I have noted that there are others besides me hereabouts who,
although rooted in well founded cynicism about bogus looney charlatanism,
and backed up with a degree of scientific knowledge,
nevertheless entertain the possibility that
our current scientific paradigm
is not inclusive
of everything.
Of course, not everything is known:
but there appears to be perhaps things which are unknowable,
or inexplicable, to scientific investigation.
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A book I read some decades ago, by Pierce,
"The CrACK IN THE Cosmic Egg" (and a sequel..)
stated (in extreme essence) that our investigations
do not so much discover the realities of how things are,
but rather, establish ordered mechanisms in the chaos that "is".
This was and is hard to "swallow", but the intervening decades
have made the concept more believable and apparent to me.
The fact that Science has been shown to become seriously "impaired"
in it's capacity to posit an observer
independent from the experiments performed
at quantum levels:
and the general and special theories of relativity:
each can be used to support the original (to me) ideas I first read in Pierce's books.
Einstein's work did not render moot the work of Newton:
but the "paradigm shift"
inherent in his postulates, (many now proved,)
essentially define Newton's observations as special cases that are correct at slow speeds and low masses.
===================
I am of the opinion
that the work of Pons and Fleischmann
in electrolytic cold fusion in Pd electrodes and heavy water may be valid,
and that those many or several experiments that are going on
may develop into an "energy source" which could be of extreme value
in the fairly near future.
However, if they DO so develop,
it will require some new understanding of the nuclear interaction,
or perhaps even a "new force".
{Hey, if astrophysics gets a new force ("dark energy")
it's only fair that nuclear physicists also get one..}
At any rate, this is a "paradigm shift" in the offing, perhaps.
Meanwhile, given the flux in all the changes
of the rates of change these days
(THERE's a power series for ya!)..
all I can say about the edges of reality is:
What you see is what you get
What you get is what you look for
What you look for is what you see.
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This is a nifty board.
Thank you.
David
Science, Paradigm Shifts, and Reality
Re: Science, Paradigm Shifts, and Reality
