And we run into the issue that there are medical problems that make the victim irrational, and therefore unwilling to seek help. If we could count on people making rational decisions from their point of view, that would be great. If you've decided that your desire to sit around and eat Cheetos all the time is greater than your desire to be healthy, I can respect that decision while thinking it's stupid. If you are sitting around eating Cheetos because you're suffering from clinical depression, and won't seek treatment because of your illness, that's different.
This isn't clearcut. We don't want police detaining people without trial because they might be mentally ill, or make up mental illnesses because it's politically convenient. However, letting people's depression go untreated until they become homeless is very much like leaving someone to have a heart attack on the sidewalk. The use of some drugs can cause similar artificial irrationality.
For that matter, what do you do if you find someone unconscious on the sidewalk? Pull out your phone and call 911 (number may very depending on country)? That's going to result in responders doing things to the unconscious person without his or her consent. Mental illness can make the person unable to rationally consent more subtly.
Mathematics tells us nothing about the real world. That's what physics and other sciences are for. Unless your father is very familiar with the various branches of physics, he can't know whether his theory describes the real world.
Sure it can be a theory. We've had competing theories so far without the ability to distinguish between them. A theory is an explanation of things that can depend on hypotheses. I don't think there's an actual promotion to "law", except historically. I haven't seen people talk about the laws of special relativity, and it's better tested than previous laws. Often what was referred to as a law was an observation without much theory, such as the Law of Gravity, which basically consisted of an equation and maybe a short paragraph of explanation.
Consider steady-state vs. the Big Bang. Both were theories that accounted for all the observations made so far, and both could make predictions. It wasn't until the discovery and analysis of quasars that we were able to find evidence for one rather than the other.
String theory has the potential to make testable predictions, unlike Creationism. If the "multiverse" is simply the "many worlds" theory of quantum phenomena, it's experimentally indistinguishable from other theories, and hence not science. If a multiverse theory makes potentially testable predictions, it's science.
Einstein was wrong. If your theory justifies Einstein's instincts, how does it account for all the experimental evidence for Bell's Theorem.
(Explanation: Einstein's big problem with quantum physics was the loss of determinism. Bell's Theorem led to experiments that disproved the idea of local determinism, meaning that either there's a nonlocal field determining things or many unpredictable quantum phenomena are truly random.)
F = ma, with the conventional meanings of F, m, and a, is wrong, because it doesn't hold at high speeds. It's very nearly right at low speeds. Special Relativity is arguably more complex (part of SR is looking at things in a new way, and once you've got the knack things are much simpler), but it's at least as accurate at low speeds, and is more accurate at high speeds.
You can't really speak of theories being "right" in the absolute sense. It's relative. A theory is closer to right when it makes more testable predictions and its predictions are reasonably accurate.
If string theorists can reduce the set of consistent parameters to something that can make a prediction, great. If they can take a subset and make a prediction that's falsified, great. From my position of ignorance, string theory looks more like a new language or formalism to describe physics than an actual theory.
It seems reasonable to assume that the universe follows some underlying set of axioms
Reasonable, but hardly certain. We've discovered a lot of what appear to be axioms in a set. It's a good working hypothesis, since then we'll look for more axioms rather than attribute weird unexplained behavior to something that can't be explained scientifically.
maths really is nothing more than the concrete expression of the implications of a set of axioms
Math is the abstract expression of the implications of a set of axioms. This fits in very well with the "underlying set of axioms" theory of the Universe, as then if we know all the axioms we can construct a perfect mathematical model of the Universe. It still won't be the Universe. So far, this approach has worked tremendously well.
Physics has not shown that warp drives are impossible, just that they require some stuff with negative mass and a whole lot of energy. We're fairly close to knowing enough science to make colonizing other planets a matter of engineering (really big, tough, and complicated engineering, but engineering nonetheless).
You still can explain things in terms of gods, if you like. Current such theories tend to imply that prayer can be used to alter the Universe in subtle ways, and what experiments we have seem to disagree with the theory, but that's hardly definitive.
What we've empirically found is that rejecting "God did it" as an explanation forces us to consider other explanations, and hammering away at them until we find suitable ones. We have found falsifiable scientific explanations for a whole lot of things, and are confident (with more or less good reason) we can explain most or all of what's left scientifically. We've found that we can make a whole lot of counterintuitive predictions about what happens when we make certain things, and this method of invention has been much more successful in achieving many of our goals than happens with god-based theories.
I just conducted an observational test. I see a banana on my desk. This is experimental verification that something exists. Since a Universe is defined as a maximal collection (in some manner) of somethings, then the existence of a banana is strong evidence that there is a Universe.
