Is philosophy relevant to science?

[swansont]

It is also the study of dimensions, forms, and models, including how/if these models apply to the world/cosmos.

One need not use math to understand the progression of dimensions from point (none) to line (one) to plane (two) to volume (three.) Then, if a fourth spatial dimension is proposed, ontology asks what that describes (how it applies) in the real world, since 3-D covers the three axes of volume or space.

If even more dimensions are proposed, the same inquiry applies with each one. If you call them “ degrees of freedom” then what does this freedom mean as regarding dimensions, as above.

 

Geometry (and math in general) is an abstraction, and need not care if it reflects the real world, and nobody has proposed a fourth spatial dimension.

 

 

You don't understand realism. You hide behind the phrase "the laws of physics", assuming that length contraction is one of them. So therefore, earth either changes shape, or we can't know its 'true shape', since there is no such thing as 'true shape' according to the above "laws of physics." No doubt the appearance of things changes with frame of reference. Philosophy (realism in this case) distinguishes between an apparently squished earth (or shortened Au) and an actually, in the real world squished earth or shortened Au. You are not, so far, capable of understanding this fundamental difference.

 

I reject realism because I do understand it. Insulting me doesn't change your options: you can have your notion that shapes and distances are intrinsic. You can have universal laws of physics. But you cannot simultaneously have both. Physics has opted for the laws being the same in all inertial frames, and it has worked out pretty well.

 

I see you omitted "accurate" from "getting data." I taught experimental design, and my "bs detector" just went off. The accurate description of earth comes from an at rest frame with it, not from the near 'c' fly by frame.

 

Again, using accurate implies that any difference comes a measurement effect, and that's simply not the case. We have no data from a near-c flyby, as you well know, so that's a moot point.

 

Of course we can speak of light (photons) as either waves or particles. So far my replies have focused on light, specifically color, as wavelength. It compresses with object/observer relative movement toward each other. The wavelength as emitted is its intrinsic color.

All of that was a variation of the theme “appears vs is” at your insistence... something we can measure... as relief from earth not changing form even if it were to appear changed (squished.)

Nice bait and switch maneuver.

 

Still haven't answered the question: is there a difference you can measure between the two photons?

 

And it's not bait-and-switch. I still want an answer to the above question.

 

 

Not so. I could go with one at a time for simplicity. Do you or do you not think that time travel is possible? Do you or do you not think that "time slows down" as in "dilates?" (That sounds like two, but it is one test of your reification of time.)

 

I've given the equation describing the SR effect on time at least twice, and you have yet to explain to me how it represents reification. I've said multiple times that the so-called reification comes from the use of imprecise language, and your further insistence that figurative descriptions be taken literally. So what's the point of doing it again?

 

I'll pass on bogging this thread down in sorting out your double talk if you refuse to explain it, as I've already challenged.

 

It's very basic logic and the underlying details should be familiar to anyone who claims to have studied relativity. I have explained it at least twice and asked you for details about what is confusing you, so you saying that I refuse to explain it is really nothing but a bald-faced lie.

 

Yup. I live the real world where the shape of cosmic bodies does not morph* with observational frame, and distances between them do not shorten even if they look that way to the high speed fly by guy.

*Oh, btw, if they don’t actually morph, since no force is applied by “length contraction” do they (shapes and distances) just remain unknowable since we rate the accuracy of all possible frames the same?

What was your stance on that again? Last I heard you thought that the distance to the sun did vary between 10 and 93 million miles, and you thought that should be taught in school.

 

You can only be in one frame at a time, so any observer will have one value for a length.

 

You continue to intentionally ignore (misrepresenting my position) that I have often agreed on GPS accuracy as adjustment of rate of clocks ticking at different speeds, not ‘proof of time dilation’. But yet you drag it out yet again.

 

You have also said that why this happens is a mystery. To you.

