uwot wrote: ↑Mon Oct 21, 2019 5:12 am
Eodnhoj7 wrote: ↑Sun Oct 20, 2019 9:21 pmActually that is the problem you begin with "let's break it down" but there is no methodology to do this except start defining beginning points by continually dividing them. The beginning points are random.
We can break down physics in many different ways, and the ways to do this are pulled out of thin air.
They really are not. As above, physics has three core constituents:
1. Observation.
2. Analysis.
3. Hypothesis.
1 and 2 are critical. If you are not looking at the real world and trying to analyse it mathematically, you're not doing physics.
3 is not essential. You can do 1 and 2 perfectly well in the absence of any hypothesis, but it is the hypotheses that get the headlines. The more outrageous the hypothesis, the bigger the headline, and the more armchair philosophers are outraged. Some then feel compelled to bluster on philosophy forums that physicists don't know what they are talking about, and/or are involved in a conspiracy to suppress some batshit theory or other. This, as likely as not, will be presented as the Truth. Or even the TRUTH. The general rule is that the more capitals, the more bonkers the writer. There's a similar relationship between the claimed IQ and the degree of fruitloopery.
I am not trying to disagree with you, for the sake of disagreeing with you...I want to start with that.
These three component of physics, are strictly a reduction of one general into many. The general is physics in this case. However there are no rules for how reduction is done....it just is done.
Observation, analysis and hypothesis can be argued as not just intertwined and circular, but defined in a myriad of ways...with no rules as to this process of divergence.
I could easily argue that physics is:
Measurement/Induction/Deduction of physical phenomenon
Interpretation/Testing/Recycling of physical phenomenon
Definition/Application of Definition/Alignment of Definitions
Etc.
That is the problem, analysis creates categories as much as breaking things down as their are an infinite number of ways a thing can be broken down because there are no rules to do it except the act itself.
For example I can cut an orange into a variety of different slices...there is no proper way to do it than actual orange being divided. Even if I say divided it into three slices...again an infinite number of ways to do it.
The problem with analysis is that when it is premised as the means to determine truth, considering there are so many ways to anaylze....it actually creates truths and these truths can be reformed again and again.
Analysis is no different than art.