After Newton, we had a theory of gravity that accounted for terrestrial gravity and orbital mechanics, but it was designed around those, and it wasn't making easily testable predictions. I believe that the first testable predictions it made were in orbital mechanics, which meant we needed more advanced telescope technology to find the newly predicted planets.
String theory may not be able to make testable predictions now, but if it's possible to test in the future (either by refining the theory or by developing new experimental apparatus or by waiting for an astronomical event) it's a scientific theory. The fact that it hasn't made testable predictions doesn't mean it won't. We wouldn't have built the LHC if it didn't transform theories with no testable predictions to theories with testable predictions.
Part of science is sitting around thinking, "Well, we've got this theory here. What are some testable predictions we can make?" Thought experiments are part of that. Obviously, a thought experiment has no observational value, but that's not what it's for.
Right now, I'm sitting with my butt in my chair. Describing this in full involves general relativity (for the gravity) and quantum mechanics (which explains why everything doesn't collapse into points, and why my butt and my chair stay apart). Incandescent light bulbs work on quantum mechanical principles (their light can't be explained with classical physics).
What your father has to do with his theory is to explain all sorts of things, such as the ones you mentioned, more or less as accurately as the present theories, and make a few predictions that previous theories didn't.
In order to do that, he has to know a lot about quantum mechanics and general relativity and the experimental evidence. Since he speaks only Serbian, this seems unlikely. It's far easier to learn English and then lots of this physics than to learn while only speaking Serbian. It's a lot easier to learn of these things when employed in a university or other research establishment I've seen a few of these theories, and the people making the theories seem to lack such understanding, and make mistakes that I can pick out, and I'm not a physicist.
Proto stellar systems are composed of elementary particles, so planet formation has to be explainable in terms of quantum mechanics, or quantum mechanics is incomplete (we know it is).
Emergent properties can be calculated, given enough computrons. Sometimes it's fairly easy: some of thermodynamics is statistical consequences of known lower-level laws. One problem with the straight computational approach is noticing when we do have a reasonable emergent property.
When I was a kid, we might have asked similarly why protons had positive charge and neutrons were neutral, and why neutrons were slightly heavier. Now we can explain both effects in terms of their quark composition. When my great-grandfather was a kid, they asked why black body radiation was what it was, and that was explained in an early result of quantum mechanics. There's lots of unexplained numbers in physics, and they may be irreducible or they may be consequences of laws we don't understand yet.
We don't know whether there's physics to be found that explains why there are three generations of leptons. We also know that not inquiring into things, but just labeling them as "that's the way they are", stifles science. Therefore, it's worth thinking of reasons why three generations now and then.
Einstein made great contributions to quantum mechanics. He didn't believe in fundamental randomness, and made some excellent arguments against it that helped the field by bringing up important points faster.
What we have in reality is a Universe made out of elementary particles that combine in various ways. Assuming that there are laws of physics in the usual sense, the particles all obey certain laws that combine to make what we see. Some of the laws about elementary particles are sufficiently subtle that we can't measure their effect on a quantum mechanical scale, and groups of particles that are sufficiently large behave very differently from the individual particles because of behavior that statistically cancels out.
We don't have a unified theory until we have one that can be applied to elementary particles and scaled up to very large scales without swapping out theories along the way. Currently, we have two main theories, general relativity and quantum mechanics, and the effects of what we describe with general relativity are too small to observe with elementary particles, and many of the effects of what we describe as quantum mechanics are statistically lost in the noise on larger scales.
The predictions don't actually have to be useful, they have to be objectively measurable (unless that's what you meany by "useful").
There's also the question of how to think about things. Our theories of gravity have been adequate for what we measured since Newton (if you'll allow the occasional deduced mass like Neptune and dark matter), but our understanding has changed. We can observe this as a series of mathematical models that agree better and better with observed reality, or we can take note of the early 1900s and how our thinking of gravity went from unexplained force from a distance to curvature of spacetime.
String theory is a way of thinking about physics that has not, to my knowledge, made predictions that can currently be verified that could falsify the approach. It may be useful as a way of extending current models once we get the hang of it.
One congressional inquiry on Benghazi was certainly justified. The continuing series was ridiculous
There's dangers involved in demanding accountability for every little thing, in that it has a chilling effect on getting anything done. It's usually easier to justify inaction and not making minor mistakes when doing nothing, and people who are doing things will make mistakes.
You approve of endless expensive and time-wasting and unsuccessful Congressional inquiries to try to pin some wrongdoing on Clinton with respect to the Benghazi attack? That's what they've been doing. That's why I don't take Clinton-bashers seriously.
