re:Flow of energy

[William Beaty <billb@eskimo.com>]

On Sat, 30 Aug 1997, Rick Tarara wrote:

> But Newton is not the most _current_ model of how nature works.  Everything
> that we teach with Newtonian mechanics can supposedly be explained with
> quantum mechanics (at least that's my understanding)

It was my impression that QM is not a complete model of reality.  It does
not encompass gravity, while Newtonian Mechanics does.  And the specific
ways that QM connects with the macroscopic world is still muddy and
controversial (Schrodinger's cat, nonlocal entanglement and all that
stuff.)  Quantum Mechanics is a limited model. 

I believe that many of the continuing phys-L arguments would evaporate if
people took the viewpoint that WE HAVE NO MODEL WHICH DESCRIBES REALITY.
Instead we have a variety of models, and every single one is "wrong" when
applied to some areas.  Yet at the same time we DO have a fairly complete
description of reality, because we have a large variety of different
models, and we also have a description of their proper applications and
their limits.

Physics is like the roof on a tarpaper shack, composed of fifty different
kinds of plywood, the occasional roadsign, and other material once
employed for other purposes.  We are involved in religious wars regarding
the benefits of roadsigns versus flattened tin cans as shingles.  We are
acting silly by trying to single out a large-ish piece of tin and defining
it as being the roof!  But even if physics lacks the elegance of being a
single shiny new sheet of corrugated steel, it still succeeds very well
in keeping the rain out.  The secret is to find the biggest and most solid
pieces of stuff, and then fit them into an overlapping jigsaw which seals
all the holes.

My impression of contemporary physics instruction is that we try to give
students the biggest "shingles" we can, but that we spend far too much
time arguing their size and benefits, and far too little time on the
skills needed to fit them together into a continuous sheet. 

In trying to deal with all the mistakes in K-6 science textbooks I
eventually came to see that many of their blatant, embarrassing errors have
some validity.  They are models of reality.  They have regions of proper
and improper application.  The K-6 textbook misconceptions are wrong in
that they pretend to have wide application and be very useful, when in
fact they are so distorted that they are only "correct" within a uselessly
limited range, and there are much better models in use.  But there is a
big difference between "wrong" versus "limited, inferior model".

It's not a matter of right and wrong.  It's a matter of usefulness, and of
range of application.

......................uuuu / oo \ uuuu........,.............................
William Beaty  voice:206-781-3320   bbs:206-789-0775    cserv:71241,3623
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