Re: [asa] YEC--What can we offer them?

"The fundamental model is the math."

I disagree. For one thing, much of science is not mathematical. If the
math is fundamental to physics, then one must use fundamentally different
criteria for judging the validity of, say, geology theories than physics
theories. So I claim that the math is an expression of the ideas behind the
math, and that the ideas are what are truly fundamental.

"Einstein needs Newton."

OK, but this is just because we weren't smart enough to look at Einstein by
himself and figure out how to interpret him. Newton was an invaluable
crutch, but now that we've learned how to interpret Einstein, we can assume
ever after that GMm/r^2 as we now apply it comes from Einstein. (Can't we?)
(I know how GMm/r^2 is applied as force but confess ignorance on how it's
applied as geometry!) I'm not saying Newton wasn't a most important and
creative guy, just that he was wrong in the current big picture of
scientific theory.

"Classical general relativity is only an approximation to a better theory."

I covered this below: "Globally all theories are wrong because none is
absolutely true. What we mean when we say a theory is correct is that it is
the best theory currently available."

Don

  ----- Original Message -----
  From: George Murphy<mailto:gmurphy@raex.com>
  To: Don Winterstein<mailto:dfwinterstein@msn.com> ;
asa<mailto:asa@calvin.edu>
  Cc: Randy Isaac<mailto:randyisaac@comcast.net>
  Sent: Saturday, July 07, 2007 12:47 PM
  Subject: Re: [asa] YEC--What can we offer them?

  Don -

  I can't agree that Newton's theory is simply "wrong." Of course a lot
depends on what one understands "Newton's theory" to be. Certainly a model
in which masses exert instantaneous inverse square forces on other masses
which move in accord with F = ma is inferior to Einstein's model of curved
space-time & can't even be considered an approximation to it: masses
exerting forces are qualitatively different things from non-Euclidean
geometries. But the fundamental model is the math. Newtonian gravitation
in that sense is then Poisson's equation for the potential with mass density
in the source term plus the statement that ma is minus the gradient of the
potential. & that statement, while not as accurately in agreement with
observation as Einstein's equations, is an approximation to the latter
equations under well-defined conditions.

  Lest this seem to Platonic, note a couple of other facts. 1st, when we we
want to know how to correlate the math objects in Einstein's theory with
physical entities we look at the Newtonian limit. In that sense Einstein
needs Newton. & 2d, it's pretty certain that Einstein's theory itself will
have to be extended to make it consistent with quantum theory, & thus that
classical general relativity is only an approximation to a better theory.
If we apply your criteria it seems that we have to say that Einstein's
theory is "wrong" even though we don't yet have any observations that it
disagrees with & don't yet know what to replace it with if any discrepancies
were to found.

  Shalom
  George
  http://web.raex.com/~gmurphy/<http://web.raex.com/~gmurphy/>
    ----- Original Message -----
    From: Don Winterstein<mailto:dfwinterstein@msn.com>
    To: asa<mailto:asa@calvin.edu>
    Cc: Randy Isaac<mailto:randyisaac@comcast.net>
    Sent: Saturday, July 07, 2007 1:53 AM
    Subject: Re: [asa] YEC--What can we offer them?

    Randy wrote:

    "By the way...I ended up claiming that, as far as I could tell,
    there has been no case where a scientific theory which has been
validated by
    data from many independent sources and which is accepted as consensus by
the
    mainstream community, has been later invalidated. I'd love to hear of
any
    examples that any of you might think of."

    I wrote earlier that QM and plate tectonics were theories that had
invalidated earlier accepted theories, but "Newton was not wrong, but his
theory lacked generality." On second thought I now claim that Newton also
was wrong, that his theory of gravitation was invalidated by general
relativity. The reason his theory is wrong is the same reason the others
were wrong: they were based on the wrong models.

    Let me explain: What does it mean for a scientific theory to be invalid
or wrong? Globally all theories are wrong because none is absolutely true.
What we mean when we say a theory is correct is that it is the best theory
currently available. When we say a theory is the best available, we mean
that we prefer its underlying models over those of any competing theory,
because those models give results in some way superior to results of
competing models.

    So the underlying models--or paradigms, as I've been calling them--are
absolutely decisive in any effort to determine whether or not a theory is
wrong. While a theory based on the wrong models may sometimes give good
quantitative answers, from the point of view of theoretical science the
underlying models are more important than the answers (within limits, of
course). Even absurd theories can sometimes give good answers.

    Newton's paradigm assumed space-time was absolute and independent of
masses within, and it assumed masses fall towards one another because of a
force between them acting at a distance. General relativity, the better
theory, says those assumptions are not true. Therefore Newton's theory is
wrong because it's based on invalid models. Even though general relativity
gives Newton's formalism in a limiting case, from the point of view of
scientific theory it doesn't make Newton's theory right.

    Science advances in a sort of bootstrap fashion by replacing current
models with new models. In the process the replaced models become obsolete
as theory--in other words, wrong.

    So I'd revise Randy's claim to read as follows: Scientific theories go
where experiments and human minds lead. In no case have scientists gone
back to an old theory once data and theorists made it clear there was a
better theory. (Exception: Sometimes an old theory still has pedagogical or
computational uses.)

    Of course, this may well not be the kind of thing Randy wanted to say!

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Received on Tue Jul 10 05:38:20 2007