Philosophy Wire: Encryption, information, paradoxes and the ESSENCE of scientific theories.

Philosophy Wire by Spiros Kakos [2014-05-03]: Einstein's skepticism about quantum mechanics may lead to an ultra-secure Internet, suggests a new paper by researchers from Swinburne University of Technology and Peking University. EPR phenomenon could be the basis for ultra-secure encryption algorithms. [1] Theories which work in practice due to the objections of their validity. Truth, reality, theories, science. Random irrelevant words. Everything works and yet nothing is valid. We all live and yet no science is correct. In a world where theories change, the only thing constant is life. Life with no analysis. Life with no thinking at all. Full of Being.

(c) Philosophy WIRES - Commenting world news from philosophy's perspective…

Philosophy Wire: First animals, oxygen, assumptions...

Philosophy Wire by Spiros Kakos [2014-04-16]: It seems that first animals oxygenated our planet, instead of our planet helping first animals to grow due to its oxygen. [1] Pairs of past events, can be interchangeable regarding cause-and-effect. And now that I think better of it, everything is interchangeable regarding cause-and-effect. It is assumptions (like the direction of the arrow of time) that determine the undetermined. Never forget that...

(c) Philosophy WIRES - Commenting world news from philosophy's perspective…

Philosophy Wire: Planet X, evidence, theories, science.

Philosophy Wire by Spiros Kakos [2014-04-14]: Hypothesized planet X (it seems that it) does not exist after all. [1] Evidence provide clues for hypotheses. Hypotheses provide evidence for theories. Theories help us "find" new evidence. An endless quest for "Planets X" is the basis of science... May we never find it...

(c) Philosophy WIRES - Commenting world news from philosophy's perspective…

Philosophy Wire: The big Bounce!

Philosophy Wire by Spiros Kakos [2013-11-20]: Did the universe came to be via expansion, via compression or via... "bouncing"? [1] No matter what the theory is, we must always remember that it will always be an attempt to explain. And an explanation can never be verified or falsified. An explanation does not predict... But doesn't science predict? Yes, this is irrelevant. But now that I think of it... When the prediction fails, what does science do? It... "explains"! Restrictive? Or immensely liberating?

(c) Philosophy WIRES - Commenting world news from philosophy's perspective…

Philosophy Wire: Crazy science... Is there a limit?

Philosophy Wire by Spiros Kakos [2013-10-11]: Our universe was made by a dying star… [1] How much weird can scientific theories be before we call them nutcases? Why do we call other similar theories as "crazy" only because they are not said by "scientists"? What is a scientist anyway?

(c) Philosophy WIRES - Commenting world news from philosophy's perspective…

Philosophy Wire: Black holes! Everywhere!

Help translate the Harmonia Philosophica book in 6 new languages and get valuable perks in return! Support the Indiegogo project now!

Philosophy Wire by Spiros Kakos [2013-08-17]: Dozens of black holes are believed to exist in the Andromeda galaxy. [1] When you start believing something, then you literally see it everywhere! (I just want to see the faces of the people when current physics theories change and black holes suddently "disappear" from the cosmos)

(c) Philosophy WIRES - Commenting world news from philosophy's perspective…

Philosophy Wire: Two moons, three moons, four moons...

Help translate the Harmonia Philosophica book in 6 new languages and get valuable perks in return! Support the Indiegogo project now!

Philosophy Wire by Spiros Kakos [2013-07-28]:


Our planet once had two moons.
At least this is what some scientists believe based on the evidence. [1]
One moon, two moons, many moons.
What kind of theory could NOT be supported by evidence?


(c) Philosophy WIRES - Commenting world news from philosophy's perspective…

Philosophy Wire: Black holes and how thinking about the observed precedes the observation…

Philosophy Wire by Spiros Kakos [2013-05-04]: Scientists concluded that the birth of a black hole generates a powerful flash, that could allow us to observe it. [source: science news] A great “secret” of science that few (if any) think of: the thinking about the observed PRECEDES the observation! Only if you think of something can toy “observe” it. And vice versa: if you have not think of something, there is no way of “seeing” it…

 

Related article: Detecting nuclear explosions, “detecting” nuclear explosions…

(c) Philosophy WIRES - Commenting world news from philosophy's perspective...

Philosophy Wire: Termites, fairies, theories...

Philosophy Wire by Spiros Kakos [2013-03-30]: Termites, not fairies, cause plant circles in African deserts after all. [source: Science News] But what is the difference? If we think again, we will see that in any case a small creature with more than 4 limbs and the ability to breath in the Earth's atmosphere was indeed the cause of the weird formations. How much do we need to call a theory "false" and a new one "correct"?

(c) Philosophy WIRES - Commenting world news from philosophy's perspective...

