For the alternative theorists:

Discussion in 'General Science & Technology' started by paddoboy, Apr 2, 2014.

  1. paddoboy Valued Senior Member

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    That was an excellent example of three silly hypothesis put by two posters, that failed all 12 points.
     
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  3. river

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    How is territory , time ?
     
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  5. leopold Valued Senior Member

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    an observation would be prone to the subjectivity of the observer.
     
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  7. leopold Valued Senior Member

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    i don't think either one ever becomes a "fact".
    the closest you can come is scientific law.
    keep in mind that we are talking science here, not math.
     
  8. Fraggle Rocker Staff Member

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    The term "law" is rather colloquial in science. We talk about the "law of gravity," but that is merely one of the four fundamental forces. We talk about "Avogadro's Law," pV=nRT (you youngsters write it differently but it's the same equation), but that is a fact derived from millions of consistent empirical observations.

    Stick with the terms "fact," "hypothesis" and "theory."

    The key difference between mathematics and science is that, while a scientific theory is derived from observation of the natural universe, and is therefore always only one observation to the contrary away from being refined or falsified, a mathematical theory is derived from abstractions and is proven true by logic rather than empirical observation. The fact that 2+2=4 has always been found to be true in observations of the natural universe makes arithmetic very useful, but it's not essential to the validity of arithmetic.

    We have developed theories of geometry for non-linear universes, and they are 100% true even though we have no non-linear universe in which to test them.
     
  9. Grumpy Curmudgeon of Lucidity Valued Senior Member

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    river

    River, if you don't understand the simple things, then physics is not something you should talk about at all. A map describes the territory. The measurement(by event)describes the time. The map does not create the territory. The measurement of the event does not create the time. The territory is what you are actually walking on, the time is what you are existing in. You cannot walk on the map, because it is a construct, a description of that territory, not the territory itself. Your MEASUREMENT of time is also a construct, a map, for describing that real time's existence. Time is a dimension the whole Universe travels through, at one rate or another(there is no universal time, though there could be said to be an average, overall time the Universe has experienced), just like all the matter moves through space at various speeds. We can only travel one way in time, toward the future(higher entropy), but we cannot NOT move through time, though we can slow our pace with speed, energy, acceleration or gravity(events).

    These are all facts, deal with them.

    Grumpy

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  10. leopold Valued Senior Member

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    i dunno.
    i got a problem with using the word "fact" when it comes to hypothesis, theories, and scientific laws.
    yeah, i know, it's a fact that if you drop an anvil on your toe it's gonna hurt.

    the hypothesis is derived from observation, the theory is developed ( and refined ) by measurement.
    i believe math is the only "real" facts of science.
    that's the problem with ANY model, finding the right controls.
    also, math models do not always correlate to reality.
     
  11. Aqueous Id flat Earth skeptic Valued Senior Member

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    How about this definition: a thing that is indisputably the case.

    Consider this. It blows my mind whenever I look at it. These are Galileo's sketches of what he saw each night (each clear night) as he looked at Jupiter for the first time through his homemade telescope:

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    At first he thought they were stars near the planet so he drew them as stars. But to his astonishment, they were orbiting the planet. That much is indisputable -- to him alone, at least, since no one else on Earth had any idea this was true. But by the end of this two week period, he realizes he has seen the moons we call Ganymede, Callisto, Io, and Europa (the 4 largest of 60+ moons).

    So they are facts, but at first he alone knows the facts. What hypothesis might come from this? Let me use the definition a supposition or proposed explanation made on the basis of limited evidence as a starting point for further investigation. Let's go with the hypothesis that other planets may be orbited by moons. What others did he know of? Earth. If we move away from the conventional wisdom that says that the moon orbits the Earth. What theory develops from that? Here I'll apply the definition a supposition or a system of ideas intended to explain something, esp. one based on general principles independent of the thing to be explained.. The theory that he arrived at was actually older than this. It was the one published by Copernicus long before this. But Copernicus had based his theory on the fact that planets did not travel in rings around the Earth. And even before Galileo had found this new data, Kepler had figure out that the planets are actually traveling in elliptical orbits around the Sun. So Galileo had found a particular case which extended the facts used to support the findings of Copernicus, Brahe and Kepler. That theory is called the heliocentric theory.

    The only math Galileo does is to record which day he saw the moons, and where they were. Brahe did the same thing, in painstaking detail, for the location of the planets as they orbit the Sun. Kepler took Brahe's data and arrived at a model for all orbits: the ellipse. And it's remarkably accurate -- to within about two digits -- based on the raw data from Brahe, now over 400 years old. But how crucial is the math to adopting the heliocentric theory? Even if we ignore Kepler's work, Galileo still independently discovered a basis for adopting it using no math at all.
     
  12. Beaconator Valued Senior Member

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    AQ-
    Actually I have read Principia Mathmatica and am familiar with QED. To save time I am going to ignore a massive appeal to authority and just say this. We could both read the same thing and develop completely different opinions not on the facts themselves but where they lead today. You would make a better student than a teacher, but what is the point of learning something if you can't teach it to someone else. (On a side note this is the main reason anyone truly intelligent in their own paradigm writes books. To pass it along for someone to understand better than individuals in their own time.)

