Freedom of Science

This is the evolution of constants of nature in physics:

• Proportionality
• Constant of proportionality == arbitrary unit
• Constant of physics
• Constant of nature

What is inherited here? No quantity is inhered. What is inhereted is the label “constant.” Because they called an arbitrary unit a “constant” physicists define it as a constant of nature. By using their authority to define doctors of physics turn an arbitrary unit they defined on the proportionality into a constant of nature.

So when physicists say “constant of nature” they mean

the arbitrary unit we associated with the observed proportionality is a universal constant of nature.

Newton’s universal constant of gravity G is a constant of nature in this scholastic polemical sense. Yet another proof that physics is alphysics still controlled by the authority of the practicing doctors.

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