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Geo
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Doesn't the postulation of the inertial and gravitational mass equivalence suggest that GR is not a complete theory? (since it also cannot be explained as a neccessity by the anthropic principle)
Can you post links to the previous PF threads that you have read through about this, and ask specific questions about that reading that you are having trouble understanding? Thanks.Geo said:Doesn't the postulation of the inertial and gravitational mass equivalence suggest that GR is not a complete theory? (since it also cannot be explained as a neccessity by the anthropic principle)
I should have posted on beyond the standard model or general relativity.berkeman said:Can you post links to the previous PF threads that you have read through about this, and ask specific questions about that reading that you are having trouble understanding? Thanks.
Why should a physical theory be complete? What scientific problem does it solve or cause? I just don’t see why it mattersGeo said:suggest that GR is not a complete theory
It solves the problem of progress i think, if you can see a bigger part of the picture you can make better guesses that will turn out to be confirmed by experiments. And after all as Feynman may have said (or may not actually couldn't find source) "physics is like sex sure it may give some practical result but that's not why we do it"Dale said:Why should a physical theory be complete? What scientific problem does it solve or cause? I just don’t see why it matters
Geo said:Doesn't the postulation of the inertial and gravitational mass equivalence suggest that GR is not a complete theory?
I don’t think there is any reason to believe this claim. Einstein didn’t make good guesses or see the bigger picture because previous theories were complete. Nor did anyone else as far as I can tell.Geo said:It solves the problem of progress i think, if you can see a bigger part of the picture you can make better guesses that will turn out to be confirmed by experiments.
Sure, it is a fine reason. It is just not connected to completeness.Geo said:Seeing the bigger picture and searching for it when it is possible isn't enough of a reason to do science?
My claim wasn't that completion as a state is what matters like a switch, if it was expressed that way my bad. My claim is that the hunt for completion and each step towards it is something that matters. So by saying a theory is incomplete the issue that arises is not why a theory should be complete but that if a theory is incomplete maybe there is more to discover in that direction. A fundamental driving force of science is the path towards completion. So to say that something is incomplete is important because a question is being asked and either is answered in the frame of the theory and move towards completion or the approach changes. Einstein in order to get to his theories he tried to answer the right questions and in order for the right question to exist there must be uneasiness towards incompletionDale said:I don’t think there is any reason to believe this claim. Einstein didn’t make good guesses or see the bigger picture because previous theories were complete. Nor did anyone else as far as I can tell.
Sure, it is a fine reason. It is just not connected to completeness.
I don’t think that there is any evidence to support any of these claims either. Where are you getting this stuff?Geo said:My claim is that the hunt for completion and each step towards it is something that matters. ... A fundamental driving force of science is the path towards completion.
Any theory that uses basic arithmetic and numbers is inherently incomplete! That is simply not a big concern amongst physicists. Philosophers and mathematicians may worry about it, but physicists just go ahead and use arithmetic anyway.Geo said:So to say that something is incomplete is important
No, his goal was not to solve the incompleteness of Newtonian physics. Relativity is incomplete in the same way as all other physical theories.Geo said:Einstein in order to get to his theories he tried to answer the right questions and in order for the right question to exist there must be uneasiness towards incompletion
So far you haven’t shown any evidence to support your view. Do you have any professional scientific reference that takes this stance, or a historical example that supports it?Geo said:In my view It is.
This doesn’t make any sense. You cannot make steps towards completeness. A theory is either complete or it is incomplete. And as Goedel proved any theory using arithmetic is incomplete. Physicists as a whole simply don’t care. I can cite every single theory using arithmetic despite its incompleteness.Geo said:Tha fact that you don't get there even with infinite steps doesn't matter. Completion as an impossible state is irrelevant but the steps towards it is partly how science is built
Please provide a reference that shows the sense in which you did mean it then. We have now wasted a lot of effort talking past each other.Geo said:But that is irrelevant because i didnt meant it in goedels terms.
No. The equivalence of gravitational and inertial mass doesn't necessarily need any explanation.Geo said:Doesn't the postulation of the inertial and gravitational mass equivalence suggest that GR is not a complete theory? (since it also cannot be explained as a neccessity by the anthropic principle)
People on this forum like to be precise about definitions when it comes to science and math, and for good reason. Lay definitions tend to lead to confusion and wasted posts. E.g., my post. :PGeo said:Yes i am familliar with goedels theorems and that's why i ve stated that completeness is impossible. But that is irrelevant because i didnt meant it in goedels terms. Physics as a whole is not a formal system so the word completion can be used in a way that don't have to meet goedels criteria.
