The word 'fact' comes from the Latin facere -to construct. — fresco
Bohr can be paraphrased as saying, ''atomic particles' are the names we give to particular types of expected interaction we have as observers'. — fresco
There is no 'representation' implied. If 'breaking atomic bonds' is a concept which observers find useful to predict further observation — fresco
As a pragmatist I consider the 'reality' debate to be futile and I doubt whether 'refinement of limits of applicability of scientific paradigms' can be equated with your term 'accuracy'. — fresco
Consider the demise of 'the aether' — fresco
Recapitulating, we may say that according to the general theory of relativity space is endowed with physical qualities; in this sense, therefore, there exists an ether. According to the general theory of relativity space without ether is unthinkable; for in such space there not only would be no propagation of light, but also no possibility of existence for standards of space and time (measuring-rods and clocks), nor therefore any space-time intervals in the physical sense. But this ether may not be thought of as endowed with the quality characteristic of ponderable media, as consisting of parts which may be tracked through time. The idea of motion may not be applied to it.
... science measures time in units relative to the rotation of the earth around the sun and distances of kilometers and so on.
— Wayfarer
This is simply not true. Physicists use light. The geological time scale is based on prior events of earth's history. — Fooloso4
The problem of including the observer in our description of physical reality arises most insistently when it comes to the subject of quantum cosmology - the application of quantum mechanics to the universe as a whole - because, by definition, 'the universe' must include any observers. Andrei Linde has given a deep reason for why observers enter into quantum cosmology in a fundamental way. It has to do with the nature of time. The passage of time is not absolute; it always involves a change of one physical system relative to another, for example, how many times the hands of the clock go around relative to the rotation of the Earth. When it comes to the Universe as a whole, time looses its meaning, for there is nothing else relative to which the universe may be said to change. This 'vanishing' of time for the entire universe becomes very explicit in quantum cosmology, where the time variable simply drops out of the quantum description. It may readily be restored by considering the Universe to be separated into two subsystems: an observer with a clock, and the rest of the Universe. So the observer plays an absolutely crucial role in this respect. Linde expresses it graphically: 'thus we see that without introducing an observer, we have a dead universe, which does not evolve in time', and, 'we are together, the Universe and us. The moment you say the Universe exists without any observers, I cannot make any sense out of that. I cannot imagine a consistent theory of everything that ignores consciousness...in the absence of observers, our universe is dead'.
I am not going to get into the debate of the Copenhagen interpretation. I know enough to know that I am not properly equipped to enter into such a discussion. Although there are some who think it has been settled, the debate continues between those who are so equipped. — Fooloso4
Do molecules break atomic bonds or is it this just a "mere representation"? — Fooloso4
(Paul Davies, The Goldilocks Enigma: Why is the Universe Just Right for Life, p 271. Linde is one of the originators of 'inflation theory' of the Big Bang.) — Wayfarer
What I argue is that all knowledge has a subjective pole or aspect which is itself never visible to empirical observation but which is still fundamental to the act of knowing. That's how I read Kant. I think Kant's insights are fundamentally true, but in my experience most scientific realists don't understand him. Kant himself was also a lecturer in science, a practical man, but he well understood the ethical implications of the scientific revolution in a way that many others seem not to. — Wayfarer
Observers are even characterised as "interacting systems" and one system coupling to another creates a relational time through their reciprocity, no human 'observer' involved at all. — fdrake
Well of course all knowledge "has a subjective pole": this is so obvious that I think you are grossly underestimating the intelligence of scientific realists. — Janus
The salient question is whether reality has a fundamental "subjective pole", and then if you want to say it does, what that could possibly mean. — Janus
Materialism is the attempt to explain what is immediately given us by what is given us indirectly. All that is objective, extended, active— that is to say, all that is material — is regarded by materialism as affording so solid a basis for its explanation, that a reduction of everything to this can leave nothing to be desired (especially if in ultimate analysis this reduction should resolve itself into action and reaction). But we have shown that all this is given indirectly and in the highest degree determined, and is therefore merely a relatively present object, for it has passed through the machinery and manufactory of the brain, and has thus come under the forms of space, time and causality, by means of which it is first presented to us as extended in space and active in time. From such an indirectly given object, materialism seeks to explain what is immediately given, the idea (in which alone the object that materialism starts with exists), and finally even the will from which all those fundamental forces, that manifest themselves, under the guidance of causes, and therefore according to law, are in truth to be explained. — Arthur Schopenhauer, World as Will and Representation
Interesting how this discussion has evolved. I think, aether's modern understanding under the logical positivists would be 'logical space'.
