"Nothing" - Out there in space

[Holy Roller]

Our models are bad? Their accuracy is staggering...

You're calling a model's missing some 85% of all matter in the Universe as "staggering" in its accuracy?
lulz...

 

[Holy Roller]

While experimental technique is worth learning by all physicists, you're dismissing for no apparent reason a practice (theoretical physics) that has led to discoveries being predicted decades and even centuries in advance.

Also, given the scales that physics is exploring currently, experimentally you can't do as much as Faraday these days without having a handle on some mathematics.

Theory at least gives a focus to the work - there has to be one, as a discovery system that's entirely "accidental experimental discovery"-based would work much, much slower.

I like theoretical physics. Faraday was purely a Theoretical Physicist.
He had trouble with long division and look at his accomplishments.
Math is stunting the growth of Physics; it's an unnecessary appendage and must be evolved out.
Most Physicists adhere to math like soy sauce on rice. Because of their addiction to math and disregard for actual thinking, the world of physics has come to a complete standstill.
Mathematics is for people who can't innovate or create.

 

[EnemyPartyII]

Doesn't the Koran actually refer to God as "the source of evolution"? I've never read the thing, but I have heard that Islam literally endorses evolution, not just in a "its a metaphor" sort of way like Genesis does, but actually refers to an idea that is like evolution in its history of th world. Someone with greater knowledge than I help me out?

 

[paug]

I like theoretical physics. Faraday was purely a Theoretical Physicist.
He had trouble with long division and look at his accomplishments.
Math is stunting the growth of Physics; it's an unnecessary appendage and must be evolved out.
Most Physicists adhere to math like soy sauce on rice. Because of their addiction to math and disregard for actual thinking, the world of physics has come to a complete standstill.
Mathematics is for people who can't innovate or create.

Right-o. Looks like someone's still mad about falling in the fourth quartile in high school maths Glad you've found a way to vent it, though! Holding it all in is unhealthy!

 

[EnemyPartyII]

I like theoretical physics. Faraday was purely a Theoretical Physicist.
He had trouble with long division and look at his accomplishments.
Math is stunting the growth of Physics; it's an unnecessary appendage and must be evolved out.
Most Physicists adhere to math like soy sauce on rice. Because of their addiction to math and disregard for actual thinking, the world of physics has come to a complete standstill.
Mathematics is for people who can't innovate or create.

How does one do "purely theoretical physics" without using mathematics?

 

[Wiccan_Child]

You're calling a model's missing some 85% of all matter in the Universe as "staggering" in its accuracy?
lulz...

I like theoretical physics. Faraday was purely a Theoretical Physicist.
He had trouble with long division and look at his accomplishments.
Math is stunting the growth of Physics; it's an unnecessary appendage and must be evolved out.
Most Physicists adhere to math like soy sauce on rice. Because of their addiction to math and disregard for actual thinking, the world of physics has come to a complete standstill.
Mathematics is for people who can't innovate or create.

Is anyone else stunned, and I mean paralysed from the jaw down, at some of the stuff Holy Roller comes out with?

 

[EnemyPartyII]

Is anyone else stunned, and I mean paralysed from the jaw down, at some of the stuff Holy Roller comes out with?

The assertion that theoretical physics can exist without mathematics is a bit of a clanger

 

[Cabal]

I like theoretical physics. Faraday was purely a Theoretical Physicist.
He had trouble with long division and look at his accomplishments.
Math is stunting the growth of Physics; it's an unnecessary appendage and must be evolved out.
Most Physicists adhere to math like soy sauce on rice. Because of their addiction to math and disregard for actual thinking, the world of physics has come to a complete standstill.
Mathematics is for people who can't innovate or create.

Erm..he worked entirely with experimental equipment and couldn't even write a single equation down. Maxwell had to do that.

"A complete standstill"? That would explain why I haven't seen any published papers in so long! Although...

"Maths is for people who can't innovate or create?" So something like "Maxwell's equations" is an oxymoron then? Hardly.

There's a reason why maths is used, it streamlines. Of course the Faradays of this world will struggle with it, but they'll still shine. But to force everyone to become a Faraday, when they may be an Einstein or a Hawking...

Frankly, just ridiculous.

 

[paug]

Is anyone else stunned, and I mean paralysed from the jaw down, at some of the stuff Holy Roller comes out with?

I considered posting a comment regarding that, but I just... I don't know. I just didn't. I didn't see it as necessary, as somehow HR's post says all there is to say. Those who don't realise the sheer idiocy of Holy Roller are people whose opinions I won't be paying much regard.

 

[Markus6]

Doesn't the Koran actually refer to God as "the source of evolution"? I've never read the thing, but I have heard that Islam literally endorses evolution, not just in a "its a metaphor" sort of way like Genesis does, but actually refers to an idea that is like evolution in its history of th world. Someone with greater knowledge than I help me out?

I was under the impression there was Islamic Creationism. I think if their scriptures had talked about evolution before Darwin we'd be taking it a lot more seriously.

 

[eMesreveR]

HR, please don't speak about physics again. Just, a word, from a friend, to a friend. Just don't. Please.

 

[Holy Roller]

Frankly, just ridiculous.

