Why is there so much crackpot physics?

[ben m]

One tool is the criteria that appears to distinguish "especially significant" moments in the history of science. This criteria is whether a new cognitive frame features "replacement of an established object concept by an event concept". Kepler's orbit is an exemplar used to illustrate application of the criteria.

Is this acceptable?

That's a tool for reading history books and figuring out whether a revolution has happened. It is not a tool for looking at present-day anomalies and predicting, or guiding, or managing, a revolution.

 

[theprestige]

One tool is the criteria that appears to distinguish "especially significant" moments in the history of science. This criteria is whether a new cognitive frame features "replacement of an established object concept by an event concept". Kepler's orbit is an exemplar used to illustrate application of the criteria.

Is this acceptable?

Can you give an example of how you would use the tool you describe above?

I describe a tool, as a rigid shaft with a handle at one end and a shaped head at the other.

I give an example of how to use this tool, by mating the shaped head with a corresponding indentation in the head of a screw, gripping the handle firmly, applying pressure along the shaft, and rotating the shaft by means of the handle, to drive the screw into a work surface.

I can give abundant illustrated and written accounts of this tool in use, including a wide variety of specific detailed implementations of the basic concept.

Can you contribute to this thread the same, for the tool you describe above?

 

[lpetrich]

I wouldn't want to be too hard on the idea of epicycles. Fourier series are essentially lots of epicycles.

But a big problem is how one specifies them. How many parameters do they need?

Each planet has a deferent (primary circle) with an angular velocity and a phase angle, and epicycles, each with a size, an angular velocity, and a phase angle.

For an underlying heliocentric Solar System with circular orbits, the Sun and the Moon require only a deferent, while the other traditional-definition planets require a deferent and one epicycle.

However, for Mercury and Venus,
(deferent angle) = (Sun's deferent angle)

and for Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn,
(deferent angle) + (epicycle angle) = (Sun's deferent angle)

Heliocentrism explains these relationships very nicely; they are unmotivated in geocentric cosmology.


Turning to orbits with eccentricity, such an orbit can be described with a Fourier series in time, thus making it have an infinite number of epicycles. But they are all specified with a small number of parameters: 3 for orbit orientation, 1 for size, 1 for eccentricity, and 1 for a periapsis time.

 

[BurntSynapse]

So far you are a waving a book and calling it a tool. Why don't you explain how exactly that qualifies as 'tools not being considered', explain exactly what is being disregarded.

What tools are not being used in research, I can get your original quote.

So you gave a vague, opaque answer at best, and I would say, no, that is not a tool.

If you believe that the exact criteria on page 17 which top experts claim distinguish the "most important advances in the history of science" is "waving a book", then I would ask for an example you consider a valid tool to which such criticism could not be applied.

 

[BurntSynapse]

That's a tool for reading history books and figuring out whether a revolution has happened.

So all the experts in this area of history and philosophy of science are wrong > A silly claim.

It is not a tool for looking at present-day anomalies and predicting, or guiding, or managing, a revolution.

If you wish to argue against application of a proposed definition by experts, don't you think you should present some reason for doing so?

 

[BurntSynapse]

Can you give an example of how you would use the tool you describe above?

Yes, although this cognitive tool is less about alteration (as is a screwdriver), and more about identification (like a IR camera).

I would use this criteria to identify potentially high-value research the same way we might use an IR camera to identify a type of camouflaged animal in a dark jungle.

Using the ABC criteria, (Andersen, Barker, Chen) some brane/holographic models might seem to warrant higher priority in the research portfolio if they treat something like mass or time as an observational consequence of a process.

Since my job the past years has been working on science administration standards definition, I haven't done any serious survey of the literature applying these to the current theories to actually perform any identification, although my NSF and NSB interviews did bring up lots of examples of research felt to be good examples of especially transformative ideas.

 

[W.D.Clinger]

One tool is the criteria that appears to distinguish "especially significant" moments in the history of science. This criteria is whether a new cognitive frame features "replacement of an established object concept by an event concept". Kepler's orbit is an exemplar used to illustrate application of the criteria.

Is this acceptable?

No. When arguing with physicists about physics by insisting the critical issues lie within your field of project management, citing books on the philosophy of science undermines your focus on project management. Appealing to the academic authority of arcane books carries less intellectual heft when your citations consist of links to amazon.com. Hoping your opponents will be intimidated by your learning and intellect is undermined by failing to realize the word "criteria" is plural.