Does this sound vaguely familiar to you, Wayfarer? — Wallows
But this subjective pole is inextricably a part of scientific observation, which hitherto has been implicit or 'bracketed out'. — Wayfarer
Means a lot! In theistic philosophy, that 'ultimate subject' is conceived as 'God' or 'supreme being'. But I think the reality is more quotidian - that the subjective nature of reality manifests in the form of human beings, who then forget to take account of the role that the mind plays: — Wayfarer
I'm referring to the units of measurement. — Wayfarer
But the units in which it is measured are devised by humans and settled by convention. — Wayfarer
I have previously quoted this passage in relation to this issue — Wayfarer
When LaPlace's daemon held sway, then science was happy to shout it from the rooftops. When Copenhagen comes along, the whole issue is kicked into the long grass. — Wayfarer
I know that I can't 'do the math' ... — Wayfarer
... without conceding that it represents the ultimate facts of the Universe, which is what is at issue. — Wayfarer
The problem with this idea is that we know the universe existed long before humans, so what was the "subjective nature of reality" prior to us appearing on the scene? — Janus
The passage of time is not absolute; it always involves a change of one physical system relative to another, for example, how many times the hands of the clock go around relative to the rotation of the Earth. When it comes to the Universe as a whole, time loses its meaning, for there is nothing else relative to which the universe may be said to change. This 'vanishing' of time for the entire universe becomes very explicit in quantum cosmology, where the time variable simply drops out of the quantum description. It may readily be restored by considering the Universe to be separated into two subsystems: an observer with a clock, and the rest of the Universe. So the observer plays an absolutely crucial role in this respect. — Paul Davies
Which systems are not created by human observers? — Wayfarer
This is simply not true. Physicists use light. — Fooloso4
In the International System of Units (SI), the unit of time is the second (symbol: s ) . It is a SI base unit, and it has been defined since 1967 as "the duration of 9 192 631 770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the caesium 133 atom".[12] This definition is based on the operation of a caesium atomic clock. These clocks became practical for use as primary reference standards after about 1955 and have been in use ever since. — Wikipedia
The modern mind-body problem arose out of the scientific revolution of the seventeenth century, as a direct result of the concept of objective physical reality that drove that revolution. Galileo and Descartes made the crucial conceptual division by proposing that physical science should provide a mathematically precise quantitative description of an external reality extended in space and time, a description limited to spatiotemporal primary qualities such as shape, size, and motion, and to laws governing the relations among them. Subjective appearances, on the other hand -- how this physical world appears to human perception -- were assigned to the mind, and the secondary qualities like color, sound, and smell were to be analyzed relationally, in terms of the power of physical things, acting on the senses, to produce those appearances in the minds of observers. It was essential to leave out or subtract subjective appearances and the human mind -- as well as human intentions and purposes -- from the physical world in order to permit this powerful but austere spatio-temporal conception of objective physical reality to develop. — Thomas Nagel, Mind and Cosmos, pp. 35-36
I think it's more that such a distinction was not part of Aristotle's lexicon. No philosophers of his day expressed their ideas in terms of "objective" and "subjective", it's much more characteristic of the modern period, although the significance is more than just lexical. — Wayfarer
I saw this when I found the other passage. I wonder how far he intends for us to push the analogy. The tool requires the hand to manipulate it. If the intellect is analogous that suggests that the reception of forms by the intellect and senses is not passive. — Fooloso4
You are trying point out to 'absolutists' what to me seems the obvious untenability of their position. It seems to me the substantive problem here is that generally pulling the rug away from fixed axioms (In the spirit of the Incompleteness Theorem) is inevitably iconoclastic of 'philosphical debate' per se. — fresco
So you deny that we have any reason to believe this Universe began approximately 14 billion years ago and that humanity came on the scene approximately 2.5 million years ago? — Janus
Where do we get this criteria of what is "reasonable to say"?The way I see it philosophical debates are not about 'how things are' in any absolute sense, but about what it is reasonable to say — Janus
So questions like 'Is it reasonable to believe that the universe is 14 billion years old ?' are rendered vacuous, because they are predicated on particular views of 'time' and 'the universe' which are not given, they are human constructs whose reasonable use is contextually bound. — fresco