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And we run into the issue that there are medical problems that make the victim irrational, and therefore unwilling to seek help. If we could count on people making rational decisions from their point of view, that would be great. If you've decided that your desire to sit around and eat Cheetos all the time is greater than your desire to be healthy, I can respect that decision while thinking it's stupid. If you are sitting around eating Cheetos because you're suffering from clinical depression, and won't seek treatment because of your illness, that's different.
This isn't clearcut. We don't want police detaining people without trial because they might be mentally ill, or make up mental illnesses because it's politically convenient. However, letting people's depression go untreated until they become homeless is very much like leaving someone to have a heart attack on the sidewalk. The use of some drugs can cause similar artificial irrationality.
For that matter, what do you do if you find someone unconscious on the sidewalk? Pull out your phone and call 911 (number may very depending on country)? That's going to result in responders doing things to the unconscious person without his or her consent. Mental illness can make the person unable to rationally consent more subtly.
Mathematics tells us nothing about the real world. That's what physics and other sciences are for. Unless your father is very familiar with the various branches of physics, he can't know whether his theory describes the real world.
Sure it can be a theory. We've had competing theories so far without the ability to distinguish between them. A theory is an explanation of things that can depend on hypotheses. I don't think there's an actual promotion to "law", except historically. I haven't seen people talk about the laws of special relativity, and it's better tested than previous laws. Often what was referred to as a law was an observation without much theory, such as the Law of Gravity, which basically consisted of an equation and maybe a short paragraph of explanation.
Consider steady-state vs. the Big Bang. Both were theories that accounted for all the observations made so far, and both could make predictions. It wasn't until the discovery and analysis of quasars that we were able to find evidence for one rather than the other.
String theory has the potential to make testable predictions, unlike Creationism. If the "multiverse" is simply the "many worlds" theory of quantum phenomena, it's experimentally indistinguishable from other theories, and hence not science. If a multiverse theory makes potentially testable predictions, it's science.
Einstein was wrong. If your theory justifies Einstein's instincts, how does it account for all the experimental evidence for Bell's Theorem.
(Explanation: Einstein's big problem with quantum physics was the loss of determinism. Bell's Theorem led to experiments that disproved the idea of local determinism, meaning that either there's a nonlocal field determining things or many unpredictable quantum phenomena are truly random.)
F = ma, with the conventional meanings of F, m, and a, is wrong, because it doesn't hold at high speeds. It's very nearly right at low speeds. Special Relativity is arguably more complex (part of SR is looking at things in a new way, and once you've got the knack things are much simpler), but it's at least as accurate at low speeds, and is more accurate at high speeds.
You can't really speak of theories being "right" in the absolute sense. It's relative. A theory is closer to right when it makes more testable predictions and its predictions are reasonably accurate.
If string theorists can reduce the set of consistent parameters to something that can make a prediction, great. If they can take a subset and make a prediction that's falsified, great. From my position of ignorance, string theory looks more like a new language or formalism to describe physics than an actual theory.
Reasonable, but hardly certain. We've discovered a lot of what appear to be axioms in a set. It's a good working hypothesis, since then we'll look for more axioms rather than attribute weird unexplained behavior to something that can't be explained scientifically.
Math is the abstract expression of the implications of a set of axioms. This fits in very well with the "underlying set of axioms" theory of the Universe, as then if we know all the axioms we can construct a perfect mathematical model of the Universe. It still won't be the Universe. So far, this approach has worked tremendously well.
Physics has not shown that warp drives are impossible, just that they require some stuff with negative mass and a whole lot of energy. We're fairly close to knowing enough science to make colonizing other planets a matter of engineering (really big, tough, and complicated engineering, but engineering nonetheless).
You still can explain things in terms of gods, if you like. Current such theories tend to imply that prayer can be used to alter the Universe in subtle ways, and what experiments we have seem to disagree with the theory, but that's hardly definitive.
What we've empirically found is that rejecting "God did it" as an explanation forces us to consider other explanations, and hammering away at them until we find suitable ones. We have found falsifiable scientific explanations for a whole lot of things, and are confident (with more or less good reason) we can explain most or all of what's left scientifically. We've found that we can make a whole lot of counterintuitive predictions about what happens when we make certain things, and this method of invention has been much more successful in achieving many of our goals than happens with god-based theories.
Math is unreal. It is spectacularly useful in science, which suggests to me that there are reasonably simple physical laws that interact.
A multiverse theory that says it might be possible to observe interactions between Universes could be a scientific theory, if not currently testable.
I just conducted an observational test. I see a banana on my desk. This is experimental verification that something exists. Since a Universe is defined as a maximal collection (in some manner) of somethings, then the existence of a banana is strong evidence that there is a Universe.
