Quote:
Originally Posted by Spaceman Spiff
It appears to me that Grey and Ken G are dancing back and forth across this fuzzy border between (frontier) physics and metaphysics, with regards to the "nature of reality". In general, from my experiencing the natural world as a scientist I fall behind Grey's point of view. Whatever an electron or proton or photon "really is", there are physical phenomena which behave and interact as these "things" do. At the same time, it is a virtual certainty that we will learn still more about their natures in the future.
To a physicist (or scientist in general), reality is what kicks back when we kick it. With our physicist hat on, we don't care what "reality really is" beyond our ability to build a model that accurately predicts how nature behaves (kicks back). Metaphysicians (or philosophers) delve into questions of "well, but what does it mean?" or "what is it, really?" or even wonder whether such questions are meaningful in the universe we live in. However, as noted by Ken G (if I understood correctly), most people who aren't scientists don't understand that these really are separate issues. So I think he is "raising the consciousness" here on this forum. Those are cool questions to wonder about as long as you don't go too far overboard "waxing Platonic" (unless you don't believe in any semblance of objective reality). And one should also keep in mind that metaphysicians don't have laboratories.
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This distinction is important to try to explain, when addressing the question in the OP.
And, as I said earlier, the mutual incompatibility is quite easy to explain, in terms of the theories themselves ... you can even do it at several different levels.
What I'm interested in is an explanation which doesn't require an extensive description of the nature of modern physics, models, theories, etc.
Odenwald's book is good, in terms of presenting the nature of 'space' and how (completely) that nature depends upon theory ... but it's a whole book!
While it may be quite challenging, I like the approach of showing that 'space' and 'time' are different, in GR and QM. The hard part is describing the incompatibility - many (most) people seem to have difficulty grasping, even faintly, just how different each is, in either GR or QM, from one's everyday sense (one's intuitive sense is very hard to put aside), let alone appreciating the difference
between GR and QM.
Perhaps 'energy' might be an easier way to show the incompatibility?