Physics is the only real science. The rest are just stamp collecting.

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Discussion Overview

The discussion centers around the statement by Ernest Rutherford that "Physics is the only real science. The rest are just stamp collecting." Participants explore the validity of this claim, debating the roles and importance of physics compared to other sciences such as biology, chemistry, and social sciences. The conversation touches on theoretical, conceptual, and philosophical aspects of science.

Discussion Character

  • Debate/contested
  • Conceptual clarification
  • Exploratory

Main Points Raised

  • Some participants argue that physics provides fundamental laws of the universe, suggesting it offers a broader understanding compared to other sciences.
  • Others challenge this view, claiming that the complexity of fields like biology and social sciences requires equally rigorous intellectual effort and that physics cannot effectively predict outcomes in these areas.
  • A few participants propose that mathematics, while foundational to physics, may not fit neatly into the category of science, likening it to art or philosophy.
  • Some express skepticism about the notion of physics being the "holy grail" of sciences, suggesting that other fields have their own significant contributions and complexities.
  • There is a discussion about the historical context of Rutherford's statement, with some suggesting it reflects the state of scientific understanding during his time.
  • Participants note that while physics can explain physical phenomena, it may not adequately address aspects of consciousness or self-awareness.
  • Some express the view that all sciences, including biology and chemistry, are important and should not be considered subordinate to physics.
  • There is a playful exchange regarding the relative importance of theoretical physics versus applied sciences like cosmetic science, highlighting differing perspectives on what constitutes "importance" in science.
  • Participants discuss the different methodologies and thought processes of physicists and mathematicians, emphasizing their interdependence.

Areas of Agreement / Disagreement

Participants do not reach a consensus on the validity of Rutherford's statement. Multiple competing views remain regarding the hierarchy and significance of different scientific disciplines.

Contextual Notes

The discussion reflects varying definitions of "importance" in science, the historical context of scientific development, and the evolving nature of scientific inquiry. There are unresolved assumptions about the roles of different sciences and the implications of their methodologies.

  • #31
Different conservation laws emerged at different times. Conservation of momentum was explicitly used by Daniel Bernoulli in his Hydrodynamica (1743). Newton did not use momentum; the concept occurs nowhere in the Principia, and modern interpretations of his three laws in terms of momentum conservation are just that: modern.

Conservation of energy had to wait for the insight that "energy" includes chemical and electrical energy, as well as the older mechanical KE and potential. Thus the conservation of energy belongs to Clausius and Joule in the mid nneteenth century.

Other conservation laws are twentieth century.
 
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  • #32
Serway (p56) refers to Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) as follows:

"Italian physicist & astronomer Galileo formulated the laws that govern the motion of objects in free fall. He also investigated the motion of an object on an inclined plane, established the concept of relative motion,..."
 
  • #33
selfAdjoint said:
Different conservation laws emerged at different times. Conservation of momentum was explicitly used by Daniel Bernoulli in his Hydrodynamica (1743). Newton did not use momentum; the concept occurs nowhere in the Principia, and modern interpretations of his three laws in terms of momentum conservation are just that: modern.

Conservation of energy had to wait for the insight that "energy" includes chemical and electrical energy, as well as the older mechanical KE and potential. Thus the conservation of energy belongs to Clausius and Joule in the mid nneteenth century.

Other conservation laws are twentieth century.

Very interesting about Newton's not using 'momentum'.

So, Clausius & Joule are in the running. (*reaches for Serway*) What leaning did these men of stature have?

I wonder if there are thinkers from other civilisations who worked in this area - perhaps earlier than the dates above?
 
  • #34
I have always regarded as one of the fundamental shifts from classical physics to modern physics to the shift of emphasis from seeing a system described by forces, mass and velocity to seeing a system described by the conservation of momentum&energy (the concepts of mass&force receding into insignificance from the fundamental point of view), along with various requirements of symmetry/invariance.

It is a subtle shift, and it is easy to superimpose a modern view on the old-fashioned classical view.

However, if one does so, then we run the risk of not understanding what classical physical actually concerned itself with, nor how its perspective was internally consistent, but still obscured certain features that the perspective of modern physics handles better.

Take the case of the "principle of Galilean invariance":
I must confess that I haven't found this requirement stated in any pre-Einstein physicist.

Rather, to them F=ma was the fundamental law empirically verified to hold for material systems (systems that consisted of the same stuff over time).

Also, it was empirically verified that a system only could lose mass if some part left the system (mass conservation law, which I believe is the oldest conservation law)

From F=ma, it is fairly trivial to DEDUCE that there exists some sets of "equivalent observers", namely those that move with constant velocity to each other. For these groups, the force F acting on the object will be observed to be the same, since the accelerations are the same, due to the observed kinematic Galilean law that velocities are additive.

