From Osher Doctorow
From the equation obtained last time:
1) F = A(t) + B(t)p + C(t)E
where A(t) can be written as mA' (t) for some function A' of t, the
de-emphasis of force in Quantum Mechanics and in Quantum Field Theory
and GR is arguably completely mistaken. By solving this for E or p
(momentum) in terms of E and the other variables, the preference
according to E and p in Quantum Theory makes no sense, and
coincidentally or not those two and m (contained in A(t) as indicated)
are central to GR.
Newtonian physics proceeded from a far more accurate view, namely that
force was central, as in:
2) F = ma (or d(p)/dt in modern terms)
3) F = Gm1m2/r^2
and similarly in Coulomb electrostatics and so on. This does not
mean that mass, energy, and momentum could not also be central, but
that the choice of force as the "villain" by Quantum Mechanics and GR
is arbitrary.
The danger that force had as a central part of physics for GR and SR
and Quantum Theory in the early years was that everything depended on
the speed of light, and if force was fundamental, then it was harder
to maintain the view that light has a constant finite velocity.
Force, after all, does not intuitively "feel" finitely bounded, as
when you push an object. In fact, the same Greeks who mistakenly
thought that the parallel postulate holds would probably have more
accurately axiomatized that force has no upper bound had they taken on
physics as a challenge (which the Pythagoreans at least actually did
in helping to construct the pyramids).
After all, Euclid defined a point as "that which has no length,
breadth, or width," while a line is "that which has no breadth or
width," and a plane as "that which has no breadth" (depth), which is
close to an infinitesimal, and in the opposite direction an infinite
quantity or infinite "limit" would be quite in keeping with this
idea.
Later in his career, when Einstein was introduced by Professor Marcel
Grossmann to advanced geometry for pursuing GR, Einstein's "curvature
of space" would have been threatened in the view of GR people had he
put force as fundamental. Steven Weinberg disagreed at least in the
1970s.
Physicists are to a large extent now trying to bury logic and
probability in the way that it buried force, and Groupthink or 1984 or
Animal Farm arguably play bigger roles in physics than had been
previously thought.
Osher Doctorow
.
|
