The Probability Distribution and 'Elements of Reality'

  • #106
WernerQH said:
Interesting. Would you say that Maxwell's electrodynamics was incomplete? He believed in the existence of an ether, but was his conviction based on deduction or inference? With hindsight, we would nowadays answer "no" to this question, but for Maxwell the existence of the ether was probably as firmly established as the existence of "systems" with some kind of "location" is for you.
If systems don't have any position whatsoever in 3D space, either they don't exist or they operate in more than 3 dimensions.

I'm not sure if the ether is analogous in that sense.
 
Physics news on Phys.org
  • #107
Lynch101 said:
I'm not sure if the ether is analogous in that sense.
Of course one could say that Maxwell's electromagnetism was "incomplete" in a sense quite different from quantum theory (although it was successful and passed all experimental tests). Too bad you can't perceive the analogy.
 
  • #108
WernerQH said:
Of course one could say that Maxwell's electromagnetism was "incomplete" in a sense quite different from quantum theory (although it was successful and passed all experimental tests). Too bad you can't perceive the analogy.
I got the analogy. It was a weak one.
 
  • #109
Lynch101 said:
I got the analogy. It was a weak one.
The point I was trying to make was that different people, at different times, can disagree on what "exists".
 
  • #110
WernerQH said:
The point I was trying to make was that different people, at different times, can disagree on what "exists".
I know. It was a weak analogy bcos it didn't really characterise the specific question. You could equally have said that people used to believe that fairies exist.
 

Similar threads

Replies
2
Views
1K
Replies
153
Views
7K
Replies
42
Views
6K
Replies
49
Views
4K
Replies
84
Views
4K
Replies
14
Views
3K
Replies
1
Views
2K
Replies
89
Views
8K
Back
Top