If we call one set of such observers the "true" observers, who deduce the ACTUAL forces on the object, then the other sets observe additional pseudo-forces, due to their acceleration relative to the set of "true" observers.


But at no point is this equivalent to state that classical physics REQUIRED the laws of mechanics to be Galilean invariant, they OBSERVED, or DEDUCED that they were. Nor, indeed did the idea of "absolute state of rest" lose its meaning, it was just that one couldn't deduce an absolute state of rest with the laws of mechanics!

This means that when the phenomena of electro-magnetic forces began to be studied, there was NO CONCEPTUAL CONFLICT with previous physics, rather what one discovered was that since the laws of electro-magnetism were not Galilean invariant, it followed that the state of absolute rest could in principle be deduced/observed by the study of electro-magnetic phenomena. Maxwell's laws were assumed to be valid for the absolute rest frame, and hence another observer's absolute velocity could in principle be deduced from HIS observed laws of electro-magnetism under the assumption that all velocities would, indeed, follow the Galilean empirical law of velocity addition.

This perspective is internally consistent, even though we now know that several of the assumptions are wrong.

However, as I hope I have shown, it wasn't because physicists previously were dumb that they didn't question their assumptions when the non-Galilean electromagnetic phenomena appeared; it was simply accommodated easily into their system of thought as some rather weird forces.

However, with the Michelson-Morley experiment came, one of the basic observational laws hitherto known failed, that of velocity addition, then something seriously wrong were understood to be the case.

However, Einstein's revolutionary thoughts, for example his fairly unique requirements of invariance, are by no means the only, or most obvious way to try and find resolutions to the problems at hand.
Others were tried out, most of them forgotten because at one point or another, they failed.
 
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  • #35
An excellent informative review... :smile:
 
  • #36
arildno said:
Very interesting about Newton's not using 'momentum'

Let me add just a little bit more.

Among the bitter controversies over the new knowledge that divided the British from the Continental European mathematicial and physicists, was one about how to model mechanics. The British, following Newton, used forces, but the Continentals used momentum and "vis viva", a pretty close concept to kinetic energy. This controversy continued until the nineteenth century, when the Continentals won the day everywhere but in anglophone engineering departments.

I believe there is a discussion of all this in Max Jammer's Concepts of Force, which I recommend.
 
  • #37
Actually, it is desA you quoted there.

Newton did, however have the corresponding concept to momentum called "quantity of motion", which incidentally, is the word that Scandinavians still use for linear momentum.
 
  • #38
the philosophical approach that argues that everything can be broken down to physical theory is physicalism.

i must say that this approach has some appeal to me, but I am biased, as was rutheford.
 
  • #39
It is not Rutherford's physicalism as such that there is something wrong with, it is his arrogant and unjustified dismissal of other disciplines dealing with phenomena that are too complex to deal with in the manner of maths&physics.
 
  • #40
Right.

1. DesA, I"m worried that you think current mathematical research trends are based upon your understanding of the physical sciences from several centuries ago.2. Gettting back to the topic at hand, arildno, Rutherford's opinoin is purely based upon those things that were science at the time, and he terms them 'stamp-collecting', not 'uncomplex' or any other term. Arguably modern chemistry and biology bear little relation to their study at the start of the 20th Century. If you're going to accuse him of arrogance then at least acknowledge that.
 
  • #41
desA said:
Who thinks out & develops the equations in the first place?

what equations? Who thinks mathematics is the study of equations...?

Is current Mathematics research internally, or outwardly focused?


As a 'current mathematical researcher' I think I'm in a better position to judge than you are whether or not we just 'work things out for the physicists to use'. We don't. Some mathematics is motivated by the 'real world', some real world scientists are now using mathematics developed without reference to the real world.
 
  • #42
Well, at Rutherford's time, Darwin's principle of natural selection was very well known, and it is really all too dismissive of Rutherford to label Darwin's work as "stamp collecting".
 
  • #43
desA said:
Let's start with two:

Galileo Galilei
Isaac Newton

Yes, let's start with people who have nothing to do with the modern trends in mathematical research... You noticed the bit where I said the ideas you had about research hadn't been true since the early part of the 20th Century? So why invoke two people who weren't even alive in the 19th Century? (Newon dead before 1750, Galileo before 1650).
 
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  • #44
As for the atomic theory of matter, this was developed by chemists, and it worked excellently.

Physicists were not too eager to go along with this theory at first, not because they didn't believe in it, but that they found the theoretical framework unsatisfactory built out, in particular that one should not rule out other possibilities for the constitution of matter.
As the physicists sharpened their tools in order to do so, they could verify in their own manner what chemists had hypothesized before.


Rutherford's statement arrogantly dismisses the conceptual work done by leading chemists prior to his own time.
 
