X-Message-Number: 17917 From: "Joseph W. Morgan" <> Subject: Science, The Correspondece Principle, and Intuition Date: Tue, 13 Nov 2001 10:04:45 -0700 This is a multi-part message in MIME format. ------=_NextPart_000_0007_01C16C2A.9F0C6360 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" In #17910 David Pizer states "On the other hand, I have seen physics experts being reversed - often. Some of Newton is replaced by Einstein, who is replaced by several others. Perhaps in the final theories, physics will be explained by things that make sense to out intuition? Perhaps, at this early time in human exploration, we don't know how to explain physics in terms of intuition - yet?" I doubt if you have ever seen physics experts reversed. Scientists make mistakes but the scientific method is self-correcting. This is in marked contrast to other philosophies and in particular to religion. In 1923 the Danish physicists Niels Bohr elucidated the Correspondence Principle which states: "We know in advance that any new theory in physics - whatever its character or details - must reduce to the well-established classical theory to which it corresponds when the new theory is applied to the circumstances for which the less general theory is known to hold." Newton's laws are valid within their domain of applicability - macroscopic sizes and speeds much less than the speed of light. Relativity physics is valid for macroscopic sizes and any speed. Let the speed of light go to infinity and relativistic physics reduces to Newtonian physics. Quantum mechanics is valid for atomic sized particles. Let Planck's constant go to zero and quantum mechanics reduces to classical physics. Note how this all fits together. We are proceeding to a more general and all-encompassing description of the universe. None of these theories has been reversed or proven wrong or overturned. They have been generalized. This is certainly not to say we know it all. We still need to combine quantum mechanics and relativity for those extreme cases such as black holes. The relationship between spacetime and mass-energy is described by a four-dimensional tensor equation. This reduces to a set of simultaneous non-linear partial differential equations. I challenge anyone to solve it by intuition. A lot of the misconceptions regarding science are directly attributable to the appallingly low quality of science reporting in the popular media. Typically we have a reporter with no scientific education dumbing down what he was told for his science-illiterate readers. The sad fact is that in the most scientifically advanced country in the world, 95% of the people are both scientifically illiterate and mathematically illiterate. We must apply scientific rigor, not wishful thinking, to the problem of suspension, whether it be cryo-suspension or something else. Joseph W. Morgan ------=_NextPart_000_0007_01C16C2A.9F0C6360 Content-Type: text/html; [ AUTOMATICALLY SKIPPING HTML ENCODING! ] Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=17917