 

I say that insisting that measurement (observation)* is* reality... is a contemporary form of idealism, with ‘frame of reference' substituting for “subjective” in classical subjective idealism. This does not deny that frame of reference can be an abstract point of view with no actual ‘subject’ present.

As we can see from your Wikipedia quote, having science tell us what reality is is Scientific realism. Length contraction is part of science. How is it that you are insisting that this is idealism?

[owl]

Two quick things:

 

"reality exists independently of observers" is a very different statement from "the shape of the earth is intrinsic, and independent of the frame of the observer". I have never advocated that the existence of anything depends on an observer. What I have said is that what we observe is reality — not an illusion.

 

and

 

"Scientific realism is, at the most general level, the view that the world described by science (perhaps ideal science) is the real world, as it is, independent of what we might take it to be" agrees with me. Science describes the real world. Science as it is, rather than how owl wants it to be.

Another replay required, as you seldom get it the first time:

 

Philosophy (realism in this case) distinguishes between an apparently squished earth (or shortened Au) and an actually, in the real world squished earth or shortened Au.

 

*Oh, btw, if they don’t actually morph, since no force is applied by “length contraction” do they (shapes and distances) just remain unknowable since we rate the accuracy of all possible frames the same?

What was your stance on that again? Last I heard you thought that the distance to the sun did vary between 10 and 93 million miles, and you thought that should be taught in school.

You:

You can only be in one frame at a time, so any observer will have one value for a length.

 

And that explains how the Au varies. The real world has nothing to do with it! As frame of reference varies, the object of observation varies. Idealism.

me:

 

The phrase “perhaps ideal science” above refers, I think, to how close “the world described by science” matches the “reality existing independently of observers” or frames of reference.

 

I say that insisting that measurement (observation)* is* reality... is a contemporary form of idealism, with ‘frame of reference' substituting for “subjective” in classical subjective idealism. This does not deny that frame of reference can be an abstract point of view with no actual ‘subject’ present.

This is the the kind of Q&A I am dealing with here with swansont.

me:

You continue to intentionally ignore (misrepresenting my position) that I have often agreed on GPS accuracy as adjustment of rate of clocks ticking at different speeds, not ‘proof of time dilation’. But yet you drag it out yet again.

you:

You have also said that why this happens is a mystery. To you.

 

'Relativity makes it happen' is no an answer. What about going faster or being in a (edit:, oopse, *stronger*) gravitational field makes clocks slow down? That is the ontological question that physics does not care about. But, being an amateur philosopher of science posting in the philosophy section, I do care about it, and it does remain an unexplained mystery.

 

Making something of time is reification, including saying that "it" (not just a clock) slows down or dilates.

The reciprocal, making something variable out of distance (length contraction) is a similar error of reification which results in the absurd proposition above, that the distance between earth and sun varies from 10 to 93 million miles.

 

Whatever happens to subatomic particles in an accelerator, the IS vs APPEARS (to be flattened )has never been clarified, and there is no evidence that whatever happens there transfers to the macro scale and makes objects flatten or appear flattened or distances extremely contracted. Just to be clear about the "law of physics" known as length contraction.

 

Back to your bait and switch trick question (which you deny as such):

But shouldn't the "intrinsic" color pf the photon be measured in its rest frame? Of course, physics recognizes (via relativity) that there is no rest frame of a photon.

 

I answered your previous questions in terms of wavelength of light emitted from the object vs wavelength of light you see after it is shifted. This satisfied your original challenge to show the difference between observed and intrinsic in a measurable way rather than the usual squished earth and shortened Au, which is clearly absurd though length contraction insists on it.

Now you rephrase the above wavelength challenge, saying that “there is no rest frame for a photon.” Its intrinsic color was as it left the object. Its observed, shifted color had changed by the time you saw it. Good grief, get over it!

 

Again to more of your nonsense:

We are not at rest with respect to it, but we are not moving with respect to it.”

