A short preview of the next essay! Here I am discussing diametrically oppossed groups of people, those with essentially rational metaphysics and epistemologies, and those with basically irrational ones. What are the consequences when they try to turn their minds to physics? ------------------------------ Those in the first group believe that reality does not exist independent of observation and that unless one is looking, something has no objective reality. Such a person will seek to explain only why things behave as they do while observed, they will not bother with a workable explanation of how things exist when not observed. They choose not to believe that events occur because when entities interact, they must obey their nature. They believe that the ultimate cause of events is probability and that nothing is certain, not even when it is being observed. Such a person will be satisfied with partial answers, and will at some point decide that probability is a fundamental explanation of why some things do what they do, even though it explains nothing. People in the second group believe in objective reality that exists independent of observation. They believe that probability is not a fundamental aspect of nature. That everything that happens is explainable if one can learn enough about the nature of the entities involved. Such a person will not be satisfied with "answers" that answer nothing, and will instead seek to gain a proper understanding of the nature of the entities involved. They believe that observation does not determine the behavior of entities. Such a person will not assert that the mere fact of observation was a casual explanation. They will realize that observation is not a cause, and will seek to understand the actual causes of events. The first group believes that concepts are merely approximations and cannot never fully describe reality. That it does not matter if they are fully consistent, or if they fail to address the questions they are meant to answer. Such a person will then not be bothered if reality contradicts their theories, or if it fails to answer fundamental questions. They think since reality is not knowable that there is no objective reality. Such a person might decide that the task of science is merely to create a mathematical construct to describe appearances. Such a person will not be bothered if their mathematics is senseless. He might maintain that even if there was such a reality, we cannot know it, so he can merely describe subjective appearances. Any theory that consistently models reality is equally good as we can never know which of them are true. The other sort of person will know that concepts are not merely approximations, but that they can and should correspond fully to reality. These people know that their ideas should aleays be consistent with reality and each other, as otherwise they are useless and create barriers to understanding reality. They will not be satisfied with merely creating mathematical descriptions which do not describe reality. They will be deeply disturbed by mathematics which is senseless, as they know that the role of mathematics is to describe actual relationships that exist between entities in reality, not merely to senselessy describe senseless descriptions until useful numbers fall out. One can see that the answers to metaphysical and epistemological questions are of fundamental importance, and will shape the way one attempts to do physics. These ideas will either be rational, and will allow scientists to understand reality, or they will be irrational. Either they are rational, and will lead one to accept that nothing is unknowable, if only one learns how to study it, or they are irrational, and lead people to the conclusions that make further discoveries difficult, or impossible. The consequences of the philosophical ideas which one accepts cannot be avoided, especially in physics. The answers to unavoidable questions of metaphysics and epistemology shape the way one attempts to do physics, whether they are rational and will have a chance to gain unbounded knowledge of reality, or whether they are irrational and will create gigantic obstacles to their ability to understanding such. ---------------
Posted on: Thu, 05 Sep 2013 01:30:20 +0000
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