On Jan 13, 2015, at 10:08 AM, Andy wrote:
> On Sat, Jan 10, 2015 at 3:26 AM, Bill Bartlett
> <william7 at aapt.net.au> wrote:
>>
>> As you can see, I can't really get my head around it properly. Thus
>> my
>> conception of space/time being compressed/bent is just a feeble way
>> to
>> expressing something beyond my understanding. But that's just a
>> problem
>> with my feeble brain. I probably would have been able to understand
>> it when
>> I was a smoker, but bow that I no longer have the crutch of
>> nicotine I seem
>> to have lost about 25% of my cognitive capability.
>>
>
> It's neither you nor your nicotine deficiency. The subject is just
> plain
> hard and anybody remotely normal has to work with the math a long
> time,
> under guidance, to get a feel for things that doesn't rest on
> analogies.
> The pros usually have this only for slices at a time, and even then
> the
> 20th century material drives many into more concrete fields, like
> fluid
> dynamics (writ large).
>
> It's frustrating enough without the 24-hour-a-day limit.
So "spacetime," "bent," "compressed"--all "analogies." But nobody, however much indoctrinated "under guidance" (by physicists, not mathematicians) will ever be able to answer the question "analogous to what?" because that would require the use of meaningful WORDS that themselves would be...analogies!
The only "concrete fields" of physical science are those with possible engineering applications.
Shane Mage
"The question whether objective truth can be attributed to human thinking is not a question of theory but is a practical question. Man must prove the truth, i.e., the reality and power, the this-sidedness [Diesseitigkeit] of his thinking, in practice."