[lbo-talk] Scientism

[Les Schaffer]

Charles Brown wrote:
> CB: Some hypotheses are spoken of as having attained the status of laws of
> nature, which expresses the certainty aspect of this. It is not just
> "skepticism". 
>
> For example, there's nobody talking about going faster than the speed of
> light. There's a lot of certainty today that that's a limit beyond a
> reasonable doubt.

on the other hand, the constancy of the speed of light is part of a
larger theoretical framework for relativistic physics, and there are
some clever scientists looking for signs that at high enough energies
these "Lorentz symmetries" get broken with testable consequences:

http://www.physics.indiana.edu/~kostelec/mov.html
http://www.physics.indiana.edu/~kostelec/faq.html

these kinds of interesting "hammering at the armor" don't derive from
skepticism or uncertainty, and are as natural as a baseball player
tapping his or her bat on a solid surface to detect tiny cracks which
could cause the bat to break with a hard enough swing.

on the other hand, do scientists and engineers in N. Korea or Iran sit
around looking for breaks in Lorentz symmetries in order to develop
nuclear technology? highly doubtful. yet you see the Physics USENET
newsgroups daily proclaim how Einstein got it all wrong, with the
implication that if only we threw out our ignorant dogmas and beliefs,
true life would spring forth.

Les Schaffer