Well history doesn't belong to historians, people can believe any fan fic happened, as is tradition. Medicine doesn't belong to biology, there's a long traditional culture of alternatives. Art doesn't belong to artists, because anything is subjectively art. Philosophy doesn't belong to philosophers, who is to say some published philosophy is better than some drunken rant?
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
#12> Bergson emphasised the cultural and technological context in which Einstein formulated relativity and argued that a theory of time that relies on clocks but doesn’t understand their history and significance, is incomplete
This is hard to get on board with. A theory of time is incomplete without a history of clocks? Have I misunderstood?
Re: Time Doesn’t Belong to Physics – When Bergson met Einstein
#13Earlier quoted context omitted.
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)
Thanks. Just to give credit where it's due, this characterization of the scientific method as being about seeking explanations of data is not my idea, it's due to Karl Popper. The best accessible exposition of Popper's position IMHO is by David Deutsch in The Fabric of Reality, chapter 7. Well worth a read.
Re: Time Doesn’t Belong to Physics – When Bergson met Einstein
#14[deleted]
Re: Time Doesn’t Belong to Physics – When Bergson met Einstein
#15> Bergson emphasised the cultural and technological context in which Einstein formulated relativity and argued that a theory of time that relies on clocks but doesn’t understand their history and significance, is incomplete This is hard to get on board with. A theory of time is incomplete without a history of clocks? Have I misunderstood?
A theory of time is only complete without a history of clocks if you believe a theory of time can be completely physically correct, period.
Do you know of any completely physically correct theories?
Re: Time Doesn’t Belong to Physics – When Bergson met Einstein
#16I find myself becoming more and more sensitive to this basic mistake: We know relativity is wrong somehow. We know quantum mechanics is wrong somehow. They're both incredibly correct with their predictions but they don't go together, so they can't both be right and in the end they both have to be wrong somehow. Two of the places where they are both clearly somehow wrong are gravity (completely missing from QM, incompatible with quantization in relativity) and time (both theories having problems with them in the extreme cases).
Therefore, grand pronouncements about how the universe is "really" a static four-dimensional object "because that's what relativity says" are just wrong, for the exact same reasons.
Perhaps even in the "not even wrong" sense, on the grounds that it is no different than taking Newtonian physics and making ground pronouncements about the nature of the universe. Newtonian physics implies things like "there can be no absolute speed limit in the universe"; not just that there isn't one, but that there can't be one for the transforms it uses to be valid. There is such a speed limit and the transforms it uses aren't valid. Declaring the universe to have this or that characteristic based on relativity is no different than declaring it must not have a speed-of-light because that's what Newtonian physics says. The only difference is that "everybody" knows the latter is wrong; the former is just as wrong.
So in general getting too worked up over what Einstein's relativity says about the universe at this level is a waste of time, no pun intended.
Science history being what it is, it is quite likely that if we ever do penetrate down to what time "really" is it'll be even more mind-blowing than a static four-dimensional universe, but that's a problem for the future. (And the current leading contenders in that theory race I'm not sure are any more disruptive than QM already was. Total chaos space/time at scales so small that they are in some sense literally microscopically microscopically microscopically microscopic may be vaguely unsettling, but to my mind doesn't seem to add anything philosophically material that QM didn't already introduce.)
Re: Time Doesn’t Belong to Physics – When Bergson met Einstein
#17Perhaps 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.
On the other hand, the hubris of physicists to call their trade a replacement for philosophy exposes the fatal flaw in scientism.
Re: Time Doesn’t Belong to Physics – When Bergson met Einstein
#18Sorry 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.
Yes, Kaku is a crackpot grifter, but he is not relevant for this article.
Re: Time Doesn’t Belong to Physics – When Bergson met Einstein
#19Sorry 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.
This is not Michio Kaku, unless I’m very mistaken.
Re: Time Doesn’t Belong to Physics – When Bergson met Einstein
#20Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
On the other hand, the hubris of physicists to call their trade a replacement for philosophy exposes the fatal flaw in scientism.
Why is that a fatal flaw?