Even in goedel's term my point was that incompletence theorem is irrelevant because if you don't know that the certain truth i pointed out is unprovable within the formal system then proving it is not a task that you should not undertake
I should have used another word to avoid confusion and i am sorry for that, it is just that i didn't consider goedel's theorems relevant that made me continue. My fault
Geo said:Doesn't the postulation of the inertial and gravitational mass equivalence suggest that GR is not a complete theory? (since it also cannot be explained as a neccessity by the anthropic principle)
wiki said:The anthropic principle is a philosophical consideration that observations of the Universe must be compatible with the conscious and sapient life that observes it.
I think you're right that that's the sort of thing people are thinking about when they casually use the word "incomplete". It would be better to call these open questions, and if having them makes a physical theory incomplete, then all theories are incomplete - ask enough "why?" questions and we always end up with "just because that's how the universe we live in works".pervect said:I've seen the argument that Newtonian theory isn't complete, because Newtonian theory puts the equivalence down to "coincidence".
pervect said:I don't follow the argument at all. The anthropic principle is a philsophical principle, not a scientific one:
I've seen the argument that Newtonian theory isn't complete, because Newtonian theory puts the equivalence down to "coincidence".
GR, to the extent it defines "mass" at all, doesn't bother to distinguish between the "inertial" and "gravitaitonal" mass. So it doesn't make any sense to me to claim that GR is incomplete on this basis. It makes some sense ot me to say that Newtonian physics isn't complete, on this basis, but that's not the claim.
I also suspect that completeness of a theory is also a philosphical issue. So we have two philosphical issues, one of which I don't see has any relevance at all (the anthropic principle), and the other of which appears to be being applied backwards from the usual statement.
This isn't a good start for a philosophicall discussion, which as I recall aren't supposed to happen on PF anyway - due to their tendency to be of low academic quality. This one seems well on the route to becoming a low-quality philosophical discussion already :(.
The scientific community should be bothered that it isn't more complicated?Geo said:Is the equivalence of gravitational and inertial mass something that is bothering the scientific community...
The equivalence of gravitational and inertial mass in Newtonian gravity was something that bothered the scientific community, and even Newton himself. Why should they be the same? The universe works this way, but why? There's no answer in Newtonian gravity.Geo said:I misused the word in the way that Nugatory explained. I would rephrase my question to that: Is the equivalence of gravitational and inertial mass something that is bothering the scientific community or explaining it as: "that's the way the universe works" is all we got and there is no evidence or reasoning that suggest otherwise?
This is a meaningless statement. You might as well state that equations are mathematical statements, not scientific ones.pervect said:I don't follow the argument at all. The anthropic principle is a philsophical principle, not a scientific one:
kimbyd said:This is a meaningless statement. You might as well state that equations are mathematical statements, not scientific ones.
There are reasonable reasons to object to some uses of the anthropic principle. This is not one of them.
Philosophical discussions are permitted only at the discretion of the mentors and may be deleted or closed without warning or appeal
What explanatory or predictive power in terms of physics and theories about physics does the anthropic principle bring to the table here?kimbyd said:This is a meaningless statement. You might as well state that equations are mathematical statements, not scientific ones.
There are reasonable reasons to object to some uses of the anthropic principle. This is not one of them.
Inertial mass is a measure of an object's resistance to changes in its state of motion, while gravitational mass is a measure of the strength of an object's gravitational pull. In other words, inertial mass determines how difficult it is to accelerate an object, while gravitational mass determines how much an object will be affected by gravity.
According to the Equivalence Principle in physics, the inertial and gravitational mass of an object are equivalent and therefore have the same value. This means that the acceleration of an object due to gravity is independent of its mass. This principle has been confirmed through numerous experiments and is a fundamental concept in the theory of general relativity.
Inertial mass can be measured by comparing the acceleration of an object to a known force. For example, if an object is pulled with a known force and its acceleration is measured, the inertial mass can be calculated using the equation F=ma, where F is the force applied, m is the inertial mass, and a is the acceleration.
The concept of inertial and gravitational mass is important in understanding the behavior of objects in the presence of gravity. It allows us to make predictions and calculations about the motion of objects and is a crucial component in the development of theories such as general relativity.
Weight is a measure of the gravitational force acting on an object, and it is directly proportional to the object's gravitational mass. This means that the more massive an object is, the greater its weight will be. Inertial mass, on the other hand, is not directly related to weight but is instead related to an object's resistance to changes in motion.