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  • #45
arildno said:
Well, at Rutherford's time, Darwin's principle of natural selection was very well known, and it is really all too dismissive of Rutherford to label Darwin's work as "stamp collecting".
Yes, but not everyone accepted it. I'm not saying that Rutherford didn't, but it may not have been considered as "truth" by a majority. We still have people, althogh insane, dismissing it as being "just a theory." Moreover, that's just one...you still had chemistry people labelling elements and botanists labelling plants and so on.
 
  • #46
Furthermore, it was not physicists that came up with the idea that infections did not occur due to miasmas but by living organisms, it was guys like Koch and Pasteur who developed these ideas into such a form that it could be tested out empirically.

This vast advancement in biology&medicine is not dismissable as stamp-collecting, either.
 
  • #47
Anatomy is still basically physics, but at a different level.

What physics can't even touch in this field is predicting models for the mechanism of "life". You simply can't take a bunch of formulas put them together in a computer and spit out a zebra.
Heck, it can't even analyse and explain the similarities between a simple bacteria colony and the psychology of a human comunity.
 
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  • #48
There are, in my judgement of the issue two ways to look at this.

The first is a purely secular view of knowledge. Given the presupposition that we (humanity) are all finite then logically all sciences which are based around human behavior (psychology, economics, social sciences etc.) are all also finite and therefore irrelevant in the long run. Making the potentially eternal laws which can be learned from the natural sciences superior. So in this respect we have narrowed down the conflict by determining that natural sciences > social sciences. Next would be a comparison of the natural sciences biology, chemistry, physics, etc. Again coming from a secular viewpoint biological organisms will eventually die out therefore making biology a finite science. However, logically from this viewpoint, gravity, force, etc. are all permenent concepts. Therefore, physics>biology. I'll leave chemistry, geology etc. to be debated in comparison to physics but in this opinion physics does seem to be eternal... at least in comparison to other fields.

However, If you have a non-secular philosophy, this means you believe that living things have an eternal aspect. In which case those sciences which deal with how we interact with other people will have a symbiotic relationship with the natural sciences. The non-secularists need to pursue the study of the natural sciences and philosophy in order to justify their viewpoint, and the social sciences in order to efficiently put their viewpoints to work.

BTW FIRST POST! hello everyone!
 
  • #49
Silverbackman said:
"Physics is the only real science. The rest are just stamp collecting."

-- Ernest Rutherford

How valid is this statement. I think it has a lot of validity considering the fact that you are learning the fundamental laws of the universe and nature. You are basically studying the "Mind Of God". Where as other sciences such as social science, geology, biology and even chemistry are more specific into detail that may be more mundane that what physics teaches. Physics seems to be the big picture of science, and thus its essence as well.

Okay, I know I'm coming to this a little late, but since nobody else seemed to mention it, this comment needs to be taken in context. Chemistry at the time was still heavily invested in the discovery and classification of elements; biology in the discovery and classification of species. The theoretical aspects of these sciences have developed heavily since Rutherford's time; back then, a lot of the work done was "stamp collecting." His comment has nothing to do with the current state of sciences other than physics.

Furthermore, the theoretical breakthroughs of biology at least have not been reducible to physics. It is neither possible to predict nor understand what mutations will take place at the molecular level, and which will take hold and why, using physics. Phenotypic expression and community ecology need to be taken into account to create any form of coherent theory on the matter.
 
  • #50
loseyourname said:
Okay, I know I'm coming to this a little late, but since nobody else seemed to mention it, this comment needs to be taken in context. Chemistry at the time was still heavily invested in the discovery and classification of elements; biology in the discovery and classification of species. The theoretical aspects of these sciences have developed heavily since Rutherford's time; back then, a lot of the work done was "stamp collecting." His comment has nothing to do with the current state of sciences other than physics.

Furthermore, the theoretical breakthroughs of biology at least have not been reducible to physics. It is neither possible to predict nor understand what mutations will take place at the molecular level, and which will take hold and why, using physics. Phenotypic expression and community ecology need to be taken into account to create any form of coherent theory on the matter.

Darwin and Mendel were PRIOR to Rutherford.
So were guys like Koch and Pasteur, who found out that it was living organisms that caused diseases, not "bad air", miasmas, which was what most others, including physicists, believed at the time.
So were the chemists who developed the highly successful atomic theory.

So, basically, Rutherford was WRONG, also in his own time, as I've said before.
 
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  • #51
One of the most fundamental branches of physics - elementary particle physics (known also as the Standard Model in its current form) - is also a kind of stamp collecting, isn't it?
 
  • #52
A Rutherfordian take on mathematics:

"All mathematics is either set theory, or tautologies".
 
  • #53
octelcogopod said:
I don't know man.. Definitions seem to change as opinions do, what we need is one grand and complete definition on what the mind, conscious experience and self awareness is, then we might be able to explain it physically.

I mean once we understand something completely there is no other way..

