lördag 23 maj 2009

Forever Young

Som icke-fysiker sliter jag som ett djur med Arthur M. Youngs essäer på en sajt som postumt tillägnats honom. En del av hans tankar kräver helt enkelt mer än vad en humanist är utbildad för!

Likväl är Young en viktig modern röst - hans anhängare säger att han såg tydligt där Einstein trasslade till det för sig - och att han är en av dem som tydligast sett att den moderna kvantfysiken har djupa "andliga" implikationer och därmed i allra högsta grad är en angelägenhet för de humanistiska disciplinerna, teologin inte minst!

Sampla det här stycket, saxat ur en av Youngs online-essäer:

But now note what made it impossible for Einstein to reconcile the two theories [Relativity & Quantum]. He called the theory he hoped to find the "Unified Field Theory." We have already pointed out that the notion of a field is a concession to conceptual thinking. We can form the concept of a field, but we cannot form a "concept" of force. Force is a different category. The quantum of action is also in a different category. Under its other name, quantum of uncertainty, it is, by definition, impossible to conceptualize.

If the reader finds this difficult, I have two alternatives, either to accept as a fact of life that quantum physics has stumbled upon something that cannot be conceptualized -- that is, take it as would a child, that Daddy said so -- or take the route that I'm trying to open through the jungle, that there are different categories, aspects, or causes of things.

Since this is a venerable tradition, echoed, for example, in Aristotle's four causes, I hesitate to repeat it again, but here in the failure to obtain a unified theory we have a lesson. Not only did Einstein doom his search to failure by calling his goal a field theory, thereby excluding what was not a field, but he insisted that quantum theory was invalid. (Why then did he seek to unify it with relativity?)

We need to uncover what it is that gives science the authority it has come to have in order to go beyond the blind spots in the current world view.

http://www.arthuryoung.com/bridging.html

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