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physics & reality We shouldn’t be even thinking of physics not related to reality. But it’s happening - contemporary theoretical physics, in their unfortunate marriage with cosmologists (or running them out of business?), continue to build monstrous space-time "realities" which, yes, fulfill the requirements of math used [130616] but otherwise fall into a realm of religion - you have to believe in their theories. In particular, string & M theoreticians and alike nowadays twist cosmology [130901]. So, on several occasions, I’ve used the term "religious physics". Well, the term is a bit rough, I agree with my critics, I could use a more neutral term, something like "soft physics", for the statements which declaratively can’t be tested experimentally. Believe me, the term "religious physics" is more appropriate.Most religions do offer doctrines about aspects of the world that go beyond the things of everyday experience. They tell us about gods or spirits or special forces or unrealistic qualities. While you can sympathize with most religions because of their moral and social values, what is the value and role of religious physics? All sorts of human inquiries, the natural sciences in particular, have given us a picture of the world without any transcendent aspects of the universe. An inquiry labeled nowadays as scientific does not fancy untestable predictions regardless of their logical (including math) beauty. The answer may well be beyond our reach today or forever but we have to respect our ignorance. The religious physics may be an honest yet imperfect attempt to describe unknown, but many people take it quite literally - that’s the danger. The very credibility of physics, the science which introduced the scientific method into the inquirers of real world, could be jeopardized. |
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