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Re: Question About Charged Particles.



In a message dated 4/8/01 8:19:26 PM Eastern Daylight Time, jlu@HEP.ANL.GOV
writes:

<< Yes, you have identified one way in which we were not
communicating. But the question "Can a charged particle ..." presupposes
that we are in posession of a "something" that uniquely predicts
"reality". It would be logically impossible to know if ever we were in
posession of such a something (one can never prove that a theory is
correct). >>

We can NEVER be sure we are in possession of a theory that uniquely predicts
reality. I think that THERE IS an objective reality for which our theories
provide a closer and closer (Hopefully) approximation of, but of course you
can't prove any theory correct. Rather you can only prove it incorrect. For
any question to have meaning in a scientific sense, it must be capable of
being disproven. We certainly have no disagreement on this.
Having said this I don't believe we are wrong to ask the question
whether a particular entity is consistent with our CURRENT best understanding
of this reality keeping in mind the tentative nature of all scientific
knowledge. Considering scientific knowledge tentative in no way denigrates
this knowledge. There is seldom any uncertainty in most dogmatic beliefs
which of course makes these beliefs worthless.
A good part of our communication problem is no doubt due to my imprecise
way of asking this question. I threw out various ideas which were supposed to
be just points to consider which were confused with the main point I was
trying to get at, electromagnetic mass being a good example.

Bob Zannelli