Are the idealistic arguments on the fact that geometry and physics based on imaginary models describe well the nature?

I hope I will have another opportunity soon to expand my answer a little more!

Kindest regards.

Dear Anatoly,

This an issue that was explored in depth by Alfred Korzybski in the 1920`s.

It is summarized by the following quote "The map is not the country".

This is a metaphor to make clear that physical reality is not the same as the image we build in our minds that represents physical reality.

The real country out there has an infinite number of characteristics, but through observation, we are unable to gather all of them to build the map that represents it in our mind. The limited set of data we gather through measurements of the real country are the data elements that we use to build our internal map.

When we study this map, we are not studying the real country, but a partial representation of it.

However, the more data we gather about the country, the better the map will be and the closer the map will be to the real country.

At some point, the map is sufficiently clear for us to use it as a guide to go to any city in the real country, visit the real lakes and rivers and so on.

I don't agree with all he wrote, but nevertheless this is definitely a jaw dropping read, and it also changes the way we see objective reality and our internal model.

If you can get hold of Korzybski's book "Science and Sanity", I promise you a quite interesting experience:

https://www.amazon.com/Science-Sanity-Introduction-Non-Aristotelian-Semantics/dp/0937298018

Dear Sirs,

Thank you very much for your response and book of Korzybski. Of course, it is very old standing question. But is there something changed now?

I feel that when we formulate geometry axiom or physics law we use important properties of our mind. For example, we see a rope between two poles and idealize it in the Euclid axiom. Of course, we need a language for it. What is the idealization property of our mind?

And why do these mental constructions (straight line, plane, Euclid geometry theorems, etc.) help us efficiently solve practical questions in nature?? Is it paradox? Anybody understand it? It looks like a hard madness...:)

What Newton made is much more complicated and even now we have not common agreement on the meaning of the 2nd law :)..."Who" told him his 3 laws???:)

Dear Anatoly,

Humam mentioned Popper, Russell North, Whitehead. These persons exhaustively studied what you are wishing to understand. Korzybski studied many of them also and made the synthesis that you will find in his book.

Nothing has changed since. What they understood is still the way we learn and understand physical reality. Each individual has to learn how this works if he/she wants to have a better idea of what is really going on.

What allows us to think and come up with symbols like straight lines and establish absolutely logical sequences like Euclid's theorems is our neocortex, which is a 6 layer neural network.

Neural networks and the neocortex have been studied in depth by Donald Hebb in the 1940's and have been found to automatically perceive patterns in any dataset, if such pattern exist at all. Our "awareness", whatever this may be, can become aware of these patterns and we can then study them and draw conclusions. These conclusions become new data to be processed in input by the neocortex, leading to further conclusions, and so on.

It is up to us to make certain that the initial data is true. This is what Euclid's theorems teaches to do to those who study them, which is to make certain that all data that we use leading to a conclusion has been exhaustively verified to be true. It the complete data set is confirmed true, then the conclusion can only be valid.

This is how Newton came to his conclusions by verifying his sources, and carefully studying the enormous data left by Kepler. His 3 laws are his conclusions.

Anybody can do this, because we all have a 6-layer neocortex at our exclusive service.

Dear André Michaud,

Many thanks for initial sources. Are they philosophers of science not physicists?

You mentioned about a perception function of our brain, like to distinguish faces, melodies, text, etc. But where do you see STRAIGHT LINE in order to be memorized and then recognized by the perception system? I mean mathematically the straight line is an mental object which should satisfy all the Euclid axioms. So no one can see straight line.:) It is just a notion given in words. Please correct me if I did not understood you.

Dear Anatoly,

People then did not specialize in narrow specialties like today.

All philosophers of the beginning of the 20th century had extensive knowledge in many fields and knew all about the physics of their time. They were contemporary of Planck, Einstein, de Broglie, Schrödinger and all other major discoverers of the beginning of the 20th century. Korzybski in particular had a keen interest in all aspects of physics, as witnessed by the last half of his book being dedicated to the physics of his time.

I mentioned a natural function of the neocortex specifically, that allows us to distinguish faces, melodies , text and so on, as you say, plus all abstract conclusions that we draw from what we perceive with our senses and knowledge that we acquire from others. Each bit of data and conclusion are stored in many places in the neocortex and can be retrieved at will when we wish to think about them, at least, what we remember.

