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Physics = Religion?
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by SuicidopoliS
on 2006-10-31 14:09:00 (edited 2006-10-31 17:33:44)
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About a year ago, there was a Solvay Conference over here in Brussels, Belgium. At the end of that conference, they organised a public event which consisted of 2 lectures, one by Robbert Dijkgraaf, and one by Brian Greene. After that, there was some kind of Q&A session. Before the event took place, for about a month or so, you could send in a question on the website of the event, and the panel of scientist attending that public event ( amongst others, together with the 2 earlier mentionned guys, were also present: Lisa Randall, David Gross, Gerard van 't Hooft,... and i forgot one more i think, a french man ) would go trough them, and pick the ones they like most. I was very happy to be informed that they picked my question too. Only, i was extremely dissapointed when i got my answer... because in fact, they didn't answer my question. For the simple reason that they misinterpreted it. My question was this: do you think that Physics, as we get to know more and more about the inner smallest particles of nature, might become something like a religion to some people? They said something in the lines of: "no, because Jack in the street doesn't know enough about Physics to be bothered about it, so it'll never have an appeal big enough to become something like a religion". ... *sigh* Yups, thank you, i knew that one already, and that wasn't what i meant. I didn't mean: " will Physics become tommorow's new Catholicism? ". And it kind of hurt me to hear that answer, as i was really thrilled to hear an answer to my question coming from such geniouses. The only one to give a proper answer was Dijkgraaf who said something in the lines of ( sorry, it's already a year ago, i can't remember it all word by word! ):"people always say that the more we know about science, the more the splender and magic of nature gets lost because we 'solve' all those mysteries; while in fact, the more we get to know about it, the more beautiful it gets.". Thank you Mr. Dijkgraaf, you saved my day by gracing me with an intelligent answer! But anyway, i might as well start the debate over here... Once more: i don't mean to ask if one day people will build temples and churches to venerate Physics. I mean "religion" in a much broader way; something spiritual and philosophical that might guide you in a certain way through life. One of the things that attract me so much in Physics is that, in my humble opinion, it unites 3 of the most important things in ( my ) life: science, philosophy and art ( yups, even art people... ), and it does that in a way that no other science even comes close to. So what do you think? EDIT: i forgot to add something. My point is also that, with string theory and stuff working in an über amount of dimensions and getting harder and harder to picture etc., things are tending to get more exotic/mystic again. I mean, for centuries we used to 'solve' problems, and at a certain point, it even seemed like Physics was... all done. And then Einstein came along, and turned the entire Physics World upside down ( thank you Mr. Einstein ), and everything got more mysterious again, and so many questions started to arise. And nowadays, we only seem to get more and more questions, and less and less answers, and we can even begin to question whether or not we überhaupt can found an answer to some of the actual problems... .oO° Life's THE CURE, the rest are details! °Oo. |
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Re: Physics = Religion?
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You should really read "Angels and Demons" by Dan Brown (if you havent read it). It may intrest you and its quite interesting (yes, it relates to this topic).
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Re: Physics = Religion?
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by
on 2006-10-31 17:29:01 (edited 2006-10-31 17:35:20)
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when i saw the title i was about to move this thread to the "other" topic! luckily, i stopped to read it first, and found intelligent conversation! (a scarcity on these forums). you are very lucky to have been able to go to a Solvay Conference!!! i am jealous! if you had addressed the question to me, as you explained its more broad meaning, i would answer this: to many of those who study it, physics is like a religion in that it is a means to be spiritual. to understand what i mean, try a little experiment: view this video while listening to this song (sorry, i'm too lazy to mux them). tell me that was not a spiritual experience! (well, maybe not. im sure its different for everyone). about string theory: imagining the 10th dimension is something you can learn easily after a 10 minute flash video. understanding the complex mathematics is the tricky part! you know, it was known that there was a great paradoxes with using Galilean Transformations in conjunction with the Maxwell equations way before Einstein pointed out that the speed of light (being a universal constant) remains constant in all reference frames. Also, Einstein may have used Lorentz Transformations to prove his point, but he didn't even make those up, Hendrik did! ...nowadays, we only seem to get more and more questions, and less and less answers... I would argue this is completely false. On the surface, looking at history, we see classical ideas called into question. The fact of the matter is, we get MORE out of our answers when they are MORE correct. In physics (unlike in religion), there is a constant measurable forward progression. Paradoxes may be invisible, or ignored, but once they are brought into question, and resolved, we have MORE answers in the book and LESS questions left. 
