I disagree: `derivation’ in physics is the same `derivation’ as in mathematics. Given a set of assumptions one makes a set of logical deductions. There are no `cultural elements’ to begin with.

Any term that physicists write down and cancel are cultural elements. So if you write m on both sides of an equation and then eliminate them by saying a prayer to Newton, then, m is a cultural term that exists only to save Newton’s authority.

Physics is philosophy done with mathematics. In mathematics symbols have no meaning. Physics consists of ascribing contextual philosophical meanings to symbols.

You say that given a set of assumptions one makes a set of logical deductions. The key word is “logical.” This assumes that physicists obey a set of rules that they do not have authority over. But physicists have total authority over the rules of derivation.

Let’s say mathematics and logic gave an error message:

“Warning! Division by zero.”

Do you think a physicist will heed the warning and try to fix the error. No. He will click “cancel” and overrule the error. He would instead label division by zero with a nice marketing label such as black hole and turn it into a new scholastic subfield of physics.

Therefore, physicists use and abuse mathematics. They write the same terms or synonyms on both sides of equations and then cancel them by some principle they invented just for the purpose of canceling this term. Is this logic? No. This is doctoral authority overruling science.

Derivation in physics is a series of steps which are already established and physicists memorize the steps and write the steps down knowing the result. These snippets of formal code are memorized to pass standard tests.

Physics differs from mathematics because physics contains units that physicists call constants of nature. These things do not exist in mathematics.

Physicists are free to add or remove any term they wish from a derivation.

I’m do not think I agree with many of your points. Boldface are quotes from your response above.

Physics derivation is a ritual and ceremonial elimination of cultural elements in order to obtain working expressions that can be used to make calculations.

I disagree: `derivation’ in physics is the same `derivation’ as in mathematics. Given a set of assumptions one makes a set of logical deductions. There are no `cultural elements’ to begin with.

Yes, there might be a `cultural element’ in that there may be preconceptions about the way Nature is meant to be. (e.g. Earth is flat, Earth is the center of the solar system, the cosmological constant is zero, …) But as scientists these are supposed to be hypotheses. We experimentally confirmed that the Earth is not flat, nor the at the center of the solar system, and that the cosmological constant is nonzero.

There are other `cultural elements’ such as the notion of naturalness. e.g. it’s more `natural’ for dimensionless parameters to be of order 1 (e.g. the diagonal elements of the yukawa matrices)… but even these are treated as assumptions of we are aware we may need to let go.

But no: the derivation of logical deductions from a set of assumptions is independent of culture. Those assumptions may be influenced by culture (as above), but the point of the scientific method is to use logic and experiment to test those assumptions.

His authority does not come from his contributions to physics.

You are saying that Ed Witten’s authority in string theory has nothing to do with his contribution to the field? I disagree. I would disagree very strongly, but I am not a string theorist and cannot speak confidently about the details of his contributions.

Ed Witten’s authority comes from the fact (may I take it as fact?) that he has provided several `big ideas’ in the field. Let me avoid the question of whether string theory is proper science, since this comes up later on. But let me say that Ed Witten’s contributions are at least highly significant mathematically.

Perhaps one could look at his citations, major works, etc? I don’t understand the basis upon which you can state that he either has not made contributions to physics, or that they are irrelevant in his stature in physics.

The modern shaman is a middleman between the spiritual and unknown world of M-theory and the regular people.

I don’t like the phrase `modern shaman,’ but I understand what you are trying to convey with it. And I am almost certain that Ed Witten is NOT a `modern shaman/middleman.’ Do you think people would recognize Ed Witten on the street? Even pop-science saavy members of the general population would be unlikely to recognize Ed Witten versus, say, Brian Greene.

Brian Greene (author of The Elegant Universe) is FAR better known as a middle man between the lay populace and the scientific frontier. With all respects to professor Witten (and a tremendous amount of respect, at that), he’s not exactly the kind of figure that is Hollywood-friendly.

But this is all about science outreach. I don’t understand what this has to do with actually doing science.

Among scientists, big names are certainly respected in the field, but they are big names precisely because they have done good work. NOT because they were elected as the `media’ figureheads. (What media?)

I don’t agree that physics and science are synonyms as you have been assuming implicitly. Today there is a growing number of mathematicians and physicists who believe that string theory is pseudo-science, anti-science or pre-science or not science at all. And string theory *is* physics. So when you implicitly assume that academic physics is science this assumption is not justified.

I don’t understand your logic here. You say three things:
(1) A number of experts don’t think string theory is proper science
(2) String theory is physics
(3) Ergo, physics isn’t science

Where did (2) come from? The people who don’t think string theory is proper science are ALSO saying that string theory isn’t proper physics. Statements (1) and (2) come from different sets of assumptions, and you’ve mixed them up to get a faulty conclusion.

