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Variant, v. 1, issue 3, September 1947
Page 27
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The present state of science is something like one of the "black box" problems they like to give you in electricity classes. You shoot a certain current into two wires which lead into a llttle black box, and out of the other end of the box currents of various densities and voltages emerge in various wires. The problem is to figure out what combination of resistances and things inside the box will produce the given results. It's like that with atomic physics, the most important piece of informationn being that when atoms are excited in various ways they give off light of very certain frequencies which make up the spectrum. Knowing this, plus certain other information given by radioactivity and such things, we have to figure out what's inside the box. Now the answer that we figure out may have no resemblence at all to what is really inside the box. However, if we are able to predict the frequencies of spectrum lines which verify experimental results, then we feel that we have a result which has some kind of connection with reality. Modern quantum physics manipulates symbols which have no physical significance at all. Yet, so cleverly devised are these symbols that when they are stirred around in the proper manner they emerge out of the other end of the black box to give the proper answer in terms of things which we can see, such as the position of lines on a spectrum. It is no use complaining that science is becoming too abstract, that it doesn't give you a physical picture of what an atom looks like.Bluntly, the atom doesn't look like anything. And if you persist in thinking of an atom as being a nucleus surrounded by negative particles in neat elliptical orbits, then you are just kidding yourself, even with that picture you don't know what an electron is; you don't know what an electric charge is, and most important, with that simple picture you can't explain all the things that you can see with a spectroscope. This, by the way, illustrates another important difference between the scientist and the pseudo-scientist. One knows that he does not know. The other is quite certain about what he knows. Milton A. Rothman (27)
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The present state of science is something like one of the "black box" problems they like to give you in electricity classes. You shoot a certain current into two wires which lead into a llttle black box, and out of the other end of the box currents of various densities and voltages emerge in various wires. The problem is to figure out what combination of resistances and things inside the box will produce the given results. It's like that with atomic physics, the most important piece of informationn being that when atoms are excited in various ways they give off light of very certain frequencies which make up the spectrum. Knowing this, plus certain other information given by radioactivity and such things, we have to figure out what's inside the box. Now the answer that we figure out may have no resemblence at all to what is really inside the box. However, if we are able to predict the frequencies of spectrum lines which verify experimental results, then we feel that we have a result which has some kind of connection with reality. Modern quantum physics manipulates symbols which have no physical significance at all. Yet, so cleverly devised are these symbols that when they are stirred around in the proper manner they emerge out of the other end of the black box to give the proper answer in terms of things which we can see, such as the position of lines on a spectrum. It is no use complaining that science is becoming too abstract, that it doesn't give you a physical picture of what an atom looks like.Bluntly, the atom doesn't look like anything. And if you persist in thinking of an atom as being a nucleus surrounded by negative particles in neat elliptical orbits, then you are just kidding yourself, even with that picture you don't know what an electron is; you don't know what an electric charge is, and most important, with that simple picture you can't explain all the things that you can see with a spectroscope. This, by the way, illustrates another important difference between the scientist and the pseudo-scientist. One knows that he does not know. The other is quite certain about what he knows. Milton A. Rothman (27)
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