Does anyone here understand Theory Development?

[ram2048]

thanks Doc, I do plan to learn more math when i have the time / resources available to do so. Was just kinda caught up into this thing and it snowballed into this.

what I'm planning on doing from here, is expand my knowledge of current accepted maths and refining my proofs and analysis as i go along, striving to break the knowledge down into logical and rational steps such that instead of just having 200 theorems in my head and knowing how to apply them, i would know how they were created and why they work.

i don't plan on being a teacher, but i do think that documentation as such could be really useful for students getting into math.

the best place to start is at the bottom right? :D

thanks again for the constructive criticism

-1k

 

[PFanalog57]

Why do you find it necessary to add the word "entity"?

You said A was the unknown ..."thing". What is a thing? A thing is itself. An identity. Therefore A is an undefined variable, an identity operator, or an entity, such, that what relations can be known about A, must be necessarily true on logical or analytic grounds. If you can't mentally grasp that logical necessity, then, with all due respect, "your construction" is "SOL".

No, B is neither the abstract model nor the equations! B is whatever it is that we are going to use to defend our model's validity!

B is a subset of C about which we need to create "expectations", ...your words. Make up your mind Doc. You can't have yer cake and eat it too

I am perfectly willing to provide you with ...entertainment, iff, I can learn something new. Hopefully ..."you", will find zero ambiguity, in that statement.

Exactly! What you are doing is pointing out the ambiguity of the English language! I believe linear B cuneiform has never been translated (it might be linear A, the issue makes no difference to my point). Does that mean that linear B contains no information? You are implying that information comes into existence when someone understands it. I would rather use the word to specify what it is they are trying to understand; something that exists outside their mind.

Thanks for the clarification Dr. D. Yes, I wasn't completely sure about what you ment by saying "C is the information we have", and I assumed it was a set of known/understood quantities. You are correct IMHO, information can exist without understanding.

 

[laserblue]

Doctordick wrote:

"For the most part, theoretical physicists earn their bread by being experts in the current accepted theories. They spend their research time looking for specific issues which will either confirm or deny the validity of a current theory. Very rarely does a theoretical physicist actually propose a new theory. There is a very good reason for this. Even among professional physicists, the act of proposing an new theory is usually met with derision. Actually, that derision is very justified. To be viable, a theory must agree with all the known facts! It is very rare that any scientist is familiar with "all the known facts!" I am sure that every mentor on this forum is well aware of the fact that every theory proposed on this forum is easily dismissed by the fact that it is inconsistent with things already known. The forum gets the title "crackpots are us" because of the pervading ignorance of the great majority of the posters.
All of you should stop posting theories and start learning physics and math; unless, of course, it is your goal to entertain the rest of us. If you cannot follow the mathematics I have posted here, you certainly do not have sufficient understanding of physics to even think about explaining the phenomena observed in the experimental laboratory."

The admonition by Doctordick to start learning physics and math reminded me of a paper by Dr. David Hestenes entitled "Modeling Games in the Newtonian WOrld".In this paper Dr. Hestenes pointed out how crucial Newton's technical proficiency was to his being able to create a viable theory or system of design principles for modeling the physical world.Dr. Hestenes also pointed out that Mavericks rarely win the modeling game because only those who are masters of the rules know where the shoe pinches most and can break the rules.

http://modeling.asu.edu/R&E/ModelingIsTheName_DH93.pdf

http://modelingnts.la.asu.edu/pdf/ModelingGames.pdf

http://modeling.asu.edu/R&E/ModelingMeth-jul98.pdf

http://modeling.asu.edu/R&E/SecretsGenius.pdf

What Doctordick wrote about professional physicists basically reveals that
professional physicists don't have much experience with creating theories.Probably because the hierarchical structure of the working world discourages independent thought and theory creation and reserves it for the principal investigator.
Yet,at the same time, many people including some physicists gain an understanding of a subject only by seeking to make it their own and working out the possibilities of a personal theory.Of course, some professional or colleague will point out that one is wasting one's time because so and so made the discovery years before but that really only serves to corroborate the reasoning that one went through in aquiring an understanding. I'm thinking of an example given in DISCOVERING by Robert Scott Root-Bernstein where one character, IMP comes up with an idea which another character, RICHTER, derisively points out was known long before. There are similar examples given in this forum.
Maybe the derision isn't justified at all. It's a short sighted depth-first kind of thinking that is quick to judge. Edward DeBono claims in his many writings on thinking that it is very easy for an intelligent person to choose a position and defend it. Maybe it would be better if one did not know all the facts.
"Professor Goddard does not know the relation between action and reaction and the need to have something better than a vacuum against which to react. He seems to lack the basic knowledge ladled out daily in high schools."
Should agreement with all the known facts be given as high a priority as Doctordick desires? Abstraction is at the core of a lot of physics and while one wants to account for as many facts as possible at least in the final version of a theory, any proposed model is going to have limitations. In "Modeling Games in the Newtonian World" at the bottom of page 12 of the .pdf version, Dr. Hestenes points out that "...Kepler's [model] could not fit the more accurate data collected with telescopes rather than the naked eye,..." and goes on to write that,

