I decided to follow the @Terry_Sampson@T_aquaticus thread through this discussion to see if I could bring my physics expertise to bear. My conclusion is that this example only underlines my original objection in this thread that the essence of knowledge is not demonstration but that which we live by. Special relativity is scientific knowledge because that is the tool scientists have been using in scientific inquiry for a century NOT because of some empirical demonstration that special relativity and not Neo-Lorentzian ether is correct. Of course as a physicist I think the NL ether hypothesis is crackpot nonsense. But the reason is not some empirical demonstration but the simple fact that SR works â it has the test of time and usefulness which this NL ether hypothesis does not.
NL ether also violates a fundamental ideal of scientific inquiry, where you test an hypothesis and you accept the result rather than keep adjusting the hypothesis until you get something which we have no way to test. It is dishonest. And it therefore has the same flavor as creationism â concocted by people who are determined to oppose the scientific results no matter what. It also has the ad-hoc flavor of the Ptolemaic universe where you keep adding epicycles to make it work. And while I am usually happy to point out that the Ptolemy picture does describe what we actually see in the sky of earth, the endless addition of epicycles does make this unsuited to the use in further scientific inquiry.
As you mention earlier, it is that ad-hoc feature which causes a problem. Parsimony is a real thing in science.
This is also why we donât suggest that trickster leprechauns leave DNA and fingerprint evidence at crime scenes in such a way that it is indistinguishable from the commission of a real crime.
Your objection is duly noted and thanks for it. As it so happens, Iâm inclined to agree that âknowledge is not demonstration but that which we live by.â
Real thing??? âguffawâ. If you were willing âto step into my parlorâ, Iâd try to show you something that might put a dent in your notion of ârealâ.
âMuch as weâd like to believe that science can be done by lone geniuses, toiling in their basement laboratories, the fact of the matter is that discovering the fundamental secrets of the universe doesnât come cheap. âŚThe Large Hadron Collider took about a decade to construct, for a total cost of about $4.75 billion. There are several different experiments going on at the LHC, including the CMS and ATLAS Detectors which discovered the Higgs boson. CERN contributes about 20% of the cost of those experiments, which is a total of about $5.5 billion a year. The remainder of the funding for those experiments is provided by international collaborations. Computing power is also a significant part of the cost of running CERN - about $286 million annually. Electricity costs alone for the LHC run about $23.5 million per year. The total [operating budget] of the LHC runs to about $1 billion per year.â
In answer to your question, Iâd say parsimony is not âa real thing in modern scienceâ, but as for most of us poor folk, it does seem to be the way we acquire knowledge. IMHO, most of us are just âad hocâ-ing along.
Well, thatâs news to me. So, in science, âparsimonyâ is more like Ockhamâs razor than being extremely unwilling to spend money or use resources. I suspect www.dictionary.com needs to update, eh?
The advantage of Hanionâs razor is you can politely signal your verdict simply by preceding whatever criticism you have with âBless his little heartâ.
