reason Archives | Metaphysics of Physics

Today we are going over quotes that help to show that the cause of the irrationality in modern physics is philosophy.

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[Note: Please note that this transcript may not exactly match the audio. However, there should be no significant differences.]

Intro

Metaphysics of Physics is the crucial voice of reason in the philosophy of science, rarely found anywhere else in the world today.

We are equipped with the fundamental principles of a rational philosophy that gives us the edge, may make us misfits in the mainstream sciences but also attracts rational minds.

With this show, we are fighting for a more rational world, mostly by looking through the lens of the philosophy of science.

We raise awareness of issues within the philosophy of science and present alternative and rational approaches.

The irrationality of modern physics is the focus of this channel. We have covered topics such as:

The irrationality of Stephen Hawking.The universe and the Big Bang. The philosophy of Niels Bohr. The achievements of Isaac Newton.Optical illusions and the validity of the senses.

If you think that science is about explaining a knowable reality, then this is the channel for you.

If you want to learn more about the irrationality of modern physics, then you are in the right place.

I am your host Ashna. My husband, Dwayne Davies is the primary content creator and your guide through the hallowed halls of the philosophy of science.

We will discuss the problems in modern physics and more and how we can live in a more rational world!

Check out our website at metaphysicsofphysics.com.

The Show Itself

Hi everyone! Welcome to the first of the Metaphysics of Physics video podcast. Today we are going over quotes that help to show that the cause of the irrationality in modern physics is philosophy.

If you are a long-time fan of Metaphysics of Physics, then you will know that modern physics is full of crazy absurdities. Such as things being particles and waves at the same time. And things not being real unless they are observed. Or the tendency to treat obvious concepts such as that of “dimension” or “time” as though they were physical things. Or that the universe is made from mathematics!

Why do educated people take such nonsense seriously? Is it because reality is as weird as physicists like to believe? And do we just have to accept this?

No! If you examine all these kinds of claims, you will not find any evidence that supports them. All these claims are simply baseless, nonsensical interpretations of experiments and/or mathematical equations. There is never a shred of evidence that supports any of these interpretations.

Ah, but what about all the alleged experimental evidence. Yes, what about it? In no case can it reasonably be interpreted as supporting any such anti-reality position. No experiment ever performed will ever show that reality is not real or that it is unknowable.

If reality was not real, the results of experiments would not be real and they would demonstrate nothing. If reality was unknowable, then you could never learn that by performing experiments that could not reveal that.

Or in other words: you cannot use reality to demonstrate that there is no reality. You cannot claim knowledge that proves that knowledge is impossible.

No experiment will ever show that reality is not real….

Why then do physicists take any of this seriously? It is because of the ideas that physicists have accepted either passively or actively. It is because of the philosophies that those in physics have blindly accepted or have actively embraced. Philosophies which lead them to interpret reality through the twisted lenses of those very philosophies which are hostile to reality and knowledge.

What kind of philosophies might these be? The kind that asserts that what we call reality is an illusion and that we might as well give up trying to understand how it works. Instead, they claim that we should confine ourselves to studying only mathematical appearances. As that is all they believe we shall ever know about.

Today we are going to explore some quotes from physicists. We will start with Niels Bohr and his contemporaries. They started physics down the road of abandoning reality in favor of mathematical appearances. And then we shall turn to more recent physicists who evidently agree with Bohr and his peers.

We shall see that the absurdities of modern physics should come as no surprise. The people inflicting modern physics with these absurdities are simply being consistent with the philosophy of Bohr and the like. The philosophy which dominates science today and which is shaped by the Neo-Kantian philosophies that have dominated our culture for over a hundred years.

Without any further ado, let us look at some of these quotes. And then discuss what kind of philosophical premises motivated them.

“Everything we call real is made of things that cannot be regarded as real.” – Niels Bohr

Bohr believed that we could never know reality as it is. We can merely develop a pragmatic abstract description consistent with what we observe. Which is merely an illusion, not things as they are.

Gee thanks Bohr, thanks for plunging physics into irrationality…

If we cannot know reality, then one might ask “towards what purpose?” do we have science? Creating science-fiction?

That seems rather pointless to me. But pragmatists would assert that there is some use in describing illusions. If they help us live better lives as we navigate our way around all these illusions.

“Isolated material particles are abstractions, their properties being definable and observable only through their interaction with other systems.” – Niels Bohr.

We are to view things such as an “electron” or a “proton” as abstract descriptions. We should not think that we know anything about what they are. No, we are merely creating abstract descriptions. And then identifying relationships between these abstractions.

After all, if we cannot know reality as it is, and all we have are illusions to work with, then should we not at least try to find out how these illusions are connected? At least then we can learn to live in this world of illusions.

“I consider those developments in physics during the last decades which have shown how problematical such concepts as “objective” and “subjective” are, a great liberation of thought.” – Niels Bohr.

Here Bohr exposes his pragmatism. He does not consider it worthwhile to discuss whether the abstractions he holds so dear are “objective” or “subjective”. He is merely concerned with whether they might prove pragmatically useful.

If we cannot know reality, then what use is it to say whether something is objective or subjective? We can never know. We can only know whether abstractions are useful.