"It is no small irony that Newton's law of gravitation would undoubtedly have been more difficult to discover if Kepler's model had been quickly invalidated by more accurate data."

Perhaps, this same kind of thing is involved with theories that seem inadequate at one point in an investigation and then are resurrected many years later in a slightly altered form.

 

[Doctordick]

Perhaps, this same kind of thing is involved with theories that seem inadequate at one point in an investigation and then are resurrected many years later in a slightly altered form.

Yes, I think this is quite true. Breakthroughs almost always occur in areas most professionals believe to be a waste of time to look at. If they didn't think it was a waste of time to look there, they would have looked and discovered it for themselves. A closed mind is a closed mind no matter what the reason for the closure is.

Have fun -- Dick

 

[PFanalog57]

HOW to BECOME a GOOD THEORETICAL PHYSICIST

An interesting web page:


http://www.phys.uu.nl/~thooft/theorist.html

HOW to BECOME a GOOD THEORETICAL PHYSICIST

by Gerard 't Hooft

This is a website (still under construction, at the very initial stage) for young students - and anyone else - who are (like me) thrilled by the challenges posed by real science, and who are - like me - determined to use their brains to discover new things about the physical world that we are living in. In short, it is for all those who decided to study theoretical physics, in their own time.

It so often happens that I receive mail - well-intended but totally useless - by amateur physicists who believe to have solved the world. They believe this, only because they understand totally nothing about the real way problems are solved in Modern Physics.

[...]


It should be possible, these days, to collect all knowledge you need from the internet. Problem then is, there is so much junk on the internet. Is it possible to weed out those very rare pages that may really be of use? I know exactly what should be taught to the beginning student. The names and topics of the absolutely necessary lecture courses are easy to list, and this is what I have done below.

[...]


I can tell you of my own experiences. I had the extreme luck of having excellent teachers around me. That helps one from running astray. It helped me all the way to earn a Nobel Prize. But I didn't have internet. I am going to try to be your teacher. It is a formidable task. I am asking students, colleagues, teachers to help me improve this site. It is presently set up only for those who wish to become theoretical physicists, not just ordinary ones, but the very best, those who are fully determined to earn their own Nobel Prize. If you are more modest than that, well, finish those lousy schools first and follow the regular routes provided by educators and specialized -gogues who are so damn carefully chewing all those tiny portions before feeding them to you. This is a site for ambitious people. I am sure that anyone can do this, if one is gifted with a certain amount of intelligence, interest and determination.

 

[quantumdude]

there's no maths in this thread. I've pointed out an error in that other thread of yours; waiting on the reply.

He did reply.

 

[elas]

I am sure that every mentor on this forum is well aware of the fact that every theory proposed on this forum is easily dismissed by the fact that it is inconsistent with things already known.

As an amateur with no mathematical training worth mentioning I developed my interest in particle physics as a retirement hobby. I took heart from the fact that many leading scientist, including Newton and Einstein are on record as stating their belief that the final solution would be "a thing of great simplicity" (Newton).

Originally I used imaginary numbers to illustrate my concept of a vacuum theory. This was recently replaced using the known masses of fundamental particles. Unfortunately I made an error in converting the known masses into numbers I could use to build tables using Excel. This really should not have prevented professionals from seeing the value of the concept (it is a theory of great simplicity).

I have just finished correcting the errors and now have a theory that uses mass and vacuum to explain the cause of charge, I can also show how mass can be arranged to show quarks in order of there charge and why particles have their particular charge. I am waiting for a reply to a question in the Classic Physics forum before publishing. But the solution should have leaped off the page for anyone of a mathematical leaning.

In contrast to your statement I have been very careful to ensure that my theory deals only with known quantities and forces. I cannot understand why professionals have not applied Occam's Law to their work and gone back to the one known fundamental force that must have existed before creation (given that any force existed) and reworked existing theory eliminating all the unnecessary entities that have been created due to an ignorance of reality at the time they (the entities) were created.