    Allow me to outline the main series of your now clockworked mind. You have very specific answers in very specific places that do not move or flow through your glial cells. They are stagnated and as you have gotten older and realized which person knows what and what information they believe is new to them, (quite subconsciously. I'm fairly impressed) you have forgotten or failed to realize when new information is released into your mind it searches for a place to land for quite a while. Not because it is nearly full, but because all this old information is so spread apart, used to certain paths, and connected to the new information the new information fails to find a specific area. Which is a good thing, except for the fact that you won't let this old information connect and flow with the new causing the initial stagnation and anger that a process you have striven your whole life to perfect isn't working to its full potential.
     
  13. Aqueous Id flat Earth skeptic Valued Senior Member

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    You could not possibly have read it, or else you could not possibly have understood it. Thus far you are posting as a person who has no idea what it contains.

    The question is whether you read and understood what Einstein said about his motives for his work in relativity.

    I am only responding to what you purport to give as an appeal to authority, on materials you demonstrate no knowledge of. You opened with an appeal to the authority of Newton and Einstein, except it was not them, but your own imagination, which followed with the explanations.

    Your opinions are developed out of your imagination. Everyone else gets their understanding of physics by studying it, usually in college.

    Every teacher is first and foremost a student. But it's not a reversible process. You for example can't teach material you never mastered in the first place.

    More to the point, what is the point of teaching something if you never bothered to learn it yourself?

    Well I guess since my glial cells are processing Lorentz in connection with Einstein, and Kepler in connection with Newton, and yours aren't, then it says something is wrong with your glial cells. :shrug:

    I won't go into the state of glial cells that claim to know what they never studied.

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  14. quinnsong Valued Senior Member

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    Then there is hope for me too! I try so hard to understand physics and when someone explains it just right or draws a diagram, chart or even a cartoon sometimes my brain goes ding ding ding EUREKA! But then they go and put it in mathematical terms and my brain goes ding ding ding DINGBAT!
     
  15. Fraggle Rocker Staff Member

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    It's hard to understand physics without a lot of math. Of all the "hard sciences" (excluding the "soft sciences" like psychology and linguistics), I'd say that physics is the most math-intensive.

    Well, maybe second after astronomy. But when astronomers talk to us, they manage to avoid math almost completely. I don't think a physicist can do that.

    This is probably why SciForums has just one board for "Physics & Math."
     
  16. Beaconator Valued Senior Member

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    Teach a man to fish and he will believe he is a better fisherman...
     
  17. Aqueous Id flat Earth skeptic Valued Senior Member

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    Let a man troll a science thread and he goes on *Ignore*

    See ya. Wouldn't wanna be ya.

    :wave:
     
  18. Beaconator Valued Senior Member

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    Being led into a lead basement, chased down the road by Columbians, poisoned with nicotine, and thrown to the ground by a policeman who used to sell marijuana just to hear a couple people complain about their knowledge. I think I'm doing alright.
     
  19. leopold Valued Senior Member

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    aqueous,
    hypothesis, theories and scientific laws are not facts unless they happen to be that.
    without the proper testing and measurement you can build a pretty nice house of cards, all supported by hypothesis and theories.
    it's one of the dangers of statistical correlation.
     
  20. Write4U Valued Senior Member

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    At the moment the experiment "demonstrates" the factual truth of the theory . Thereafter it becomes a theory again.
     
  21. dumbest man on earth Real Eyes Realize Real Lies Valued Senior Member

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    So..., is the ^^above quoted^^ statement : 1.) a hypothesis? : 2.) a theory? : 3.) a fact? : or, 4.) a momentary fact (which hereafter "becomes a theory again") ?
     
  22. Write4U Valued Senior Member

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    It is my opinion, I make no other claims.

    The sources I used are below.

    From wiki,
    Which factually confirm or falsify the theory.

    and

    After the measurement any further growth of the plant is again only theoretical, until the next growth measurement gives us factual results.

    Seems to me that my statement was not far off the mark.

    What i was trying to say that, when an experiment produces a theoretically predicted (observable) result, we have a factual confirmation of the theory. The more often experiments shows factual confirmation of a theory, the stronger the theory.

    Succinctly stated, a theory is a description of a function, a fact is the result of an experiment used to test the theory.

    IMO, this is very much related to the emergence of "time", during the measurement itself. During the experiment (measurement), "duration" becomes part of the set of facts, and if pertinent, also a property of the theory.
     
    Last edited: Apr 22, 2014
  23. Write4U Valued Senior Member

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    While I agree with the general thrust of the answer that time is "available" for events, the question is what came first: time or action? It is like asking : was mathematics before the formation of the Universe? It is a false equivalency, if not circular. IMHO. Time is created "during the creation of physical space", regardless if it is the action of a quantum event or the movement of the enire Universe. It "requires" time to complete a function or an event. Until the task (experiment) has been completed no time or time frame can be assigned to the event.

    IMO, Time is the upper speed limit in which reality can become manifest, or form itself. Space is always changing, requiring and creating time in the process. There is no "future time" for the Universe, for the universe there is only the Past and the Now. For us time is limitless, because it has already been created by space and for us the universe is infinite. But, IMO, the physical work dictates the creation of a time frame and the action or change (the event) must complete before we can speak of a "spacetime event". I propose that the action precedes and creates time. As the Universe has been expanding for 13+ billion years, it would be unwieldy to assign spacetime coordinates to objects, especially as we have no clue where to start from, so we invented ways of measuring everything. If we can measure it, we can make it.
    I am more interested in individual "time lines" because they tell a personal story.

    But, this may be of real interest to scientists as a point of discussion,
    It seems to support the constancy of "c" ? I always have to laugh when we have to "reset" our calendars to "round off the difference".
     
    Last edited: Apr 22, 2014

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