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In reply to the discussion: Both of these are true - There is no god. There is a god. - And both are false. [View all]Jim__
(15,262 posts)29. I understood the article to say structural relations are important and not perspective.
I didn't see (or don't remember seeing) the exact example that's mentioned in the OP. But the article does briefly talk about symmetries, relations and perspective. I understand the article to be saying that structural relations are important and not really affected by perception.
From the article (my bolding):
...
A growing number of people think that what really matters are not things but the relations in which those things stand. Such a view breaks with traditional atomist or pointillist conceptions of the material world in a more radical way than even the severest modifications of particle and field ontologies could do.
Initially this position known as structural realism, came in a fairly moderate version known as epistemic structural realism. It runs as follows: We may never know the real nature of things but only how they are related to one another. Take the example of mass. Do you ever see mass itself? No. You see only what it means for other entities or, concretely, how one massive body is related to another massive body through the local gravitational field. The structure of the world, reflecting how things are interrelated, is the most enduring part of physics theories. New theories may overturn our conception of the basic building blocks of the world, but they tend to preserve the structures. That is how scientists can make progress.
Now the following question arises: What is the reason that we can know only the relations among things and not the things themselves? The straightforward answer is that the realtions are all there is. This leap makes structural realism a more radical proposition call ontic structural realism.
The myriad symmetries of modern physics lend support to ontic structural realism. In quantum mechanics as well as in Einstein's theory of gravitation, certain changes in the configuration of the world - known as symmetry transformations - have no empirical consequences. These transformations exchange the individual things that make up the world but leave their relations the same. By analogy, consider a mirror-symmetric face. A mirror swaps the left eye for the right eye, the left nostril for the right, and so on. Yet all the relative positions of facial features remain. Those relations are what truly define a face, whereas labels such as "left" and "right" depend on your vantage point. The things we have been calling "particles" and "fields" possess more abstract symmetries, but the idea is the same.
...
A growing number of people think that what really matters are not things but the relations in which those things stand. Such a view breaks with traditional atomist or pointillist conceptions of the material world in a more radical way than even the severest modifications of particle and field ontologies could do.
Initially this position known as structural realism, came in a fairly moderate version known as epistemic structural realism. It runs as follows: We may never know the real nature of things but only how they are related to one another. Take the example of mass. Do you ever see mass itself? No. You see only what it means for other entities or, concretely, how one massive body is related to another massive body through the local gravitational field. The structure of the world, reflecting how things are interrelated, is the most enduring part of physics theories. New theories may overturn our conception of the basic building blocks of the world, but they tend to preserve the structures. That is how scientists can make progress.
Now the following question arises: What is the reason that we can know only the relations among things and not the things themselves? The straightforward answer is that the realtions are all there is. This leap makes structural realism a more radical proposition call ontic structural realism.
The myriad symmetries of modern physics lend support to ontic structural realism. In quantum mechanics as well as in Einstein's theory of gravitation, certain changes in the configuration of the world - known as symmetry transformations - have no empirical consequences. These transformations exchange the individual things that make up the world but leave their relations the same. By analogy, consider a mirror-symmetric face. A mirror swaps the left eye for the right eye, the left nostril for the right, and so on. Yet all the relative positions of facial features remain. Those relations are what truly define a face, whereas labels such as "left" and "right" depend on your vantage point. The things we have been calling "particles" and "fields" possess more abstract symmetries, but the idea is the same.
...
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Both of these are true - There is no god. There is a god. - And both are false. [View all]
pinto
Jul 2013
OP
application of concepts from quantum physics to other areas are almost always nonsense.
Warren Stupidity
Jul 2013
#7
Quantum physics describes the nature of physical reality at the micro level.
Warren Stupidity
Jul 2013
#14
I read an article. Got some ideas from it. Posted. Probably a mistake to use a religious analogy.
pinto
Jul 2013
#21
Thanks for the lead, I'll check it out. (aside) I'm peddling nothing here. Honestly.
pinto
Jul 2013
#11