Weight is observable, mass is imagined, and disputes about that could end the world

How does science work? And what's all this about quantum mechanics?

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ernestm
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Weight is observable, mass is imagined, and disputes about that could end the world

Post by ernestm »

Weight is observable, but mass is conceptual. In conventional physics, mass is fixed, and matter warps space at Einsteinian scales. That's a convenient way of looking at things, and results in many accurate predictions, so it's become commonly held that the existence of mass is a 'fact' by scientists in the USA. However, one could equally say space is a fixed Euclidean franework, and gravity warps matter at Einsteinian scales. It's just shifting the equations around so that a different variable is fixed, which may be more complicated to represent, and may be more difficult to imagine, but still totally equivalent. Which is warping: space or matter? We are accustomed to the weight of objects not observably changing due to gravity, and so it is natural for us to think of mass as 'fixed.' Yet it could be that in reality, space stays fixed and matter warps. No experiment could distinguish between the two.

But the latter view, that space is fixed and warps matter, can even be convenient. Scientists themselves don't hold mass to be fixed in all cases. What if mass DOES vary in size, in the same way as weight varies by gravity, at Einsteinian scale? That provides one possibility for modeling the 'crushing of matter' in black holes , when the distance of nuclei is less than their size. And there's string theory, within which a fixed Euclidean space could be the base three dimensions in a more sophisticated multidimensional representation of reality.

Thus mass as a fixed property value is a meaningful concept, and very useful for most cases. But it's still an imagined property of the universe, convenient to us at the scale we see it. Scientific theory can't get as far as defining the three basic dimensions (space, time, and mass) without running into irresolvable epistemological alternatives as to what actually exists. So Popperians say, not only is weight observable and mass imagined, but also go on to say, just as mass is imaginary, all of science is just an imagined 'model of reality'--A very meaningful and extremely powerful model, because it provides a huge number of useful predictions and possible explanations. Nonetheless, it is still never more than an imagined model in epistemological terms.

Sadly, very few Americans now alive have reached the same conclusion, however obvious what I just stated might appear. The problem has been getting worse for a while. On the Wikipedia, the American Association for Advancement of Science (AAAS) states that scientific theory defines what 'facts' are 'true'' about 'reality:'

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientifi ... anizations

The Academy of Science, still has a Popperian definition, but the AAAS definition says science defines reality.

The majority of Americans do not know there is more than one definition of scientific theory, and only know the AAAS definition. The public therefore assumes that science states the existence of matter with fixed mass to be a factual reality, and that mass is not an imagined property of the Universe, but 'real' in an absolute sense. While that might not seem so important, the consequences are horrifying. Many consider science's claim to define reality as a license to overrule it with their own preferred beliefs. For example:
  • People choose to "believe in" EVOLUTION as 'explaining away' the existence of God, which should be an entire non-issue. The entire debate is ridiculous. We use natural selection for our own benefit. Why would an intelligent 'Creator' not use natural selection as a tool, to simplify the work? Do people have to assume a 'Creator' must be less intelligent than the human race was 5,000 years ago? Why wouldn't some Creator just throw in a few changes to DNA pairs here and there, to push the process in a different direction? Wouldn't that be more fun to watch, after all? But many assume the existence of natural selection denies the possibility of a Creator, however wrong science teachers try to say that is, an extraordinary number of people leave school thinking 'science disproved the existence of a Creator.' people think evolution as a 'fact' about 'reality' is a necessary absolute cause, but science has nothing to say about absolute causes. It's only a model of the apparent observable world.
  • Science says the Earth goes around the sun. According to a Newtonian model, it's the simplest overall representation of the apparent observable world in a significant number of cases. But from the perspective of little insects on a huge orbiting ball, it still looks like the sun rises on one side of the sky and sets on the other, to which the typical response is these days unnecessarily undignified. Science, by asserting the earth goes around the sun, has reduced our own existence to tiny maggots in a giant and forbidding universe, while simultaneously saying the apparent appearance of the sun rising and falling is an 'illusion' based on our limited perception. Therefore, people jump to the conclusion that our importance in the Universe must equally be a delusion of grandeur from limited perception.
    Nonetheless, humankind has the greatest degree of sophisticated order in all we know. We are at the ENTROPIC center of the universe. But that observation is never emphasized while teaching how we are like unimportant maggots on an insignificant rock. Why would a Creator not have swung a mighty hammer, at an anvil of unimaginable heat, to create one arcing spark with the conditions just right for life, our careening planet, at the edge of one galaxy of giant spinning balls of fire? Of if one chooses not so to believe, why are we taught to grant our conscious experience so little dignity, while the relatively mundane laws of Newtonian mechanics batter us into maggots for years?
  • But those issues are now far outranked by GLOBAL WARMING: people choose not to be 'believe in' global warming. Its existence should not a question of belief. Scientific conclusions gauge the likelihood of future events based on a predictive model, and one does not 'believe in it, one understands the meaningfulness of the predictions. The existence of global warming is scientifically rather unquestionable, as it is based on the laws of thermodynamics and easily repeatable experiments on atmospheric gasses. There are problems with estimating how fast global warming is, but its existence is rather undeniable, without totally rewriting the laws of physics.
But in the USA, distrust of a discipline that has declared it is defining 'facts' about 'reality' is rampant. An entire Presidential Administration denied that global warming even exists, rather than fund research on how fast the problem is becoming increasingly irreversible, losing critical time for gathering data. This is a matter of survival of the human race. It shouldn't be up to grabs on what one believes.

By defining itself as stating 'facts' about 'reality,' science is turning itself into religion, about which one may have different beliefs, based on some superior authority of intuition that has been worshipped in the USA ever since John Adams wrongly said 'natural rights' are self evident. Other nations have chosen others, so natural rights are clearly not self evident. But the fallacy is taught at such an early age, self-evident intuition is still held to be completely superior to the Western empiricism which actually led to Jefferson's choice of natural rights. In exactly the same way, by asserting that science defines 'facts' about 'reality,' people assume their intuitions about its conclusions must be correct, without trying to understand the reasoning and scientific observations leading to modeled predictions.

I only cited some problems with frequently resulting beliefs held to be fact as examples, and mostly one could consider them insufficent concerns to warrant correction. But 'beliefs' about global warming have brought this problem onto a critical plane. At this rate, 'unbelievers' in global warming will destroy the world. They shouldn't even exist. So what to do about that? Should we let the arrogance of science, in stating it defines "facts about reality," be the cause of the demise of the human race?

I call philosophers to contact the AAAS and say its definition of scientific theory should be changed:


https://www.aaas.org/

Please join me in this cause.
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