 

“One set of measurements show that I cannot be at rest with respect to it, but another set shows that I am not moving with respect to it.”

 

Not enough sense here to even formulate a question.

Maybe it's the same kind of nonsense as the Schrodinger's cat puzzle.

The cat is *not*, as claimed, both dead and alive until we open the box. It is one or the other, and we don't know which until we open the box.

 

Then it goes to this exchange:

you:

In my frame, the light really is red. In

the object's frame, the light really is green.... Both answers are true.

me:

See * above. “Really?” “In your frame” is how you see it, for sure. But that is not its actual color. As it is emitted is its actual color, “really.”

And the Earth stays spherical too even if it were seen as very squished. Really! Squished and spherical are NOT “both true.”

 

What a bunch of bs.

 

Here is another case of obfuscation:

You:

Physics recognizes that there is no frame of absolute rest, aka a preferred frame.

me:

“Absolute?” Of course we are not talking about your object as the one thing in the cosmos not moving.

 

I never claimed that preferred, as in at rest with what is observed, is a frame of absolute rest. As usual you distort what I am saying.

 

You have none to withhold. Get over it and we can be done with this stultifying thread.

An exception to my longstanding policy of not replying to your always personal attacks:

I used diagnostic categories throughout my professional career but choose not to in this case, having read his original thread claiming to be a time traveler. (If not the same person, my apologies to him/her.)

You can be done with this thread any time you like. Fewer hostile replies could only be an improvement.

PS; edit: My apologies to time Traveler. I mistook him/her for another who had a thread claiming to be an actual time traveler. (Couldn't find the thread, but it was a joke that finally got exposed.)

 

swansont:

What I have said is that what we observe is reality — not an illusion.

I'll make it very simple. If you were able to observe a flattened earth, from a hypothetical very high speed frame, would the earth 'really' be flattened because you observe it to be flattened, make the flattening "not an illusion?"

Would you really teach that the distance to the sun varies from 10 to 93 million miles and make a fool of yourself in all of astronomical science?

What, no direct answer? Of course not, because it is a totally bogus assertion, not "really" based on "the laws of physics" but on some very unfounded assumptions.

Edited January 20, 2012 by owl

[swansont]

'Relativity makes it happen' is no an answer. What about going faster or being in a (edit:, oopse, *stronger*) gravitational field makes clocks slow down? That is the ontological question that physics does not care about. But, being an amateur philosopher of science posting in the philosophy section, I do care about it, and it does remain an unexplained mystery.

 

I seem to recall Cap'n very patiently explaining how the constant speed of light gave rise to length contraction and time dilation. Gravitational effects are more complicated, but the underlying reasoning is the same. That's why these effects happen.

 

Making something of time is reification, including saying that "it" (not just a clock) slows down or dilates.

The reciprocal, making something variable out of distance (length contraction) is a similar error of reification which results in the absurd proposition above, that the distance between earth and sun varies from 10 to 93 million miles.

 

Absurd to you, but I don't really care, especially at this point.

 

Back to your bait and switch trick question (which you deny as such):

 

 

I answered your previous questions in terms of wavelength of light emitted from the object vs wavelength of light you see after it is shifted. This satisfied your original challenge to show the difference between observed and intrinsic in a measurable way rather than the usual squished earth and shortened Au, which is clearly absurd though length contraction insists on it.

Now you rephrase the above wavelength challenge, saying that “there is no rest frame for a photon.” Its intrinsic color was as it left the object. Its observed, shifted color had changed by the time you saw it. Good grief, get over it!

 

And you still haven't answered my question about how I can measure a photon and tell the difference between one that is blue, and one that is "really" green but has been blue-shifted to be blue.

 

Not enough sense here to even formulate a question.

Maybe it's the same kind of nonsense as the Schrodinger's cat puzzle.

The cat is *not*, as claimed, both dead and alive until we open the box. It is one or the other, and we don't know which until we open the box.

