Warp wrote:
> Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
>> If a new theory contradicts things the 
>> current theory explains, there's no good reason to consider it until it has 
>> been adjusted to explain that which it says shouldn't happen.
> 
>   Perhaps nitpicking, but don't GR and QM contradict each other in some
> aspects, yet both are considered the current status quo, to the best of
> our knowledge? In other words, a theory contradicting another establishing
> theory is not *always* grounds for dismissal.

Yes. But the places where QM contradicts GR is places where you can't 
*measure* GR.  Places where GR contradicts QM is places where you can't 
*measure* QM.

Let me see if I can rephrase one more time: If a new theory explains 
something, but the theory predicts things that *experiements* (not other 
theories) already contradict, the new theory needs to be changed.

For a while, light acted like waves sometimes and like particles other 
times, so we knew neither theory was right. (Once we figured out light was 
acting like particles, that is, which is what Einstein won the Nobel for.) 
Now we've figured out that light *isn't* a wave, it's always particles, and 
it just *moves* sometimes en mass in a way that waves move. But there are 
several ways of writing the equations for the way a wave moves, and not all 
of them require the contents to be a wave. (For example, an actual ocean 
wave is made out of particles, but it still moves like a wave.)

If you have a theory that says X is only 1000 years old, you need to explain 
why there are 15 different independent ways of measuring its age that says 
it's 100,000 years old that all come up with a date close to each other. If 
you point to photos taken by Apollo 11 astronauts and show how they might 
have been taken on Earth, you have to also explain the other dozen moon 
shots, the rocks brought back not looking like anything anywhere on earth, 
and explain why all the technical drawings matched the space ships and would 
according to current science also work. You can't just say "there's one 
discrepancy that I can explain by dismissing the entire rest of the 
evidence."  If you want to claim that no plane hit the pentagon, you also 
have to explain where the 130 people who got on that plane went. And so on.

If you want to say life came from outer space, OK, we don't know where life 
came from, but what supports your theory, and where did it come from in 
outer space in order to come here?  Maybe it did, but what's the evidence 
that it *did* rather than *might have*.

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   My fortune cookie said, "You will soon be
   unable to read this, even at arm's length."

Post a reply to this message