From: John W Burgeson (jwburgeson@juno.com)
Date: Thu May 22 2003 - 13:14:16 EDT
A few days ago, Dick posted a part of somebody's writing which was,
obviously, a bit difficult to understand. He followed it with the
comment:
>>Or as that great Chinese philosopher said: "He who, hoo hee.">>
Today, browsing my own web site for something, I came upon this in a
scholarly article:
"In attempting to judge the success of a physical theory, we may ask
ourselves two questions: (1) 'Is the theory correct?' and (2) Is the
description given by the theory complete?' It is only in the case in
which positive answers can be given to both of these questions that the
concepts of the theory may be said to be satisfactory. The correctness of
the theory is judged by the degree of agreement between he conclusions of
the theory and human experience. This experience, which alone enables us
to make inferences about reality, in physics takes the form of experiment
and measurement. It is the second question that we wish to consider
here, as applied to quantum mechanics.
"Whatever the meaning assigned to the term 'complete,' the following
requirement for a complete theory seems to be a necessary one: 'every
element of the physical reality must have a counterpart in the physical
theory' We shall call this the condition of completeness. The second
question is thus easily answered, as soon as we are able to decide what
are the elements of the physical reality."
I wonder if the "He who, hoo hee" comment would be made on this one?
In a subsequent post I'll identify the writer.
John Burgeson (Burgy)
www.burgy.50megs.com
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