Perpetual Student:
I'll start with a direct quote from Witts book.
"Yet after all the progress - after Socrates, Aristotle and Lucretius paved the way for Newton, Planck and Einstein, after tens of thousands of scientists have probed deeply into Nature - no-one has a clue of "WHY" the universe is here, how it really works, or what it is ultimately composed of" end quote.
The main complaint here, as I see it, is that science doesnt ask the "WHY". Now, I dont interprete this as meaning that science is wrong, rather that science is concerned with theories that agree with measurement and observation.
Freeman Dyson says the following
"This is often the way it is in physics - our mistake is not that we take our
theories too seriously, but that we do not take them seriously enough. It is always hard to realize that these numbers and equations we play with at our desks have something to do with the real world. Even worse, there often seems to be a general agreement that certain phenomena are just not fit subjects for respectable theoretical and experimental effort..............But as soon as we mention the words value and
purpose, we run into one of the most firmly entrenched taboos of
twentieth-century science. Hear the voice of Jacques Monod (1970), high priest of scientific rationality, in his book _Chance and Necessity_:
"Any mingling of knowledge with values is unlawful, forbidden."
Monod was one of the seminal minds in the flowering of molecular biology in this century. It takes some courage to defy his anathema. But I will defy him, and encourage others to do so. The taboo against mixing knowledge with values arose during the nineteenth century out of the great battle between the evolutionary biologists led by Thomas Huxley and the churchmen led by Bishop Wilberforce. Huxley won the battle, but a hundred years later Monod and Weinberg were still fighting Bishop Wilberforce's ghost. Physicists today have no reason to be afraid of Wilberforce's ghost. If our analysis of the long-range future leads us to raise questions related to the ultimate meaning and purpose of life, then let us examine these questions boldly and without embarrassment. If our answers to these questions are naive and preliminary, so much the better for the continued vitality of our science..................................... .Goedel proved [see Nagel and Newman (1956)] that the world of pure mathematics is inexhaustible; no finite set of axioms and rules of inference can ever encompass the whole of mathematics; given any finite set of axioms, we can find meaningful mathematical questions which the axioms leave unanswered." end quote.
It has often been stated by posters on this thread who have devoted much to the study of science, that the purpose of science is to describe reality and not explain it.
When lay men ask the "WHY" question of scientists, the answer is often that it is a meaningless question or the layman does not have the knowledge and understanding of science.
Now, I agree that some of Witts statements have been provocative to say the least, so a back lash is not unexpected. However, in my opinion, a lot of his descriptions make sense, although I cannot comment on the math and most of the physics as I am not qualified to do so.
With respect to the list of great scientists, whom you say Witt has said are wrong, I looked up all references to the greats in his book.
Witt mentions most on your list and a number of others not on your list.
From what I see, he never said they were wrong, in fact he states that he bases his theories on logical extensions of their physics.
If he takes issue with some of their conclusions then he is doing what every scientist does.
I agree that the infinity issue sounds ludicrous, but then has infinity really been tamed. Read the thread "Are we allergic to infinity" and see the range of opinions.
Agreed, he never went the route of peer review and that was an error, if the objective was to be accepted by the scientific community.
However, when you consider his prime questions, what would the scientific community have to say.
Here are his prime questions.
quote
1.Why does the universe exist?
2.Where did it come from?
3.What, at the smallest level is it made of?
4.What caused it?
5.What existed before the beginning?
6.Where did all the material come from?
7.Why did the Big Bang happen and does time predate the Big Bang?
end quote.
Are these questions not worthy of an answer and will mainstream science answer these questions?
Sol: Benjamin Franklin was a politician who discovered electricity. Bill Gates was a college student who pioneered the personal computer. Michael Faraday was a bookbinder who rewrote electromagnetism
. Witt is not as bad as that, I'll grant you.