 

Wrong again, but there's no way I am going to try and explain this to you. Meanwhile, QM works, too.

 

The bottom line in all this is that your philosophy in incompatible with physics. You can stand on the porch and shake your fist all you want. Physics doesn't really care.

 

 

An exception to my longstanding policy of not replying to your always personal attacks

 

You have called me stupid about nine different ways. You don't get to do that and complain about "personal attacks" by others.

[owl]

A quick pass through. No tags. Ts.

me:

Not enough sense here to even formulate a question.

Maybe it's the same kind of nonsense as the Schrodinger's cat puzzle.

The cat is *not*, as claimed, both dead and alive until we open the box. It is one or the other, and we don't know which until we open the box.

 

swansont, making even less sense to me:

 

Wrong again, but there's no way I am going to try and explain this to you.

 

What part was wrong? The part about how the cat can't be alive and dead at the same time or the part where we can not know until we open the box and examine the cat?

 

Meanwhile, QM works, too.

Huh? I was thinking I'd ask you to make sense of that too... but it really is not worth it, and I, like you, really don't care anymore about this... umm... 'discussion' (to put it blandly) with you.

If you ever get interested in "philosophical" stuff like epistemology, ontology of time, space, spacetime or the transition from euclidean to non-.... as the basis for new models like relativity... or how real is the intrinsic shape of Earth... come back to the philosophy section and visit.

 

Or continue to think that as a physicist among the lowly philosophers, with Caesar over his new subjects, "I came, I saw, I conquered."

Get over your supposed superiority as a "real" physicist.

[Iggy]

An exception to my longstanding policy of not replying to your always personal attacks

Yet my posts that you find insulting are the only ones to which you reply. There is noting insulting in my previous post. It might have been helpful to consider and reply, but it fulfills no censorious and masochistic need to cry before you've been hurt -- so, of course, you didn't.

 

Fewer hostile replies could only be an improvement.

Then you missed my point already. I said the very nice, very non-hostile, and very repetitive explanations are stultifying the thread -- they aren't going to work. Sometimes paying the price of ill-concealed laughter that Sam Harris explains in the following clip is an improvement.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WwG9pDNSAXA

[Cap'n Refsmmat]

What part was wrong? The part about how the cat can't be alive and dead at the same time or the part where we can not know until we open the box and examine the cat?

Your position is falsified by experimental results in quantum mechanics.* The concept that the cat (and other quantum systems) have a definite state, but we merely do not know what that state is, turns out to have testable consequences, and experiments have been performed.

 

swansont didn't want to try to explain this, since it takes roughly three or four years of undergraduate education.

 

I suggest you abstain from criticizing physics you do not understand.

 

* Or, rather, your position is requires other, even more unpleasant assumptions for it to be plausible, and those assumptions have been rejected for quite a long time.

[swansont]

owl,

 

The philosophy you propose gets in the way of doing physics. i.e. not only is it is not necessary, it makes it harder, in a way that runs afoul of Occam's razor, so what the hell good is such a philosophy? You can have your so-called realism, and your smug assurance that what scientists do and why it works is a mystery, and that anyone who disagrees with you simply doesn't understand your position. I simply don't care. You haven't made a single argument that shows me that your philosophy is necessary to doing science. Physics rejected your philosophy more than 100 years ago, and seems to have made quite a bit of progress in the interim. Your arguments belong on the same scrap heap as the creationists', because they have similar footing.

[dimreepr]

The way philosophy is relevant to science is that philosophy set the parameters for science. Now they are two sides of the same coin, but they both have completely different knowledge sets. So when you toss the coin you just get an argument that the other side simply can’t understand and so can’t have, from your perspective, a logical response and so the coin keeps spinning.

 

 

[owl]

Your position is falsified by experimental results in quantum mechanics.* The concept that the cat (and other quantum systems) have a definite state, but we merely do not know what that state is, turns out to have testable consequences, and experiments have been performed.

