PeterDonis said:
If this is what you mean by "wrong", then you are using the word in a very different sense from its usual sense.
Given that I'm not a native speaker, this is imaginable. I know that there is also a moral meaning, right or wrong, which is not present for true and false, but in a physics discussion and in particular in the article this plays no role. The google translator gives "falsch" as the main translation, which backtranslates into "wrong, false, incorrect, counterfeit, mistaken, erroneous". This does not look like my use would be "a very different sense".
PeterDonis said:
The word "error" has a precise technical meaning when speaking of approximations. That meaning does not have the implications you are claiming here.
Explain the difference. If I use an approximation instead of the correct theory, the consequence is a difference between my computation and the value the correct theory would give. This difference is part of the error I make, not? There are, of course, also other sources of error, but this error is the one relevant if one discusses an approximation.
PeterDonis said:
Nobody is arguing that the Newtonian approximation is "correct". Nor is anyone arguing that it is "wrong". The whole point is that "correct" and "wrong", binary categories, are not useful categories to use when talking about scientific theories and approximations. Much more useful are "less accurate" and "more accurate", which again have precise technical meanings in terms of how much error (using the technical meaning of that term, as above) there is in your predictions vs. the actual data.
I disagree. I think these binary notions, which distinguish the theories as a whole, are very important.
PeterDonis said:
If you have not read the Asimov essay that
@Nugatory linked to in post #2, I strongly suggest that you do so, because it does a great job of discussing exactly this point and dispelling the kind of common confusion you are displaying here.
I have read it, and even quoted it in one of the many deleted postings.
To quote again: "John, when people thought the Earth was flat, they were wrong. When people thought the Earth was spherical, they were wrong. But if you think that thinking the Earth is spherical is just as wrong as thinking the Earth is flat, then your view is wronger than both of them put together."
This statement is using "wrong" in the same sense I have used it. What I argue against is to name "When people thought the Earth was spherical, they were wrong" a fallacy.
Orodruin said:
No, this can only be correct in a philosophical sense and that has absolutely nothing to do with what is being discussed. Unless you are afraid that a bridge will break down because the engineers building it did not account for relativistic corrections you really have no case here because that is what the article is about. You are building a strawman argument. Empirical science is not about being right or wrong, it is about finding as good of a description of how nature behaves as possible.
First, I completely disagree philosophically. Science is about right and wrong (better true or false, to avoid the moral aspects which are not present). Empirically falsified theories are rejected because they are false. That they may be nonetheless used for approximate computations is fine and useful, but the scientific problem to find a theory which is not falsified remains.
Orodruin said:
This statement is just absurd. You are essentially saying that if we had accepted Newtonian mechanics as false there would have been no point in developing relativity.
What is absurd is your interpretation, because I'm saying exactly the opposite. If we had accepted Newtonian mechanics as
true, and therefore ignored the open problems which had the potential to cause doubt (like MMX, Mercury perihelion) there would have been no point in developing relativity.
Orodruin said:
Again. Strawman and a failure to understand what the article is about.
No. The argument of the article simply fails to prove what is claimed to be proven, namely that "classical mechanics is wrong" is a fallacy.
All what it shows is that "There is somehow a notion that SR, GR, and QM have shown that classical physics is wrong,
and so, it shouldn’t be used." But this is very different from "classical physics is wrong" being a fallacy. Classical physics
is wrong, as any approximation, but it can be used as an approximation whenever the approximation error is sufficiently small.