Not really. Newton's corpuscular theory of light failed (and still fails) to account for the diffraction phenomena that Huygen's wave theory adequately explains. However, if all you mean is that Newton was right insofar as light exhibits particle-like behaviour in certain circumstances, fine, but then so was Huygens if you simply read him as claiming that light exhibits wavelike properties in many circumstances. Typically, in undergraduate physics courses in electromagnetism, it is the wavelike aspects that are focussed on.But in the end, Newton was right.
You have strongly held opinions. Where does mathematics and its objects figure in your view of things? Physical and causal? Non-causal, non-physical and pointless to ponder?Everything else would be non-physical and therefore pointless to ponder.
This betrays a very deep misunderstanding of what idealism is (in all its varieties).Objects would only exist as thoughts.
What is physical is what is causal. Anything that has a causal relationship (which would include God's relationship to the world, soul's interactions with the body, mind's interaction with the body, etc.) would be deemed physical. Everything else would be non-physical and therefore pointless to ponder. — Harry Hindu
This is right, but also misses the point to some extent. The laws of physics are usually expressed in terms of mathematical equivalences, but those equivalences are often developed on the basis that they model the relations of causes to their effects. — MetaphysicsNow
No doubt someone is going to shout "but quantum mechanics proves there is no causation". It proves no such thing - if it proves anything at all, it proves at most that we require a probabilistic conception of causality when dealing with some specific kinds of events. — MetaphysicsNow
Physicalism seems to admit, in accordance with the 2nd Law, that pattern is real, causal, and as fundamental as matter. — tom
My view is that science doesn’t explain itself; the natural laws and regularities which science assumes and relies on, are not themselves explained by science. — Wayfarer
I don't think I am misrepresenting physicalism too much by describing it as the metaphysical assertion that everything that is instantiated in Reality is physical. This includes everything we have discovered, and everything we have yet to discover. — tom
If you press a materialist, you quickly find that the most important constraint on the meaning of the [materialist] Thesis is that it should be compatible with science, whatever science comes up with. This is contrary to what some of them say. If, they say, certain phenomena could not be explained purely in terms of material factors, then the scientific thing to do would be to give up materialism. But, holding the Thesis, they make the bold conjecture that this will never happen. That what would never happen?
If that question cannot be answered with a precise and independent account of what material factors are, there is still one option. That is to nail a completeness claim to science, or to a specific science such as physics. The instructive example here is J.J.C. Smart [another Australian!], who begins his essay "Materialism" with an offer to explain what he means:
By 'materialism' I mean the theory that there is nothing in the world over and above those entities which are postulated by physics (or, or course, those entities which will be postulated by future and more adequate physical theories).
He quickly discusses some older and more recent postulations in actual physics, which make that 'theory' look substantive. But of course the parenthetical qualification makes that discussion completely irrelevant!
Smart may believe, or think that he believes, the 'theory' here formulated; but if he does, he certainly does not know what he believes. For, of course, he has no more idea than you or I of what physics will postulate in the future. It is a truly courageous faith, that believes in an 'I know not what' -- isn't it?
Indeed, in believing this, Smart cannot be certain that he believes anything at all. Suppose science goes on forever, and every theory is eventually succeeded by a better one. That has certainly been the case so far, and always some accepted successor has implied that the previously postulated entities (known, after all, only by description) do not exist. If that is also how it will continue, world without end, then Smart's so-called theory -- as formulated above -- entails that there is nothing. — Bas Van Fraasen
I'm not sure what you are asking. What mathematical "objects"? Do you mean numbers? Do numbers cause you to do things? Sure they do. You behave differently when you add or subtract numbers and get values that apply to real life things. Is not the sum the effect of adding numbers together, and the difference the effect of subtracting numbers? This means that numbers are physical.Where does mathematics and its objects figure in your view of things? Physical and causal? Non-causal, non-physical and pointless to ponder? — jkg20
I think idealists are the ones that haven't thought things through. What are objects of thought and how are they related to thoughts? Any idealists want to answer that? What are thoughts without objects? What is the substance of thought if not sensory impressions?This betrays a very deep misunderstanding of what idealism is (in all its varieties).
