I have stated many times that nobody is a bigger fan of science than I am. I have been like that since some of my earliest memories. It saddens me that many who consider themselves “scientists” seem to have lost their way. I believe that ideally science should start with an image I invoke of a person on a “darkling plain” (a phrase I got from Dover Beach by Matthew Arnold) holding aloft a torch and asking, “What is out here?” They might not see far, but they can see all around them. Instead, many scientists on that plain are using a fixed and focused spotlight or – even worse – a laser pointer to illuminate a specific goal that they will do anything to attain. They neither see nor wish to detect anything outside of their chosen path. When Isaac Newton commented that he saw further by standing on the shoulders of giants, he did not add that he also clamped his head in a vise and put on blinders so that he could not see anything else around him.
Let me try and make this clear: The scientific method and math are two of the greatest tools humans have discovered since they learned how to use fire without injuring or destroying themselves; but they are just tools. When they are considered the be-all and the end-all to which reality must conform, then they are losing their utility. Put another way: Knowing how to use a wrench and a screwdriver does not dictate the form and operation of an assembled engine.
Nowhere is this more obvious than in those cases where someone insists that math is precise and perfect and that it alone can describe the universe. That position can be disproven at the most simple and basic level with a soda can and two strings. Wrap one string around the can and cut it so that the two ends meet exactly. Then place the other string across the exact center of the can and cut it exactly where it crosses the string wrapped around the can. Remove both strings and lay them out straight and measure them with a ruler calibrated to the nth degree and you will see that each one of them has a fixed and determinable length. Now use math to take the length of either string and determine the length of the other one. Put the figures in a computer and set it to work on the problem and it will start chunking out numbers. In very short order it will be using decimal places that are smaller than the Planck Constant, but that’s okay. Since math is precise and perfect, that is a mere formality and limitation imposed by physical reality, so it must be ignored. I hope you are patient because the universe will come to an end before the computer and its successors have completed the calculation, while failing to ever precisely verify the measurement you made with a ruler in less than a second. This is simply because π as a symbol has an exact value, but when interacting with the physical realm it must be truncated and rounded or it fails. That tears a hole in the belief that physical reality is just math made flesh, as it were.
By the way, that disconnect between π and physical existence might be the ultimate proof that this universe is not the result of intelligent design or a computer simulation. If it was designed, the designer probably would have formulated π to equal something like 3.14, full stop. (Or even 3.1 or 3.0, if the designer was particularly lazy.) On the other hand, if it was a computer simulation using the full computation then the program would get stuck and crash the first time it had to do any calculation regarding a circle. Incidentally, looking back I can say that I developed a version of the simulation theory over 60 years ago when I was in Junior High School. That was when computers were the size of a small house and consisted of ranks of vacuum tubes and switches, programmed by punch cards, and with memory stored on inch-wide reel-to-reel magnetic tape. Even a game as simple as Pong was still 10 years in the future. After thoroughly examining and analyzing that theory I discarded it as unhelpful.
As it happens, this also has implications for other aspects of current scientific thought. I read an article in a science magazine that was commemorating the centennial of the foundations of quantum theory. It stated that everything about that flowed from one basic formula. I don’t pretend to know enough math to understand it, but I did notice that π was one of the symbols within it. And now I know why quantum theory will never be able to completely explain reality; no matter how much they massage it or how fine they divide it they will always face an infinite regression due to that element alone.
It may seem like I am talking about math more than science, but I find that to be one of the other flaws in current science: The faith that reality must be converted to symbols and numbers for any results to be valid. Once again I feel like they are confusing the tool with the conclusion. Mathematicians appear to believe that “pure” math consists of symbols suspended in some immaterial aether. It only gets complicated when one has to convert it into numbers and usable units to deal with the physical world, and therefore the physical world must be made to yield to those beautiful symbols and formulae. Math is precise and perfect except when it is not and they are the arbiters of those decisions, provided by dispatches from their ivory towers.
I do not expect anyone in science or math to be convinced by my layperson observations. I know that will only begin when one of their own finally gets fed up enough to nail 95 Theses to the Large Hadron Collider and start a painful Reformation. I can only encourage that brave soul to do it.
Gort, berenga. (I have adopted this as my signoff. It is the last line from the original classic The Day the Earth Stood Still and not that insipid, illogical “remake.” I interpret it to be Klaatu telling Gort, “We’re done here.”)
The Moorman Files 