Dead Ends

Chatted with Locutius today, always a good thing.  I was thinking about going to pay a visit and drink his overpriced whiskey, but he pointed out that there was snow on the ground and further voiced his hopes that it would stay there.  That blew my desire to visit the Methow Valley anytime soon.  Maybe in May.

One of the things that we discussed was the seeming dead end where physics has seemed to arrive.  The background for this view can be found here:

http://nautil.us/blog/the-present-phase-of-stagnation-in-the-foundations-of-physics-is-not-normal

Overall, I tend to agree with the article:  But there are caveats.  I am in awe of the Michelson Morley experiments, but Michelson had to open his yap in 1894 and come up with this exemplar of stupid:

While it is never safe to affirm that the future of Physical Science has no marvels in store even more astonishing than those of the past, it seems probable that most of the grand underlying principles have been firmly established and that further advances are to be sought chiefly in the rigorous application of these principles to all the phenomena which come under our notice. It is here that the science of measurement shows its importance — where quantitative work is more to be desired than qualitative work. An eminent physicist remarked that the future truths of physical science are to be looked for in the sixth place of decimals.

But truthfully, you really can't blame Michelson, Einstein was 10 years away and the theoretical basis of the twentieth century "On the electrodynamics of moving bodies" was nowhere to be found.  Physics was going nowhere fast.

I kinda agree with all the points brought up in the article with one caveat:  But it ain't just physics that has this problem, it is the project of science.

Physics is the easier problem to see, all the hoopla lately has been a bunch of big talk about the Higgs Boson.  Well fuck, that took several good hard shakes of the money tree to come up with that expected result.  The LHC is a hell of a deal, one could argue that it is the most expensive and complex technology in the history of the planet, but the expected results that the physicists are crowing about kinda lead exactly to nowhere.

Now is where I will show my weirdo credentials.  I think that the reason that physics is in this straits are twofold:

1. Too many fucking physicists
2. Too narrow of a view of what science really means

Science is stuck because it sees itself as a separate priesthood (yes, I was a scientist and I was guilty as charged).  In my dotage, and while licking my wounds following my failure and exit from the field, I have had way too much time to think about this.  The cult of science cannot advance because it has become too intent on home run results in tightly constrained fields.  But the real problem is that the constraints of the individual hyper-specialized "fields" cannot create anything new.  Because they have "defined" their way out of any advance worthy of the name.  

I think that perhaps a return to the role of "Natural Philosopher" will allow renewed growth.  But I doubt in my soul of souls that such a thing can ever be possible in the governmental/educational/capitalist arena that currently defines the goals and roles of science in our world