The Language and Logic of Physics, Metaphysics and Mysticism: The Philosophy of Science Applied to Modern Physics

This book is about the philosophy of science, particularly epistemological issues relating to modern physics. It is written from the point of view of an anthropologist and layman who pays close attention to language and how it influences our logic and ways of thinking. The thesis of the book is that faulty use of language has led to some untenable theories in physics, and this may be the reason that it is difficult to find empirical support for such theories as String Theory or Quantum Loop Gravity. The word “logic” is derived from the Greek word, “logos” (which means “word”) so language is the basis of logic. The two major terms that are misused in the opinion of the author are “space” and “time”. Space and time are metaphysical concepts and when treated as physical entities, fantastic concepts emerge, such as “wormholes” where space can be folded up so that space travelers can burrow a hole through the fold to take a shortcut to distant places and times within the universe. The guiding precept in the book is that qualitative language must precede quantitative language in building a theory. Sometimes physicists miss the conceptual forest for all the mathematical trees. In a word, they are blinded by the math. If the conceptual premises based upon assumptions (and inferences from those assumptions) are wrong, no amount of math can fix the theory. Ptolemy’s geocentric theory based upon epicycles in the orbits of the planets is an example of a theory that yielded accurate mathematical predictions but was wrong because of systematic error. It is the view of this author that some modern theories partake of the same kind of epicycle-type fixes as Ptolemy’s geocentrism. Thus, this book is written from the perspective of a fairly-well informed consumer of popular physics, a reviewer of popular physics literature and some professional literature on the subject, an anthropologist with an interest in linguistics, and most of all, as a philosopher of science who is an adherent to the scientific method. Reification and mathematical abstraction have largely taken the “physical” out of physics. I would like to see a return to physical mechanisms to replace metaphysical abstractions such as “spacetime.”