Chronos, I’m with you on the democratic argument, which sounds off to my ear. However, I’m not sure you’re reading his bit about “proofs” correctly. I think he is articulating your general point, responding to Smolin’s argument that string theory doesn’t rest on rigorous proofs. If you look at the sentences just before and after the part you quoted, I think this is clear.
Now, you might disagree over whether you think there is compelling evidence for some of the unproven elements of string theory. But unless I’m misreading you (or Sean, or you and Sean both), then I think he agrees with you on the standards of proof in physics.
Have you tried what I like to call SurfToE? (I don’t think anyone else calls it that, but Lisi is a surfer, so the pun seems natural.) Don’t understand the first thing about it, but it does have the advantage of not requiring numerous extra dimensions of which we have no evidence. And (I think) no free parameters.
FWIW Of the two books, I found Not Even Wrong much harder to follow. It’s more of a maths-oriented perspective, than the more physical The Trouble with Physics…. Also the writing is quite a bit more “dry”.
So I recommend The Trouble with Physics….
I’m not sure what you mean. The standard test (suitable for undergraduate physics-major labs) is using 1-kg or so masses on a torsion balance (Torsion spring - Wikipedia).
For the record, when I did it, results matched Newton’s law to within experimental error.
I’ve heard a bit about the surfer’s theory, but I’ve never been particularly clear what the physics of it is supposed to be. From what I’ve gathered, it consists mostly of “So there’s this really big mathematical object that’s, like, way cool… What if that, like, explains all of physics, dude?” While E8 is certainly way cool, the details of how precisely it leads to a physical Theory of Everything are somewhat lacking.
put down the sabre, you can also test Newton’s theory of gravity by calculating the acceleration both of the Moon and of an object near Earth’s surface (such as an apple) and showing that both are consistent with the same mass for the Earth, or by showing that it (along with Newton’s other laws of motion) leads to the already-experimentally-verified Kepler’s laws for planets orbiting the Sun. Which is, in fact, how Newton himself tested it.
Really? Does Newton’s theory of gravity make those predictions, or does it only make predictions with helper hypotheses like …
device X measures the mass of the test object (eg, apple)
the orbits of the planets can be measures with devices Y and Z
etc etc.
In order to get to the outright empirical prediction, which usually takes the form of a reading on a dial – after all, scientists don’t just see the orbits of the planets, rather they lie at the end of a chain of inferences – theories need all kinds of helper hypotheses.
She means that theories may only be tested within the context of certain assumptions that are assumed to hold, hence the Popperian view of how science progresses, as refutation of false conjectures, is incorrect. The “auxilliary hypotheses” that put down the sabre mentions are things that everybody takes for granted when testing a theory, and are just “assumed away”. The upshot of this is that no theory is really tested in isolation, and in doing your lab experiment, you were really assuming quite a lot more than what appears on the surface.
Take this: assume Newton’s theory implies we should observe P, (i.e. N –> P). We test P and find that it doesn’t hold. By modus tollens it seems that we have falsified Newton’s theory. But have we? The real implication is (N /\ A –> P) where A are a load of auxiliary hypotheses. Concluding ¬N from ¬P is now not sound, as it may be A where the problem lies.
Still, a little autistic to bring it up, when it was clear what Chronos meant
OK, sure. What’s wrong with these “helper hypotheses”, as you call them? If the string model worked and made testable predictions with the help of “helper hypotheses”, I would have no problem calling it a theory. It doesn’t, though, so I don’t call it one.
