Time Doesn’t Belong to Physics – When Bergson met Einstein
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Re: Time Doesn’t Belong to Physics – When Bergson met Einstein
#2> Of course, one of the most successful aspects of science has been to describe the world in a sense that is true without relying on appearances. For example, Descartes very successfully describes the moon illusion (why it appears larger closer to the horizon) in his book on optics. As science progressed, it continued to correct for more and more illusions that were not limited to the realm of the visual. Thus Laplace corrected illusions of a mathematical nature, such as the commonly held belief that if a coin had landed heads many times in a row it will have a greater probability to land tails. Einstein was part if this tradition, taking it to a new level.
Very interesting quote, and I think in a sense that even hard sciences like physics are not only a study of the "external world", but also the "internal world" that our mind creates to represent it. So much of the conversation around quantum mechanics isn't really about the math or science, which really isn't that complicated, but around how it can be that what is _really_ happening is so different from what we perceive to be happening in our minds.
I think every break through in theoretical physics is sort of inextricably tied with a breakthrough in the study of consciousness. You have to understand both how the world works and also how the mind translates that to conscious experience of the world to really have something that most people will see as an explanation.
An understanding of light, for example, is not just an explanation of the math underlying electromagnetic waves, but also how the eye perceives those waves and translates that into vision.
Re: Time Doesn’t Belong to Physics – When Bergson met Einstein
#3Perhaps it went over my head but in summary he wanted the scientific process of discovery in physics research to stop because his philosophy couldn't keep up?
Re: Time Doesn’t Belong to Physics – When Bergson met Einstein
#4> We have first order knowledge of things
No, we don't. We only have first-order knowledge of our perceptions of things. And quantum mechanics shows us that those perceptions can be radically different from the underlying reality.
Of course, Einstein can be forgiven for making this mistake because he didn't know about the Bell inequality and the subsequent experiments, so it is understandable that he would cling to the hope that something would come along and rescue QM from the EPR paradox by somehow extracting classical reality from the Schroedinger equation. But modern thinkers cannot be so readily absolved.
Re: Time Doesn’t Belong to Physics – When Bergson met Einstein
#5Perhaps it went over my head but in summary he wanted the scientific process of discovery in physics research to stop because his philosophy couldn't keep up?
Yep. Pretty much. This is a not-uncommon sentiment among philosophers. It's the only way they can cope with the shift in the societal power dynamic that has happened since Newton and Darwin and Einstein and Turing and Bell. Science has subsumed philosophy, and the philosophers really hate that.
Re: Time Doesn’t Belong to Physics – When Bergson met Einstein
#6> Of course, one of the most successful aspects of science has been to describe the world in a sense that is true without relying on appearances. For example, Descartes very successfully describes the moon illusion (why it appears larger closer to the horizon) in his book on optics. As science progressed, it continued to correct for more and more illusions that were not limited to the realm of the visual. Thus Laplac…
Whilst it definitely helps being able to understand it I don't think it's a prerequisite, you only have to look to what we know of the quantum world to see that.
Re: Time Doesn’t Belong to Physics – When Bergson met Einstein
#7> Of course, one of the most successful aspects of science has been to describe the world in a sense that is true without relying on appearances. For example, Descartes very successfully describes the moon illusion (why it appears larger closer to the horizon) in his book on optics. As science progressed, it continued to correct for more and more illusions that were not limited to the realm of the visual. Thus Laplac…
Science is about explaining the data, and "the data" includes our perceptions of the world. In fact, that is all that we have direct access to. So... our perceptions of the world include a constant stream of overwhelming evidence that the world is classical, a 3-D space inhabited by objects that exist in particular places at particular times. So when evidence comes along that this isn't actually true, it can cause some pretty severe cognitive dissonance, and at best it demands an explanation of why the world appears classical even though it isn't. That has nothing to do with science being "about the internal world as well as the external world." Science is about explaining the data. The (hypothetical) existence of internal and external worlds is part of one possible explanation.
Re: Time Doesn’t Belong to Physics – When Bergson met Einstein
#8Sorry for Kaku's old age decline, but not gonna waste my time listening to this crank. Has he been officially diagnosed with dementia yet?
edit: you are right, I just flew over the article.
Re: Time Doesn’t Belong to Physics – When Bergson met Einstein
#9TFA is presented as an interview. It's not clear to me who is asking the questions, and who is answering.
Re: Time Doesn’t Belong to Physics – When Bergson met Einstein
#10> Of course, one of the most successful aspects of science has been to describe the world in a sense that is true without relying on appearances. For example, Descartes very successfully describes the moon illusion (why it appears larger closer to the horizon) in his book on optics. As science progressed, it continued to correct for more and more illusions that were not limited to the realm of the visual. Thus Laplac…
Science is about explaining the data, and "the data" includes our perceptions of the world. In fact, that is all that we have direct access to. So... our perceptions of the world include a constant stream of overwhelming evidence that the world is classical, a 3-D space inhabited by objects that exist in particular places at particular times. So when evidence comes along that this isn't actually true, it can cause so…
well said. It might seem like semantics but I think getting people to think of science using the way you defined it would resolve a lot of these debates (plus many other other fashionably nonsensical ideas)