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Re: Tautologies, math, and Wiles's work
Posted:
Jul 20, 2003 10:20 PM
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James Harris wrote:
> > > > there is nothing to differentiate your complaints about Wiles
> > > > from complaints about photons, DNA, the Jurassic era,
> > > > evolution, relativity, and the rest.
> > > Yet to take one of your examples--photons--and consider that the
> > > existence of photons has been theorized for some time, but was
> > > proven by experiment.
> >
> > It was not *proven* by experiment: another respect in which Wiles'
> > work is qualitatively more reliable than photons, DNA, and the rest.
> > The physics experiments were consistent with certain theoretical models,
> > but of course, you have not even come close to verifying the immense
> > chain of experimental and theoretical reasoning leading to the current models
> > with "photons". Instead, you rely on textbooks, fourth-hand (if that)
> > accounts, and the assertions of the Science Establishment.
>
> My degree is in physics. I did physics experiments in school.
Ask the school for a refund.
First, the "existence" of "photons" is not a precisely formulated statement
as in the case of Wiles' proof, let alone one provable by experiment. There
are of course theoretical models (not necessarily well-defined or known
to be logically consistent, by the way) within which one can single out
certain objects as "photons".
Second, your student experiments in optics could not possibly replicate
the mountain of theoretical and experimental steps involved in building
up any of the theoretical model(s) involving photons. Instead, you
accepted on trust assertions by textbook authors, professors and similar
purveyors of the Social Truth that you like to castigate, amounting to
a certification-by-authority that the apparatus you were doing the experiments
with actually corresponded to the theory in the manner claimed.
You did not produce the relevant gases, crystals, apparatus, electricity, ..
involved in laser experiments, nor did you do the experimentation
needed to corroborate the values of relevant physical and chemical
parameters listed in the CRC handbook, and so on all the way down.
What actually happened is that a long and social process
of knowledge-accumulation occurred and you took the results on trust.
In particular, if your experiments gave a "wrong" result, the conclusion
would be that you made a mistake, not that photons' existence is in doubt;
a pure assertion of authority by the Scientific Establishment concerning its
Social Truth, which you accept without any objection in all the non-FLT
situations.
Note that your repeatedly discredited objections in this thread about
Wiles' logic are irrelevant, as you also object to Ribet's proof without
giving any particular reason to doubt it. The matter is simply one of an
obvious double standard produced for the occasion, where social certification
by a small network of experts counts as OK for photons, DNA,
evolution, relativity, the Jurassic era (or the existence of Napoleon and
George W Bush), etc --- but somehow the information that experts
have certified Ribet's and Wiles' work is cast as suspicious.
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