Moorad Alexanian wrote:
....................
> However, such a
> theory cannot even bring anything into being, theories are descriptive not
> prescriptive.
I often see & hear the phrase "theories are descriptive, not prescriptive"
used as a kind of mantra. Of course our theorizing doesn't compel the universe to
do anything, even when it's correct. But the phrase encourages people to neglect
the fact (supported by the great predictive success of science, & especially of
mathematical physics) that there is a mathematical pattern underlying the universe
which _is_ prescriptive, & that our "laws of physics" give us better and better
approximations to that pattern. Successful quantitative predictions are not themselves
prescriptive but but indicate that some prescribing is going on.
There's a story that when Einstein was asked what his reaction would have been
if the 1919 eclipse observations had disagreed with the general relativity prediction of
the bending of starlight by the sun, he said, "Then I would have been sorry for the dear
Lord!" Certainly (if he really said it) Einstein didn't think he could bend starlight
by sitting in Berlin & writing equations. But he was confident that he'd achieved some
insight into the basic structure which "the dear Lord" had given the universe.
But the question remains - why is this pattern, & not another, "activated" in a
real universe? & that's a question science _qua_ science can't answer.
Shalom,
George
George L. Murphy
gmurphy@raex.com
http://web.raex.com/~gmurphy/
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