> At 01:43 PM 9/25/96 -0400, Reed Konsler wrote:
> >>From: David Leeper <dleeper@gte.net>
> >>Date: Mon, 26 Nov 1956 00:50:14 +0000
> >
> Major CLIP...
> >
> >Science can be qualitative as well as quantitative...we aren't all
> >physicists.
>
> ???????
You can't BUILD the quantitiative unless you have the qualitiative!
1) Conventional physics/chemistry/... problems DON'T have negative mass.
2) If you can't detect it [qualititative], you can't measure it
[quantitative]. [It may take some extreme technology, but this principle
still holds.] Alternatively, detection is a form of measurement in its
own right--"is it there, or isn't it?" If it weren't for this,
statistics would be far less useful.
3) That time always goes forward is rather inobvious until you go
macroscopic in your physics.
4) The Lorentz transform was initially discovered because it
preserved Maxwell's equations. [The Galilean transform DOESN'T.] The
hunt for the ether [effectively disabled by the Michelson-Morley
experiment] was an attempt to lock Maxwell's equations to a preferred
reference frame, so the Galilean transforms for Newtonian physics could
be kept. Part of Einstein's genius in creating Special Relativity was
checking to see that all of Newtonian mechanical laws WERE preserved
under the Lorentz transform.
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/ Kenneth Boyd
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