A Right Criticism
but
The Wrong Solution
But Susskind's Lecture, from its very outset, instead attempts to ground his criticisms of Classical Physics, solely from a Quantum Mechanical (basically a Copenhagen) standpoint, via what seems initially to be a valid revelation of the fundamental-and-debilitating weaknesses of the former.
He wrongly puts it down to congenital errors, due to actual "inaccuracies-in-measurements", but he does it, by inferring that the blame should be put solely upon the unavoidably inadequate means used in obtaining them, instead of Classical Physics' actually wholly flawed and totally inadequate mathematical rationality, which ever since its inception in Ancient Greece, was wholly incorrectly and damagingly transferred to ALL the Sciences.
Susskind does not even recognise this problem - but he also, in attaching the errors solely to poorly arranged-for experimental means, thereby delivering the blamed evident inaccuracies of the results obtained.
But in that he is doubly wrong: for his criticisms, which still leave him (and his auditors) totally unaware of the real causes, so, both cannot, in any way, deliver a solution, but also, in that wrong attribution, he completely hides the real causes, and, therefore, allows his "purely theoretically-perfected" equations to be the ONLY Ultimate Sources of Truth.
He establishes his position by this as totally idealist.
He establishes it NOT via Reality, but through Mathematical Rationality alone.
Theoretical Physicists have always dealt with all experimentally achieved results and consequently theoretically interpreted them via the mistakenly applied Pluralist Rationality, which sees all extracted relations solely as products of Eternally Fixed Natural Laws. That ONLY come out of the consequently formulated and theoretically confirmed Equations. The data so originally achieved will NOT be the Form that is required, but, on the contrary, that imposed upon the situation by just those constraints that ensure its total conformity to Plurality.
We do not directly measure Reality-as-is, but a Reality so constrained as to reveal more clearly only exactly what is purposely sought! But, unless the data-producing experiments required for the usual Pluralist Approach have been "perfectly applied", both in how the experiments were set-up-and-maintained throughout, they will never deliver the exactly aimed-for data, which is necessary, and will instead only produce data certain to differ from what could be either achieved in such sufficiently-rigidly controlled experiments OR taken directly from prior, "accurate" individual Equations, as all simultaneously-acting Laws are assumed to be wholly independent of one another, and hence arranged to be extracted one-at-a-time - pluralistically!
Whereas, in the actual Real Holist World outside, those could, if done correctly, actually reflect Reality-as-it-actually-is.
The problem is that the Rationality of Mathematics, as fully exemplified in Euclidian Geometry, did indeed define a legitimate Rationality - it works flawlessly - but ONLY in constrained areas. This is solely because Form, unlike almost everything else in Reality, does indeed soundly conform to Plurality's rules: a specific Logic for dealing with a Discipline composed exclusively of separable entires and FIXED relations or Unchanging Laws!
But, the trouble was, that following the universal successes of Pluralist Logic, it was applied to all the sciences, in a way which omitted the richness and dynamism of the material Universe.
In assuming that revealed relations are Eternal Natural Laws, all Real Development is excluded.
And, Susskind, in his Lecture, then proceeds to "Compound the Felony", by marshalling all his arguments, via the same mistaken Rationality. He correctly demonstrates the inability to predict in literally ALL situations, but instead makes it solely due to measured inaccuracies, whereas the most important of them are all due to the total exclusion of handling All Qualitative Change.
Susskind does not even recognise this problem - but he also, in attaching the errors solely to poorly arranged-for experimental means, thereby delivering the blamed evident inaccuracies of the results obtained.
But in that he is doubly wrong: for his criticisms, which still leave him (and his auditors) totally unaware of the real causes, so, both cannot, in any way, deliver a solution, but also, in that wrong attribution, he completely hides the real causes, and, therefore, allows his "purely theoretically-perfected" equations to be the ONLY Ultimate Sources of Truth.
He establishes his position by this as totally idealist.
He establishes it NOT via Reality, but through Mathematical Rationality alone.
