On Fri, May 30, 2025 at 5:59 PM Alan Grayson <[email protected]> wrote:
*> You asked me what I really understand, and I told you. You can't claim > that we understand mathematics because we invented it, because the same can > be said of physics. * *We didn't invent the way Mercury orbits the sun, and as early as 1859 observations were good enough for us to know that Newton couldn't explain it, and in general Newton couldn't accurately predict how ANY planet that was close to its star would behave; but in 1915 Einstein could do both. So at the very least would you admit that Einstein understood gravity better than Newton did?* *> What I can say is that you don't understand gravity, and that won't > occur until there is a deeper theory which explains why motion in a gravity > field obeys extremal principles* *And if tomorrow somebody comes out with a theory that says matter tells spacetime how to curve and spacetime tells matter how to move because of X then you would still say we don't understand gravity because this new theory doesn't explain why X exists. If that's what it takes to "understand" something then it would be impossible even in principle to understand gravity. In fact it would be impossible to understand ANYTHING because even pure mathematics needs to start with unproven and unprovable axioms. * *If nothing is understandable, absolutely positively nothing, then the very word "understandable" loses its meaning because meaning needs contrast. Saying everything has the property X is operationally equivalent to saying nothing has the property X. That's why I have no patience for philosophers who triumphantly tell us that "nothing is real", it's equivalent to saying "everything is real". * *> I understand some of the conservation laws, such as conservation of > charge and energy.* *Then by all means tell the entire world about this marvelous new understanding you have developed. I'd love to have a deep understanding of exactly how an electron is able to generate a negative charge. I'd love to know what an electron is made of, what makes electron stuff different from non-electron stuff. But remember if you say energy and electrical charge are conserved because of X then you know what the next question I'm going to ask will be. * * John K Clark See what's on my new list at Extropolis <https://groups.google.com/g/extropolis>* 089 > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CAJPayv3NkkVQ%3DAyhAnxjk2Sq-k9Tz0CYUAu9KmTT89Ktdomm9Q%40mail.gmail.com.
