Davies Writes Ridiculous NYT Op-Ed

Society seems to move faster than my ability to comprehend science. As I struggle to understand both the history behind and the solutions to the N-representability problem (eg. utilizing an electron pair representation of the electronic energies to solve many-electron problems) as coined by Professor John Coleman, society seems more than able to confound itself in basic principles. This is no different with Paul Davies, who as a notable popularizer of physics and a college professor, ought to know better than to cultivate confusion in the general populace over what physics says, physics implies, and what physics does not do for either at the moment.

All science proceeds on the assumption that nature is ordered in a rational and intelligible way. You couldn’t be a scientist if you thought the universe was a meaningless jumble of odds and ends haphazardly juxtaposed. When physicists probe to a deeper level of subatomic structure, or astronomers extend the reach of their instruments, they expect to encounter additional elegant mathematical order. And so far this faith has been justified.

Complete nonsense. When a physicist smacks a molecule with a femtosecond pulse, s/he certainly expects a certain result based on hypotheses rooted in conjecture formulated from prior observations. But our expectancies are not allows the result. Consider the Franck-Condon principle. The FCP is an elegant mathematical model of expected vibronic transitions, yet in photoinonic studies the FCP breaks down at energies in large excess of the energy of a chemical bond. This is due to the effects of Cooper minima on molecular vibrations (an effect of the change in sign of the dipole matrix element versus photon energy). The breakdown of FCP required experimental evidence to indicate the presence in photoionic spectroscopy, and the explanation later came from the mathematical model and how this model does not interfere with the previously established model.

Though physics is not a reduced form of phenomenology, it ultimately requires some phenomena to map mathematically. Certainly a desire of several mathematical physicists is to be able to start from various basic mathematical axioms and derive the entire universe. However, their derivations ignore the history of science which built such principles on established knowledge rather than prior dispositions.

A classic relic from the history of science is the birth of quantum physics during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. As physicists discovered the electronic freedoms of hydrogen and other gaseous elements, they found themselves in a quagmire. Classical physics simply failed to account for the electronic freedoms of atoms and molecules. However, classical physics gave a certain mathematical tool set that was able to be adapted and fitted into solving the problems faced by the turn-of-the-century physicists.

Planck utilized his knowledge of oscillators to give a mathematical derivation of the black body spectrum. Einstein used his knowledge of colliding particles to initially describe the photoelectric effect of metals. Bohr incorporated the discretized energies of gas spectrum and Rutherford's planetary model of electronic orbits and fashioned his quantized model that forced electrons into energy orbits and defied the Larmor formula which dictated that accelerating (and thus, orbiting) electrons emit E&M waves.

Sometimes...no, I would say all the time, science is dictated by what is observed and not by what is expected. Scientific knowledge is highly provisional, and we cannot create discrepancies with science due to this provisional limitation. But provisional knowledge is not what the general populace desires, and the acceptance of non-concrete answers to certain questions often invoke confusion and anti-science in audiences. So I can empathize with the scientific popularizer in the difficulties of addressing science to a general audience.

When I was a student, the laws of physics were regarded as completely off limits. The job of the scientist, we were told, is to discover the laws and apply them, not inquire into their provenance. The laws were treated as “given” — imprinted on the universe like a maker’s mark at the moment of cosmic birth — and fixed forevermore. Therefore, to be a scientist, you had to have faith that the universe is governed by dependable, immutable, absolute, universal, mathematical laws of an unspecified origin. You’ve got to believe that these laws won’t fail, that we won’t wake up tomorrow to find heat flowing from cold to hot, or the speed of light changing by the hour.

I have never been instructed as such. I have always been told that the laws and theories came from observational evidence. As a student I have even tested the various classical laws and theories that are simply time-tested (eg. electron diffraction indicating the wave-like nature of electrons and photoionization indicating the particle-like nature of electrons). I have always been told that these laws are provisional. They could potentially change tomorrow; however, the likelihood is slim. And if they do change, there is a discoverable mechanism that shows how it changed.

Note I did not say why. Personally, I think why questions are unnecessary in science and cannot be answered as precisely and accurately as how questions. Ultimately this leads into a rhetorical battle of words, but this essentially rooted in the previous provisional knowledge of science. Scientific knowledge is rooted in operational language. This is due to two reasons: (1) the heavy reliance of observational data and (2) the heavy reliance of concise definitions. More on this later.

If the laws of physics were just any old ragbag of rules, life would almost certainly not exist.

Poppycock. I doubt it has been determined that simply changing the permittivity of space would disallow the formation of molecules that look very much like the metabolic process we observe in organisms. Since that is the defining feature of life-- metabolism-- I think it is a bit rash to conclude that only this set of universal constants are necessary for the universe to produce through time intelligent observers.

This is why I like PZ Meyers' summary of the anthropic principle: "[a] tiresome exercise in metaphysical masturbation that always flounders somewhere in the repellent ditch between narcissism and solipsism." I wish I was a mastery of words like this biologist.

(Note: Peter Woit seems to blame Davies' hang-up on the anthropic principle and multiverses on string theory. I agree. String Theory gets too much hype from pop science authors where there is little experimental linking. But that's a digression.)

In other words, the laws should have an explanation from within the universe and not involve appealing to an external agency. The specifics of that explanation are a matter for future research. But until science comes up with a testable theory of the laws of the universe, its claim to be free of faith is manifestly bogus.

Now we come to the culminating end, and Davies' defeat at supporting his argument. As John Wilkins at Evolving Thoughts points out, Davies suffers from two gross fallacies: an enthymeme and a fallacy of reification. Davies takes the universe and assigns it as having the certain property of possessing laws.

I promised to return to the operational description of scientific knowledge and where it was going in this conversation. Wilkins has allowed me to springboard into this discussion. There is a difference between words and the world. As humans, we often believe our words are the world. But they are not. They are our attempts to describe the world through our words. Mathematics is elegant and much of our understanding of the world can be expressed in such elegant terms, but mathematics is not the world. Mathematics is the language, and physics is the study. The laws do not necessarily exist beyond our observations and use of them. The universe simply is, and though that is such profound statement to many, often inciting displeasure and discontent amongst the populace, it creates none where it is understood.

Note: The Edge seems to be gathering a list of responses.