MDO asserts:
<<And - it turns out he was right! Although for the wrong reasons.
<<<So when between Lamark wrote and recent discoveries of environmental changes
that are inherited (and a mechanism), was Science True?
I do appreciate that an assertion that a scientific truth is 100% true for all
time is typical human hubris and almost always wrong. Lamarck was still 99.7%
wrong.
There can be some acquired inherited characteristics via epigenetic mechanisms
such as DNA methylation and histone modification but that is a tiny tiny
fraction of inheritance and
it would be misleading to think Lamarck has been vindicated. It is curious but
correct that a famine occurring in a grandparents time can affect the metabolic
state of a grandchild.
<<That both arise from some as yet unknown "reality" would explain their tight
<<<relationship, for example
It is indeed remarkable how math is so nearly perfectly the language of
physical processes. To quote Uncle Albert,
"Here arises a puzzle that has disturbed scientists of all periods. How can it
be that mathematics, being after all a product of human thought which is
independent of experience, is so admirably appropriate to the objects of
reality? Is human reason, then, without experience, merely by taking thought,
able to fathom the properties of real things?"
Einstein was a confirmed realist in that an objective physical world exists
independent of our observations and that reality is the real business of
physics.
His field equations have stood the test of time and accurately describe reality
as we know it but there are conditions that conflict with QM. Some of the math
required obscure procedures unknown to physics and some had to be constructed
with collaborators. (Tensor calculus)
The world of quantum mechanics is not like that at all. Bohr often sounded like
an idealist purporting that physical properties only become real when measured.
It appears reality itself is altered by the act of observation. This is
clearly the case on the quantum level for many systems. It can be summarized
as : don't look, wave; look, particle.
I won't repeat summarizing the classic double slit experiment here again. None
of this bothered Bohr who was an architect of the "Copenhagen interpretation",
which can be summarized as "shut up and calculate." QM was a means to predict
the results of observations and might not represent the reality lurking behind
those observations. This state of affairs did not sit well with Einstein and
led to the EPR paradox (Einstein, Podolsky, Rosen) paper arguing QM must be
incomplete as led to contradictions and non-locality with entangled particles.
Perhaps hidden variables explain entanglement? This possibility remained an
open question until John Stewart Bell's famous theorem dismissed this with
little more than high school math --subsequently shown to be correct
experimentally many times. The weirdness of QM with voodoo like spooky action
at a distance reigns supreme.
Einstein was subsequently less enamored of mathematics from a later quote:
"Insofar as mathematics is about reality, it is not certain, and insofar as it
is certain, it is not about reality."
In any event we can now calculate effects of virtual particles that flip in and
out of existence on the magnetic moment of muons from first principles and are
beginning to untangle the neurological basis of consciousness and cognition.
This may lead one to conclude it is ALL physics underneath and we are fancy
wetware. There is no ghost in the machine.
Mike
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