Saturday 18 February 2012

Is Materialist Science Blowing Smoke Rings Up Your Ass




The American Scholar writes: 


Real objects cannot have infinite charge or mass or whatever. But when scientists in the 1950s started calculating those quantities with their latest and fanciest theories, infinities kept sprouting up and ruining things. Rather than abandon the theories, though, a few persistent scientists realized that they could do away with the infinities through mathematical prestidigitation. (Basically, they started calculating with and canceling out infinity like a regular old number, normally a big no-no.)


No one liked this fudging, but because it led to such stunningly accurate answers, scientists couldn’t dismiss it. In fact, the reigning paradigm in physics today—which describes the workings of invisible “fields” (similar to magnetic fields)— would not exist without this hand waving. And now physics is stuck with fields: they’ve become more fundamental to understanding the universe than mass or charge. Fields have become the very fabric of reality—even if our understanding of them relies on some unrealistic assumptions. Close explains how and why physicists resigned themselves to this tension and came to trust— even celebrate—how much smarter their equations were than they were.


This is about the notion of infinity. Like a SIMS game or WoW the virtual geography can go on forever. That's who we are. We're in a potentially infinite holographic universe learning lessons that we can take with us when we finally leave. Until then we keep coming back to get it right. All the data points towards this but doesn't 'touch' it. In this respect you need to make your mind up for yourself.

Jim Carters Circlons above are part of the physics on the fringe that is starting to leave the back scratching peer review boys looking like overpaid CERN  masonic scientists smashing up particles till there's nothing left to smash up. Ever.