A reasonable person might say that abstractions are only useful if they are objective.

Bohr believed that we cannot know whether something is objective or not, so considers it pointless to consider such things.

“We must be clear that when it comes to atoms, language can be used only as in poetry. The poet, too, is not nearly so concerned with describing facts as with creating images and establishing mental connections.” – Niels Bohr

Bohr enjoyed the fact that so much of the quantum physics he was developing made no sense. He reveled in its frequent contradictions and insisted that different aspects of the same thing could be in a kind of conflict (but were complementary) with each other. Of course, he urged his peers to accept such conflicts!

He was like one of those deranged poets who enjoys constructing rhymes that make no sense. But who nonetheless insists that his poetry is of great depth and significance.

Except he was not merely some poet filling his victim’s ears with an insult to the Muses. He was detaching physics from reality while insisting that physics does not need it. While insisting that instead it needs beautiful descriptions of contradictions!

“There is no quantum world. There is only an abstract quantum physical description. It is wrong to think that the task of physics is to find out how nature is. Physics concerns what we can say about Nature.” – Niels Bohr

That sums it all up. According to Bohr, the point of physics is not to learn about the fundamental nature of the physical world. What then is the point of physics?

According to Bohr, it is about whatever we want to say about reality. Without concerning ourselves with things like objectivity, logic or the true nature of things. It is all about “poetry” and the relationships between meaningless abstractions with no connection to an unknowable reality.

Of course, physics is about explaining the real physical world. But according to Bohr we can not know the real world, let alone explain it!

You can read more about the philosophy of Bohr in episode seven of the podcast. There we cover his philosophy in some depth.

Bohr and his disciples had an enormous influence on physics and later physicists. But he was not the only person to assert such things.

For instance, we have this quote from Werner Heisenberg:

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This is a question I hear far too often. Here is the first part of my response where I explain that reason has no limits that need concern us. This will be part of a series addressing this issue.

I do not yet know how long it will take for me to get around to covering the rest of this series. We will see. In any case, let us get on with the first part.

What do you mean by that? What are these limits?

Reason is the process by which we look to reality and deduce the facts of reality by applying the laws of logic. It is the only means by which we can reliably learn anything about reality.

Obviously, there are things we cannot know. We can know only what we can deduce from sensory data and its implications. That which is based on our observation of reality. If there is no data pertaining to something, we cannot know anything about it.

For instance, we will probably never know what happened on the 1st of July in that spot right there in Greece in 200BC. We have no way to know that, there is just no data to tell us anything about this. We can take an educated guess that it was probably this or that. But, we will never know what exactly took place.

This is not a problem and it does not present reason with any challenge. Even with reason we are not omniscient, there are things we cannot know. Simply due to lack of data.

That does not mean reason is somehow invalid. Only that it has a foundation — that being the observable facts of reality, that is, evidence. As opposed to unsupported claims for which there is no evidence. And which we have no reason to take seriously.

A part of this issue of data is context. We can only reason within a certain context of knowledge. At any given time we only know so much and we may be missing key facts. But, if we do not know that, how can we be expected to account for that of which we are ignorant?

Take Newtons laws of motion. They work very well at all but the highest speeds. At faster speeds, they are less accurate and we have to apply relativistic equations instead. Does this mean that Newton was wrong and that he should have known better than to come up with equations that break down at higher speeds?

Of course not! Newton had no way to know what would happen at extremely high, relativistic speeds. He had no way to know that his equations might break down at some such speeds. So, he had no reason to think that he should modify his equations to account for them. Within the context of his knowledge, his equations were entirely reasonable and logical.

It does not indicate that reason is somehow faulty. It shows that reason is contextual. That is, it depends upon context. It shows that one can only apply reason to what they know, to the data available at the time. Which then leads one to certain logical conclusions.

When further data is discovered, then reason may require a reevaluation of one’s earlier conclusions to account for the new data. But, far from invalidating reason, this merely shows that reason is contextual and depends on the context of one’s knowledge.

What is logical depends on the context of one’s knowledge. One cannot be expected to account for what he does not know about. That would be equivalent to making up data and that is not reason. That is the antithesis of reason.

If more data is discovered, if further knowledge is developed, then reason is self-correcting. It will account for new data and correct itself to better account for the data.

It is widely asserted that reason is limited because it depends on sensory data, which is itself limited. This claim has no validity whatsoever. Our senses are not agents of distortion. They give us data as it is. It might not match what we expect reality to look like, but, they nonetheless show us reality as it is and have no powers of distortion.

Besides, how could one demonstrate that? How could one hope to prove that the senses are invalid? If the senses are invalid, how would one know? One would have no ability to know that. Since everything we know about reality starts with what we sense about reality. If we cannot trust our senses, how would we know that our senses cannot be trusted?

No, we would not be able to know anything. Not even that we cannot trust our senses! There would be no such thing as knowledge, concepts or any ideas at all if we did not have some contact with reality as it really is.

So, the claim that our senses are deceptive is self-refuting. Since if it was true we would never know it and for us to know it, it would have to be false!

So much for that attack on reason…

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Vodcast Episode One: The Cause of Modern Physics is Philosophy