mis-apprehensions about the state of modern science and its `real' knowledge - for want of a better phrase. Here's a rundown that should set our minds at rest - for a while anyway - first, an appreciation from Lee Smolin "We live in the ruins left by the overthrow of Newtonian science, trying to make sense of the many new discoveries that have grown up suddenly like a lush forest among the scattered stones of an ancient temple. In the confusion and promise of this situation our current theories are temporary dwellings, built with what is at hand, which includes both the stones of the old science and the trunks and branches of the new." p. 14 "His [Einstein's] general theory of relativity had revolutionized our understanding of what space and time are, but it had failed to produce a picture of the world that accounted for most known phenomena. In particular it had nothing to say about atoms, the particles that make up the atom, and their interactions with light, electromagnetic fields, and the other forces that hold the atom together. As the great physics of the twentieth century, at least from an experimental point of view, was atomic and nuclear physics, this meant that for most of physics general relativity was, at best, irrelevant. But what for Einstein was far worse was that the theory that had proved successful in the atomic and nuclear realm made little sense to him. This theory, quantum mechanics, owed its birth to Einstein as much as to any other single person. But the final form of the theory, as it had been arrived at in 1926 did not seem to him to fit the criteria of a fundemental physical theory. While he had to concede that it worked, he could not accept it, and the growing success of quantum mechanics meant Einstein himself was more and more irrelevant - marginalized, in the modern lingo. Indeed, Einstein spent the last twenty years of his life in a vain attempt to invent a theory, the so called unified field theory, that would supersede quantum mechanics. Einstein was well aware of his failure to achieve this and what he so forcefully communicated in that essay was that until there is some theory that brings together the successes of relativity and quantum theory, we will not have a physical theory that can be relied upon to give us a complete picture of what the world is. And, as the ultimate task of physics is to provide that picture then, without it, despite all of the experimental successes of relativity and the quantum theory, we do not have, in the deepest sense, any physical theory at all." p. 8 `The Life of the Cosmos' - notes - Einstein - "All these fifty years of conscious brooding have brought me no nearer to the answer to the question, 'What are light quanta?' Nowadays every Tom, Dick and Harry thinks he knows it, but he is mistaken. ... I consider it quite possible that physics cannot be based on the field concept, i.e., on continuous structures. In that case, nothing remains of my entire castle in the air, gravitation theory included, [and of] the rest of modern physics." - 1954 i.e - he knew, finally, that Relativity was close, but not right on target - Lee Smolin was interviewed on Radio 3 (BBC 21:45 programme) about his book `The Trouble With Physics' and, despite the setting he got two points across. 1) - Physics is still in a Newtonian mind-set. E.g 'atoms of any given element are identical and self-defined' - that's a Newtonian concept still held by most physicists today; 2) - He then said "We know no more than we did in 1975 - and that's not good" - implying physics is stuck in a dead-end. - quote from latest book "For all time, science has depended not just on journeyman scientists, but also visionaries who explore wild new ideas and think outside the box. But because of the nature of the University system, and its funding in the last quarter century, virtually all these visionaries have been pushed to the outside and receive little funding. What's left are a group of sheep who are herded by a few leaders" - Lee Smolin in `The Trouble With Physics' - To expand a little - Smolin says he was writing `for the layperson' and so has codified some things - when he says "Quantum Theory" I don't think - from evidence of many other leaders in the quantum field - that he thinks there is a theoretical model behind `QM' or `QED'. In fact Feynman - who painstakingly (with many others) tied quantum lab facts down [to] algorithms that enabled successful interpolation (and some extrapolation) of experimental QED outcomes - always said `no-one can understand it'. Because most of the early algorithms (un-thinking processes don't forget) give ridiculous "infinity" answers - until a mathematical `cheat' called re-normalization was arranged which got rid of (some of) the ridiculous infinities. So anyone saying "Quantum Theory says (or `insists on') anything much other than what we [now] know already is either a fool or a liar. The whole of `quantum' is mainly plain lab facts - without explanation, enabling only a little interpolation and some limited prediction. There is no `quantum model', only speculation. As Feynman and Smolin have said - "We don't have a complete physical theory". cheers Ray ------------------------------------------------- FURTHER REFERENCES GO - "search perceptions" - in SEARCH-ENGINE file-ID www.perceptions.couk.com/uef/present-state.txt