-Original Message-
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On
Behalf Of Andrew Paul
Sent: Saturday, April 15, 2006 9:06 AM
To: Killer Bs Discussion
Subject: RE: Liberal Capitalist Fundamentalism
Does the correctness or otherwise of any new paradigm have anything to
do with those who reject it being fundamentalists?
Certainly. There are a lot of new paradigms that I reject. Most attempts
at new paradigms are not that at all. It's just a silly new idea dressed
upparticularly in business. I got very frustrated with management at a
company I worked for buying absolute rubbishwhich never ever
workedbecause it was called the new paradigm.
I would have thought
their rejection of it was sufficient? I would have thought that
paradigms are not actually correct, just kind of current.
Well, in the sense that Newtonian physics was never actually correct and
modern physics isn't actually correct you are right. But, the traditional
barrier for switching the basic way one looks at things (changing paradigms)
is much higher than the barrier for a new theory...as it must be.
Otherwise, science would go back to being natural philosophy...with all the
effort being spent on arguing basic worldviews and little spent on matching
data.
As a matter of interest, what are your two paradigms of the last 2500
years?
Maybe I wasn't clearbut I meant that there were two paradigm
shifts...which implies three paradigms. The first can be called the
Aristotelian. If you read Physica, you get a general feel for this
paradigm. Things have properties which govern their behavior. The heavens
were made of fundamental different stuff than the earth. The stars didn't
fall to the earth because their nature was essentially different.
The first paradigm shift was from this worldview to a mechanistic worldview.
The planets and the earth were governed by the same rulesthink of
universal gravitation. This world view was a world of billiard balls,
wheels, etc. A tremendous amount of progress was made under this worldview.
For example, thermodynamics was reduced to the actions of atoms, that
basically behave like little billiard balls, in the statistical mechanics of
Maxwell. Fluid dynamics, likewise, can be reduced to mechanics.
So, the paradigm shift occurred during the period between Copernicus and
Newton. One theoretical and one experimental development can be highlighted
in this shift. The theoretical development was the use of ellipses instead
of perfect circles by Kelvin. It is not well known, but Copernicus needed
epicycles too because he used circles...the heliocentered universe only
decreased the epicycles by 1. The experimental development was the
observation of the moons of Jupiter.
This paradigm shift lasted through the development of electromagnetism. The
nature of the aether was a bit problematic, but there was every confidence
that it would eventually be understood. After all, the orbit of the moon
was problematic for 4 decades, but it was eventually solved.
We know, now, that this was just an early indication of the problems
inherent in the mechanistic paradigm. SR delivered another blow to it,
although not a fatal one. QM produced results that could not be reconciled
with this paradigm. Indeed, Einstein maintained that the QM he helped found
was no more than an intermediate phenomenological modelthat something
more realistic and solid lay below it.
Einstein wasn't really a fundamentalist for this. His explanation was
certainly possible during his lifetime. It was only after the Bell
Wigner's worked showed that local hidden variable theories are inherently
inconsistent with QM, and the experimental work of Aspect et. al. which
demonstrated spacelike correlations, that we can label folks who insist on
local realism as fundamentalists. Einstein just guessed wrong.
There is no indication of a need for a fourth paradigm of physics now. It
is arguable that the mathematical paradigm is so broad that we will not need
to develop a fourth. But, it is clearly arguable that the present
developments in physics, including fun things like string theory and fuzzy
space, fit well within this paradigm.
One way to look at things is that new theories are far less of a fundamental
change than new paradigms. The last paradigm shift in physics requires a
decoupling of physics from realism. Realists can still be very good
physicists, they just need to shut up and calculate when they do physics.
That view, which accepts unreal things like electrons that really have just
the right infinite charge for us to see a well defined finite charge, is an
acceptance of the new paradigm.
So, when Nick talks about as fundamental a change in viewpoint as he seems
to, I see it as requiring justification similar to that needed to abandon
the mechanistic/realistic worldview that had served physics so well. Now,
since economics/political science/sociology is not as well
