- #1
oldman
- 633
- 5
Here I comment on a new trend in fundamental physics and ask philosophy folk whether they think that it represents an acceptable shift in the way physics is done (remembering the tautology that physics is that which is done by physicists!).
Established and traditional aspects of the philosophy of a physicist might include the following prescriptions:
Observe the workings of nature with an intelligent eye; keep a sharp watch for apparent regularities; probe any newly observed regularities in Nature's behavour with the experimental techniques that are to hand; describe the so explored regularities with the language of mathematics, with its help make predictions of nature's behaviour that can be falsified and, if no such predictions are falsified, provisionally incorporate theories about the observed regularities into the body of accepted wisdom. (Last and by no means least, use this knowledge to stimulate technical progress; be financially rewarded, become famous and be awarded prizes.)
Velikovsky (see for example http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Velikovsky ) had a different and catastrophist philosophy. He cobbled together observations of Nature's present condition with legends of the past, injected the idea of sensational disasters like planetary collisions into his mix of wild surmise --- and became a successful best-selling author and lecturer. In doing so he became a famous bete noire for the scientific community.
Yet some aspects of Velikovsky's catastophist philosophy have acquired scientific respectability. For example it is now accepted that the dominant status of our species was made possible by the astronomical catastophe that overtook dinosaurs some 65 million years ago. Attempts to use orbital calculations to trace the genesis of this event back to collisions between asteroids by have recently been reported. And among biologists the idea of punctuated evolution is no longer the anathema it once was. We live and learn.
It seems to me that in accounting for the face that nature now presents to us we have always to recognise the interplay of two distinct factors. The first is the fundamental regularities and laws that concern physicists, with their Popperian stress on prediction and falsifiability. The second is the generally unknowable sequence of historical chance events that shape the face of nature we now see, that Velikovsky so dramatised and are not part of science.
I claim that physicists seem recently to be trying to incorporate such unknowable sequences into their own endeavours, and that it gives fundamental physics a new Velikovskian flavour.
I am here referring to the unknowable sequence of events that led to the choice of "our" vacuum, and "our" laws of physics from the 10^500 or so other vacua postulated by string theory, and to the similarly unknowable events that caused "our" universe to "bang-out" of an unknowable multiverse --- ideas of the "landscape" variety, that is.
At first sight such ideas seem to me like silly idle speculations rather than physics. But then I remember how venomously Velikovsky's notions were received by the scientific community of his time, how later they turned out to incorporate a grain of truth. Also, so much of what we are must depend on mysteries of the past. For instance, the events that led to a meeting between your great-great grandfather and great-great-grandmother are almost certainly unknown to you. Yet for you they were vitally important! Perhaps the landscape scenario is relevant, after all.
I then equivocate. What do philosophy folk think about the new Velikovskian physics?
Established and traditional aspects of the philosophy of a physicist might include the following prescriptions:
Observe the workings of nature with an intelligent eye; keep a sharp watch for apparent regularities; probe any newly observed regularities in Nature's behavour with the experimental techniques that are to hand; describe the so explored regularities with the language of mathematics, with its help make predictions of nature's behaviour that can be falsified and, if no such predictions are falsified, provisionally incorporate theories about the observed regularities into the body of accepted wisdom. (Last and by no means least, use this knowledge to stimulate technical progress; be financially rewarded, become famous and be awarded prizes.)
Velikovsky (see for example http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Velikovsky ) had a different and catastrophist philosophy. He cobbled together observations of Nature's present condition with legends of the past, injected the idea of sensational disasters like planetary collisions into his mix of wild surmise --- and became a successful best-selling author and lecturer. In doing so he became a famous bete noire for the scientific community.
Yet some aspects of Velikovsky's catastophist philosophy have acquired scientific respectability. For example it is now accepted that the dominant status of our species was made possible by the astronomical catastophe that overtook dinosaurs some 65 million years ago. Attempts to use orbital calculations to trace the genesis of this event back to collisions between asteroids by have recently been reported. And among biologists the idea of punctuated evolution is no longer the anathema it once was. We live and learn.
It seems to me that in accounting for the face that nature now presents to us we have always to recognise the interplay of two distinct factors. The first is the fundamental regularities and laws that concern physicists, with their Popperian stress on prediction and falsifiability. The second is the generally unknowable sequence of historical chance events that shape the face of nature we now see, that Velikovsky so dramatised and are not part of science.
I claim that physicists seem recently to be trying to incorporate such unknowable sequences into their own endeavours, and that it gives fundamental physics a new Velikovskian flavour.
I am here referring to the unknowable sequence of events that led to the choice of "our" vacuum, and "our" laws of physics from the 10^500 or so other vacua postulated by string theory, and to the similarly unknowable events that caused "our" universe to "bang-out" of an unknowable multiverse --- ideas of the "landscape" variety, that is.
At first sight such ideas seem to me like silly idle speculations rather than physics. But then I remember how venomously Velikovsky's notions were received by the scientific community of his time, how later they turned out to incorporate a grain of truth. Also, so much of what we are must depend on mysteries of the past. For instance, the events that led to a meeting between your great-great grandfather and great-great-grandmother are almost certainly unknown to you. Yet for you they were vitally important! Perhaps the landscape scenario is relevant, after all.
I then equivocate. What do philosophy folk think about the new Velikovskian physics?