After Newton, we had a theory of gravity that accounted for terrestrial gravity and orbital mechanics, but it was designed around those, and it wasn't making easily testable predictions. I believe that the first testable predictions it made were in orbital mechanics, which meant we needed more advanced telescope technology to find the newly predicted planets.
String theory may not be able to make testable predictions now, but if it's possible to test in the future (either by refining the theory or by developing new experimental apparatus or by waiting for an astronomical event) it's a scientific theory. The fact that it hasn't made testable predictions doesn't mean it won't. We wouldn't have built the LHC if it didn't transform theories with no testable predictions to theories with testable predictions.
Part of science is sitting around thinking, "Well, we've got this theory here. What are some testable predictions we can make?" Thought experiments are part of that. Obviously, a thought experiment has no observational value, but that's not what it's for.
Right now, I'm sitting with my butt in my chair. Describing this in full involves general relativity (for the gravity) and quantum mechanics (which explains why everything doesn't collapse into points, and why my butt and my chair stay apart). Incandescent light bulbs work on quantum mechanical principles (their light can't be explained with classical physics).
What your father has to do with his theory is to explain all sorts of things, such as the ones you mentioned, more or less as accurately as the present theories, and make a few predictions that previous theories didn't.
In order to do that, he has to know a lot about quantum mechanics and general relativity and the experimental evidence. Since he speaks only Serbian, this seems unlikely. It's far easier to learn English and then lots of this physics than to learn while only speaking Serbian. It's a lot easier to learn of these things when employed in a university or other research establishment I've seen a few of these theories, and the people making the theories seem to lack such understanding, and make mistakes that I can pick out, and I'm not a physicist.
Proto stellar systems are composed of elementary particles, so planet formation has to be explainable in terms of quantum mechanics, or quantum mechanics is incomplete (we know it is).
Emergent properties can be calculated, given enough computrons. Sometimes it's fairly easy: some of thermodynamics is statistical consequences of known lower-level laws. One problem with the straight computational approach is noticing when we do have a reasonable emergent property.
When I was a kid, we might have asked similarly why protons had positive charge and neutrons were neutral, and why neutrons were slightly heavier. Now we can explain both effects in terms of their quark composition. When my great-grandfather was a kid, they asked why black body radiation was what it was, and that was explained in an early result of quantum mechanics. There's lots of unexplained numbers in physics, and they may be irreducible or they may be consequences of laws we don't understand yet.
We don't know whether there's physics to be found that explains why there are three generations of leptons. We also know that not inquiring into things, but just labeling them as "that's the way they are", stifles science. Therefore, it's worth thinking of reasons why three generations now and then.
Einstein made great contributions to quantum mechanics. He didn't believe in fundamental randomness, and made some excellent arguments against it that helped the field by bringing up important points faster.
What we have in reality is a Universe made out of elementary particles that combine in various ways. Assuming that there are laws of physics in the usual sense, the particles all obey certain laws that combine to make what we see. Some of the laws about elementary particles are sufficiently subtle that we can't measure their effect on a quantum mechanical scale, and groups of particles that are sufficiently large behave very differently from the individual particles because of behavior that statistically cancels out.
We don't have a unified theory until we have one that can be applied to elementary particles and scaled up to very large scales without swapping out theories along the way. Currently, we have two main theories, general relativity and quantum mechanics, and the effects of what we describe with general relativity are too small to observe with elementary particles, and many of the effects of what we describe as quantum mechanics are statistically lost in the noise on larger scales.
The predictions don't actually have to be useful, they have to be objectively measurable (unless that's what you meany by "useful").
There's also the question of how to think about things. Our theories of gravity have been adequate for what we measured since Newton (if you'll allow the occasional deduced mass like Neptune and dark matter), but our understanding has changed. We can observe this as a series of mathematical models that agree better and better with observed reality, or we can take note of the early 1900s and how our thinking of gravity went from unexplained force from a distance to curvature of spacetime.
String theory is a way of thinking about physics that has not, to my knowledge, made predictions that can currently be verified that could falsify the approach. It may be useful as a way of extending current models once we get the hang of it.
Except that I'm precisely not judging Europe, except on objective criteria. You are the one who made claims about what Europeans want.
One congressional inquiry on Benghazi was certainly justified. The continuing series was ridiculous
There's dangers involved in demanding accountability for every little thing, in that it has a chilling effect on getting anything done. It's usually easier to justify inaction and not making minor mistakes when doing nothing, and people who are doing things will make mistakes.
You approve of endless expensive and time-wasting and unsuccessful Congressional inquiries to try to pin some wrongdoing on Clinton with respect to the Benghazi attack? That's what they've been doing. That's why I don't take Clinton-bashers seriously.