- #1
oldman
- 633
- 5
The rise and fall of evidence-based natural philosophy.
The way we think of the external physical world — natural philosophy -- has in the past often been coloured by anthro’centric prejudice and personal egotism. This perspective has gradually been eclipsed by the secular ideal of evidence-based knowledge, which has served fundamental physics well. But it now seems to be in decline.
First, here are examples of thinking coloured by anthro’centric prejudice:
1. The ancient Greek belief in a real, physical pantheon of deities on Mt. Olympus, who lived and loved much as we do. As deities do, they took a personal interest in the welfare of their
dependants, like Athena did with Odysseus.
2. The medieval conviction that the Earth is flat and centred on civilised places like the
Mediterranean, with edges one should be careful of approaching because of strange creatures --- sea-serpents and suchlike.
3. Pre-Copernican models of the heavens in which the Sun revolved around our central domain, the Earth. This was a persistent, natural, seemingly evidence-based prejudice.
4. The early 20th century astronomical view that the Milky Way is an Island
Universe, which preserved our central status in the scheme of things.
5. The outdated 20th century view that what we ourselves can easily observe 'out there' --- stars collected in luminous galaxies --- is nearly all that need concern astronomers. Remember that observations by Zwicky were ignored for quite some time, and that Vera Rubin’s data was at first sceptically received.
6. The still-extant conviction that this planet and all non-human life on it exists primarily to serve the needs and purposes of that small fraction of its biomass that is 'intelligent', namely our good selves.
Meanwhile, technology has flourished, driven by the gradual rise to domination of a secular
evidence-based perspective in physics and all other sciences. The result is that fortunate folk now enjoy comforts beyond the imaginings of earlier peoples. There are however two prominent examples of the decline of this successful perspective:
The first is mainstream cosmology, where obtaining evidence that confirms theoretical advances is costly and sometimes impossible. The mainstream consensus now is that (5) above is improbably simplistic, and that some 95% of the universe is in fact made of undiscovered 'dark energy' and 'exotic' matter, both of a quite unknown kind. There is indeed supporting evidence for this view, for example the observed element abundances, the Euclidean geometry of space and agreement with the analysis of recent satellite observations (WMAP). These are all features concordant with the Lambda CDM model universe that mainstream cosmologists now agree is sufficiently convincing.
But even this model is not quite free of problems. It incorporates a startling invention; an inconceivably brief instant of exponentially rapid drastic change (inflation), driven by a scalar field invented specifically for this purpose. And it cannot yet account for a striking asymmetry of our universe — the entire absence of natural anti-matter.
Consensus cosmology has acquired sceptics who find the current consensus too fanciful to accept for a variety of reasons: ignorance, scepticism about postulating vast amounts of invisible stuff, conservatism, contradiction of their own (sometimes crackpot) ideas and prejudices and distrust of a consensus model with ad hoc 'patches' added to solve specific problems.
It is clear that modern cosmology incorporates ideas cantilevered out further over an abyss of ignorance than say, classical thermodynamics or Newtonian physics. This structure has been needed because the ideal of evidence-based knowledge is so difficult to attain.
A second and more extreme example is physics beyond the 35-year-old Standard Model of
particle physics. Here our evidence-based perspective has given way entirely to mathematical ratiocination, as documented in the dissident writings of Peter Woit (Not Even Wrong) and Lee Smolin (The Trouble with Physics). And in well-regarded recent approaches to the thorny problem of reconciling General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics there seems to be little attempt to predict observable consequences. See Androvandi and Pereira, Arxiv:0711.2274V1[gr-qc], Ambjorn, Jurkiewicz and Loll Arxiv:hep-th/0509010V3 and Fairbarn Arxiv:0807.3188V1[gr-qc].
If evidence-based fundamental physics is in decline, have readers of this forum any ideas of what is to take its place?
The way we think of the external physical world — natural philosophy -- has in the past often been coloured by anthro’centric prejudice and personal egotism. This perspective has gradually been eclipsed by the secular ideal of evidence-based knowledge, which has served fundamental physics well. But it now seems to be in decline.
First, here are examples of thinking coloured by anthro’centric prejudice:
1. The ancient Greek belief in a real, physical pantheon of deities on Mt. Olympus, who lived and loved much as we do. As deities do, they took a personal interest in the welfare of their
dependants, like Athena did with Odysseus.
2. The medieval conviction that the Earth is flat and centred on civilised places like the
Mediterranean, with edges one should be careful of approaching because of strange creatures --- sea-serpents and suchlike.
3. Pre-Copernican models of the heavens in which the Sun revolved around our central domain, the Earth. This was a persistent, natural, seemingly evidence-based prejudice.
4. The early 20th century astronomical view that the Milky Way is an Island
Universe, which preserved our central status in the scheme of things.
5. The outdated 20th century view that what we ourselves can easily observe 'out there' --- stars collected in luminous galaxies --- is nearly all that need concern astronomers. Remember that observations by Zwicky were ignored for quite some time, and that Vera Rubin’s data was at first sceptically received.
6. The still-extant conviction that this planet and all non-human life on it exists primarily to serve the needs and purposes of that small fraction of its biomass that is 'intelligent', namely our good selves.
Meanwhile, technology has flourished, driven by the gradual rise to domination of a secular
evidence-based perspective in physics and all other sciences. The result is that fortunate folk now enjoy comforts beyond the imaginings of earlier peoples. There are however two prominent examples of the decline of this successful perspective:
The first is mainstream cosmology, where obtaining evidence that confirms theoretical advances is costly and sometimes impossible. The mainstream consensus now is that (5) above is improbably simplistic, and that some 95% of the universe is in fact made of undiscovered 'dark energy' and 'exotic' matter, both of a quite unknown kind. There is indeed supporting evidence for this view, for example the observed element abundances, the Euclidean geometry of space and agreement with the analysis of recent satellite observations (WMAP). These are all features concordant with the Lambda CDM model universe that mainstream cosmologists now agree is sufficiently convincing.
But even this model is not quite free of problems. It incorporates a startling invention; an inconceivably brief instant of exponentially rapid drastic change (inflation), driven by a scalar field invented specifically for this purpose. And it cannot yet account for a striking asymmetry of our universe — the entire absence of natural anti-matter.
Consensus cosmology has acquired sceptics who find the current consensus too fanciful to accept for a variety of reasons: ignorance, scepticism about postulating vast amounts of invisible stuff, conservatism, contradiction of their own (sometimes crackpot) ideas and prejudices and distrust of a consensus model with ad hoc 'patches' added to solve specific problems.
It is clear that modern cosmology incorporates ideas cantilevered out further over an abyss of ignorance than say, classical thermodynamics or Newtonian physics. This structure has been needed because the ideal of evidence-based knowledge is so difficult to attain.
A second and more extreme example is physics beyond the 35-year-old Standard Model of
particle physics. Here our evidence-based perspective has given way entirely to mathematical ratiocination, as documented in the dissident writings of Peter Woit (Not Even Wrong) and Lee Smolin (The Trouble with Physics). And in well-regarded recent approaches to the thorny problem of reconciling General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics there seems to be little attempt to predict observable consequences. See Androvandi and Pereira, Arxiv:0711.2274V1[gr-qc], Ambjorn, Jurkiewicz and Loll Arxiv:hep-th/0509010V3 and Fairbarn Arxiv:0807.3188V1[gr-qc].
If evidence-based fundamental physics is in decline, have readers of this forum any ideas of what is to take its place?