[Physics] Orwellian language

[Doug Marett]

Hi Ilja

    Thanks, yes, I checked out your arXiv article, looks like that is
another example of the problem. I am sure there are many more in the
mathematical models that are not immediately evident to the casual reader.
Contradictory language just adds confusion for those trying to understand
physics concepts - in some cases this is an unfortunate convention that
arose because of a mistake and then stuck. Other times, the theory is
actually flawed by it, particularly if it contains:
a) contradictory arguments
b) defies known laws of physics
c) contains untestable propositions

Here are some of my, err, favorites:

1) The North pole is actually the South pole:
http://www.physics.org/article-questions.asp?id=65

This one is just darn inconvenient, but it is a true oxymoron.

2) The carriers of electricity are negative, not positive:
http://www-spof.gsfc.nasa.gov/Education/woppos.html
here is a cartoon about Benjamin Franklin making the mistake
http://xkcd.com/567/
This then leads to the unendinig confusion about conventional current and
electron current.
This is particularly vexing when 1 and 2 are combined, like when trying to
determine the expected direction of the Lorentz force in a motor
experiment, and being confronted with a compass that tell me the wrong pole
for my magnet, and a electrical diagram that doesn't define whether we are
talking about conventional or electron flow!

3) Space is expanding.
Well, this is a contradiction in terms - space cannot "expand". A gas
inside of a space can expand, or the walls of a vessel can expand,
enclosing more space, but space itself cannot expand, in the literal sense
of the words. But this one also defies the known laws of physics, since as
space is presumed to expand, the energy in space also expands (increases),
directly defying the conservation of energy law.
http://www.preposterousuniverse.com/blog/2010/02/22/energy-is-not-conserved/
Finally, the theory cannot be directly tested in the sense that the
expansion cannot be measured by an observer seeking to observe a direct
increase in the distance between objects in near space - see:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metric_expansion_of_space . Since this is
part of the definition of the theory, it contains an untestable
proposition.

4) Light is both a particle and a wave.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wave%E2%80%93particle_duality
A wave is a disturbance in a medium, a particle is an object.
Albert Einstein <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Einstein> wrote: "*It
seems as though we must use sometimes the one theory and sometimes the
other, while at times we may use either. We are faced with a new kind of
difficulty. We have two contradictory pictures of reality; separately
neither of them fully explains the phenomena of light, but together they do*
".[1]
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wave%E2%80%93particle_duality#cite_note-1>
There is a lot of talk that the collapse of the wavefunction would appear
to defy the conservation of energy and the speed of light, unless one
resorts the the undesirable many-worlds approach, which is probably
untestable (how does one go about detecting alternate universes??).

There are many more, if anyone wants to add to the list I would like to
hear it!

Doug





On Thu, Nov 10, 2016 at 2:20 AM, Ilja Schmelzer <
ilja.schmelzer at googlemail.com> wrote:

> Regarding the doublespeak, I have been able to publish a criticism of
> one aspect of the doublespeak in Foundations of Physics.
>
> "Moreover, a naming convention which forces us to name theories which
> are local in any physically important sense "non-local" is not only
> absurd, but can be even considered as Orwellian."
>
> With a footnote explaining: "To classify the actual convention as
> "Orwellian" is justified not only because it requires to name a local
> theory non-local. It also shares another important aspect with
> newspeak -- it leaves some incorrect thoughts without words to talk
> about then: Indeed, the word "local" is the natural word to describe
> the class of models considered in this paper, with some much higher
> speed of information transfer in a hidden preferred frame, and to
> distinguish it from theories with really pathological locality and
> causality violations. And this is, indeed, a class of theories which
> is the closest thing to anathema in modern physics."
>
> Schmelzer, I.: About a "nonlocal" local model considered by L.
> Vervoort, and the necessity to distinguish locality from Einstein
> locality, acc. by Foundations of Physics, arXiv:1610.03057
>
> 2016-11-10 4:54 GMT+01:00, Doug Marett <dm88dm at gmail.com>:
> >     I don't buy your argument that such language in science is acceptable
> > because it has become a customary form of scientific discourse, i.e. the
> > use of contradictory or oxymoron-ic phraseology  . Rather, I think it is
> > better to view such deliberate misuse of the meaning of words in physics
> as
> > a form of doublespeak https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doublespeak, which
> has
> > its origins, in part, in the doublethink of George Orwell's 1984. It is
> in
> > a sense, the "political language" of physics.
> > What we are talking about is the  intentional ambiguity in language or to
> > actual inversions of meaning (e.g., "I just want you to know that, when
> we
> > talk about war, we're really talking about peace."
> > It is summed up by Edward Herman in describing the purpose of doublespeak
> >
> >  "What is really important in the world of doublespeak is the ability to
> > lie, whether knowingly or unconsciously, and to get away with it; and the
> > ability to use lies and choose and shape facts selectively, blocking out
> > those that don’t fit an agenda or program."
>
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