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Re: Physics = Religion?
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Hmmm... "do you think that Physics, as we get to know more and more about the inner smallest particles of nature, might become something like a religion to some people?" Well... In my opinion, it won't become "something like a religion" until we know everything about physics. A religion is set of rules to live by, and one can't make a full set of rules without fully knowing the subject. But once we master physics, we will know everything about the universe and its inner workings. When that day comes, we will know exactly how to live our lives. I suppose that would be the day when physics becomes a religion. Of course, I'm just a humble observer. My opinion is my own. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Clue: "I think the 2nd Inuyasha movie had the best music..."
Wise Man says: "Take a dog off its leash and it will wander."
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Re: Physics = Religion?
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by
on 2006-10-31 23:53:17 (edited 2006-11-06 18:05:05)
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Virtual Dub to the rescue! Direct download through FileFront. |
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Re: Physics = Religion?
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by
on 2006-11-01 01:55:35 |
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very nice psoplayer, thanks!
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Re: Physics = Religion?
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by SuicidopoliS
on 2006-11-01 04:32:50
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"to many of those who study it, physics is like a religion in that it is a means to be spiritual." I'm the living proof of that one :) "In my opinion, it won't become "something like a religion" until we know everything about physics. A religion is set of rules to live by, and one can't make a full set of rules without fully knowing the subject." I don't agree at all with this. First of all, we will NEVER EVER know EVERYTHING about nature/Physics ( in fact, we don't know anything about it, we merely attempt to describe it), and second, i also don't agree that "religion is a set of rules to live by". I believe that to be a ( very important, indeed ) side-product of many religions, but the first objective of any real major religion we know has been to explain certain phenomenae which exceeded our comprehension at the time they ( the religions, that is... ) were created. In the end, that's one of the main reasons Chatolicism didn't like science to grow so fast; because people were loosing faith in God as Science started to answer, in a much more accurate way, things that were adressed by religion first. You know, the famous "We just don't need God anymore." state of mind. As Gendou said:"In physics (unlike in religion), there is a constant measurable forward progression.". Some religions just kind of... grew old because they didn't progress. It's a pitty the Bible is such a timeless book, only nobody understood it, and the way it was/is preached just doesn't do the trick. I don't believe the Bible was ever meant to be taken literally, but hey, that's just my humble opinion, and i'm starting to get off topic... Up until Einstein, Physics were pretty straightforward ( and i don't mean easy by that, but just... direct descriptions of things we could see and measure ). You could, if you tried hard enough, understand and picture everything. And then Einstein came along, and, maybe unwillingly, started out this whole revolution, which ended up with Quantum Physics, which are completely not-understandable. We can work with it, we can predict with it, but we just bloody freakin' hell can never get it. And i'd like to quote Feynman on this one: "I think it is safe to say that no one understands quantum mechanics." And also: "What I am going to tell you about is what we teach our physics students in the third or fourth year of graduate school... It is my task to convince you not to turn away because you don't understand it. You see my physics students don't understand it. ... That is because I don't understand it. Nobody does." And yes, indeed, there are ways to picture 10 and more dimensions by working with curled dimensions and stuff... but the thing that always strike me with those representations is that, no matter how hard we try not to, we always end up refering to our 3D view... We just can not picture more then 3 ( geometrical ) dimensions at the same time. And this is the part where, as Quantum Physics and String Theory are, in a certain way, not completely understandable, no matter how hard we try, we kindda get back to the start of religion: explaining facts we can't explain... .oO° Life's THE CURE, the rest are details! °Oo. |
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Re: Physics = Religion?
