quantum mechanics: Kastner\'s brilliant blog (Introduction)

by rekastner , Sunday, July 21, 2013, 20:28 (4144 days ago) @ dhw
edited by unknown, Sunday, July 21, 2013, 20:36

But if you're going to say that 'theory is not knowledge,' then we have very little knowledge. In practice, you're going down Descartes' road of doubting any knowledge of which we can't have absolute certainty. That rules out almost everything we normally think we can claim to know. Descartes couldn't even retain a claim of knowledge based on the information from his senses under that standard, because of the 'evil demon' argument. (See the Meditations.) -E.g.: we have Newton's theory of gravitation: a well-corrobated theory. I count it as good provisional knowledge. There's also QM: a well-corroborated theory. I count that as good provisional knowledge as well. All I do is suggest that QM works so well because it refers to something real in the world, at least to the structure of that something. In fact this is what was suggested by Heisenberg, though he didn't follow up on it.-So for purposes of discussion, a useful working definition is that our best, rigorously tested and well-corroborated theories count as providing at least provisionally correct knowledge about the world.-I'll be happy to send you the lectures -- but I'll need an email address for you. Did you send it to me? Have I overlooked it?