{"id":6814,"date":"2011-10-12T12:32:16","date_gmt":"2011-10-12T19:32:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/?p=6814"},"modified":"2018-03-24T13:19:38","modified_gmt":"2018-03-24T20:19:38","slug":"science-and-humility-rewriting-physics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/2011\/10\/science-and-humility-rewriting-physics\/","title":{"rendered":"Science and Humility, Rewriting Physics?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Neutrinos by Chuck Colson –
\nOne of the most potentially exciting — or confounding — scientific discovery happened recently. It depends on your point of view.<\/em><\/p>\n

The expression \u201cphysics envy\u201d refers to the way that the social sciences try to emulate the mathematical precision and certainty of physics.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s easy to understand the envy: No one argues with Newton\u2019s Laws of Motion. Physics is authoritative in ways that economics and even biology can never hope to be. But \u201cauthoritative\u201d isn\u2019t the same thing as \u201comniscient\u201d \u2014 when it comes to studying creation, humility and an appreciation of mystery are indispensible<\/p>\n

Recently, scientists at the super collider at CERN in Geneva announced that subatomic particles called neutrinos sent from CERN to Italy arrived 60 billionths of a second faster than expected. <\/p>\n

If the measurements are correct \u2014 a big if \u2014 this would mean they traveled faster than the speed of light. Any ninth-grade science student can tell you that shouldn\u2019t happen. <\/p>\n

That\u2019s why the news was, as particle physicist Brian Cox put it, potentially \u201ca very, very big deal.\u201d To understand why, you need to know that, in his theory of Special Relativity, Albert Einstein stated that no information or material object could travel faster than the speed of light in a vacuum.<\/p>\n

Among other reasons, as the object approaches the speed of light its inertia increases and the object will appear, to a non-accelerating observer, to be slowing down.<\/p>\n

I know that\u2019s hard to grasp, but here\u2019s what you need to know: Einstein\u2019s theories of relativity are, as the Guardian newspaper put it, a \u201ccornerstone of modern physics.\u201d Real-world applications of these theories include the GPS in your car and the atomic bomb.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s why Cox says that, if the results at CERN stand up, the result will be a \u201ccomplete rewriting of our understanding of the universe.\u201d The key phrase there is \u201cour understanding of the universe.\u201d For all the greatness of men like Newton and Einstein, we don\u2019t \u201cunderstand\u201d the universe \u2014 we understand parts of it and even that understanding is partial.<\/p>\n

For example, only 17 percent of the matter of the universe can be accounted for by \u201cour understanding of the universe.\u201d We can only infer the existence of the other 83 percent, known as \u201cdark matter,\u201d from the speed at which galaxies rotate and the way that they cluster.<\/p>\n

In other words, a huge chunk of the visible universe remains completely mysterious to us. And sub-atomic particles behave in ways completely alien to the physics that govern the visible world: For example, an electron can be in two places at the same time.<\/p>\n

Nobody really knows how these two sets of laws go together, at least in ways that can be proven in any meaningful sense.<\/p>\n

None of this means that Einstein was wrong about the speed of light: The results at CERN I believe will turn out to have been the result of measuring or equipment errors. And it certainly doesn\u2019t mean that physics doesn\u2019t deserve the high regard in which it is held.<\/p>\n

What it does mean that some humility and appreciation of mystery is in order. There is so much that we don\u2019t know and a lot of what we do know may be, as recent events have reminded us, wrong.<\/p>\n

There is a healthy caution here for scientism \u2014 the worldview which says science is the ultimate authority with explanations for every phenomenon, including creation. Not quite so.<\/p>\n

HT: Break Point<\/a> (read full article)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Chuck Colson – One of the most potentially exciting — or confounding — scientific discovery happened recently. It depends on your point of view. The expression \u201cphysics envy\u201d refers to the way that the social sciences try to emulate the mathematical precision and certainty of physics. It\u2019s easy to understand the envy: No one … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":497,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"generate_page_header":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[11,51],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6814","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-intelligent-design","category-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6814","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/497"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6814"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6814\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6814"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6814"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6814"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}