Freedom of Science

From Imaginary Potential
. . . that the simple rules of cellular automata can somehow generate fundamental laws of physics.
To me such a claim does not make sense. How can one derive laws from other laws? Laws are definitions. Newton’s laws are definitions Newton called “axioms or laws of motion.” All “laws of physics” are such […]

From Wikipedia:
Kepler’s laws challenged Aristotelian and Ptolemaic astronomy and physics.
Maybe. But that’s not our problem anymore. Newton replaced Aristotle long time ago as the head of the scholastic corporation. Our challenge and duty as scientists is to question the doctrine of a forceful Newtonian nature to be the legal and true doctrine of nature.
Related posts:

Aristotle/Newton
Scholastic […]

In physics anything which is not a physical quantity is metaphysics. There is no exception to this rule. Example: “Newton’s laws” is not a physical quantity therefore “Newton’s laws” is metaphysics and does not belong to scientific physics. Laws, principles, axioms, definitions, conjectures and similar philosophical stuff are independent of scientific physics. If we define […]

In Definition 5 Newton defines a new word to describe a new species of force he just invented: centripetal force. Centripetal force is a force that seeks a center. Newton gives four examples of this force: Terrestrial “heaviness” with which bodies tend to the center of the Earth; iron seeking loadstone; the force holding […]

Not Even Wrong points to a paper by the string theorist Moataz Emam that asks the question So what will you do if string theory is wrong? As an answer he suggests that physics may divest itself from string theory and create a new academic department equidistant from physics and mathematics. I believe that my […]

A scientific principle:
If a problem is independent of a term that problem is independent of that term.
Example: Given f(x0, x1), then, the problem modeled by f(x0,x1) is independent of any term xn > x1.
Question: This principle is generally accepted and used in physics. For instance orbital motion is described by f(R,T) where x0 = radius […]

Humans have a unique ability to create environments that are depressing, writes John Baez. Some are melancholy, unloved, like a dimly lit highway overpass at night covered with graffiti, or this building in Shanghai:

I understand this feeling. At times I felt the same way. But unlike the holographic principle, the surface of a building […]

Check out Peter Callesen’s wonderful paper cut-outs.1

These paper figures that come out of paper but could never fully free themselves from the background inspire us to speculate on the most fundamental philosophical question: Is there a theater of operations where phenomena happen? Or asked in the language of physics, Is there a background? If […]

Water inside a rotating sphere:

I assume that the spiral shape arises because the bottom of the vortex touches the sphere?
Here’s a simplified geometry of the same phenomenon:

This is figure 11.7: Shape of liquid surface in a rotating bucket, in Equilibrium statistical physics by Michael Plischke and Birger Bergersen. They reason that “in a normal fluid, […]

Every important unit in physics progresses through five stages. The following process is a constant of physics and cannot be changed.
1. No unit
Initially a proportionality new to physics is stated without a unit. In the 18th century physics textbooks stated “Newton’s law” as 1/R2. Just like that, no unit, no constant and no M&ms attached […]