Matter, Math, logic, and theory

The strong force thread has gotten very byzantine and confused. I have not been able to sort out any individual's position on any single "point", nor how this all relates to an origin debate. In hopes of clearing this up, I thought I would start a thread for discussing these issues in a straightforward way. This might help bring the other thread into focus. Let me begin with some statements, and anyone who has better knowledge will hopefully correct my errors:

Matter can cahnge at several levels:

1) Substances can undergo physical changes, which affect their physical state (solid, liquid, gas, plasma), and can be mixed, heterogenously or homogenously to different effect.

2) Molecules and atoms can undergo chemical changes, which affect their physical properties (color, smell, reactivity, etc..) These changes occur by the movement of electrons.

3) The nuclei of atoms can decay, fuse, or fission, changing their chemical properties (effectively changing their chemical identity Hydrogen fuses to become Helium). These changes occur by the movement of nucleons (neutrons and protons).

4) Neutrons, protons and other hadrons are composed of quarks. Hadrons can exchange quarks, or eject new hadrons under some circumstances, but a hadron cannot be separated into its constituent quarks.

5) Matter and energy are interchangeable

6) But we (or I) am unsure how it is that matter is matter and energy is energy

7) Or why a particle is a boson instead of a lepton (or vise versa)

8) Or why a lepton is an electron instead of a quark (or vise versa)

9) But this is what quantum theorists are trying to figure out.

On to mathematics, logic, and physics.

1) Logic is a kind of mathematics.

2) Mathematics can prove a statement or its negation, given the postulates of the mathematical system one is working from.

3) Most natural systems can be described in terms compatible with a mathematical system, be it arithmetic (of which the math of change, or calculus is a subset), logical, using a "model" or theory of nature. Quantitative and/or logical predictions can be made from the theory on this basis. Comparisons of empirical result to the expected results from the theory as it is modeled to a mathematical system either increase or decrease our confidence in the accuracy of that model.

The good model - the one that we can be highly confident of by its predictive powers - is the goal of pure science.

Applied sciences take over from there, applying that model toward manipulating nature to meet our needs.

 

__________________
Man should no more get tired of using his brain--if he is using it properly--than a fish should get tired of water.

- Colin Wilson

- *nods*  Gotcha. 

  Jerry, thanks. Straightens up life some. Just for a history of the thread:

  The "logic/math" thing came up because I pointed out that math wasn't a science, but rather a very descriptive tool that was useful to science.

   But it wasn't a science, you didn't do experimentation or observation on it.

  Matter, on the other hand, came up because someone claimed that "matter changes all the time, so why can't physical laws". To which I pointed out that matter wasn't changeable, because he was looking at collections of matter, and not what matter really was.