 

swansont didn't want to try to explain this, since it takes roughly three or four years of undergraduate education.

 

I suggest you abstain from criticizing physics you do not understand.

 

* Or, rather, your position is requires other, even more unpleasant assumptions for it to be plausible, and those assumptions have been rejected for quite a long time.

 

Am I allowed to “philosophize” in the philosophy section on the absurdity of a cat being alive and dead at the same time as a principle of physics describing the real world?

 

I understand Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, for instance, but "uncertainty" is in fact different than claiming two mutually exclusive conditions (both dead and alive) to be simultaneously present.

[Cap'n Refsmmat]

Am I allowed to “philosophize” in the philosophy section on the absurdity of a cat being alive and dead at the same time as a principle of physics describing the real world?

The cat is an example deliberately contrived to be absurd. Macroscopic systems generally don't exhibit quantum superposition.

 

I understand Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, for instance, but "uncertainty" is in fact different than claiming two mutually exclusive conditions (both dead and alive) to be simultaneously present.

Quantum superposition can be observed experimentally in microscopic systems.

 

http://www3.amherst.edu/~jrfriedman/NYTimes/071100sci-quantum-mechanics.html

 

Quantum mechanics is absurd. It is also tremendously useful. There are ways to get around some of its oddities by using different interpretations, but using these new interpretations requires accepting other oddities (such as an event at one location causing an instantaneous change at another location arbitrarily far away).

 

The question of this discussion is not whether QM or relativity is absurd, but whether the philosophical objections are relevant to science. They aren't. They do not stop us from building models which better describe the behavior of the universe.

[owl]

Swansont,

You say,

The philosophy you propose gets in the way of doing physics.

Realism "realizes" that planets do not in fact get closer to and further away from the stars they orbit, even under observation from extreme frames. This does no disservice to doing physics. It simply challenges one of its theories, length contraction, which has never been shown to apply on large scale. Even in the accelerator the possible difference between particles appearing flattened vs actually being flattened could be clarified by ontological consideration.

 

You haven't made a single argument that shows me that your philosophy is necessary to doing science.

 

Philosophy of science examines the meaning of its propositions and theories as to how well they describe the real world. When length contraction insists that there is no "true shape" of cosmic bodies or "actual distance" between them, it is the job of philosophy to become a reality check.

 

If you were actually willing to teach wanna-be scientists that the earth-sun distance (or earth's shape) varies as per length contraction as a result of differences in observational frame, an ontological review is very much in order.

 

Same with assumptions about time. "What is it that 'dilates'? is a fair question, a philosophy of science question. If it is just clocks slowing down, more precise language would make science more clear and 'honest' by dumping the reification that "makes something of it." Likewise it would put the lie to "time travel"... back to science fiction where it belongs.

 

And the reason that there is an ongoing ontological debate (not just me) about "spacetime" is that it needs ontological clarification... and "how it works" IS a legitimate inquiry of science.

Bashing me will not make these philosophical issues go away.

[md65536]

Even in the accelerator the possible difference between particles appearing flattened vs actually being flattened could be clarified by ontological consideration.

And here we lead up to the climactic moment where you finally wow and silence your critics by not just showing that it could be clarified, but that it actually is clarified! And you prove the ontological consideration's correctness.

 

(The crowd awaits in utter silence save the sound of anticipatory gasps and unimpressed crickets.)

 

 

[owl]

The cat is an example deliberately contrived to be absurd. Macroscopic systems generally don't exhibit quantum superposition.[/Quote]

....(edit: trouble with quote tags. I'm a tech impaired old fart.)

The question of this discussion is not whether QM or relativity is absurd, but whether the philosophical objections are relevant to science. They aren't. They do not stop us from building models which better describe the behavior of the universe.

 

 

Kenneth Chang, from your link:

In the realm of atoms and smaller particles, objects exist not so much as objects as mists of possibilities of being here or there and everywhere at the same time -- and then someone looks and the possibilities suddenly collapse to definite locations.

