How is there no physics?

Question

Hello

According to a college that works with me, he cliams that physics does not work in an uncontrolled environment.

He seems to be clear about the fact that he does not mean things are less accurate and subject to error due to unknown factors, and complexity of the real world.
He indicates that physics it's self is mostly not applicable to the real world.

I siad that a lot of physics is incorrect, but that physics still applies some how.
He seems to indicate that in the real world, it is large not based on any form of physics at all!

What the hell is he talking about?
What do you think of this and what philosophy is it?

Sabre

Answer 1

Ask your friend if his theory makes any predictions that can be tested experimentally. Oops, that would be a controlled environment, and your friend says that physics breaks down only in uncontrolled environments. That means his theory cannot be tested, so that makes it pretty useless as a scientific idea.

Answer 2

You are simply dealing with a person who does not understand science in general and physics in particular.

This is no particular philosophy. It's plain stupidity. Probably just a lack of imagination paired with poor education. One of the sources could be a rather poor presentation of physics/chemistry in school. If the teacher he had was a poor experimentalist and messed up some, maybe most of the experiments, an unmotivated student will naturally blame the problem on nature and not on the teacher.

If he had to do experiments by himself and did not have the maturity to repeat a failed experiment or ask himself what HE might have done wrong, the results would probably be the same: a failure to understand that a failed experiment is the result of a failed experiment rather than a failed law of nature.

You also have to keep in mind that generalizing from laws people HAVE to learn in school to daily phenomena is NOT trivial. In most cases it is virtually impossible for both the layman and the expert. Think about weather prediction. It is of utter importance to all of us and still represents one of the greatest failures of science. We can predict where Jupiter's moons will be a hundred years from now with an accuracy of a few miles (just guessing here) but we can't tell if it is going to rain tomorrow. Does it take wonder that most people will believe there is a qualitative difference between science in the laboratory and the everyday world? Of course not. Especially not since it would take two to three years of hard core math and physics to explain to them the meaning of Ljapunov exponents and why the ones the weather man has to deal with are particularly nasty.

Moreover, we all take things that work for granted. Things that fail, however are much more impressive. So that cell phones, computers and in most cases bridges work is the result of the ingenuity of the inventor/engineer, not the consequence of the laws of nature being constant and universal. And most people don't even care as long as they can make that phone call or send their email that it took billions of applications of the laws of nature to design these systems. But when a bridge fails (or the connection gets interrupted), an easy culprit can be found in physics that never "worked" in school, either. No further analysis needed. Case closed. Or so 99% of mankind thinks.

Good advice: let it go because you can't change the way the man thinks, anyway. On the internet it is a different matter. You find one of these people, prove to them that they are wrong. Not so much to their own advantage but to that of onlookers: the more people learn by watching how easy it is to contradict "common sense" arguments that violate nature, the more they will start to think deeper about problems they encounter.

Or so I hope.

:-)

Answer 3

Hmm, probably because physics could be interpreted in two ways, maybe more...but here is two o f them.

First, Physics is an explanation of what we as human see and observe. We try and make sense of it. To the best of our ability we are correct..but, in reality we could be completely wrong and are incapable of becoming aware of it. For example, what is and electron.....some will say that it is a fundamental thing in nature meaning that it has no constituent particles. It also has a property that we as human call charge. But in actuality it could be just a form of matter that cant be understood or measured correctly...like dark matter, and all we can see is that it has charge and is point like.

Secondly, physics concepts not observed have to be proved by mathematical practices. When I was in college studying physics i had a class mate who studied physics but didn't believe any of the basic principle. He just learned it because it was interesting. Anyway..he didn't believe it because he thinks that mathematics is severely flawed. Specifically in the realm of the quantity of "0". For instance 1 divided by 0. Teachers will tell you...hmm its undefined. Mathematics students may say...hmm that quantity does not make sense. Physics students may say...hmm, that number does not correlate to anything real...so we may ignore it. Some may say that there is a deep problem here...they may say that all of math is based on this ambiguity about 0. There you go..hope that helped

Answer 4

Physics always apply, your driving a car and have to break because of Inertia. The breaks stop the car because of friction, you hit someone and they go flying through the air, thats a transfer of energy showing that every action has an equal and opposite reaction. Physics applies to everything you do, all the way from sleeping to launching a rocket into space.

Answer 5

Nature Boy nails it again. Seems like one more test is in order. Drug test. The physical world is as real and measurable as you reading this.