That's a tool for reading history books and figuring out whether a revolution has happened. It is not a tool for looking at present-day anomalies and predicting, or guiding, or managing, a revolution.

If you wish to argue against application of a proposed definition by experts, don't you think you should present some reason for doing so?

Why should ben m be different?

As it happens, ben m and others have already explained how a great many experiments have confirmed violations of Bell's inequality, so your expert (Einstein) was wrong about quantum mechanics and the nature of reality.

ben m and others have also cited the wealth of experimental evidence that confirms Einstein's theories of relativity. That's why we're inclined to think faster-than-light travel is impossible.

If you wish to argue against scientific theories that have stood up magnificently during a full century of testing, don't you think you should present some reason for rejecting those theories?

 

[Dancing David]

If you believe that the exact criteria on page 17 which top experts claim distinguish the "most important advances in the history of science" is "waving a book", then I would ask for an example you consider a valid tool to which such criticism could not be applied.

Dear Sir or Madam as the case may be,
Welcome to the JREF!

The burden rests solely upon you to explain how you alleged cognitive tool should be applied.

The burden rests solely on the claimant of the positive claim.

Your claim: there is this cognitive tool which needs to be applied.

Your lack: an actual explanation of what the tool is and how it is to be applied.

You have advanced from a YouTube video to a book to a specific passage in a book.

yet some how you still have not provided

1. the cognitive tool
2. an explanation of the use of said tool

And again Welcome to the JREF.

Your mission, should you choose to accept it and stop all the rhetorical posturing
1. Delineate the cognitive tool
2. Explain the application of the cognitive tool to future research.

 

[ben m]

So all the experts in this area of history and philosophy of science are wrong > A silly claim.

Historians of science do claim to be able to look at a completed event, with the benefit of hindsight, and analyze what was going on. That's fine. (Although they don't use Kuhn to do so.) When a historian of science looks at, e.g., early plate tectonics, or early cold fusion, or early pentaquarks, they do so knowing who turned out to be right and who to be wrong.

Back to "tools" and "management". You are claiming that they can look at fragments of current data and spot the ingredients for a future revolution. This is wrong.

If you wish to argue against application of a proposed definition by experts, don't you think you should present some reason for doing so?

The expert historians can do whatever they want with history. (This generally does NOT include Kuhn's SoSR, which every historian including Kuhn himself appears to disagree with.) I've never seen a science historian venture to tell scientists what to study next.

 

[Perpetual Student]

Originally Posted by Perpetual Student
Another example, of a very different species, is BurntSynapse's notion that we can overturn the known laws of physics and achieve faster than light travel through superior project management. Although quite different in approach, both these ideas register quite high on the crackpot scale.

Should Copernicus' notion that he could overturn the known laws of astrology and achieve a consistent calendar through drawing imaginary lines and circles in the sky have rated high on the crackpot scale at that time?

Why or why not?

The above argument begs a response since it is often used as a justification to support crackpot ideas.

Firstly, the scientific method and scientific evidence, as we use those terms today, were not understood in the early sixteenth century – scientific thinking was quite rare if it existed at all at that time in Europe. In contrast to what we mean by the known laws of physics today, I have no idea what is meant by the phrase, “known laws of astrology.” Were these laws of astrology subjected to experiments and supported by a well tested theory or were they merely the result of magical thinking? I think you know the answer.

Secondly, the western world embraced the Ptolemaic system because Aristotle accepted it. For whatever historical reasons, Aristotle’s beliefs were embraced by the western church as dogma. Had Aristotle been persuaded by Aristarchus of Samos, it is quite possible that the west might have accepted a heliocentric system all along. Many theories were proposed and discussed in the pre-Christian era in a spirit that we would regard today as more or less scientific. That kind of thinking was severely suppressed and was replaced by Christian dogma toward the end of the Roman Empire. Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler, et al were pioneers in paving the way to modern scientific thinking.

Thirdly, the limit of c is foundational to modern physics and is supported by a theory that has been tested by thousands of physicists, countless times throughout the world for a hundred years. There is no reason to believe that all these physicists have missed the boat and all have somehow mismanaged their experimental and theoretical projects -- or because they lacked management "tools."

In summary, the notion that exceeding c might be achieved through better project management is downright silly, your historical analogies are misguided and if you were a genuine professional, you would be embarrassed by having made such a claim.