 

“In the realm of” is a key designation here. How the subatomic realm transfers to macroscopic is an interesting topic of investigation. One hopes a unified "theory of everything" will eventually put it all together. Meanwhile...

 

But, more to the point, “objects exist as... mists of possibilities”... etc.... is quite the philosophical assumption.

“...and then someone looks” and the possibilities become observed positions.

 

This claims that the act of observing collapses the “wave of probability,” and manifests possibility into reality.

 

These are a lot of philosophical assumptions. They require serious examination. That is my intention here.

Bye... for the weekend.

Edited January 21, 2012 by owl

[D H]

These are a lot of philosophical assumptions. They require serious examination. That is my intention here.

No, they don't. At least not the way you want. Feyman was right. Philosophy has turned into a joke.

[md65536]

No, they don't. At least not the way you want. Feyman was right. Philosophy has turned into a joke.

 

I don't think it's fair to treat this thread or its participants, or even their references, as representative of philosophy.

At the very least, Feynman hadn't even the chance to read any of this supporting evidence when he declared that philosophy is bullshit.

[swansont]

Bashing me will not make these philosophical issues go away.

 

The philosophical issues you raise are of no apparent consequence to science. Given that more than 100 years have passed without addressing them, I'd say the empirical data are on my side. Go ahead and show me the science that has failed because of the refusal to address ontology. I've asked this numerous times before, but you have yet to take me up on the offer. I think we all know why.

[PeterJ]

I don't think it's fair to treat this thread or its participants, or even their references, as representative of philosophy.

Yes, well said. Not much real philosophy going on here.

 

But I would agree with Swansont that professional philosophy is a century behind the times, possibly longer, and it's not surprising that physcists despair of its ever catching up. The problem is not philosophy, however, but philosophers. As a member of a professional philosophy forum I read most of the discussions with horror and amazement. I feel that any progress is likely to come from outside the profession. This is why I think physicists, and all of us as individuals, should take an interest, and not just leave it to the people who have been failing so spectacularly for so long.

 

I have never seen one proposal by a philosopher in the European academic tradition that might account for the weirdness of QM, SR etc. After a century of thought there is not even one. It's ridiculous. But this does not mean there is any problem with philosophy as an area of research and study. I can't undertand the Zeta function but that doesn't mean mathematics is pointless.

Edited January 22, 2012 by PeterJ

[D H]

I don't think it's fair to treat this thread or its participants, or even their references, as representative of philosophy.

I realize that the participants in this thread are anything but representative of philosophy. At least that is my hope.

 

What we have in this thread (24 wasted pages) are some who argue for an Aristotelian kind of realism, others who tell us not to ignore the wonders of solipsism, and yet others who talk about who knows what. Some of the ramblings in this thread are quite remarkable.

 

Perhaps a brief history of physics is in order.

• Galileo: Aristotle was wrong.
  
• Newton: Aristotle was very, very wrong.
  
• Einstein: Newton was only correct in a very narrow domain. The universe is quite weird outside of that narrow domain.
  
• Schrödinger: The universe is even weirder than Einstein imagined.
  
• Bell: Much, much weirder.
  
• Mermin: "Shut up and calculate."

[owl]

Back to basic philosophy of science.

I repeat:

"When length contraction insists that there is no 'true shape' of cosmic bodies or 'actual distance' between them, it is the job of philosophy to become a reality check."

 

Different frames of reference do not in fact make earth change shape or move closer to sun. Address that, and then we can discuss whether the act of observing turns "objects as mists of possibilities" into well defined an located things. as per:

objects exist not so much as objects as mists of possibilities of being here or there and everywhere at the same time -- and then someone looks and the possibilities suddenly collapse to definite locations.

 

... "and then someone looks" and possibilities become realities.

