Sublime

To do this one would have to postulate even more complex manoeuvrings in space, governed by laws of physics very different from those that operate on our supposedly stationary Earth. But they would be different in precisely such a way as to remain observationally consistent with the Earth being in motion and the laws being the same out there as

There is no picture- or theory-independent concept of reality. Instead we will adopt a view that we will call model-dependent realism: the idea that a physical theory or world picture is a model (generally of a mathematical nature) and a set of rules that connect the elements of the model to observations. This provides a framework with which to

The explicit goal of scientific research is not to make correct quantitative predictions; it is to understand how the world works.

In classical physics, change is described using a specific framework we will call the Laplacian paradigm,

Incidentally, Plato’s idea that physical reality consists of imperfect imitations of abstractions seems an unnecessarily asymmetrical stance nowadays. Like Plato, we still study abstractions for their own sake. But in post-Galilean science, and in the theory of virtual reality, we also regard abstractions as means of understanding real or

Physics, my friend, is a narrow path drawn across a gulf that the human imagination cannot grasp. It is a set of answers to certain questions that we put to the world, and the world supplies the answers on the condition that we will not then ask it other questions, questions shouted out by common sense. And common sense? It is that which is