The question of whether string theory is science revolves around experimental verification. But I do not think this is relevant to the discussion of the role of culture in physics? For the sake of argument, can we treat string theory as a `special case’ and talk about physics without string theory? (Then one can argue about whether string theory belongs to physics.)

In science there are no figureheads or shamans controlled by the media. Shamans only exists in physics. Because physics is controlled by the media.

Why are “shamans controlled by the media”? I have taken “shamans” to mean those scientists who do public outreach to make their fields accessible to the general population. Who is this `media’? Are they scientists? Are they some secret society? Or do you actually mean the television/newspaper/etc. industry?

I do not understand what you mean by “physics is controlled by the media.” Can you explain this and give concrete examples?

Consider that every physicist spends over two decades just to cram the preliminaries of this text. Only after they earn their license to practice that physicists finally get to interpret this text. Interpretation means picking legal snippets from the text and combining them into a new snippet and publishing it as a paper in an official organ of the industry.

No, I disagree. The purpose of a physics education is twofold. The minor purpose is to understand the status of the field. The major purpose is to teach young physicists how to think (rationally) about physics. Learning how to think (and how to be creative) is what leads to *new research.* Published papers aren’t just re-interpretation of old papers — they’re meant to be based on NEW results.

Sometimes there are papers that connect two previously unrelated ideas in a field. For example, the idea for braneworld extra dimensions didn’t originate in 1998 with the ADD paper, but rather in the late 70s by Shaposhnikov. ADD connected this idea to the Hierarchy problem and worked out logical consequences of this connection (n>2, etc.). In this case, yes, one draws from literature — but the idea to connect them was novel. It wasn’t just `interpretation of canon’ — Shaposhnikov’s proposal was anything BUT canon (people didn’t talk about TeV scale extra dimensions seriously until ‘98). Further, this led to NEW ideas — e.g. warped extra dimensions and a whole host of models. These new ideas weren’t just cutting and pasting.

Physics is the definition of hermeneutics.

No, hermeneutics is studying how a piece of work can be interpreted. Scientific ideas aren’t subject to `interpretation’ in this sense.

There is a huge Hierarchy between the Planck scale and the Weak scale. This is a `Hierarchy Problem.’ It may be that there is no new physics at some intermediate scale and that nature is just very finely-tuned. In which case, scientists in the future will say that we `misinterpreted’ the hierarchy. What they would mean is that we made the wrong set of assumptions: namely that nature doesn’t like hierarchies.

But this is different from `intepretation’ in the humanities sense. In the humanities sense, we can `interpret’ the significance of Chaucer in Chaucer’s day. By this we mean WE (today) make assumptions about Chaucer’s day and deduce how his works reflect those assumptions. We could also `interpret’ Chaucer in a contemporary setting, by which we make different assumptions about what Chaucer is trying to tell us in the modern era. At no point does Chaucer rise from his grave and say “Oh, actually good sirs, what I meant was this…”

Do you see that this is different from the `interpretation’ of the hierarchy? Scientists state very plainly what their assumptions are. These assumptions, with experimental evidence, can then be tested/reassessed.

Physicists’ belief in something as occult and magical as Newtonian force is not science regardless if it is practiced by theoretical or practical physicists.

No! This is *not* the point of view of scientists. Newtonian gravity isn’t the `whole picture’ of gravity. We know at least that Einstein’s theory of general relativity, which includes the Newtonian limit, appears to be `correct’ at large scales. We strongly suspect that at the quantum scale gravity takes on a different nature.

But does this mean Newton is *wrong*? (Or much worse, `occult’ ?) NO! The modern viewpoint of physics is that Newtonian gravity is an effective theory. It is valid on human scales. Hence when we throw a ball into the air, we do quite well calculating a trajectory based on Newtonian gravity. We can even calculate air resistance and all that — but even air resistance is a `fake’ force that is really just an effective theory for the fluid dynamics of the air. And even this fluid dynamics is an `effective theory’ for the collective behavior of zillions of molecules of mostly-nitrogen.

An effective theory isn’t *wrong,* it just has limits of validity. Even the standard model is an effective theory. Chemistry is an effective theory for quantum physics. Biology is an effective theory for organic chemistry.

A great example I was once told is that a chef has a recipe. This recipe is an effective theory for biochemical reactions that `cook’ food. These are an effective theory for atomic physics, which is an effective theory of the standard model, which is an effective theory of possibly string theory, etc. But the chef doesn’t care about that. He just has his effective theory, and that’s fine for making great soup. A chef doesn’t need to know string theory.

There are some great expositions on this — perhaps poking around the web would be helpful.

