Physicists and Philosophers Debate the Boundaries of Science
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Physicists and Philosophers Debate the Boundaries of Science
1–10 of 168 posts
Re: Physicists and Philosophers Debate the Boundaries of Science
#2If it is not testable, it does not sound like physics to me. Physics is an empirical science, and should therefore be testable by definition.
Re: Physicists and Philosophers Debate the Boundaries of Science
#3If it is not testable, it does not sound like physics to me. Physics is an empirical science, and should therefore be testable by definition.
Its testable just not with current tech
Re: Physicists and Philosophers Debate the Boundaries of Science
#4If it is not testable, it does not sound like physics to me. Physics is an empirical science, and should therefore be testable by definition.
A large chunk of physics is theoretical in nature. Sometimes you simply cannot experimentally validate a phenomenon, so you instead propose a theory that attempts to explain it using physics. Then in the future, when the phenomenon is testable, your peers determine whether your theory was correct or not.
Re: Physicists and Philosophers Debate the Boundaries of Science
#5If it is not testable, it does not sound like physics to me. Physics is an empirical science, and should therefore be testable by definition.
A large chunk of physics is theoretical in nature. Sometimes you simply cannot experimentally validate a phenomenon, so you instead propose a theory that attempts to explain it using physics. Then in the future, when the phenomenon is testable, your peers determine whether your theory was correct or not.
No sometimes you can't build a practical, on-demand test. You can predict what future observations should look like.
Re: Physicists and Philosophers Debate the Boundaries of Science
#6If it is not testable, it does not sound like physics to me. Physics is an empirical science, and should therefore be testable by definition.
Its testable just not with current tech
Then why ask philosophers? If you don't know what the other side of the moon looks like because rockets have not been invented yet, how could a philosopher possibly help?
Re: Physicists and Philosophers Debate the Boundaries of Science
#7If it is not testable, it does not sound like physics to me. Physics is an empirical science, and should therefore be testable by definition.
A large chunk of physics is theoretical in nature. Sometimes you simply cannot experimentally validate a phenomenon, so you instead propose a theory that attempts to explain it using physics. Then in the future, when the phenomenon is testable, your peers determine whether your theory was correct or not.
theory is by definition a tested hypothesis
Re: Physicists and Philosophers Debate the Boundaries of Science
#8If it is not testable, it does not sound like physics to me. Physics is an empirical science, and should therefore be testable by definition.
Its testable just not with current tech
Maybe not. It's not completely clear that, for example, string theory could ever be experimentally verified, since it operates completely at a level below all the manifestations of our observable universe. (AFAIK, I'm no physicist)
What technology can you imagine that could ever prove or disprove a hypothesis of our universe being only one facet of a multiverse? The apparatus would necessarily exist within the closed system.
Re: Physicists and Philosophers Debate the Boundaries of Science
#9If it is not testable, it does not sound like physics to me. Physics is an empirical science, and should therefore be testable by definition.
> Physics is an empirical science
Theoretical physics is also very much a thing.
> and should therefore be testable by definition.
That sounds nice but the definition of testable is hard to pin down and changes over time.
Re: Physicists and Philosophers Debate the Boundaries of Science
#10If it is not testable, it does not sound like physics to me. Physics is an empirical science, and should therefore be testable by definition.
What do you mean by "testable"? There's a pretty big spectrum of "untestable" ranging from requiring too many trillions of dollars to requiring more resources than this planet has to requiring equipment or energy levels we don't know how to produce even in theory to requiring stuff we're pretty sure is impossible like looking beyond the range of the observable universe or requiring more energy than is contained in the observable universe.
And at what point in its development and study do you abandon a theory that nobody has yet invented a way to test?