>You do not need to discuss the intricacies of the Lamb shift and virtual
particles in order to illustrate the basic property of INDISTINGUISHABILITY
shared by quantum-mechanical particles. <
>However, in light of the fundamentally INDISTNGUISHABLE nature of identical
particles at the quantum level, your point seems hollow. We already know,
apart from the Lamb shift and apart from any virtual particles, that there is
no experimental way to distinguish the situations you described, in which two
electrons have effectively exchanged places. So why lay such emphasis on the
inability of theory to predict something that we can never hope to observe
anyway?<
Well, I must say this about that. ****Stan is right and I am wrong!!!*** The
point could have been made in a much simpler fashion so that part of my
argument is indeed hollow. Thank you for the correction both in substance
and in spelling of Retherford (not Rutherford), who should have had the
forethought that if he was to get famous in physics he should change is name
to something much different from that giant - Rutherford. Unfortunately
this is not the first time I have messed up on Retherford's spelling..
This has nothing to do with Stan's post. But I do want to relate something
that was said to me by a friend tonight. He suggested that some people might
not like my way of stating facts. That I am too definite in the way I state
things. If anyone has been offended by that I apologize. I won't promise to
change because it is the way my personality works. I see issues and data
only and do not feel personally hurt when someone tells me I am wrong. I
appreciate it. But too often I forget that others might not feel the same
way.
Stan wrote:
> My main point is that to those
of us trained in the quantitative sciences (you too, Glenn), it is amazing
how
low the burden of proof is in the area of evolutionary biology. It's hard to
be impressed by Dawkins and company when you have grown up reading Einstein
and Feynman.
With my professional bias showing,<
I am not sure I would agree here completely. When I went from physics into
geophysics and started learning geology, I found that proofs were less
certain than in any science which can utilize mathematics as effectively as
physics and chemistry. There is no equation I can manipulate to prove that
the continents were once joined, nor is there an equation which will evolve
life. The mathematics which applies to geology, living systems is far more
complex and thus much less understood than the relatively linear equations
upon which most of physics is built (I know that much effort is now going
into nonlinear phenomena). But I am not sure that I would agree that the
burden of proof is less. The problems are so different that logic and
example are all that one has.
glenn