With your last note responding to Brian's query about
Descartes' law of refraction, you have just redefined
your original claim so as to make it a very different
one from what you earlier asserted.
If I remember correctly, you originally chose the example
of relativistic vs. Newtonian mechanics, and claimed that
the discovery of relativistic mechanics in the realm where
v approaches c did not "overthrow" any "natural law" such
as Newton's F=ma. This is debatable, but is not my concern
now. By "natural law", you explained that you meant a
mathematical description of a physical phenomenon. I know
that is what you meant because you used that definition to
rule out the phlogiston theory of combustion as a "natural
law".
Yet now, when faced with an example of a mathematical
description of a natural phenomenon that indeed *was* shown
to be incorrect (Descartes' law of refraction), you have
reformulated your claim to assert that what you *really* meant
was that the physical phenomenon of refraction itself was
not overthrown, only the mathematical description of it
(which most people would call the "natural law"). You wrote:
***************************************************
When Burgy and I talk about falsifying a physical law with new
evidence, we mean demonstrating that the physical phenomenon itself, not
just our abstract mathematical description of it, is false. Refraction is
still recognized as a legitimate physical phenomenon; what's more, it is
also recognized that it is caused by the decrease in the speed of light as
that light passes through dense material, such that as a general rule of
thumb the greater the density, the greater the angle of refraction.
Descartes' attempt to describe this phenomenon may have been shown to be
incorrect, but the phenomenon itself is still very much real.
***************************************************
This is very different from your original claim, as perusal of your
earlier messages will show. By no conceivable stretch of the imagination
do people mean "physical phenomenon" when they say "physical law". The
"law" is our description (which may be mathematical or not depending
on the subject) of a phenomenon.
Rather than get defensive and try to convince people that you have
been consistent with your terms throughout this thread, why don't you
take some time to think about what you really meant when you asserted
that "no physical law has ever been shown to be false". Then you
can explain it better. In the form you put it in the message quoted
above, it seems suspiciously like a tautology that runs something like:
"real physical phenomena have never been shown to be not real".
Stan Zygmunt