Not only physicists ignore and rewrite history but at the same time they believe that Newtonian mythology is the true history of physics. That makes sense too. They wrote it themselves.

No self respecting physicist believes that Newtonian gravity is valid at the Planck length.

What do you mean that physicists rewrite history?

Physicists have yet to realize that history *is* science. The original meaning of the word history is research. Research means looking at history.

History isn’t science. I think you’re playing word games. The `original meaning’ of history isn’t relevant. When you say ‘history’ the only definition that is relevant is the modern one. And the modern definition of history is not the same as the modern definition of science.

If you take `history’ to be defined in some archaic way to mean `research’, then ok, fine — your `history’ is closer in definition to what I call `science’. But now we’re speaking in different languages, and it’s much easier if we speak in the same language.

The best example of what happens when history is ignored is what physicists call Newton’s constant of gravity. This thing was invented in the 19th century as a unit conversion factor. It is k (now known as Gaussian constant) written in British units. Not knowing history physicists believe that G is some kind of constant of nature and they still discuss its value and keep measuring it in experiments. So you see how the culture of physics corrupts physics into pseudo-science.

The reason why physicists keep measuring G is that they hope to find deviations from Newtonian gravity that would be a signal of NEW physics.

In fact, near the Planck scale we DO expect the value of G to change (to `renormalize’ or `to run’). Physicsts are curious if it changes at a much higher scale, as would be predicted by theories of extra dimensions, for example.

So to understand the scientific process:
(1) We have a Newtonian theory of gravitation that works pretty well.
(2) We suspect (hypothesis) that it is replaced by a new effective theory at some small scale.
(3) Theorists come up with funny ideas (more hypotheses) that there may be extra dimensions.
(4) We use logic to deduce that these theories of extra dimensions would predict a deviation from the expected value of the Newton constant at small scales. (Why? Because of the framework of quantum field theory, which is also an assumption.)
(5) We construct an experiment to test the Newton constant at atomic scales.
(6) We do the experiment.
(7) To date, we find no deviations from the predicted value. So we can rule out parameter space for certain theories of extra dimensions.

And after this you accuse physicists of being culturally corrupt?

At no point did history play into this. YES, there is a history associated with things like Newton’s constant. Historians of scientists can write books about this, and physicists actually DO like reading these books once in a while.

BUT, the point was that we have a theory TODAY. We have a new hypothesis that we want to test that contradicts the predictions of this theory. We do an experiment to check these predictions, thus ruling out one theory or the other (or both). The history of our current theory has nothing to do with actually doing science.

Respectfully,
F

I have no basis to assess the the idea that scientists need to prop up a figurehead in their community. This is a socio-anthropological question regarding scientific culture.

Yes. The existence of shamanistic figurheads in physics is a socio-anthropological question more related to physics culture.

It would seem that as a socio-anthropological element in physics culture shamanism must be distinct from physics. This is not the case. The culture of physics defines physics.

Physics is not free of cultural elements. On the contrary, physics is full of cultural elements written as mathematical symbols. This is proved by the fundamental algorithm of physics called derivation. Physics derivation is a ritual and ceremonial elimination of cultural elements in order to obtain working expressions that can be used to make calculations.

It is perhaps an important one, but not one that I choose to engage in at the moment.

Yes, it is important. And you are right it is a waste of time to get bogged down in social issues in physics rather than learning more legal physics. (Writing grant proposals is also a cultural issue but no physicists can ignore it.) But if a physicist needs to understand fundamental issues he must know how to recognize cultural elements.

Physicists believe their own propaganda and think that there are no cultural elements in physics. What you identified as “crap papers” in your graphic are full of cultural elements.

I do not agree, however that that this particular scientific community is led by `media-created celebrity.’

I believe that Witten is a media-created celebrity. His authority does not come from his contributions to physics. He is a celebrity and therefore wields authority because the media anointed him as the figurehead (or if you don’t like that term) as a shaman that the audience of the media (general public) can relate to.

The classical shaman was the middleman between the spiritual world and the regular people. The modern shaman is a middleman between the spiritual and unknown world of M-theory and the regular people.

Or that all scientific progress is about propping up figureheads independent of actual research?

I don’t agree that physics and science are synonyms as you have been assuming implicitly. Today there is a growing number of mathematicians and physicists who believe that string theory is pseudo-science, anti-science or pre-science or not science at all. And string theory *is* physics. So when you implicitly assume that academic physics is science this assumption is not justified.

So the answer is No. In science there are no figureheads or shamans controlled by the media. Shamans only exists in physics. Because physics is controlled by the media.

I understand that `scholasticism,’ which you seem to define as the critique and analysis of past work, is part of academia.

