January 11, 2019 Friday
Bedtime Story
On Scientific Statement
Well, let me tell you straight away that
after the philosopher and mathematician Karl Popper (another great thinker that
Europe produced during that war era) the concept of a scientific statement
became far easier to define.
To him any statement that is independently
verifiable and thereby falsifiable is by definition a scientific statement.
It may seem a trivial proposal but the
implications are so profound that if taken seriously by all men a lot of
insanity on this planet would dramatically come down.
This idea must have come to him from the
upheavals that were taking place in the world of theoretical physics (backed up
by experimental evidence) during the dawn of the twentieth century.
Physics during his time was undergoing
tremendous revolution (it was possibly the most sexy moment to be a physicist in
Europe ever!) under the likes of Einstein and Niels Bohr with the great
unraveling of classical mechanics and germination of relativity and quantum
mechanics.
In fact so dramatic were these theories
proposed by the two of them that these two giants of physics were themselves in
disagreement with each other.
Today this disagreement between these two
behemoths goes under the name of “Bohr-Einstein debates” and is considered one
of the highest points of scientific research of the first half of the twentieth
century.
It is important that you get the essence of
the debate right as otherwise you might wrongly interpret the debate.
To the uninitiated such scientific debates
become a question of the very reliability of theories under consideration.
To those who seek surety and certainty I can
only advise you to either stick to mathematics or better your own personal religions.
Physics is one those sciences, especially
fundamental physics, that is constantly correcting itself.
The essential disagreement of those times
was not on relativity or quantum mechanics since it was Einstein himself who
had initiated the quantum revolution through his 1905 paper that light consist
of discrete packets or quanta.
Can you guess who was the most or one of
the most vocal opponents of this idea of light not being a pure wave but being
both a wave and a particle?
It was Niels Bohr himself!
It took Bohr twenty years to embrace the
idea of photons because in order to explain the atomic spectra and to propose
his own model of the hydrogen atom he was forced to use the photon model and
particle behavior of light.
With only the wave theory of light his proposed
atomic structure would collapse.
For three decades these two geniuses kept
on shifting their stances on the understanding and on the interpretation of
quantum mechanics (this shifting of belief with new evidence is fundamental to
science and Bayesian way of thinking and must not be mistaken for their
weaknesses).
If you find this surprising don’t be.
Stay tuned to the voice of an
average story storytelling chimpanzee or login at http://panarrans.blogspot.com
Good night Mon Ami and my fellow cousin ape.
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Another great educator and a teacher that I am aware of is
Professor Subhashish Chattopadhyay in Bangalore, India.
While I narrate stories, Professor Subhashish an electronic
engineer and a former professor at BARC, does and teaches real mathematics and
physics.
He started the participation of Indian students at the
International Physics Olympiad.
Do visit him here:
All his books can be downloaded for free through this link:
For edutainment and English education of your children, I
recommend this large collection of Halloween Songs for Kids:
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