I have been an opponent of Occam’s razor. I think it is total nonsense. Science goes with the accurate explanation and simplicity has nothing to do with it. And when there are explanations which are equally accurate we usually keep both explanations, particularly in physics, because the alternate methods provide different advantages in solving problems.
I know that I agreed with parsimony at one time, but most definitions I see simply refer to Ocaam’s razor (when it is not just about being economical with money). So I am struggling to find a definition which I must have seen when I agreed with it.
I have certainly lauded the tendency of mathematics to embrace easier methods of calculation, because this enables us to handle more difficult problems. So I wonder if the definition of parsimony I was looking at had to do with an economy in the work to calculate results. I can certainly see that we would prefer the easier method of calculation for the most part.
We also tend to keep easier methods even when they are less accurate as a kind of first approximation which can be very good approximation depending on the conditions. However we have learned a lesson from chaotic dynamics that sometimes our approximations can distort the big picture.
This seems not to be the position you took in your book. “As is the case of math, these theory differences result in physics being done differently. For example, from Mach’s view it would make no sense to attempt to confirm the existence of entities such and atoms and subatomic particles.” You then go on to give searching for neutrinos as the sort of thing that a Mach-oriented physicist would not do. Which position are you advancing here? Do physicists with different worldviews do the same experiments or not?
Speaking just from my experience with lots of physicists, none of them would decline to search for a hypothesized particle because they lacked a belief in the real existence of subatomic entities. That’s just not how the interaction between worldview and scientific practice occurs.
On a different note… In the same section, you talk about the difference between Heisenberg and Einstein on the applicability of classical concepts to quantum uncertainty:
‘[Heisenberg] goes on to comment that we should be prepared to give up our ordinary (“classical”) concepts when we deal with the world of subatomic entities.’
‘But we could just as well regard the uncertainty between a particle’s velocity and location as a limit to our ability to calculate and discover subatomic events… This was the way Einstein understood the uncertainty… But he does not take his esteem of math as far as Heisenberg who regards as unreal anything mathematically calculable.’
Here I think you are again blurring the distinction between physical theories, which are empirically testable, and interpretations of theories, which are not. The two models of uncertainty, Heisenberg’s and Einstein’s, belong to the former category rather than the latter. A particle which has a definite position and momentum, even if we can’t measure them, is a different entity than a Heisenberg-style particle, which does not have those properties. (In the language of physics, these are models with and without hidden variables, respectively.) Crucially, the two kinds of entity behave differently in measurable ways, as described by Bell’s theorem(s), meaning that the choice of theory can be settled empirically – and it has been definitively settled experimentally in favor of Heisenberg. (The experimental results still leave open the possibility of hidden variable theories that violate Special Relativity, but that is not the sort of model Einstein was proposing, nor one that he would likely be happy with.)
Like the thought of Dylan harmonizing Knocking on Heaven’s Door, such could be said of the interaction between consciousness and an unobservable phenomenon.
And here, as I suspect, with the question of an unobservable phenomenon or being, like my philosophy of law professor when asked if a contradiction is necessarily false, commenting will be refrained.
If not wrong in a scientific context, this is at least confusing. A theory has nothing to do with tentativeness or degree of proof. Theories can be very solidly established or completely speculative. Theories are generalized explanations, such as statistical mechanics underlying condensation.
A thought just popped into my mind. People can feel pretty confident that the religion is irrelevant, when the physics works. Yet, and I’m sure James Smith could say something about this, how irrelevant is it when we become like what we worship.
I didn’t say anything about theories and degrees of proof, so I have no idea why you thought you needed to say that.
And I fully agree that theories can have a ton of evidence in their favor or be completely speculative. What I’m trying to point out is that the heart of a theory is it’s hypothesis: what it is proposing as an explainer. My claim is that the nature of such postulates is regulated by one’s divinity belief.
Many postulates cease being merely our proposals when they are discovered, just as many cease to be advocated when it is discovered they are false. By “discovered” I mean “observed.”
You complain that what I’m saying about theory-formation isn’t the way scientists talk about their work. True, but irrelevant. It’s philosophy of science that refelects on theory-making (and like topics) and that is what I draw on.
The hypotheses that theories propose are very different, to be sure. So in the physical sciences “observation” means something different from what means in, say, history. But there are surely theories in history that have been overturned because of observed physical evidence - the theory that there was no Trojan war so that it was the invention of Homer. At the asme time items also true that as theories become less checkable by observation, their internal coherence becomes more important. Still, even in ethics, some hypotheses are indirectly empirically confirmable.
Have you seen R.C. Sproul’s position (which is the same as Norman Geisler’s) that every explanation for the universe will be essentially one of the following statements: from nothing, an infinite regress, an uncaused cause, or self-caused?
Wow! I can see helping in a search for a dog you don’t believe is missing. But searching for a dog when you believe e there are no such things as dogs?
I don’t understand the analogy to my comment. But looking for a married bachelor, or an explanation for something that happens without a cause feels more like what I see scientists doing with M-theory.
I’m not sure what you man by “interpretations of theories.” But the difference btw Heisenberg and Einstein is one that I see as driven any their different general conceptions of reality which in turn presuppose different divinity beliefs. Heisenberg says to his own view that it “fits with the Pythagorean religion” (the divinity of mathematical laws), whereas Einstein held a dualist view of reality the presupposed the divinity (independent existence) of the “external” physical world as well as of the logical & math’l truths.