Theoretical Physicists have always dealt with all experimentally achieved results and consequently theoretically interpreted them via the mistakenly applied Pluralist Rationality, which sees all extracted relations solely as products of Eternally Fixed Natural Laws. That ONLY come out of the consequently formulated and theoretically confirmed Equations. The data so originally achieved will NOT be the Form that is required, but, on the contrary, that imposed upon the situation by just those constraints that ensure its total conformity to Plurality.
We do not directly measure Reality-as-is, but a Reality so constrained as to reveal more clearly only exactly what is purposely sought! But, unless the data-producing experiments required for the usual Pluralist Approach have been "perfectly applied", both in how the experiments were set-up-and-maintained throughout, they will never deliver the exactly aimed-for data, which is necessary, and will instead only produce data certain to differ from what could be either achieved in such sufficiently-rigidly controlled experiments OR taken directly from prior, "accurate" individual Equations, as all simultaneously-acting Laws are assumed to be wholly independent of one another, and hence arranged to be extracted one-at-a-time - pluralistically!
The problem is that the Rationality of Mathematics, as fully exemplified in Euclidian Geometry, did indeed define a legitimate Rationality - it works flawlessly - but ONLY in constrained areas. This is solely because Form, unlike almost everything else in Reality, does indeed soundly conform to Plurality's rules: a specific Logic for dealing with a Discipline composed exclusively of separable entires and FIXED relations or Unchanging Laws!
But, the trouble was, that following the universal successes of Pluralist Logic, it was applied to all the sciences, in a way which omitted the richness and dynamism of the material Universe.
In assuming that revealed relations are Eternal Natural Laws, all Real Development is excluded.
And, Susskind, in his Lecture, then proceeds to "Compound the Felony", by marshalling all his arguments, via the same mistaken Rationality. He correctly demonstrates the inability to predict in literally ALL situations, but instead makes it solely due to measured inaccuracies, whereas the most important of them are all due to the total exclusion of handling All Qualitative Change.
And, he conversely puts down the simple addition of results into more complex situations, as due to the very same reason - rather than the actual reason that classical Pluralist Physics cannot deal with Reality-as-is, and merely substitutes, instead, the additions of multiple Fixed Laws, for the actual totally unknown and unconsidered Real Qualitative Changes that are involved.
He declares that the Double Slit Experiments all totally prove his case, whereas the opposite is true.
He declares that the Double Slit Experiments all totally prove his case, whereas the opposite is true.
Their paradoxes, on the contrary, and much like those of Zeno, expose the fundamental inadequacies of Pluralist Logic.
And, in a significantly ineffectual following section, he then resorts (as is usual for him) to proving his case using Mathematical Equations alone - the very cause of the major failures, to "prove" the opposite!
NOTE:
A whole series of papers dedicated to a major prior series of lectures by Susskind, has also been published in SHAPE Journal, but give-yourself-time, SHAPE has been publishing for 11 years now, delivering 125 issues with perhaps somewhat more than 1000 individual papers available!
Having spent most of my professional life posing these difficult questions, the importance of this now mature philosophical stance in addressing what is wrong with Modern Physics, is also succesfully employed across many different disciplines, from Politics to Evolutionary Biology.
NOTE:
A whole series of papers dedicated to a major prior series of lectures by Susskind, has also been published in SHAPE Journal, but give-yourself-time, SHAPE has been publishing for 11 years now, delivering 125 issues with perhaps somewhat more than 1000 individual papers available!
Having spent most of my professional life posing these difficult questions, the importance of this now mature philosophical stance in addressing what is wrong with Modern Physics, is also succesfully employed across many different disciplines, from Politics to Evolutionary Biology.
The flaws of the dominant Pluralist stance are revealed inadvertently by Susskind himself, for he passionately believes in Pluralistic Theory over-and-above any messy purely Pragmatic Extractions from Reality-as-is.
When presented with "beautiful", generally consistent-and-coherent elegant Theory, and the messy error-filled "facts" from Nature, he resolutely chooses the Former as "containing the Real Truth".
However difficult, Reality must be our final arbiter.
Anything else can only be delusional!
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