Philosophy Wire: Science, knowledge, castles on the sand…

Philosophy Wire by Spiros Kakos [2013-03-25]: Two forthcoming European Physical Journal D papers challenge established wisdom about the nature of vacuum. In one paper, Marcel Urban from the University of Paris-Sud, located in Orsay, France and his colleagues identified a quantum level mechanism for interpreting vacuum as being filled with pairs of virtual particles with fluctuating energy values. As a result, the inherent characteristics of vacuum, like the speed of light, may not be a constant after all, but fluctuate. [source: Science News] Fluctuating spped of light. Fluctuating theories. Fluctuating knowledge. Building castles on the sand…

(c) Philosophy WIRES - Commenting world news from philosophy's perspective...

Philosophy Wire: Neanderthals, big eyes, stupid brain...?!

Philosophy Wire by Spiros Kakos [2013-03-13]:

A study of Neanderthal skulls suggests that they became extinct because they had larger eyes than our species. As a result, more of their brains were devoted to seeing in the long, dark nights in Europe, at the expense of high-level processing. [source: BBC News]

If you ask me, this is an over-simplyfied analysis. Bigger eyes => more processing of visual images => less processing power left for other thinking? Wow! Who 5-year-old kindergardeen student came up with this "high level thinking" argument? Simplification, serial way of thinking, analogies: the guarranteed way for failure in science.

(c) Philosophy WIRES - Commenting world news from philosophy's perspective...

Philosophy Wire: Babies, assumptions, assumptions, assumptions…

Philosophy Wire by Spiros Kakos [2013-02-26]: Scientists believe that babies can discriminate between syllables while still in the womb, by studying babies outside the womb! [source: BBC News] The story of Science: assumptions, assumptions, assumptions… A necessary evil if we wish to examine the cosmos with the great tool called "science"... And it is to the credit of these scientists the fact that they announced openly their assumptions. Good science can only be made on the basis of honesty.

(c) Philosophy WIRES - Commenting world news from philosophy's perspective...

Philosophy Wire: Protons, bricks, new bricks…

Philosophy Wire by Spiros Kakos [2013-01-29]: A puzzle at the heart of the atom refuses to go away. The most precise measurement yet of the proton's radius confirms that it sometimes seems smaller than the laws of physics demand – an issue that has been hotly debated for two years. [source: 1, 2] A carefully founded building collapses when you remove even one brick. In this case of course the solution is known: we just invent new bricks to fill in the gap…

(c) Philosophy WIRES - Commenting world news from philosophy's perspective...

Philosophy Wire: Medicine, Mess, Fuss!

Philosophy Wire by Spiros Kakos [2013-01-15]: A mess is prevailing in medicine. A new research shows that free radicals – substances which are often accused of being responsible for making us older or even cause heart problems and cancer – are potentially beneficial for the human organism and that the anti-oxidants (which are often considered an beneficial for anti-aging or even for optimism! see here) may be actually harmful. [source: web news] As I said in the article “Cancer – The chance for a paradigm shift in medicine?” as well, there are many things to learn for human life. And the mess in medicine theories lately, a cause for questioning too basic principles, can only be a good thing…

(c) Philosophy WIRES - Commenting world news from philosophy's perspective...

Philosophy Wire: What IS a particle? A surprisingly difficult (and immaterial) question…

Philosophy Wire by Spiros Kakos [2012-12-27]: In modern physics a particle is an elementary piece of mass. But scientists do not know what mass is and only now they are starting to formulate theories about its true nature (see the Higgs boson for example). So again: a particle is an elementary… something which we do not know what it is exactly. And this… thing is the basis for our physics theories today. Materialists believe that everything is matter. But what is matter? The sum of various particles so vigorously studied by CERN? But again, the definition is not perfect. What is a particle for example? Energy? Wave? A wavefunction collapsing with conscious observation?

As Planck has said...

"As a man who has devoted his whole life to the most clear headed science, to the study of matter, I can tell you as a result of my research about atoms this much: There is no matter as such. All matter originates and exists only by virtue of a force which brings the particle of an atom to vibration and holds this most minute solar system of the atom together. We must assume behind this force the existence of a conscious and intelligent mind. This mind is the matrix of all matter." [Max Planck, Das Wesen der Materie (The Nature of Matter), speech at Florence, Italy (1944) (from Archiv zur Geschichte der Max-Planck-Gesellschaft, Abt. Va, Rep. 11 Planck, Nr. 1797)]

Matter in today's science is more immaterial than the most pure spirit...

Scary, isn’t it? Or extremely liberating?

After all it was Bohr who said "Isolated material particles are abstractions, their properties being definable and observable only through their interaction with other systems.[...] We must be clear that when it comes to atoms, language can be used only as in poetry"...