"And then someone looks" at the earth and its distance from the sun flying by very fast and, behold, earth IS flattened and only 10 or 15 million miles from the sun!

 

The reality of the solar system and its bodies change as how we look at them changes!

And this is not a form of idealism? Is anyone here philosopher enough to see this point?

 

The philosophical issues you raise are of no apparent consequence to science. Given that more than 100 years have passed without addressing them, I'd say the empirical data are on my side. Go ahead and show me the science that has failed because of the refusal to address ontology. I've asked this numerous times before, but you have yet to take me up on the offer. I think we all know why.

 

The science insisting that ‘flattened’ spherical bodies (sun, planets, etc.) are really flattened when we see them that way... that “science” has failed. I was not avoiding your challenge. You just didn’t hear my answers... not ‘framed’ right for you.

[Cap'n Refsmmat]

The science insisting that ‘flattened’ spherical bodies (sun, planets, etc.) are really flattened when we see them that way... that “science” has failed. I was not avoiding your challenge. You just didn’t hear my answers... not ‘framed’ right for you.

How has it failed? It has passed every experimental test offered. It only fails when tested against your assumptions about the nature of reality.

[D H]

Back to basic philosophy of science.

Back to? You've never been there. This thread is about your Aristotelian (not even Newtonian!) view of the universe versus modern science.

 

I haven't the foggiest why you are ranting and railing against relativity. Relativity is at its core a realistic theory, but obviously not a naive Aristotelian realistic theory. That boat sailed 400+ years ago. What you should be ranting and railing against is the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics, which is at its core a logical positivistic theory.

[owl]

How has it failed? It has passed every experimental test offered. It only fails when tested against your assumptions about the nature of reality.

 

My assumptions? Do you mean "assumptions" like, “the earth is almost spherical, not flattened... not a very oblate spheroid... just trivially oblate ?”

We are way past "assumptions" about the shape of earth and distance to the sun. That has been well known for a long time. Relativity can not change that.

[Cap'n Refsmmat]

My assumptions? Do you mean "assumptions" like, “the earth is almost spherical, not flattened... not a very oblate spheroid... just trivially oblate ?”

We are way past "assumptions" about the shape of earth and distance to the sun. That has been well known for a long time. Relativity can not change that.

Relativity predicts that we'd know Earth to be very nearly spherical, so no, relativity does not fail when tested against that assumption. I mean assumptions like "three-dimensional shape is an intrinsic property of objects".

[swansont]

Back to basic philosophy of science.

I repeat:

"When length contraction insists that there is no 'true shape' of cosmic bodies or 'actual distance' between them, it is the job of philosophy to become a reality check."

 

Different frames of reference do not in fact make earth change shape or move closer to sun.

And you "know" this without ever having checked that it is true.

 

By insisting that it is true, you demand that there is no such thing as a universal law of physics.

[owl]

And you "know" this without ever having checked that it is true.

 

By insisting that it is true, you demand that there is no such thing as a universal law of physics.

 

“Checked” with which authority? All these years of very good earth science and astronomy have compiled a very reliable estimate of the precise shape of earth and average distance to the sun.

I only “demand” that what we (science) already knows about earth and our solar system not be discarded for an idealist-based theory with no confirming evidence... the flattened earth and contracted Au via extreme frames of observation, etc.

 

Relativity predicts that we'd know Earth to be very nearly spherical, so no, relativity does not fail when tested against that assumption. I mean assumptions like "three-dimensional shape is an intrinsic property of objects".

You've told me many times that a flattened earth is just as valid as a nearly spherical earth, depending on who is looking from where and and at what velocity. Also you seem to deny that earth has a "true shape." If I'm wrong about that, please explain how.

 

About your last statement:

Three dimensions (axes) describe 3-D objects. Is that an "assumption" or a fact? I know of no 4-D objects. We can add the time factor, but that is not another spatial dimension. And Minkowski's 4-D "spacetime" is quite another subject.