Even Berkeley's pretty brute idealism insists on a distinction between thoughts and the objects of thoughts. Kantian transcendental idealism is even more insistent on the division. — jkg20
Science implies causality in its explanations. This reaction happens as a result of this combination of chemicals, while using these chemicals causes that reaction. Natural selection is a causal process of organisms evolving over time from previous ancestors, etc.The laws of physics don't seem to mention causality, anywhere. — tom
I don't see the relevance. The fact that in most cases science models causal relations doesn't entail that it always does, nor that it cannot, on the basis of those models, predict as yet unobserved phenomena. After all that is precisely what Maxwell's equations did, and those were very definitely the result of modelling events that were taken to be causally related.If that is the case, then how can quantum entanglement be discovered in the theory, 50 years before technology was capable of testing, or observing that prediction?
What notion of determinism are you working with here? One very typical one connects it explicity to the idea that each state of a system is ineluctably caused by the previous states of the system, so I don't see how a determinisitc theory in that sense is able to render causality meaningless. You could try stripping out the explicit reference to causation and say that a system is deterministic if (and only if?) the state of that system at time t allows for precisely one next state of the system. The direction of time, though, is embedded into the idea of next state and so if by time-invariant you mean to include the idea of equivalence under time-reversal, it cannot be that sense of determinism in which you take the two theories you are talking about to be deterministic.Both quantum mechanics and general relativity are deterministic theories. Deterministic physical theories, being time-invariant, render causality meaningless.
I don't see the relevance. The fact that in most cases science models causal relations doesn't entail that it always does, nor that it cannot, on the basis of those models, predict as yet unobserved phenomena. After all that is precisely what Maxwell's equations did, and those were very definitely the result of modelling events that were taken to be causally related. — MetaphysicsNow
What notion of determinism are you working with here? One very typical one connects it explicity to the idea that each state of a system is ineluctably caused by the previous states of the system, so I don't see how a determinisitc theory in that sense is able to render causality meaningless. — MetaphysicsNow
Science implies causality in its explanations. This reaction happens as a result of this combination of chemicals, while using these chemicals causes that reaction. Natural selection is a causal process of organisms evolving over time from previous ancestors, etc. — Harry Hindu
Aren't 'natural laws and regularities' among the very 'patterns' you're referring to here, but which you then proceed to dismiss as 'inductive principles' which are 'not scientific'? — Wayfarer
The problem with this is that including 'everything we have yet to discover' makes it so open-ended as to be meaningless. If you simply re-define the term 'physical' to include 'anything that might be discovered', then it can mean anything; and a term that includes everything, means nothing. Something can only be defined by saying what it is, which implicitly also says what it isn't. — Wayfarer
What is your concept of the non-physical? — johnpetrovic
I see. You claim that science merely models causal relations, but somehow manages to model unknown, unexpected, surprising causal relations, even when those relations, as in the case of quantum entanglement, are explicitly not causal?
That makes no sense.
Please explain how extinction events happen without implying causation. Explain how physical traits arise and are propagated or filtered out of a gene pool without implying causation. — Harry Hindu
You obviously do not understand the basic concepts of natural selection. — Harry Hindu
Then let me clarify it for you. When you model what you take to be causal relations using mathematical tools, you end up - if you are successful - with a set of equations. Often enough these equations are differential in form, and differential equations can have different solutions. — MetaphysicsNow
Play determinism backwards? Surprising spontaneous creation events? What are you talking about?The initial conditions at the big-bang determine, through the laws of physics, the universal wavefunction for all times.
And "all times" means the universe is a static block, the past and future exist.
An alternative formulation would be, the final state of the universe determines, through the laws of physics, the universal wavefunction for all times. And if you play determinism backwards, you get surprising spontaneous creation events. — tom
How about you answer the questions that show you know what you are talking about instead of engaging in ad hominem attacks?Don't make an ass of yourself. — tom
How about you answer the questions that show you know what you are talking about instead of engaging in ad hominem attacks? — Harry Hindu
obviously do not understand the basic concepts of natural selection — Harry Hindu
The laws of physics that we have discovered do not depend on any inductive principle, and their discovery has nothing to do with the mythical principle of inductive inference.
The laws of physics stand on their own merit. — tom
the natural laws and regularities which science assumes and relies on, are not themselves explained by science. That is the sense in which they transcend science. — Wayfarer
You think "physical" is meaningless, but "metaphysical" is not? — tom
Questions about the nature of scientific laws, and the nature of numbers, and whether number is real, and, if so, in what sense, are metaphysical questions. And as such, they're not the kinds of questions which physics can provide an answer to even in principle. — Wayfarer
Making an observation that you don't know what you are talking about and that you keep reinforcing every time you post, is not an ad hominem attack.
I'm still waiting on your explanations. — Harry Hindu
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