And it was Werner Heisenberg who said "I think that modern physics has definitely decided in favor of Plato. In fact the smallest units of matter are not physical objects in the ordinary sense; they are forms, ideas which can be expressed unambiguously only in mathematical language"...

(c) Philosophy WIRES - Commenting world news from philosophy's perspective...

300, 400, 500 light years? Who cares?!? If you are an astronomer everything goes… (or why Astronomy = Astrology)

Philosophy Wire by Spiros Kakos [2012-12-03]: New measurements of the Polar Star have revealed that the distance of the star from Earth is 323 light years, instead of 434 light years which was the last measurement known. [source: web news] Astronomy is the only science where measurements can change so drastically without anyone saying anything. What would your professor tell you if you had made a… “small” mistake of 100 light years in a distance measurement? Hahahaha!!! (Gr. Χαχαχαχαχα!!) And let’s not forget the infamous “discovery” that the visible matter which all astronomers thought was the total mass of the Universe, is only 5% of the total mass of the Universe (call me “Dark Energy” and “Dark Matter”). Small mistake. Just a 95% difference isn’t that important anyway! AHAHAHAHA!!!! And they accuse astrologists for inaccuracies… I just hope the next measurement of the distance of Polar Star is not 212 light years… But even if it is, who will dare question the modern priests of stupidity?

PS. Shestov has talked nice about astrologists, revealing the nudity of astronomers. There are relevant posts… Actually astrology is not equal (as the title implies) but much more noble than astronomy in many aspects.

(c) Philosophy WIRES - Commenting world news from philosophy's perspective...

Philosophy Wire: Neutrinos faster than light => New physics required

Philosophy Wire by Spiros Kakos [2011-11-18]: Neutrinos at CERN are still “insisting” on travelling faster than light, in the infamous OPERA experiment which was repeated once more [source: web news]. On the drawing board again then. All modern physics is based on the axiom that the speed of light is the ultimate barrier. Now everything has to change. And all those “scientist-lovers” who were celebrating the agreement of experimental data with the Theory of Relativity are reminded (the hard way) that modern exact science is nothing more than models. And models change all the time… (that is, if time exists since travelling faster than light means that you go back in time and if you go back in the past that means that the past has not passed… but that is another story for “future” posts)

(c) Philosophy WIRES - Commenting world news from philosophy's perspective...

Philosophy Wire: Brain neurons change and are unique. So what makes us… us?

Philosophy Wire by Spiros Kakos [2011-11-01]: Scientists found out (in yet another study – see also this Philosophy Wire and here) that the DNA of brain neurons changes constantly and thus results in every neuron being actually unique [source: web news]. If our brain cells change, then what makes us who we are? What constitutes our… “self” if we are composed only of matter and this matter changes second by second? The old materialistic model is by far surpassed by the data and new holistic theories will come into place…

(c) Philosophy WIRES - Commenting world news from philosophy's perspective...

Philosophy Wire: Particles, Light and the self-censorship of “current theory”…

Philosophy Wire by Spiros Kakos [2011-10-30]: Scientists who announced that sub-atomic particles might be able to travel faster than light (see Opera experiment) are to rerun their experiment in a different way, in order to verify the findings [source: BBC News]. Other scientists claimed that some kind of systematic error must exist in the experiment and the new trials will try to answer those claims. Verifying experimental results is good. However one must be aware of the other side of the coin: holding your self attached to the current established theory, makes you too reluctant to any new experimental result that could refute that theory. And this could be a good thing again (asking for objective data is the foundation of exact science after all – at least for the things that are in the scope of exact science see Religion and Science unification - Towards religional science), if that happened in a non dogmatic way. However calling any experiment that threatens your theory as “wrong” is near that thin line where dogmatism lies. And scientists should be very careful when treading near that line…

(c) Philosophy WIRES - Commenting world news from philosophy's perspective...

Philosophy Wire: The solution of anti-matter mystery and the stupidity of tautology

Philosophy Wire by Spiros Kakos [2011-07-02]: Scientists from the Tevatron accelerator claim that preliminary results show a possible explanation of the great mystery of why matter is much more than anti-matter in our Universe [source: BBC News]. When protons and anti-protons collide, new particles are formed which start decaying. Scientists claim they have found that some matter particles decay faster than other anti-matter ones. But what is that? Is that an explanation? Or merely a tautology? When you do not know why matter is more than anti-matter, is the claim “some matter particles decay slower than their anti-matter counterparts” a scientific explanation? Or do we just push back the problem to the previous step? If we ask “why is A > B”, is the claim “because A = C and C is greater than B” and explanation, or do we need to justify why C is greater than A also? Wittgenstein thought all mathematics is a mere tautology. What we learn today is that this may be applied to physics as well…

(c) Philosophy WIRES - Commenting world news from philosophy's perspective...