By Richard Panek.
I'm a little frustrated with the book. Panek never really try's to answer what Gravity is. He pushes the question off, going over the history of not-explaining what gravity is.
Physicist Kip Thorne has said that asking "What is Gravity?" is a meaningless question, kind of like asking "What is north of the north pole?"
Even that is a punt. "What is north of the north pole?" is only meaningless once you realize that the Earth is a globe and its geometry non-euclidean. For the non-physicist, what concepts am are needed to know "What is gravity?" a meaningless question?
The history of not explaining gravity is very interesting. It marks a philosophical transition from explaining things from first principal, to explaining things using the scientific method.
Before Newton, we tried to explain the world from the Bible, from Aristotle. Newton came up with a theory better at making testable predictions about the effects of gravity. His theory didn't depend on the Bible. It depended on observations that anyone could make. This was new. It removed the Church from being an authority.
Newton never produced a theory explaining what gravity was, only that it could make very accurate predictions. At the time there was a lot of controversy around this. If you can't explain why, only what, then how can you trust the theory?
By observing more deeply. By making testable predictions.
And this is where much of physics is now. It can make very accurate predictions about very extreme conditions. It struggles to say why that should be so.
I'm a little frustrated with the book. Panek never really try's to answer what Gravity is. He pushes the question off, going over the history of not-explaining what gravity is.
Physicist Kip Thorne has said that asking "What is Gravity?" is a meaningless question, kind of like asking "What is north of the north pole?"
Even that is a punt. "What is north of the north pole?" is only meaningless once you realize that the Earth is a globe and its geometry non-euclidean. For the non-physicist, what concepts am are needed to know "What is gravity?" a meaningless question?
The history of not explaining gravity is very interesting. It marks a philosophical transition from explaining things from first principal, to explaining things using the scientific method.
Before Newton, we tried to explain the world from the Bible, from Aristotle. Newton came up with a theory better at making testable predictions about the effects of gravity. His theory didn't depend on the Bible. It depended on observations that anyone could make. This was new. It removed the Church from being an authority.
Newton never produced a theory explaining what gravity was, only that it could make very accurate predictions. At the time there was a lot of controversy around this. If you can't explain why, only what, then how can you trust the theory?
By observing more deeply. By making testable predictions.
And this is where much of physics is now. It can make very accurate predictions about very extreme conditions. It struggles to say why that should be so.
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