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THE POET AS SCIENTIST

THE POET AS SCIENTIST, THE POET AS SCIENTIST

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The Geek's Raven
[An excerpt, with thanks to Marcus Bales]

Once upon a midnight dreary,
fingers cramped and vision bleary,
System manuals piled high and wasted paper on the floor,
Longing for the warmth of bedsheets,
Still I sat there, doing spreadsheets:
Having reached the bottom line,
I took a floppy from the drawer.
Typing with a steady hand, I then invoked the SAVE command
But got instead a reprimand: it read "Abort, Retry, Ignore".

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Form input - by Günter Born

Friday, April 08, 2022

Do biologists believe in "space-time"?

This may seem an odd question to ask life science specialists. After all, Einstein's Theory of Relativity primarily deals with space-time distortions at speeds approaching the speed of light, and with the effects of massive gravitational fields on light and time. So, what does that have to do with the life sciences, as we understand them? However, even if, as life science specialists, you may not be interested in "space-time", "space-time" may be interested in you! Consider the following example. https://philarchive.org/archive/ASSMAH-2 Here we have an attempt to explain mental illness in terms of distortions of the space-time continuum within the brain. Does this make sense? That's up to you, I suppose. Physicists, of course, believe in all aspects of relativity theory religiously. Quite religiously, actually. It's a cult. Anyone questioning relativity is a "confirmed relativity denier" and must be shunned. They are unclean. Lately, since GPS became commonly employed, engineers have climbed aboard the relativity bandwagon, as well. Since, at times anyway, 30 microsecond an hour corrections are necessary for GPS to function, and these are roughly correlated with relativistic predictions. And, since relativity is used to sell their products, engineers love relativity. I would tend to argue that the evidence for relativity isn't really that terrific. We have laboratory particle accelerator experiments which show that wave forms that can't travel faster than light, can't propel particles to speeds faster than light. Sound highly artifactual and confounded, to me, anyway. We have crude correlations to micro-effects like in GPS. Almost anything could be causing micro-effects on atomic clocks that relate to gravity. Gravity does affect things, in a variety of ways, you know. Doesn't mean time is dilating, necessarily. And, bear in mind, the physicists really do have to believe in something, as a model of the universe, don't they? Otherwise, what are they doing, exactly? In a general way, I'm suggesting that the physicists are selecting data to fit the theory. Historically, there's been a cyclical movement between believing the universe was totally controllable, and absolute -- Isaac Newton believed this -- and believing that the universe was virtually uncontrollable and incomprehensible. Arguably, Relativity theory moves in this direction. So, as a group, do biologists "buy" the whole special theory of relativity -- time is a dimension like space, time is distorted by gravity, time slows down at high speeds, time stops at the speed of light? Because, the physicists are true believers here. And, with biological nanotechnology, biologists are more and more impinging on the traditional territory of the physicists. Physicists may insist that life scientists must consider relativistic "space-time" considerations in their work. Physicists may insist that Einstein is directly relelvant to the development of new drugs, and treatments in health care. How would life scientists feel about this, exactly? https://cen.acs.org/articles/94/i37/Relativistic-effects-govern-methyl-transfer.html

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