The problem with physics

Even something as fundamental as Newton’s law of gravity is ultimately an approximation. Textbook authors dutifully write down the famous law without remarking that it results in infinite forces when the two attracting objects get infinitely close together. Never mind that infinite forces are a sure sign that your theory has gone up in smoke: in the current crop of textbooks sitting on my desk, not one mentions the obvious pathology.

To quote the fake president from Dave: Okay, let’s get right to the guts of it: every one of these accusations is absolutely true.

I can’t find fault with them, at least.

Sure, Edison (and perhaps as or more importantly, his staff) knew Ohm’s law and that hot things glowed (which is blackbody radiation). The details of why were far less important than those two models. It’s true that probing the question of Mach’s principle (at what does a gyroscope point?) led to general relativity, but we have that model without the answer to the question.

Physics, like all of science, tries to make models to explain how the universe behaves. It’s not a quest for the true nature of things — that’s metaphysics (and in case this gets translated into hipster, no, that’s not ironic). It may be a shortcoming that this isn;t driven home more forcefully, but it’s not an inherent flaw of science.

So I contend that it doesn’t matter. What he’s complaining about isn’t inherently a problem with physics or with physics education. But the author then acknowledges this, which leaves one to scratch their head and wonder what the point of the article is.

After decades — indeed, centuries — of employing such tricks, physicists have forgotten that they are modelling phenomena, not necessarily uncovering Divine Truth.