Fwd: quarky malarkey

DANIEL.DAVIES at flemings.com DANIEL.DAVIES at flemings.com
Fri Oct 29 10:07:30 PDT 1999


Please respond to lbo-talk at lists.panix.com

To: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com cc: (bcc: DANIEL DAVIES) bcc: DANIEL DAVIES Subject: Re: Fwd: quarky malarkey

From: DANIEL.DAVIES at flemings.com


>> -- Don't you feel a little bit uncomfortable talking about
"Strange-Charge
>> space" when fellow spods are ragging on Lacan for talking about
"irrational
>> numbers".


>While I have real difficulty assuming this post is in good faith and not
>mere spam, I'll try to take it seriously.

Well I'm sorry if it seemed flippant to you, although I'll hedge that apology by noting that the context appears to be such classy epistemological devices as "it seems fairly obvious".


> (2) There is no possibility of the terminology misleading either the
physicists
>themselves *or* non-physicists trying to gain some minimal
>understanding of the field.

A more serious point, but I think that physicists have also allowed their use of language to take them off on tangents in the past:

Is light made up of waves, or particles?

When quantum states "collapse", what collapses? Isn't the word "collapse", with its implication of an event, a contribution to many misunderstandings of the point of the double-slit experiment?

Does opening the box kill the cat 50% of the time? Even if Schrodinger had the wrong end of the stick, does that mean that he wasn't a /proper/ spod?

Is the Second Law of Thermodynamics a law? In the common sense of the word "law"? In what other sense?


>There is a reasonable basis for assuming
>that Lacan's terminology may lead to (or is even intended to
>lead to) real confusion.

Perhaps so. I haven't read it, so I have no reasonable basis for saying all that much about it; I'm assuming you have.


>It seems deliberately obscurantist, as does
>this post from Davies.

Sorry about that.


>Incidentally, the web site posted for particle theory is wonderful.

I agree.


>Carrol

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