[FRIAM] invoking quantum woo (was Book publishing advice needed)

[thompnickson2 at gmail.com]

Jon, Roger, 

I would be a fool to say that I am certain what an explanation Is.  But my instincts tell me that an equation, by itself, is never an explanation.  What follows from that assertion, that a mathematical model is never a model.  Hmmmm!  May be too strong.

FWTW

N

Nicholas Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology
Clark University
ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com
https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/
 


-----Original Message-----
From: Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com> On Behalf Of Jon Zingale
Sent: Sunday, July 12, 2020 11:00 AM
To: friam at redfish.com
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] invoking quantum woo (was Book publishing advice needed)

Roger,

I feel that you may be allowing the authority of *how you imagine other really important thinkers to be mystified* to mystify you. There was no reason for the ancient greeks to assume that all geometry must be given by compass and straight-edge, similarly, there is no reason for natural philosophers to assume that all matter be given by the points and waves of the greeks. Euclid begins with assumptions of what properties constitute points and lines, and these ideas continued to be appropriated (by natural philosophers) and baked into physical theories in the nearly 2500 years that followed. For many purposes, this appropriation and application serve just fine. With each success, positive returns helped to constrain the conceptual toolset until the dogma of these particular characterizations of point and wave became an indisputable doctrine.

>From my perspective, doctrines of this type culminate in 20th-century set theoretic thinking and finally became dislodged as richer frameworks (where the notion of a point is not taken for granted as being Euclid's,
say) arose like those in non-standard analysis or synthetic differential geometry. To me, that there is still so much mystification around this topic is a vestige of indoctrinated thinking. That electrons are things with their own properties doesn't surprise me. Every time I use one of Euclid's points to describe nature, I assume I am also (as you put it) *ignoring the problem* and *just following the differential equation.*

Jon



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