With quantum mechanics (and modern experimental technology), we can actually look down below the level of individual particles, and we have found that photons are actually their own particles, not patterns of vibration (or whatever) within other particles.
We knew this before quantum mechanics. Lorentz's aether wasn't matter.
You mean quantum mechanics? Quantum mechanics is very elegant, it's just usually explained badly. See http://www.amazon.com/QED-Strange-Theory-Light-Matter/dp/0691024170.
I've read (indeed, I own) this book. I don't know how to evaluate elegance, but the Standard Model particle zoo isn't simple, at least not in the way Newton or special relativity is simple. I wish you would assume I have some idea what I'm talking about and that my concerns and questions might be well motivated, however alien they seem to you.
Would you care to propose some alternative theory of truth?
I would like too but I haven't really figured out what I think. I'm not particularly radical, but I think the epistemology Eliezer has laid out on Less Wrong has some holes, leaves important questions unanswered etc. Maybe one day I'll write something.
Obviously, but that disagreement should then be resolved by reference to experiment. There is no room for persistent disagreement. In engineering, you can have five different methods, each with their own advantages and disadvantages, and this is a stable state. In science, having five different theories is not a stable state; it needs to be resolved, rather than harden into different factions.
But they aren't always resolved that way! Special relativity beat out Lorentzian Ether Theory even though they are empirically equivalent. Obviously if you have two theories that predict different outcomes of some feasible experiment you can run that experiment and resolve the difference. The question is, what we do when there is no experiment to run? Well we do some math and try to come up with testable hypotheses. Using different theories or different vocabulary seems to affect how easy it is to do the math and generate hypotheses.
"And then once you notice that theories of physics have this nasty habit of turning out false... well then I don't even know what you're using to declare A right and B wrong."
Experimental evidence?
As the sentence immediately following this one was supposed to indicate, usually both theories are wrong in the long run.
What does that even mean? How would you apply that to a theory of physics (past or present)? What "theoretical assumptions" are involved in, say, Special Relativity? Special Relativity makes the assertion that the speed of light is constant regardless of reference frame, but this isn't just a mathematical axiom that you can pick up and discard at will; it is based on a huge pile of experimental evidence.
It isn't based on any experimental evidence that distinguishes it from a theory that says mass contracts in the direction it moves in. But it turns out that if you start from a theory which says's light's speed is constant you can come up with things like the theory of General Relativity. Alternately, you might have two theories that describe totally different phenomena without error but have the potential to describe things about other phenomena and eventually one might be subsumed under the other. But it won't always be obvious which theory is the more fundamental one. I suspect one reason there is a lot of work done trying to incorporate gravity into quantum mechanics rather than the other three fundamental forces into General Relativity is that SR/GR just doesn't have the vocabulary to make hypotheses about particle physics. The former is sort of obvious though "Oh there is another force, there must be this other wavicle: a graviton." That doesn't mean it will be an successful approach but that is part of the reason it is the popular one.
Special relativity beat out Lorentzian Ether Theory even though they are empirically equivalent. Obviously if you have two theories that predict different outcomes of some feasible experiment you can run that experiment and resolve the difference.
These two theories are not equivalent at all; they predict different outcomes for the Michelson-Morley experiment, unless you patch up the ether by requiring it to be at rest relative to the Earth at all times.
- Eliezer Yudkowsky, Collapse Postulates
In the olden days of physics, circa 1900, many prominent physicists believed in a substance known as aether. The principle was simple: Maxwell's equations of electromagnetism had shown that light was a wave, and light followed many of the same equations as sound waves and water waves. However, every other kind of wave- sound waves, water waves, waves in springs- needs some sort of medium for its transmission. A "wave" is not really a physical object; it is just a disturbance of some other substance. For instance, if you throw a rock into a pond, you cannot pluck the waves out of the pond and take them home with you in your backpack, because the "waves" are just peaks and troughs in the puddle of water (the medium). Hence, there should be some sort of medium for light waves, and the physicists named this medium "aether".
However, difficulties soon developed. If you have a jar, you can pump the air out of the jar, and then the jar will no longer transmit sound, demonstrating that the wave medium (the air) has been removed. But, there was no way to remove the aether from a jar; no matter what the experimentalists did, you could still shine light through it. There was, in fact, no way of detecting, altering, or experimenting with aether at all. Physicists knew that aether must be unlike all other matter, because it could apparently pass through closed containers made of any substance. And finally, the Michelson-Morely experiment showed that the "aether" was always stationary relative to Earth, even though the Earth changed direction every six months as it moved about in its orbit! Shortly thereafter, the inconsistencies were resolved with Albert Einstein's Theory of Special Relativity, and everyone realized that aether was imaginary.
Shortly thereafter, during the 20th century, physicists discovered two new forces of nature: the strong nuclear force and the weak nuclear force. These two forces, as well as electromagnetism, could be described very well on the quantum level: they were created by the influence of mediator particles called (respectively) gluons, W and Z bosons, and photons, and these particles obeyed the laws of quantum mechanics just like electrons and mesons did. The description of these three forces, as well as the particles they act upon, has been neatly unified in a theory of physics known as the Standard Model, which has been our best known description of the universe for thirty years now.
However, gravity is not a part of this model. Making an analogy to the other forces, physicists have proposed a mediator particle known as the "graviton". The graviton is thought to be similar to the photon, the gluon, and the W and Z bosons, except that it is massless and has spin 2. I posit that the "graviton" is essentially the same theory as the "aether": a misguided attempt to explain something by reference to similar-seeming things that were explained in the same way. Consider the following facts:
And, with reference to the graviton itself:
So, what's really going on here? I don't know. I'm not Albert Einstein. But I suspect it will take someone like him- someone brilliant, very good at physics, yet largely outside the academic system- to resolve this mess, and tell us what's really happening.