Physical Axioms and Attractive Forces

The only answer I could give you wouldn't have anything to do with Meta Science, so I'm afraid it would be off topic in this forum, but I commend you for asking good questions. The difficulty you mentioned (accounting for attraction without recourse to any fundamental attractive mechanism) is indeed one of the objections that people raised back in the 1600's in response to Descartes' assertion that everything could be explained by mechanical repulsion. It was pointed out beginning in the early 1700's that ideas like "Lesage gravity" still rely crucially on the existence of elementary attractive forces. The belief that a Lesage mechanism avoids the need for attractive forces is another of the fundamental misconceptions underlying Meta Science. (By the way, you're quite right to be wary of "dogma".)

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by nonneta</i>
<br />The only answer I could give you wouldn't have anything to do with Meta Science, so I'm afraid it would be off topic in this forum, but I commend you for asking good questions. <hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">

So you <b>do</b> have the explanation (the answer) for how an attractive force works mechanistically, but you cannot divulge the answer because that would be "in violation" of Metascience???

My goodness. You have shown no hesitation to declare that Dr. Van Flandern's thoughts and Metascience are completely wrong and without merit!

A gravitational flux as an explanation for gravity was first proposed by de Duillier and later, independently, by Le Sage (you seem to rely greatly on name dropping), and it does not require the use of attractive force - contrary to your assertion.

However, if you are too terrified to mention the mechanistic answer to how an attractive force works on Metaresearch, you can divulge the answer to me by email.

I wait for your answer.

Gregg Wilson

Gregg,

Both of your reecent posts would be improved if you had not included the taunts. It is a mild form of ad hominum, as these things go, but see if you can leave them out in the future.

nonneta,

You have also used a tone of voice that is less civil than it could have been, skirting the edges of ad homimun as well. Your posts would also be improved by removing them from the draft copy just before you push the button.

Gregg did ask a good question (thank you for mentioning it to him). I'm curious though. I asked more or less the same question earlier and you just let it pass. What is it about the physical mechanisms, the "behind the curtain" explanations, that is off topic here?

Just in case you haven't noticed, physical explanations (to go along with mathematical descriptions) are the entire point of this Website.

LB

Gregg,
One should be avoid attributing false quotes. My message did not contain the phrase '"in violation" of Metascience'. The criterion for suitability for this forum is not agreement with Meta Science, but relavance to Meta Science. Criticism of Meta Science is self-evidently on-topic, whereas explanations of physics that have nothing to do with Meta Science are not.

Your inference as to the character of the answer I mentioned is incorrect and a non-sequitur. (See the reply to Larry below if you're really interested in the answer.) Also, your claim that Lesage gravity functions without elementary attractive forces has been known to be incorrect for centuries. It relies on the existence of cohesive extended objects.

Larry,
There has been nothing inappropriate or uncivil in my messages here. You may perhaps be confusing them with some of the replies that I've received. Disagreeing with someone's ideas does not constitute an ad hominem attack.

Like Gregg, you evidently inferred that the answer I mentioned conformed to the dogma of Meta Science, despite the fact that I specifically said it does not. The ideas of Meta Science are not viable, for reasons that have been discussed here previously (and are, as yet, unchallenged).

But I think we may be able to make some progress by exploring your last comment. You said the entire point of this website is "physical explanations to go along with mathematical descriptions". This encourages me to think that it may be on-topic to ask you to give an example of what you regard as a "physical explanation". Just to warn you in advance, when you give me your example, I'm going to show you that all you have provided is a mathematical description. Then I'll show you that there are really two kinds of mathematical descriptions, those that you label "physical explanations" and those that you don't label "physical explanations". Then we will examine what distinguishes the former from the latter, and we'll find that it is a purely artificial and subjective distinction, based (in your case) on unjustified (and unjustifiable) prejudices, and moreover that your prejudices are irrevocably inconsistent with empirical facts. At that point the discussion will probably need to be moved to a different venue, since we will begin to actually think about physics in a meaningful way, leaving Meta Science far behind.

I now see the error of my ways. Electromagnetic fields can configure some matter, in such a way, as to render it without any attractive qualities whatsoever. Why, and how, they can do this is still a mystery.

Another point I should have mentioned concerns the frequent TVF claim (echoed is Larry's last message) that Meta Science agrees with the mathematical descriptions of the accepted (and empirically successful) scientific theories, and seeks only to supplement those mathematical descriptions with physical explanations. In my previous message I pointed out that Meta Science fails to provide any objective definition of the distinction between mathematical descriptions and physical explanations (as confirmed by the inability of any of its proponents to even propose such a definition), but I neglected to mention that the premise of TVF's claim is incorrect. As we've seen in this thread, Meta Science disagrees drastically with the mathematical descriptions of the empirically successful theories, even in the sub-luminal regime. The closely-related phenomena of aberration and Doppler shift provide just one illustration of this disagreement. Meta Science wants to believe that it agrees with the empirically successful sub-luminal mathematical descriptions, and then simply extrapolates these mathematical descriptions into the super-luminal range, but this cannot be correct, because the successful sub-luminal mathematical descriptions inherently converge on a singularity at v = c, so they are logically un-extrapolatable. This is why, if you wish to propose superluminal conveyance of energy and/or momentum, you cannot avoid completely re-writing all the SUB-luminal laws of physics. But of course, in so doing, you relinquish the empirical viability of those mathematical descriptions. The only conclusion we can reach is that Meta Science is not viable.