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Old 14-December-2006, 05:33 PM
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Ken G Ken G is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Tensor View Post
Of course they're models. The professionals and serious amateurs are well aware of it and are neither surprised or bothered by it.
To some extent that's true, but note there are many professionals and serious amateurs on this forum, yet I would argue that a significant fraction of all the posts in the Q&A section are of a more scientific/philosophical bent than simply questions about "what does theory A say about situation B". Questions like that are generally viewed as too dry for most posters, to be frank. Let's face it-- the philosophical implications of the theories are of higher general interest, and that's the part that is very often overinterpreted by both the askers and the answerers of the questions. A quick perusal of the open threads at the moment provides many examples, including this one. Why on Earth would we even want to know about the Planck domain at this point in humanity's scientific quest, anyway?
Quote:
The problems usually crop up when those who don't realize they are models (which is a large percentage of people) try to fit "reality"(whatever that is) into these models.
I agree, I guess the issue is, to what extent does this statement hold for the majority of visitors to this forum.

Quote:
That’s probably why I’m not all that thrilled (and really could care less) about the philosophy of science. I’m more interested in if a model works or doesn’t mathematically, how well it matches observations, and the predictive power of the model.
And that is certainly the most solid scientific stance, and personally I think it resolves a lot of the tension between science and other forms of inquiry (a common topic for this forum). Still, then why are we concerned about the Planck domain? There are no observations to match, nor meaningful predictions to make, in that domain. Indeed, when one tries to match that domain to any of the actual observables in the universe, say dark energy, the numbers can be off by a hundred factors of 10. My point is, the Planck domain is already pure philosophy, with very little chance of ever not being so (unlike bridges, for example).
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