Well, forgive me, but I thought the weight of my post was to say that historical materialism was not a species of philosophical materialism and therefore had no relation to the new physics. I guess like most people, including yourself, apparently, I am an amateur in the discussion of the new physics.
But that hardly is the issue, since I was only concerned to show that historical materialism has no relation to the philosophical question of the objectivity or otherwise of the material world. If you 'do not understand the first thing' about historical materialism, I cannot object to that. But I can object to your heavy-handed intervention, for its ignorance of what was under discussion, and for your insistence on dragging the conversation rudely onto ground where you (for reasons I can't quite gather) feel more confident.
>
>Ever since the Cophenhagen interpretation, philosophers of physics as
>Mr Schwartz will tell you have struggled with whether objectivity
>indeed means more than than ability of scientists to agree on the
>results (or range of possible results) of experiments.
No doubt this is accurate of *philosophers* of science. But philosophy of science and science are two different things, and I think that Lewis Wolpert's recent argument that science is ill-served by the philosophy of science has more than a grain of truth in it.
Even philosophers of science might have noticed Thomas Kuhn's rejection of the relativistic interpretation of his own work, recently republished in a collection reviewed in today's papers. They might also have noticed Goedel's similar insistence on the objective reality of number. But sad to say most so-called philosophy of science rushes headlong into absurd conclusions from the properly tentative arguments advanced by the scientists. Such works as the recentish 'Tao of Physics' are characteristic of the mystical mumbo-jumbo that rushes to fill the vacuum left in the Copenhagen interpretation.
> You insist
>that the experimental results have to refer to an objectivity of
>reality, objective in the sense that *all* experimental results are
>consistent with the *same* underlying reality.
Yes, I think so. It's not my reality verses yours. That's the difference between mere opinion and science.
>It is this second idea
>of objectivity which as you should know the Copenhagen interpretation will
>not allow.
You read more into the Copenhagen Interpretation than it will support. Heisenberg identified an indeterminacy in the measurement the position and momentum of sub-atomic particles. That in itself has no bearing on other areas of science. It is sheer philosophical speculation to expand Heisenberg's indeterminacy exponentially to contain the entire objective universe, as if biology, cosmology, anatomy, chemistry, an every other science were rendered indeterminate by quantum mechanics.
Further, though Niels Bohr persuaded Heisenberg that the indeterminacy was a feature of reality rather than a weakness in the apparatus, not everyone agreed. Einstein in particular objected to Bohr's assumption that the position of the particle was a consequence of the observation.
'Observation of reality cannot CREATE an element of reality like a position, there must be something contained in the complete description of physical reality which corresponds to the possibility of observing a position, already before the observation has actually been made.' (1954)
Einstein considered Quantum Mechanics to be incomplete (see his paper of 1935), a condition which lays it open to the possibilities of indeterminacy, and Bohr's boorish insistence that this was not a hurdle to be overcome but a limit to be celebrated.
As Einstein said
'The Heisenberg-Bohr tranquilizing philosophy - or religion? - is so delicately contrived that, for the time being, it provides a gentle pillowfor the true believer from which he cannot very easily be aroused. So let him lie there.'
>
>We are thus left with weak objectivity. All scientists can agree on
>the rules, and can unambiguously agree, when faced by a specified set
>up, on what can happen and can't happen.
But you leave unsaid whether these rules are drawn from the world or from the fancies of scientists.
>But it is no simple matter
>to go further and declare, as you are in the habit of doing, that the
>picture of the world yielded by the sum total of all experimental
>reults on all possible pieces of the world is in fact not just a
>picture, but really is identical to the objectivity world, something
>that exists outside of us, and prior to any conception, or
>measurement we may have of it.
Whoever thought such a thing? Certainly not me, and no scientist that has ever worked. 'Just a picture' is wrong. It is more than a picture, but it is of course an approximation, not the thing itself. In fact, my entire contribution has been to insist that the science is not the same thing as that which it describes. On the contrary that is the social constructionist position: ie that the subject matter of science arises out of the agreement of scientists. My point was that science refers to something outside of itself, that pre-exists it, objective reality. The gap between science and the objective world only exists if the objective world has an existence independent from science.
-- James Heartfield