As for straight lines, once we understand the idea, we can make a mental picture of a straight line, and even draw one on paper or anywhere else, and make use of all applications that need straight lines to make use of. We do as we please with our knowledge.

You have the words "straight line", and you also have the mental image that you build of a straight line. We observe our inner model by thinking with images, but we describe it with the language that we use. When we try to understand something, we use a mix of both methods (mental images plus language used internally) to clarify each detail so we can describe it to ourselves and to others if we wish.

Pavlov was the one who understood how thinking works in the period between 1928 and the year he died. Paul Chauchard, a French scientist continued his research.

Lothar Pickenhein published Pavlov's work post 1928 in 1998:

Pickenhein L (1998). I.P. Pawlow, Gesammelte Werke. Ergon Verlag.

Paul Chauchard, work was published in 1960:

Chauchard P (1960). Le cerveau et la conscience. Éditions du Seuil.

Hans-G. Hildebrandt

Dear Anatoly!

I see a parallelism between your question and Gödels incompleteness theorem.

A science like physics which envolved more and more to a theoretical-mathematical structure of ideas without real knowledge becomes more and more similar to mathematics. Natural sciences are first of all based on knowledge of reality and they have to map the reality. Mathematics is even though derived from reality but this science develops into its own space of a virtual reality. Mathematics don't map the reality. It only described the knowledges about reality - admittedly more or less exactly. But reality is not a formal system. Therefore it's wrong to declare or use mathematics as the source of knowledge of reality.

I refer to the paper: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/301614262_The_Reason_of_a_realistic_View_to_Particles_and_Atomic_Nuclei?ev=prf_pub

You can declare resp. describe the world of particles only by the duality of electron and positron.

My regards!

Hans

Thesis The Reason of a realistic View to Particles and Atomic Nuclei

This is just to apologize to Dr. Anatoly and to all other colleagues for an inadvertent slip I made in my previous answer. I referred there to Walter Kohn! I meant, of course, Thomas Kuhn, the famous author of The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, in which he introduced his seminal concept of paradigm shift.

Stephen Robert Horn

A further direction to explore this question, on top of the good suggestions made above, might be in foundations of mathematics: Alfred Tarski's theory of truth linked to model theory that grew out of the failure of Bertrand Russell's program to produce a formal foundation for mathematics (eventually itself formalised by Kurt Goedel). The best way perhaps to present this is to remark that some theorem (a formal statement) is true if it holds in all models for the theorem. The models may be physical, abstract and so on. As reality semantically is indeed not a formal system, it is approached experientially and by cognition. Physics does this one way, mathematics another.

I would like to comment on Dr. Anatoly's reference to Newton's three laws of motion.

These are empirical laws, based on so many experiments (including gedanken experiments, as in Galileo's famous writings) and so much collective experience. It should be recalled that Newton's work, elucidated in the first book of his Principia, represents a great synthesis of all previous ('successful') work in this field (above all, Galileo's law of inertia, which became Newton's first law). [

Dear Mr. Humam B. Ghassib,

I do not suppose Newton`s three laws of motion are empirical laws only in the following sense. No one at Researchgate for about half a year can not object me :):):)??!!!!!!! I just welcome you and I want strongly to be corrected!

I said about the impossibility to test each Newton`s law separately. Sir Newton did not provide any determinations of force F, inertial mass m, inertial system, etc. He only gave his 3 laws! So what are these? As I know it is long discussion.

1. We can not check the 1st Newton`s law because we do not know what the force F is. So we just guess about the true inertial system.

2. We can not check that the 2nd Newton`s law F=ma is the LAW because we can NOT determine independently inertial mass m and force F. In fact this second law is used as the determination of F or m.

3. The 3rd Newton`s law is not checked due the problem with the 2nd law above. The forces F1 , F2 and the "closed system" notion are not determined.

Dear Anatoly,

Let me first state that the best justification of the 'validity' of Newton's three laws of motion in classical physics is their phenomenal success on a very large scale, both terrestrially and celestially. They must be considered together because they constitute a grand synthesis (just like Maxwell's grand synthesis of electromagnetic phenomena in the 19th century). I think it is an excellent intellectual exercise to try and trace their content and how the underlying ideas evolved from antiquity till Newton's days.