 

[ben m]

Using the ABC criteria, (Andersen, Barker, Chen) some brane/holographic models might seem to warrant higher priority in the research portfolio if they treat something like mass or time as an observational consequence of a process.

Finally! A concrete example you can imagine taking into Ed Witten's office. Thanks.

But this is where you've got the wrong end of the stick. The point of the study of scientific revolutions is to figure out why the true model was overlooked or dismissed prior to the revolution. "What cognitive process prevented Marie Curie from dreaming up fission, when she had all the information to do it?" "What cognitive process prevented Tycho Brahe from doing what Copernicus did?"

Compare that to what you're doing.

First, where's the cognitive block? "Hey," you say, "pay more attention to THIS subfield"---wait a second, that's a subfield you found in the literature, something physicist thought of already and have been working on for a decade. There was not a cognitive block in place preventing people from inventing holographic models---they invented them, they've been thinking about them, they're willing to consider all of their naively-counterintutitive implications.

There is nobody out there opposing braneworld models because of cognitive-dissonance---"the world mustn't work like that" or "that's too far from my mental picture of reality". I'm not aware of anyone opposing braneworld models in general---they're one of many classes of models, any of which may turn out to be true, depending on how the details play out over the upcoming decades. People are working on the details in the hopes of figuring out which model is correct.

Second: mass? Mass is generated dynamically; a mechanism for this, proposed in the 1960s and 70s, predicted a new boson which was discovered in 2012. It's called the Higgs boson. Nobody described the Higgs discovery as a revolution, because thinking about dynamical mechanisms for everything is a standard non-revolutionary tool of fundamental physics. We've got known dynamical mechanisms for the hadron spectrum, the "doublet" nature of fermions, etc. etc.. People are working on finding dynamical mechanisms for the strong CP problem, for flavor symmetries, for dark energy, for dark matter, and for (yes) spacetime and gravity. What made you identify this as missing?

 

[HighRiser]

Ben, why did you have to go and mention the goddamn particle?

Now Farsight is going to come in and explain the true nature of the universe to us again.

 

[ben m]

Ben, why did you have to go and mention the goddamn particle?

Now Farsight is going to come in and explain the true nature of the universe to us again.

Oh no! You're right! <backtracks furiously> <deep breath> We-have-a-dynamical-explanation-for-mass-the-electron-is-just-a-photon-in-a-box-and-the-box-is-the-photon-because-dark-energy-is-light-bending-in-an-arc-as-Einstein-says-clearly-if-you-play-the-LP-backwards-as-everybody-knows

 

[Reality Check]

BurntSynapse, cite the project management textbook that describes this tool

BurntSynapse, I agree with Dancing David:

Your mission, should you choose to accept it and stop all the rhetorical posturing
1. Delineate the cognitive tool
2. Explain the application of the cognitive tool to future research.

You need to back up your claim with a statement of what this cognitive tool that needs to be applied (in the future) and how it can be used.

It is irrelevant to cite a book that is talking about past scientific revolutions.

So let us start with the basics.
BurntSynapse,
Please cite the project management textbook that describes this tool to identify future scientific revolutions.
First asked 17 May 2013 - 0 days and counting

 

[Reality Check]

Should Copernicus' notion that he could overturn the known laws of astrology...

BurntSynapse, can you cite the publications where Nicolaus Copernicus tried to overturn the known laws of astrology?

FYI: The motions of the planets is described by the known laws of astronomy.

 

[BurntSynapse]

When arguing with physicists about physics by insisting the critical issues lie within your field of project management

Since I consider administration of physics to be a substantially different discipline than physics, I would strongly agree this would be a mistake.

Although I make plenty, I don't think I can claim that one.

 

[BurntSynapse]

Dear Sir or Madam as the case may be,
Welcome to the JREF!

The burden rests solely upon you to explain how you alleged cognitive tool should be applied.

If it were my tool, this is perhaps valid. In this case however, I defer to the experts in that specialty unless some reason to discount their research is available, and I don't know of any - nor have any been provided AFAICT.

The burden rests solely on the claimant of the positive claim.

Until a skeptic makes a positive claim that a defect exists, in which case they now have a burden to demonstrate and explain that. For example, stating "X ranks high on the crackpot scale", and "Y is a crackpot trifecta" doesn't really help anyone.

Commitment to equal responsibility for supporting the claim that a defect exists does seem lacking in much of the nay-saying, but understandable because this is often tedious work.

