tisdag 16 september 2025

Logical Fallacy of Modern Physics?

Aristotle would have been very surprised to see that modern physics in the form of Standard Quantum Mechanics StdQM is filled with his logical fallacy of "affirming the consequent" or "confirming an assumption by observing a consequence". 

Examples: 

  • If there was a Big Bang, then a Universe would have been come into existence. We observe that a Universe exists, and conclude there was a Big Bang. 
  • If the Higgs boson exists, there will be blip on a computer screen. We observe a blip and conclude that the Higgs boson is real physics worthy of a Nobel Prize.

The incorrect form is: If A implies B and B is observed to be true, then A is true. Cannot be used as verification of A.

The correct form is: If A implies B and B is observed to be false, then A is false. Can be used as falsification of A.

But we have been confronted with the incorrect form so many times that we are immune to the logic fallacy of "affirming the consequent". 

The motivation using this logical fallacy over and over, is that the assumptions of StdQM cannot themselves be checked because of their evasive physical nature, and so the only possibility has been to observe some observable consequence to see if it is the case, and then use that as evidence that the assumption is satisfied. 

This is not so in classical mechanics, where the basic laws in the form of Newton's law of gravitation or Coulomb's law of electrostatics can be directly checked. Then there is no need to resort to logical fallacy and the science has a better chance to capture reality. 

Is it then true that the basic assumptions of Schrödinger's Equation SE for the Hydrogen atom cannot be checked? No, they can be directly be checked because SE for the Hydrogen atom is based on

  1. Coulomb's Law
  2. Kinetic energy in the form of compression energy of charge density. 
Both can be checked directly as in classical mechanics. It means that after verifying 1-2 we can predict the spectrum of Hydrogen to be exactly that observed. What could happen is that we observe some "fine structure" of the spectrum and we can then conclude that there is something missing in the set up for 1-2 such as non-zero magnetic field. 

The trouble with StdQM is that the generalisation to atoms with more than one electron leaves the setting of 1-2 and adds assumptions which cannot be directly verified because they concern a multi-d wave function living in some Hilbert space, which has no physical meaning. What remains is to check consequences of the presence of such a wave function and use that as confirmation of correctness of the added assumptions, then resorting to the logical fallacy.

Now there is a version of quantum mechanics named RealQM which is based solely on 1-2, in principle,  and so the assumptions of RealQM can be checked, at least in principle, and so RealQM takes the same form as classical mechanics and so does not need to resort to incorrect logic. Maybe quickly check it out?


1 kommentar:

  1. اعمال تستحق الشكر تابع اعمال فحص شبكات المياه الحارة والباردة بالضغط للخزانات والسخانات في الحمام ضروري للحفاظ على أداء هذه الشبكات وضمان سلامتها .

    يتطلب هذا الفحص القيام بمجموعة من الخطوات الدقيقة لضمان حصول الجميع على مياه نظيفة وآمنة. وعندما يتم إهمال هذا الفحص، يُمكن أن تتسبب التسريبات والمشاكل التقنية في أضرار جسيمة للمنازل .

    لذا، فإن الالتزام بالفحص الدوري والصيانة يُعتبر استثماراً مهماً للحفاظ على المنازل وتحسين جودة الحياة

    شركة كشف تسربات المياه بالاحساء

    شركة كشف تسربات المياه بالجبيل

    SvaraRadera