Re: [iPad] OT: Off on a philosophical tangent

 

They might surprise us yet. People were saying everything had been invented and there wouldnt be any real changes just before the airplane was invented, and look how many changes have taken place since then. It'll be fun seeing why they come up with next.

On Friday, April 27, 1900, the British physicist Lord Kelvin gave a speech entitled "Nineteenth-Century Clouds over the Dynamical Theory of Heat and Light," which began:

The beauty and clearness of the dynamical theory, which asserts heat and light to be modes of motion, is at present obscured by two clouds.

Kelvin went on to explain that the "clouds" were two unexplained phenomena, which he portrayed as the final couple of holes that needed to be filled in before having a complete understanding of the thermodynamic and energy properties of the universe, explained in classical terms of the motion of particles.

This speech, together with other comments attributed to Kelvin (such as by physicist Albert Michelson in a 1894 speech) indicate that he strongly believed the main role of physics in that day was to just measure known quantities to a great degree of precision, out to many decimal places of accuracy.

The "clouds" to which Kelvin was referring were:

• The inability to detect the luminous ether, specifically the failure of the Michelson-Morley experiment
• The black body radiation effect known as the ultraviolet catastrophe



So: what became of Physics, and of these "two small clouds"?

Examination of the failure of the Michelson-Morley experiment to detect the ether led directly to the Theories of Relativity.

Investigation of the "ultraviolet catastrophe" led directly to quantum mechanics.

And that's pretty much where modern physics *lives* today.



I commend to you Arthur C. Clarke's Profiles of the Future, specifically the chapters "The failure of Nerve" and "The Failure of Imagination".

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 Jim Saklad                                        mailto:jimdoc@icloud.com

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