You still don't get it. — fresco
As far as I know, relative to some of the issues involving 'time' and 'matter' in frontier physics (Rovelli, for example), 'the age of the universe' has zero status in terms of 'interest value'. — fresco
Richard Feynman's riposte to such questions..'Shut up and calculate !' — fresco
The impression I get is that this (commercial) reactonary 'posture' is to suggest 'philosophy' could be a name that might be given to 'a valuable process of hypothesis stimulation and comparison'. — fresco
I recommend you read Rovelli's 'The Order of Time' before you give judgement on his opinion on 'temporality', especially when he devotes part of it to show how 'time' can be eliminated from the fundamental equations of physics. — fresco
https://www.nbcnews.com/mach/science/what-time-physicist-carlo-rovelli-ponders-enigmatic-fourth-dimension-ncna895226The biggest of the open questions is: Why is the future so different from the past? This is something that is not written into the laws of physics — the fundamental laws of physics don’t distinguish the past from the future. This is still something mysterious, I believe.
https://physicstoday.scitation.org/do/10.1063/PT.6.4.20190219a/full/I do not think that the universe is fundamentally atemporal. The main point of the book is that there isn’t a single notion of time that is either true or false. What we call time is a rich, stratified concept; it has many layers. Some of time’s layers apply only at limited scales within limited domains. This does not make them illusions.
[Rovelli] points to Heisenberg, Schrödinger, Bohr and Einstein for acknowledging the importance of philosophy. — Fooloso4
Natural science does not simply describe and explain nature; it is a part of the interplay between nature and ourselves; it describes nature as exposed to our method of questioning. This was a possibility of which Descartes could not have thought, but it makes the sharp separation between the 'world and the I' impossible.
If one follows the great difficulty which even eminent scientists like Einstein had in understanding and accepting the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum theory, one can trace the roots of this difficulty to the Cartesian partition [i.e. division of res cogitans/extensa]. This partition has penetrated deeply into the human mind during the three centuries following Descartes and it will take a long time for it to be replaced by a really different attitude toward the problem of reality.
The position to which the Cartesian partition has led with respect to the 'res extensa' was what one may call metaphysical realism. The world, i.e., the extended things, 'exist'. This is to be distinguished from practical realism, and the different forms of realism may be described as follows: We 'objectivate' a statement if we claim that its content does not depend on the conditions under which it can be verified. Practical realism assumes that there are statements that can be objectivated and that in fact the largest part of our experience in daily life consists of such statements. Dogmatic realism claims that there are no statements concerning the material world that cannot be objectivated. Practical realism has always been and will always be an essential part of natural science. Dogmatic realism, however, is, as we see it now, not a necessary condition for natural science.
Rovelli wrote a paper published in Scientific American entitled: "Physics Needs Philosophy / Philosophy Needs Physics" — Fooloso4
Space, time, particles and fields get fused into a single entity: a quantum field that does not live in space or time. The variables of this field acquire definiteness only in interactions between subsystems. The fundamental equations of the theory have no explicit space or time variables. Geometry appears only in approximations. Objects exist within approximations. Realism is tempered by a strong dose of relationalism. I think we physicists need to discuss with philosophers, because I think we need help in making sense of all this. — Rovelli
The main point of the book is that there isn’t a single notion of time that is either true or false. — Rovelli
This 'vanishing' of time for the entire universe becomes very explicit in quantum cosmology, where the time variable simply drops out of the quantum description. It may readily be restored by considering the Universe to be separated into two subsystems: an observer with a clock, and the rest of the Universe. So the observer plays an absolutely crucial role in this respect. — Paul Davies
Nobody except perhaps a religious fundamentalist is likely to question 'the age of the universe', because current views on the matter consensually 'work'. Therefore the issue of 'reasonableness' is vacuous. The question is a 'straw man'. However it is also the case that views about 'time' and 'universe' are human constructs open to revision on the basis of 'better' paradigms. — fresco
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