[ExI] The "Unreasonable" Effectiveness of Mathematics intheNatural Sciences

Lee Corbin lcorbin at rawbw.com
Tue Sep 30 13:28:15 UTC 2008


Stefano writes

> Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
> 
>> But the church would not have prevailed in the end because they would
>> have been beaten in any enterprise requiring an understanding of the
>> heliocentric view, such as colonising the solar system. The Ptolemaic
>> cosmology may have given the right answers up to a point, but beyond
>> this point it would either have failed or made the calculations too
>> cumbersome; so on the basis of utility (which subsumes Occam's Razor),
>> the Copernican theory is preferred.

Yes, just as the "theory" that it's alternately light and dark
over very approximately 24 hour period, or the belief that
one must inhale and exhale (either naturally or artificially)
or perish. Literally tens of thousands of alternate beliefs
about our daily lives would not give what you call "the
right answers", which, indeed may ultimately be founded
upon Occam's razor. Yet we are vastly more certain of
ordinary "facts" of life, such as if you lift and object and
then let go of it, it will fall down than we are of all these
esoteric concepts such  as Occam's Razor, or cultural
differences.

I claim that all the latter are really based upon the former,
epistemologically. But I do *not*  want to get into another
realist/idealist/objectivist/ subjectivist debate, since they go
nowhere, as you (Stathis) say. So I agree with what you
write above, and confine my remarks only to those who
accept the ordinary, daily, practical realism of everyday
life.

>> But arguing about metaphysical concepts - is there really a
>> concrete world out there or does it just look that way? - adds
>> nothing to science, and if anything detracts from the serious
>> business of getting things done.

Stefano writes

> Very well put.

I could hardly agree more.

> But speaking of the merits, from a strict contemporary-science angle,
> is there any reason to consider a "geocentric" perspective as
> intrinsically flawed or inconsistent with some experimental data?

No, you can set up rotating coordinate systems that have great
utility. Even when I was in the 8th grade, I just knew that the
teacher was all wet when he said that there was no such thing
as centrifugal force. 

> It is not a rhetorical question, I have never given it much thought, and
> since after all we recognise nowadays that the Sun is not in any kind
> of "objectively fixed" position,

Yes, according to the best ideas we have---i.e. those ideas that
have successively survived criticism---there isn't really any such
thing as "objectively fixed position", although one may point out
that the CMB allows you to come to rest with respect to the Big
Bang. But then if you do, you must still consider someone else a
few light years away to be moving, and there is no objective notion
of one frame being absolutely fixed and the other not.

> and that the motion of a rocket can
> be equally well described as a rocket moving away from earth or the
> earth moving away from the rocket I simply assume that the
> "heliocentric" view is simply a much simpler, more elegant and more
> Occam-compliant way to describe our portion of the universe.

Just so. I only wonder why you probably would not often phrase
seasonal differences in temperature, or other accepted facts about
daily life as "a simply more elegant and more Occam-compliant way"
to describe our surroundings. (Sorry to throw in one more jab at all
the high falutin' talk about such things, but apparently I am channeling
the spirit of Feynman at the moment  :-)

On to Mike's statements about "Truth". I really think that his comments
and Jef's are more appropriate in a different thread.

Lee




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