Dear Don,
Thank you for interest to my essay and drawing my attention to yours
With the best regards
Maxim
Dear Don,
Thank you for interest to my essay and drawing my attention to yours
With the best regards
Maxim
Hi Maxim,
I found it a very thought provoking article revisiting the evergreen topic on a fundamental question. You've touched just the right chord!
Thus, I have the following to say:
1. This is the time in the history of physics that we are realizing the intimate connections of the smallest with the largest, with our mathematical and observational tools. Cosmology and particle physics at two apparent extremes seem to merge.
You have articulated the things so well, especially when you quote Fock, "the equations of theoretical physics are never, and cannot be, absolutely accurate..." I often feel the same way, and wish to add that these are precisely those "white spots" where our ignorance lies, and where we crave for the "beyond standard approach". (I think an approach is "standard" just because it is followed by many scientists who think alike, and not exactly because it closer to the truth). You have correctly mentioned the course of history taking turn and twists. New ideas replacing the old, and often the vice versa in the garb of the newer ones.
2. Thus, would you agree if I say that Fock's viewpoint shows that the quest for so-called "objectivity" in physics is like a wild-goose-chase? The scientific objectivity is nothing more than achieving an agreement of opinions based on our experiments and aggregate of knowledge that we can commonly perceive, carry out, analyse and settle down to conclusions. Could it be possible just due to our common evolution and acquired faculty of brain?
Dear Murli,
Thank you for your kind interest to my essay and comments. However, on my opinion, "objectivity" in physics is determined by Fock's well defined "physical rigor", which provides adequate treatment of reality.
Agreed. The physical rigour is a candid attempt to bring in the new (or sometimes, but not necessarily, the historically old) concepts, as well as the abandonment of the existing ideas. This detachment is quite basic to objectivity. For instance, with the dark matter not observed till date, it should be alright to go for the modification of gravity, along with the dark matter search, and to see if the modified versions lead to scalar fields (scalarons) with some dilatonic couplings with the standard matter in the background. The masses etc, calculated with reasonable constraints such as the age of the universe, lead to further distinctive features. Of course, this must come together with the corresponding mathematical rigour Fock had addressed to. What I think is that our common evolutionary track as human beings of powerful intellect, inescapably, puts us to argue or rationalize and understand in more or less the similar way.