Interesting. I didn’t think about scholasticism this way. I think analysis and critique of past work would be part of scientific process. But physics is ahistorical. The reason physics is ahistorical is because physics is scholasticism. It makes no sense for a physicist to question and replicate for instance an old canonical experiment such as the Cavendish experiment. (In fact it is illegal in physics to question canonical experiments.) It makes infinitely more sense to build a new gadget dub it Cavendish experiment and compute a new value for G.

But more important is research, i.e. forward progess in human knowledge.

This seems to make sense. I would say *independent* research is important. Legal research on the legal canon of physics that physicists do is more like scholasticism.

Unlike the humanities, science is *not* about hermeneutics.

I don’t know what hermeneutics means but Wikipedia definition describes physics pretty well:

Hermeneutics may be described as the development and study of theories of the interpretation and understanding of texts.

Exactly. Canon of physics is the “text.” Consider that every physicist spends over two decades just to cram the preliminaries of this text. Only after they earn their license to practice that physicists finally get to interpret this text. Interpretation means picking legal snippets from the text and combining them into a new snippet and publishing it as a paper in an official organ of the industry. Physics is the definition of hermeneutics. Thanks for pointing this out.

Unlike the humanities…

Physics and humanities are just two academic departments. Nature does not heed this academic distinction. Academic physics as practiced today is humanities if you count scholastic philosophy as part of humanities.

The `theoretical magicians’ sit around and write papers debating interpretations of the works of the past great practical magicians, but do not do any actual magic themselves.

Great example, thanks. Especially the fact that practical magic is still magic. Magic does not exist. So both practical and theoretical magicians appear to be in the same boat. Physicists’ belief in something as occult and magical as Newtonian force is not science regardless if it is practiced by theoretical or practical physicists.

There are plenty of historians of science that do this.

You identified the greatest shortcoming of physicists: their total ignorance of history. Especially their total ignorance of history of physics. Physicists prefer to rewrite history instead of learning from history. And who can blame them. If you have doctoral authority to rewrite history then it makes more sense to rewrite history than to learn from history.

Not only physicists ignore and rewrite history but at the same time they believe that Newtonian mythology is the true history of physics. That makes sense too. They wrote it themselves.

Physicists have yet to realize that history *is* science. The original meaning of the word history is research. Research means looking at history.

The best example of what happens when history is ignored is what physicists call Newton’s constant of gravity. This thing was invented in the 19th century as a unit conversion factor. It is k (now known as Gaussian constant) written in British units. Not knowing history physicists believe that G is some kind of constant of nature and they still discuss its value and keep measuring it in experiments. So you see how the culture of physics corrupts physics into pseudo-science.

This isn’t the first time that you have used one of my graphics as a springboard for a completely different discussion…

Yes, I remember. Great images, I love them. I hope you will post more of the kind.

The comments that I did not agree with were these:

The fact that physics is done by a media-created and media-annointed celebrity shaman is not surprising. Every generation has its media shaman as the figurehead of the scholastic physics hierarchy.

I have no basis to assess the the idea that scientists need to prop up a figurehead in their community. This is a socio-anthropological question regarding scientific culture. It is perhaps an important one, but not one that I choose to engage in at the moment.

I do not agree, however that that this particular scientific community is led by `media-created celebrity.’ Is this to be interpreted as saying that you believe string theory is one big `wag the dog’? Or that all scientific progress is about propping up figureheads independent of actual research?

I understand that `scholasticism,’ which you seem to define as the critique and analysis of past work, is part of academia. But more important is research, i.e. forward progess in human knowledge. Unlike the humanities, science is *not* about hermeneutics. At the end of the day, science isn’t about sitting around and discussing the `flavour of the day.’ It’s about the scientific method, proposing new tests, and creating new knowledge (rather than just recycling the old).

There is a rather charming novel, “Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell” by Susanna Clarke. It’s a story about two magicians in 19th century England. The author distinguishes between `practical’ magicians (the title characters and `theoretical’ magicians, which are actually `historians of magic.’ The `theoretical magicians’ sit around and write papers debating interpretations of the works of the past great practical magicians, but do not do any actual magic themselves.

If I understand you correctly, you are claiming that the majority of string theorists are analogues of these `theoretical magicians’ who do not actually *do* research but rather discuss interpretations of research. This, I think, is false. There are plenty of historians of science that do this. But theoretical physicists are proper researchers endeavoring to create new knowledge.

That being said, I mean no offence by delinking your pingback, but I do feel the post has no relevance to the discussion on my page. This isn’t the first time that you have used one of my graphics as a springboard for a completely different discussion:

http://globalpioneering.com/wp02/fine-physics/

I have no problem with this, but would prefer to keep such disparate discussions in their own places.

Respectfully yours,
Flip