As soon as you break the symmetry of a circle - put a nick or a mark on its circumference - immediately you can see (from this imperfection) that it has some relative rate of motion (or rest). — apokrisis
OK, but the issue was whether or not it is possible to have a perfect circle, such that you could not tell its rate of spinning, or even whether or not it is spinning. — Metaphysician Undercover
That's what I am trying to get at, the nonsensicalness of this notion of spinning, which appears to be totally incompatible with the pure symmetry of a circle. — Metaphysician Undercover
Without such assumptions science could never get started. — John
I habitually wake up in the morning, however the time I awake constantly changes, and yes it is possible that I will not awake at all. — Rich
Yes, I got that. The point I was trying make is that I do not see how unregulated chaos can produce anything other than … unregulated chaos. ‘Symmetry’ implies repetitive patterns, which are, as I envision it, absent in chaos.The circle simply illustrates the basic principle that a symmetry is defined by differences not making a difference.
Such phenomena can only take place in a stable orderly lawful universe. If instead our starting point is utter unlawfulness/chaos, we would not know what to expect. Given unlawfulness, particles could pop out of existence for no reason at all. The collection of particles could turn into anti-matter and/or form a conglomerate. During observation the cosmological constant could shift followed by an instant implosion of the universe. And so forth. Thorough unlawfulness all the way down is completely unpredictable.Unlawfulness comes in once we start talking about symmetry in the sense of dynamical equilibrium states - or broken symmetries that can't get more broken and so ... become effective or emergent symmetries again.
And this is better illustrated by a gas of particles. At equilibrium, every particle is as likely going forward as going backward. So all action settles to a collective average.
What you are talking about are events and laws that result from more fundamental laws. I have no problem with that idea, as long as it not offered as an "explanation" of laws at the fundamental level.... The ground state becomes a new effective symmetry - the ball rolling around in the circle of the trough - which the world then reads off quantumly as a new degree of freedom or an actual particle.
I am talking about laws and their constituents.Are you talking about laws or constants? Or laws with different constants? That is, do you have a clear story on how they are the same or different kinds of things?
I am not suggesting limiting options, though. I am all for thinking of every possibility we can imagine, and then working out how we logically conceive of each one. The thing is I don't see how something like whether there are laws of nature or not is discoverable by science. Science itself operates on the assumption that there are invariant laws of nature; and it's not clear how it could function without that assumption. — John
‘Symmetry’ implies repetitive patterns, which are, as I envision it, absent in chaos. — Querius
Given unlawfulness, particles could pop out of existence for no reason at all. The collection of particles could turn into anti-matter and/or form a conglomerate — Querius
What you are talking about are events and laws that result from more fundamental laws. I have no problem with that idea, as long as it not offered as an "explanation" of laws at the fundamental level. — Querius
I am talking about laws and their constituents. — Querius
How a system behaves is dependent not only on its constituent parts but also on the organization of these parts, which creates a causal web/network in which general behavior arises. — darthbarracuda
even so-called fundamental physics...affords no refuge to the reductionist. — Pierre-Normand
And then - surprise, surprise - rotational symmetry is one of physics foundational facts. — apokrisis
Yet the forment of the quantum vacuum generates particles with a spontaneity that is also completely statistically predictable. — apokrisis
Well what I mean is that scientists expect chemicals for example to behave the same tomorrow as they did today. Or when hypothesizing about, for example geological formations, they assume that materials behaved the same millions of years ago as they do today. Or when they are hypothesizing about galaxy formation or even what would have happened just after the Big Bang, they assume that different elements, particles and materials would have behaved as expected in the hypothesized conditions.Without such assumptions science could never get started — John
Science depends upon mathematical equations that describe repetitious events that are approximately the same, enough so that they can be used for practical purposes. That Newton's Equations are imprecise does not mean that they are impractical. In some cases they may be in which case other v equations are used.
The concept of laws of nature is not only unnecessary in science, it is totally misleading. — Rich
The intuition of possible meanins is not in the equations in is in the minds that create the possibilities. It all begins with Schrodinger's intuition that quanta phenomenon may be described by a wave equation. Similarly, Einstein and his associates looked for possible contradictions in the meaning of the equations. It is the always the mind's intuition that is driving science into new creative directions. The equations themselves may act as an enabler or an inhibitor. It all depends. — Rich
The fact that laws of nature have limited application doesn't detract from their usefulness within that domain.
Again, I say the only real question is 'why are there laws', and that whatever this question is, is not a scientific question, but a meta-scientific question. — Wayfarer
I don't know. Do you have an exact number or an approximation? — Rich
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