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by
on 2006-11-01 10:27:56 (edited 2006-11-01 10:32:06)
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Thank you, Suicidopolis, for your entertaining reply! Did you watch the video psoplayer posted? explaining facts we can't explain What makes it hard to be a physicist is you have to stop thinking like a human. You have to think in such general terms that, the happenstance that you breath air and live on a giant water-covered spheroid, and that you see only a small sliver of the electromagnetic spectrum, all become irrelevant to the underlying laws of nature. Not everybody can do this. Take, for example, the amateur relativity enthusiast. If you have ever met one, you know what I mean by "enthusiast". They love the science-fiction like properties of General Relativity. They can't get enough of the stuff! So, at a party (can you tell this happened to me on a number of occasions?), they ask you to explain, say, time dilation. You do your best, without spilling your drink, to enact two reference frames moving at different velocities relative one another. You gloss over the math and hope he/she knows what you mean by "classical mechanics", and who Isaac Newton is. But, ultimately, we can't explain it all (like Clarissa) in such a short time. Humans have that problem. I wish I was a robot.
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Re: Physics = Religion?
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on 2006-11-01 18:56:51 |
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While I've had the "pleasure" of having an "enthusiast" ask me something like that I have had to try and explain the dimensions up through 8 on many an occasion. Once you gat past 5 you start losing people. It's not unlike your cryptography challenge I'm sure everyone and their little brother could do the stuff in that if it was base 10, but once you start moving people out of what they are used to it becomes increasingly harder for them to fully grasp what it is that's going on. Religions do "grow old," but they also "split young." This leads to more and more seperations of religions and discontinuity between all of them, much like a buffet line people only like to pick what they want and go back to their tables with their friends. Science on the other hand, is proven, and is more of ice cream parlor; it has many differnet flavors of essentially the same stuff and while you can choose what flavor you can get you're still getting about the same thing. If I liked you before Gendou, I like you even more so now. You're the first person that I've ever met that admits to having heard of Clarissa explains it all. |
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Re: Physics = Religion?
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by SuicidopoliS
on 2006-11-07 12:10:40
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@Gendou: yes, i have seen the video, but honestly, it didn't quite do the trick for me... Even though i did like the video, i'm not particularly fond of the music ;) To me it sounds fun, but not quite... err... 'religious experience oriented'. I prefer Keith Jarrett when it comes to "music with that little extra"! Especially his Sun Bear Concerts... @D-Ninja: "Science on the other hand, is proven, and is more of ice cream parlor; it has many differnet flavors of essentially the same stuff and while you can choose what flavor you can get you're still getting about the same thing." Well, i must disagree with you! Are you pretending chemistry is basically the same thing as physics, which in return is basically the same thing as biology? Even though different elements of different sciences do pop up in other sciences, they are all fundamentaly different, for they study different topics! Or , if they do study the same subject, they study it in a different way. .oO° Life's THE CURE, the rest are details! °Oo. |
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Re: Physics = Religion?
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who's god? 
you know, this site is like myspace with anime so it should be 'animespace' |
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Re: Physics = Religion?
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on 2006-11-07 13:18:45 |
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Hence the different flavors. All science studies the universe, albeit in different aspects of it. Ice cream (unless you get that soy stuff) is made of frozen water and milk, hambergers are made of meet and bread. They're not the same. Vanilla and Chocholate are the same except that there are bits added to it to better suit the wants of the end consumer. They have the same fundamental parts. Biology studies life and the process that make it up, relgion studies very little and proclaims a lot. They are not the same. Biology and chemestry are the same except one narrows the feild to biological compunds while the other studies all of them. "Or , if they do study the same subject, they study it in a different way."- chocholate chip cookie dough and brownie dough ice cream. Same idea different aplication. "Even though different elements of different sciences do pop up in other sciences, they are all fundamentaly different, for they study different topics!"- Chocholate and vanilla. Ask any person that likes only chocholate or only vanilla and they will tell you that chocholate and vanilla could be no farther apart (i.e. fundamentally different) when in all reality only four ingredients make a difference. All sciences are bound by the same ideological processes. If I study physics I will use the same rationale as someone studing biology. If you still doubt me then why are there so many "cross-over" sciences like bio-mechanics. |
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Re: Physics = Religion?
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by
on 2006-11-07 13:27:44 (edited 2006-11-07 13:28:01)
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i want cookies and ice-cream!
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