As far as I know mind and brain are the same thing, according to leading Neuroscientists;

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/mind-identity/

conscious experience and self awareness are also the same, according to the discipline (and who oughta know!?)

http://consc.net/papers/puzzle.html

In fact the two have been melded into one idea which is

conscious awareness

There's nothing mysterious, metaphysical or spooky about the mind, brain, awareness or consciousness. Its all physical

Thanks to physics (NB: topic!) for helping to clarify that physcial fact about the physiology of the brain/mind/conscious awareness. Who else would have come up with an fMRI machine with accompanying accutrimonts.

Physics is like a pencil. Its how you use it that determines the outcome. This is true for all the arts and sciences. That's how I see it anyway.

But, its been said that we're "not to believe everything we think"!:-p
 
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  • #54
Crosson said:
A Rutherfordian take on mathematics:

"All mathematics is either set theory, or tautologies".
All (serious) statements are either tautologies or conjectures. :biggrin:

And an old one:
There are 10 kind of people: Those that understand binary and those that do not.
 
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  • #55
loseyourname said:
It is neither possible to predict nor understand what mutations will take place at the molecular level, and which will take hold and why, using physics. Phenotypic expression and community ecology need to be taken into account to create any form of coherent theory on the matter.

Hasn't physics come up with a formula for community ecology, phenotypic expression and survivability predictions for mutations?

These are physical phenomena and so they are reducible to physics formuli.

Or are Gödel’s incompleteness theorems true? Does emergence prevent predictability? Is irreducible complexity a reality or are are physicists lazy?

The following link shows that some physicists are busy trying to extract formuli out of biological function and other stuff.Statistical Physics, Biological Physics and Physics of Quantum Systems

http://ion.elte.hu/kredit/Intezet/PhDeloadasokangolSTAT-uj.html
 
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  • #56
baywax said:
As far as I know mind and brain are the same thing, according to leading Neuroscientists;

:

Is a light bulb that is turned on (emitting light) the same thing as a light bulb that is turned off (not emitting light)? The energy that powers the light bulb is from an outside source and is really not part of the light bulb. The energy that powers the brain is from an outside source and not really part of the brain. The mind is really not part of brain but part of the electrochemical activity that is powered by energy from an outside source (from food). Its simple. No electrochemical activity, no mind; no outside energy, no electrochemical activity. The question is "what in the 'outside energy' allows the the brain to produce the mind?
 
  • #57
What is there so special in the outside energy other than the ability to do work?:)
 
  • #58
SF said:
What is there so special in the outside energy other than the ability to do work?:)

Stop the blood flow to the brain (interfere with the energy flow) for a short time and there is no consciousness. A short time more and there is no more mind. Seems like there is MORE than the ability to do work in the electrochemical activity in the brain. It seems like the really cool stuff like 'how does the graviton work?' and 'how does energy produce consciousness in the brain?', are pretty much unkowns.
 
  • #59
sd01g said:
Is a light bulb that is turned on (emitting light) the same thing as a light bulb that is turned off (not emitting light)? The energy that powers the light bulb is from an outside source and is really not part of the light bulb. The energy that powers the brain is from an outside source and not really part of the brain. The mind is really not part of brain but part of the electrochemical activity that is powered by energy from an outside source (from food). Its simple. No electrochemical activity, no mind; no outside energy, no electrochemical activity. The question is "what in the 'outside energy' allows the the brain to produce the mind?

Equating the brain with the mind means there is no mind without the brain just as there is no visual stimulus without eyes or a visual cortex (the part of the cerebral cortex that receives and processes sensory nerve impulses from the eyes.).

The brain and the nervous system are structured, physiologically, in such a way that they produce the "electrochemical activity" you're talking about. The activities of these structures sometimes produce a result we've called "mind" or "brain activity".

food has to become an "internal source of energy" before it can help "power electrochemical activity". Actually food becomes that electrochemical soup of activity. You'd know more about this if you studied the mammalian cellular metabolic chart.

The question is "what in the 'outside energy' allows the the brain to produce the mind?

The answer could be as simple as "you are what you eat".

Food maintains the brain and its activities. This isn't a new thing. All organs are supported by food.

The word "mind" is an overblown human dramatization of brain activity.
This doesn't diminish the amazing potentials the human brain can realize.

We call a bile duct a "bile duct" because its a duct that carries bile. You could always lobby to change the name of the brain to "the mind duct" or "the vessel of electrochemical activity". But its called a brain, for now.:smile:
 
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  • #60
sd01g said:
It seems like the really cool stuff like 'how does the graviton work?' and 'how does energy produce consciousness in the brain?', are pretty much unkowns.
Just curious: if you lived 100 years ago and you were introduced to a modern laptop, would you have considered "software" magic, at least as special as consciousness?:)

Software does come from 0s and 1s and that seems pretty hard to understand; just looking inside the HDD for the windows does not work :p
 

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