Your claim: there is this cognitive tool which needs to be applied.

I'm not certain I would use "need" without a number of qualifications and context.

However, I will say that to me, there seem good reasons to think the ABC criterion offers value in distinguishing a particular class of potentially transformative models.

Your lack: an actual explanation of what the tool is and how it is to be applied.

The tool is an evaluation criterion which seems to show promise with regard to delivering strategic value for a science research portfolio. I envision it as being applied in comparing models such that we could support research based on models like heliocentrism or evolution, even though there might be apparent falsification, as the lack of parallax and complex eyes seemed to be for Copernicus & Darwin.

 

[BurntSynapse]

Historians of science do claim to be able to look at a completed event, with the benefit of hindsight, and analyze what was going on. That's fine. (Although they don't use Kuhn to do so.)

Not sure what you mean, by "use", but even after a half-century, he is certainly cited and credited enough to be regarded as a giant.

When a historian of science looks at, e.g., early plate tectonics, or early cold fusion, or early pentaquarks, they do so knowing who turned out to be right and who to be wrong.

...which is similar to all cognition. After being burned, we infer future fires to have the same characteristic. So?

Back to "tools" and "management". You are claiming that they can look at fragments of current data and spot the ingredients for a future revolution. This is wrong.

Why not use their words, which I quote? "Ingredients" is a very different term I've never seen used, and I don't believe I have.

The expert historians can do whatever they want with history. (This generally does NOT include Kuhn's SoSR, which every historian including Kuhn himself appears to disagree with.) I've never seen a science historian venture to tell scientists what to study next.

That's a very big brush you're using to paint the picture - Kuhn radically changed his opinions on large parts of SSR and key concepts within it, most famously: incommensurability...I'll gladly drink to that.

 

[BurntSynapse]

The above argument begs a response since it is often used as a justification to support crackpot ideas.

For discussion I'm happy to assume it is used this way, but my recommendation applies to our rules of evaluation and assessment.

I have no idea what is meant by the phrase, “known laws of astrology.” Were these laws of astrology subjected to experiments and supported by a well tested theory or were they merely the result of magical thinking? I think you know the answer.

By today's standards, the answer is obvious as you point out. On the other hand, the laws of astrology were the most tested and reliable prognostication techniques in history. They had mountains of experimental confirmation proving (by their standards) astrology's validity. (This is why Popper held "confirmation is cheap, falsifiability is what matters")

My point is that they could not have known future rules in their time any more than we can now. Sure, I think ours are better, but I also think those in the future will be even more so.

Many theories were proposed and discussed in the pre-Christian era in a spirit that we would regard today as more or less scientific.

Understanding how we might better identify evaluations of models as better/worse is what my support of the ABC criterion is directed toward.

In summary, the notion that exceeding c might be achieved through better project management is downright silly, your historical analogies are misguided and if you were a genuine professional, you would be embarrassed by having made such a claim.

Good thing I try to avoid it, but communication within our current paradigm makes it difficult not to sound like that's what I'm claiming. "Exceeding c" implies matter moving faster than c within a flat space-time relative to other matter, which is not what research based on a model which meets the ABC criterion would probably say.

Such a model would treat space, time, matter, or some other Fundamental-Object-Concept-X as an observational consequence of an underlying process, like Kepler's orbits are to heliocentrism, or like genetic-drift and natural selection are to speciation.

 

[BurntSynapse]

The point of the study of scientific revolutions is to figure out why the true model was overlooked or dismissed prior to the revolution.

The premise here: that there is a single point to all study in the fields of history, philosophy, and cognitive science of scientific revolutions is an extraordinary claim. Do you mean to say this is the most important point for some issue?

"What cognitive process prevented Marie Curie from dreaming up fission, when she had all the information to do it?" "What cognitive process prevented Tycho Brahe from doing what Copernicus did?"

Why would there need to be a suppressing cognitive process? Maybe she was distracted by cancer, hung over, or ogling her lab partner.

Compare that to what you're doing.

First, where's the cognitive block?

I don't claim there is a block, just a lack of communication and education across disciplines, which is a well established source of innovation.

"Hey," you say, "pay more attention to THIS subfield"---wait a second, that's a subfield you found in the literature, something physicist thought of already and have been working on for a decade.

Surely you can't mean to claim there have been physicists working on applying the ABC criterion (from outside their field) to research portfolio management (outside their field) for longer than it's existed.