One can view the first law as a definition of the concept of force (or, more precisely, resultant force). The second law then establishes a relation between this resultant force and the inertial mass. As for the third, it often comes in 'surreptitiously'; but it played a fundamental role in later developments concerning the concept of linear momentum and the physics of collisions. The reformulation of Newton's second law in terms of linear momentum, based on Newton's Principia itself, was truly a most remarkable achievement. The analytical reformulation of (classical) mechanics (Lagrangian and Hamiltonian mechanics) represented an equally remarkable achievement which has had a most significant impact on modern physics.

As you say, it is a long discussion. But why should you start from scratch? There have been very profound works concerning all these issues. Please allow me to mention just one of these, namely, Alexandre Koyre's Newtonian Studies (The University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1965). Then you can build on these works.

Hans-Josef Heck

Dear Anatoly, Dear Researchers,

the question, Anatoly raised, has a much more fundamental implication:

How - do we / can we -

- create / acquire - knowledge.

You see, the problems start, when we just want to form a question.

Anatoly's question has provoked some detailed answers.

I would like to answer the underlying fundamental question itself:

Which is quite easy by - pointing to "nature" itself.

The fundamental question has already been answered by the "evolution".

We are able to survive, because we can create that knowledge

that is needed to act in such a way, that we will survive.

You now will probably throw one of these apples after me,

which have fallen down from Newton's tree a long time ago.

But stay put. Give it a second thought.

We are able to create that knowledge which we need to survive -

without any language - and - without any philosophy of science.

All individual sciences - such as biology, psychology and

- of course - physics can "fail".

"language" - cannot

"philosophy including science theory" - cannot

"legal sciences" - can? cannot?

"creative sciences - e.g. aesthetics, .." - - can? cannot?

Aren't we to give creating knowledge about creating knowledge a fresh start?

We have to create knowledge which is usable/appliable.

If it is not usable/appliable, it has "failed".

I have turned to the help desk and asked for a new category:

Knowledge Sciences

but didn't get an answer.

-The ticket-number is: [579b9029dc332dda676a0af2]

in case someone wants to assist my proposal.

But perhaps they have downed this ticket number

- thrown into the waste paper basked?

So you perhaps better apply on your own?

I have done research on how knowledge about creating knowledge

is to be created, for decades now.

It is not such a kind of sophisticated philosophical knowledge.

Therefore we need a self-contained category.

Hans-Josef Heck

www.wissenswissenschaft.de

Dear Humam B. Ghassib,

Your answer on my opinion of the 3 Newton`s laws was as follows, I quote:

"One can view the first law as a definition of the concept of force (or, more precisely, resultant force). The second law then establishes a relation between this resultant force and the inertial mass"

But the first law (if F=0 then v=const) does NOT determine the FORCE! If the velocity v is not constant so the force F might be absent in the noninertial system! For example, you are sitting down in accelerating reference system, i.e. in the bus. You see the objects outside the bus moves with an acceleration. But there are NO FORCES acting on these objects.

Dear Hans-Josef

I see you are deep into epistemology (Erkenntnistheorie) that you name Wissenswissenschaft.

I will not throw any apple to you by the way.

I would however change your fist two "cannot" into "can? cannot?"

It seems to me that even those two can mislead us:

- "Language" also can fail to correctly describe nature and mislead us in cases that we still do not know enough about the aspect we are describing with language, even if we are certain that we know all about the issue being described.

- "philosophy including science theory" can also fail and mislead us if the foundations leading to the conclusions have not been sufficiently verified as being true, or if some of these foundations are assumed true without sufficient confirmation or are arbitrarily defined as being true.

Dear Sirs,

I say to make all clear. Possibly as Poincare said the whole physical theory can be verified only.

So, say the physical theory can be as follows: 3 Newton`s laws, the lever rule (or the relation between the torque and the angular momentum), the known expression for gravitational force, Einstein equivalence principle. Then we can deduce from the above whole theory the sequences namely the physical theory of a balance work. Then with the use of balance we measure any inertial mass m. Then using F=ma we determine a force F. Then we can check the 3rd law.

I point out that we did not check each Newton`s law in the above propositions! We trusted the above whole physical theory is true!