>From: James Heartfield <Jim at heartfield.demon.co.uk>
>Reply-To: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com
>To: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com
>Subject: Re: Science
>Date: Sun, 10 Dec 2000 09:44:15 +0000
>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.
No you were not. You have been arguing that intersubjectivity in the sense that you and I perform the same experiment and collect the same data is not enough for science; that intersubjectivity has to be an indicator of reality. Yet to dogmatically assert that position, you have to be ignorant of non locality and the EPR paradoxes. This is not as simple as you have been making it out to be.
>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.
Whatever. Read Bohr, Heisenberg, Schroedinger, Fenyman, Omnes and others. They are not philosophers.
>
>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.
See you do not even know what Bell's theorem is. If you did, it would be obvious to you that Einstein's and Bohm's positions confront great difficulties. Einstein presumed that sense experience can be understood in terms of an idea of some external reality whose spatially separated parts are independent realities, in the sense that they depend on each other only via connections that respect space time separation in the usual way: instaneous connections are excluded. But the existence of such a reality lying behind the world of observed phenomena is precisely what Bell's theorem--not the Tao of physics--proves to be impossible.
>
> > 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.
in quantum mechanics, our experimental results are not consistent with the same underlying reality. I tried to give you some indication, drawing from Lindley. But why does your ignorance not stop you from declaring to the world that you know, as Valery once put it, the recipe that never fails in science?
>
>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.
Who was doing this? And I wasn't talking about Heisenberg's uncertainty principles but EPR results.
>
>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)
yes but this is einstein's position in a very complicated debate. why are you choosing sides when you don't have a clue except what your faith tells you?
>
>But you leave unsaid whether these rules are drawn from the world or
>from the fancies of scientists.
What are you talking about? I was referring to the rules needed for the verification of experimental results.
>
>
> >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.
How do you make sense of different and incompatible measurements made on the same system not yielding consistent results?
The
>gap between science and the objective world only exists if the objective
>world has an existence independent from science.
If you dip into the literature just a little bit, as I have, you will find that there are real difficulties for this view in regards to superposition. I am not saying that it's untenable; only that your pronunciamento will not do.
Warm regards, Jan
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