It was meant to be ridiculous, but it also served its point of illustrating math isn't needed. I don't think we can break out of this morass we're in without a truly inventive mind. One way we can do that is by removing the pretentiousness and egregiousness that comes with an advanced degree in math or mathematics-based physics.
Author Scott Turow once wrote a book entitled, 1L. The book was an autobiography telling his first-year experiences at Harvard law school (hence the title name). He admitted that the only reason why he and his fellow-students were even there in the first place was to secure a suave, swank position as a studly high-level corporate lawyer and the Ferrari.
The same thing is taking place in the world of physics education, where students there value their worth and the worth of the people around them by how advanced their mathematics is. In this regard, they are no different and no better than Turow and his fellow-students; they all suffer from intellectual pride that will impede the discovery process.

This is why I call for a moratorium on eradicationg math from theoretical physics, or drastically scaling it back.
I propose nothing more than a second semester of calculus to prevent this corrosive intellectual pride from mucking things up...

 

[Holy Roller]

Take pure, raw, inventive thought and input them into a computer. Let the equations get worked out by computer, for cryin' out loud!

 

[Cabal]

It was meant to be ridiculous, but it also served its point of illustrating math isn't needed.

Trust me, it really didn't. Unless you think everyone is an experimental genius like Faraday (and they're not), your idea isn't going to work.

I don't think we can break out of this morass we're in without a truly inventive mind. One way we can do that is by removing the pretentiousness and egregiousness that comes with an advanced degree in math or mathematics-based physics.

Or by distinguishing two distinct branches of physics, one for the mathematically inclined, one for the more practical...oh wait, we already have that!

The same thing is taking place in the world of physics education, where students there value their worth and the worth of the people around them by how advanced their mathematics is. In this regard, they are no different and no better than Turow and his fellow-students; they all suffer from intellectual pride that will impede the discovery process.

I'm in that world right now, and all I can tell you is, you're completely and utterly wrong.

This is why I call for a moratorium on eradicationg math from theoretical physics, or drastically scaling it back.
I propose nothing more than a second semester of calculus to prevent this corrosive intellectual pride from mucking things up...

As I said, streamlining. Good luck finding a way to compactly describe an infinite-dimensional space as a basis for quantum mechanics without vector spaces or analysing a waveform without Fourier transforms.

Forcing teaching designed for only one type of intelligence is a doomed concept. Thankfully, we don't have that right now. If you can't do the maths, don't become a theorist, make like Faraday and become an experimentalist. If you're not good with your hands but are good with figures, follow in Hawking's footsteps and become a theorist.

 

[Cabal]

Take pure, raw, inventive thought and input them into a computer. Let the equations get worked out by computer, for cryin' out loud!

Steady on there, HR, I think you'd need maths if you were going to do all that by hand

 

[Holy Roller]

I'm in that world right now, and all I can tell you is, you're completely and utterly wrong.
As I said, streamlining. Good luck finding a way to compactly describe an infinite-dimensional space as a basis for quantum mechanics without vector spaces or analysing a waveform without Fourier transforms.
Forcing teaching designed for only one type of intelligence is a doomed concept. Thankfully, we don't have that right now. If you can't do the maths, don't become a theorist, make like Faraday and become an experimentalist. If you're not good with your hands but are good with figures, follow in Hawking's footsteps and become a theorist.

Note what I placed in bold, above.
Now you can't tell me that when you're having your final that you don't have that sense of competitive drive come over you, and that feeling of envy to note that other dude got the higher grade than you did. This phenomena is caused by intellectual pride.
Pride caused the competitive instinct, as it did the envy.
It will only get worse once you get your degree and enter the professional sphere.

My main and only real concern in physics is that mathematics takes the prominent role, and the cognitive takes a back seat. By "cognitive", I mean the sort of thought-experiment that created something like the general theory of relativity. Remember that? When Einstein ran the famous thought-experiment in 1906 when he was a patent clerk? It wasn't a mathematical mind that created such thinking, it was cognition and the inventiveness that stems from such thinking.

We need instruction in thought-experiments and not equations. One produces results; the other generates intellectual pride.

 

[Holy Roller]

Oh, one more thing. If you're PhysicsProf, your report button worked!

 

[Naraoia]

How does one do "purely theoretical physics" without using mathematics?

By sitting in an armchair and making stuff up?

Is anyone else stunned, and I mean paralysed from the jaw down, at some of the stuff Holy Roller comes out with?

No, quite the opposite. He's one of the people who's just so disproportionately arrogant for his knowledge that I want to spank him.

 

[Naraoia]

HR, please don't speak about physics again. Just, a word, from a friend, to a friend. Just don't. Please.

QFT and seconded (except the "friend" bit ).

 

[paug]

HR is full of it. Whether someone's intellectual pride/ego balloons over some equations is a matter of that individual. I don't see why, as you said, gedankenexperiments wouldn't generate pride, but equations would. It's actually quite humorous what some of you Christians will come up with to save your little book - not that this is doing that explicitly, but it has a common origin.

But please, by all means, continue. This is kind of like watching a train wreck - it's really terrible, but I can't peel my eyes off of it.