Reflections on a Self-Representing Universe
By CambridgeBlog ⋅
/ By Shahn Majid. /
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Space and Time debate needs to involve not only scientists
but the wider public.
. . . in fact, theoretical physics is in need of fresh profound ideas
The reason is that scientists’ ideas have to come from somewhere,
from sitting around in cafes, from contemplation of art.
We don’t know where the key revolutionary idea
is going to come from.
Put another way, to progress, scientists need now to see
what Science is, which means they have to step outside it
and see it in part as a non-scientist.
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I want you to ask yourself what does someone have
to say about quantum gravity?
What does that person have in common with a theoretical physicist?
My approach as a theoretical physicist is to use
mathematics and the scientific method to explore the issue,
while a carol singer is surely using other means to ‘connect’.
As a scientist I am 1000% committed to the Scientific Method
but I see it as a particular way of exploring reality.
One that we might now need to understand better by seeing
it from the outside.
What I am going to argue now is that what we know about
quantum gravity — what we have seen in earlier posts — is telling
us that the Scientific Method itself is perhaps the fundamental
‘metaequation’ of physics.
In other words, just maybe, as we search for the ultimate theory
of physics we are in fact rediscovering our own assumptions
in being Scientists, the Scientific Method?
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http://www.cambridgeblog.org/2008/12/reflections-on-a-self-representing-universe/================ .
