Science predicts only the predictable, ignoring most of our chaotic universe.
A wonderful and fundamental critique of the epistemological constraints of logic and mathematics.
When physicists started working with quantum mechanics they realized that the totally ordered real numbers are too restrictive for their needs. They required a number system with fewer axioms. They found the complex numbers.
When Albert Einstein wanted to describe general relativity, he realized that the mathematical structure of Euclidean space with its axiom of flatness (Euclid’s fifth axiom) was too restrictive. He needed curved, non-Euclidian space to describe the spacetime of general relativity.
In quantum mechanics it is known that for some systems, if we first measure X and then Y, we will get different results than first measuring Y and then measuring X. In order to describe this situation mathematically, one needed to leave the nice world of commutativity. They required the larger class of structures where commutativity is not assumed.
When Boltzmann and Gibbs started talking about statistical mechanics, they realized that laws they were coming up with were no longer deterministic. Outcomes of experiments no longer either happen (p(X) = 1) or do not happen (p(X) = 0). Rather, with statistical mechanics one needs probability theory. The chance of a certain outcome of an experiment is a probability (p(X)) is an element of the infinite set [0,1] rather than the restrictive finite subset {0,1}).
When scientists started talking about the logic of quantum events, they realized that the usual logic, which is distributive, is too restrictive. They needed to formulate the larger class of logics in which the distributive axiom does not necessarily hold true. This is now called quantum logic.
If the structure that we see is illusory and comes about from the way we look at certain phenomena, then why do we see this illusion? Instead of looking at the laws of nature that are formulated by scientists, we have to look at scientists and the way they pick out (subsets of phenomena and their concomitant) laws of nature. What is it about human beings that renders us so good at being sieves? Rather than looking at the universe, we should look at the way we look at the universe.
Read the entire article here – a long worthwhile read
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