Potentially relevant to that finding on pilot waves, among other things.
I get the impression from some people that analogies are only valid if they're direct subsitutions. "Alice walked across the room much like Bob did" would be fine, they'd say, but "Alice crept across the room like a cat that had spent six years training as a ninja" would not, because Alice isn't sufficiently similar to a cat.
Personally I think less exact analogies are more interesting and more illuminating. They encourage examination of what exactly it is about two systems that's similar and what's different, why those difference occur, and what other similarities the two systems may or may not share. More exact analogies are less interesting because they require less thinking. As far as laboratory astrophysics goes, analogies can suggest useful comparisons and lines of inquiry that might otherwise remain unexplored, but they can't replace the substituted system perfectly.
In a case that I wrote about in Quanta, a physicist in Israel created a fluid that traps sound much as a black hole traps light; he then detected an effect in this “sonic black hole” that is analogous to Hawking radiation, a hypothetical black hole phenomenon predicted by Stephen Hawking in 1974 with profound consequences for how the universe works. Does the tabletop experiment provide indirect evidence for Hawking’s prediction?
Hartmann argues that experimenting on sonic black holes may indeed shed light on real ones because there might be a “common cause” underlying their similar mathematics. In the same way, yellow fingers and heart disease are both caused by smoking, and detecting one can be evidence of the other. On the flip side, many black hole experts put no stock in the analogy and consider it potentially misleading, since it isn’t known whether Hawking’s math, upon which the analogy is based, actually does describe black holes.
Either way, the situation “raises wonderful philosophical questions,” Hartmann said, “because we learn about new types of evidence.” Increasingly, he said, physics theories like string theory and the multiverse describe realms of nature that are inaccessible to experimenters. Direct tests of such theories appear impossible. “So we have to think about alternative ways of testing theories. And whatever we think about these analogue experiments at the moment, I think these works go exactly in the right direction.”
http://nautil.us/blog/can-analogies-reveal-the-laws-of-physics
Since in most cases,we only have a referential pointer and not the actual thing I am not sure how we can't use analogies. Words, math, etc, are analogous tools that reference the thing, except perhaps for the word word. Word.
ReplyDeletehttps://lh3.googleusercontent.com/K61OBi7_uzKGIQnWzoZz8BGgE7ig7NTM-xc0nUA0Adn5IGwuunBiM9OPnJywGFB__mmKBbutD-q5f2U=s0
Analogies, no, or limited at best.
ReplyDeleteAnagogies, however... yes.
"Increasingly, he said, physics theories like string theory and the multiverse describe realms of nature that are inaccessible to experimenters. Direct tests of such theories appear impossible."
ReplyDeleteI hate these simplistic statements. String Theory IS testable. The problem is that the predictions we can test don't allow us to distinguishing it from alternatives because they're the same predictions, and those that would may go untestable. But this isn't just a problem with String Theory. You can't go inside a black hole to check if there's really a singularity in there and report back, but no one complains that Relativity is "untestable".
So, to clarify: analogies are useful in comparing like types, but of course we all know of the infamous Apples-Oranges issue with analogies. It's blurry how much or how little two things must be alike each other for the analogy to hold, unless restricting oneself to purely Formal Basic Logic involving idealized types under comparison. Moreover, it definitely only works between things at similar 'levels' of analysis. For example, while oft cited, the analogy between Star Systems and Atoms is stretched at best. They depend on entirely different physical forces (gravity and the strong and weak forces, respectively). The electrons are many, many factors farther out, and are fuzzy Quantum thingies where we can't say both where they're going and how fast at the same time and are sometimes seemingly just not there (in fact, quite frequently they basically 'disappear' and 'reappear'). They don't really move on a 'plane' the way orbits do, despite our convention of depicting them as if they did. And they frequently swap back and forth with other stoms, and are differentially drawn to or repulsed by other atoms, and in fact have a FORCE FIELD that deflects other atoms from getting too close! And what would be the Nebulae, Asteroid Belts, or Comet Fields of the atoms?
ReplyDeleteAnagogy, on the other hand, is similar to Analogy but allows comparison across types. By anagogical reasoning, from root words meaning basically 'transcends/leads above-beyond) the Atom-Star System concept is partially rescued by way of saying that, while they are of quite different types, the similarities nonetheless reflect some basic principles common to both. So, we see that reality on many levels is organized on a principle of Central Attractors bounded by (or, in some cases, temporarily devoid of) various smaller things, arranged into zones of varying but non-random proximity (i.e. there are only so many orbital zones, electron levels, etc... filling the intervening space), which sometimes/often form up into even larger things like Molecules/Galactic Arms, Compounds/Galaxies, etc..., etc... from least complex (a Central Attractor or one of the smaller objects alone by itself) up to extremely complex ones (sophisticated chemical compounds, supergalactic structures, etc...).
Pedro Pereira Fair point. I let that one pass because it's not really the main point of the article : one could always add "currently testable" and the overall message wouldn't change at all.
ReplyDeleteEli Fennell That's interesting, but AFAIK "anaogogy" has a very specific meaning and is used exclusively in mystical/spiritual interpretations. I would instead use "analogy" much as you're using "anaogogy". The key point of any analogy is to demonstrate a similarity of specific aspects. Whether the things are similar in other regards is where things may or may not get interesting : the analogy may be better or worse, a closer or poorer overall match, but it would still be an analogy in my view.
ReplyDeleteYeah, I knew I was digressing from the actual article, but it's something that occasionally bugs me when I see it. My apologies.
ReplyDeleteRhys Taylor That's only true as a matter of recent history. Anagogy was utilized in the early Sciences, as well, before it fell out of fashion due to its association with mysticism. But the basic Principle is more sound than the modern Sciences gave it credit, providing you use it conservatively. Same with Analogy: you have to use it conservatively, or you misuse it.
ReplyDeleteOnly Anagogy, however, allows one to deal with similarities between things at different levels of analysis.