From: "JACK L. URETSKY (C) 1996; HEP DIV., ARGONNE NATIONAL LAB, ARGONNE, IL 60439" <JLU@hep.anl.gov>
Date: Fri, 30 Jan 1998 12:10:14 -0600
Hi John-
You write:
You seem to understand that usefulness is enough. Why muddy the water
with inappropriate and emotion laden words like "truth"? Of course, in
order to be useful our theories must make accurate (enough) quantitative
predictions, but that doesn't make them "true."
To "do" science, we must, I think, believe in the *existence* of an
objective reality, but there is no reason to think that we can ever know
its "true nature" and no difficulty that arises as a result as long as we
do not confuse ourselves and our students by using inappropriate words
like "truth" and "proof" in connection with our models. My students
quickly learn that writing such things in their lab report summaries tends
to produce lots of green ink (my substitute for red) on their papers.
*******************************
Ahhh, there you have it. I thought that the business of physics
is prediction, using the smallest number of free parameters.
Because it is logically impossible to prove that any particular
theory is "true", physicS cannot be a "search for truth".
Regards,
Jack