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THE LANGUAGE AND LOGIC OF PHYSICS, METAPHYSICS AND MYSTICISM: Does Modern Physics Require a Different Logic? - Softcover
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Inhaltsangabe
This book is about the philosophy of science, particularly epistemological issues relating to modern physics. It is written from the point of view of an anthropologist and layman who pays close attention to language and how it influences our logic and ways of thinking. The thesis of the book is that faulty use of language has led to some untenable theories in physics, and this may be the reason that it is difficult to find empirical support for such theories as String Theory or Quantum Loop Gravity. The word “logic” is derived from the Greek word, logos (which means “word”) so we find that language is the basis of logic. The two major terms that are misused in the opinion of the author are “space” and “time”. Space and time are metaphysical concepts and when treated as physical entities, fantastic concepts emerge, such as “wormholes” where space can be folded up so that space travelers can burrow a hole through the fold to take a shortcut to distant parts of the universe. The guiding precept in the book is that qualitative language must precede quantitative language in building a theory. Sometimes physicists miss the conceptual forest for all the mathematical trees. If the conceptual premises based upon assumptions (and inferences from those assumptions) is wrong, no amount of math can fix the theory. Ptolemy’s geocentric theory based upon epicycles in the orbits of the planets is an example of a theory that yielded accurate mathematical predictions but was wrong because of systematic error. It is the view of this author that some modern theories partake of the same kind of epicycle-type fixes as Ptolemy’s geocentrism. Thus, I write this book from the perspective of a fairly-well informed consumer of popular physics, a reviewer of popular physics literature and some professional literature on the subject, an anthropologist with an interest in linguistics, and most of all, as a philosopher of science who is an adherent to the scientific method. Reification and mathematical abstraction have largely taken the “physical” out of physics. I would like to see a return to physical mechanisms to replace metaphysical abstractions such as “spacetime.” If one can imagine a tree metaphorically representing a theory, the roots would represent the foundational premises of the theory, the trunk the central concept, and the branches would represent the extensions and ramifications of the theory. While physicists argue about which secondary branches of the tree are correct, I am challenging the root premises of some physics theories which give rise to the trunk, primary branches and secondary branches. The premises of theory are rooted in language, logic, and concepts made from these elements of thought. If the roots are not correct, the entire tree will fall. In essence, this book is about thinking. More specifically, it is about “thinking about thinking”. As a student of social and biological sciences, I learned early on that science is mainly a thought process for discovering what is true in nature. The scientific thought process is called rational-empiricism or logical positivism by philosophers, and it is about de-mystifying what primal, pre-scientific humans had mystified because of their lack of understanding of nature. Furthermore, science assumes that the material world is real, not an illusion, and that our senses (and instruments that extend our senses) can give us a pretty accurate picture of nature - certainly accurate enough to ensure our survival as a species for the last several hundred thousand years
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