Quote:
Originally Posted by modest
You're not wrong, you're just inhibiting yourself. It wasn't that long ago people were honestly trying to figure out if the solar system was geocentric or not. Understand, we had a model that described the motion of the planets in the sky without the 'correct' (earth orbits around the sun) description. So there were two models and neither really worked any better than the other.
So, people I'm sure asked which was real - which was in the middle, the sun or the earth. You would have said "faeries vs. elves" and stayed above the stench. Good for you, meanwhile we did figure out which model was correct.
Same will no doubt happen with curved spacetime vs. gravitons or many other differences in interpretation we have today. Yeah, believe it or not, one of these interpretations is the more correct one.
"faeries vs. elves" 
~modest
EDIT:
We've both dragged this thread off topic. I appreciate that you will want to reply to this, and you should, but we're not getting anywhere and we should respect the topic me thinks. |
I would just comment quickly that from my perspective, the inhibiting factor is that many people tacitly view the elements of some
specific (theirs) valid worldview as ontologically real; i.e. assume those elements exist
independent of that particular valid worldview. When they do that, they loose perspective on what sorts of valid models can really be built. They may think any model that does not define "photons" or "electrons" cannot possibly be correct, or indeed, any description where simultaneity is not relative to inertial frame cannot be correct.
Likewise, in my view it is not really inhibiting to stay away from the ontological arguments and rather investigate the constraints on valid worldviews (especially as it appears there exists surprisingly specific constraints if you take into account what sorts of assumptions would be undefendable). Even when you don't take any ontological preferences, you can investigate whether geocentric or heliocentric model is valid predictionwise... ...also in this case it is interesting that geocentric model can be twisted into a valid view by changing your perspective on space and inertia and such things - i.e. one could see the situation as geocentrism by changing completely what it means to "go around something". That of course would amount to much more complicated worldview than the heliocentric one.
That is to say, someone who did not take any ontological preferences, could have compared the heliocentric & geocentric models, and said over the heated debates; "it is much simpler to explain our night sky by the definitions of the heliocentric model, plus its definitions of space are simpler than what the geocentric model requires. You probably want to use heliocentrism in your descriptions of the situation".
That is in fact completely in line to Kuhn's description of scientific revolutions. E.g. some new observation (planets moving backwards for brief moments in our sky) makes the description of the situation more complicated when you describe it in terms of an old model (if you believed in geocentric models, you saw that observation as figure-8 orbits or perhaps as even more complicated motion). But someone realized that by changing some definitions/assumptions, the description of the situation suddenly became much simpler -> heliocentrism.
(That someone is often from a new generation of scientists; someone whose mind was not yet too entangled together with the existing models)
It is quite likely that our current scientic models have got some overly complicated ways to describe some situations. Dark matter comes to mind. It is not trivial to make new definitions that yield simpler overall model, but to my knowledge all the attempts to redefine space/gravity to explain away dark matter have been met with fair bit of resistance for no objective reason at all. Dark matter itself is often presumed to be ontologically real element, existing independent of our definitions in our worldviews.
Oops that wasn't quite as quick comment as I hoped for... Well I suspect this was useful or interesting commentary for some people anyway... I won't drag this thread off the subject more.
-Anssi
