The world was a playground for physical experiments
Before the 20th century, the physical world was a playground for natural philosophers where they asked questions, did experiments, and acquired knowledge based on what they observed and witnessed. I started thinking how sciences and physics have become more abstract after reading the conversations between Tagore and Einstein. Physical sciences have been developed based on human perceivable truths. Truths that can be acquired by human experience and logic, although Einstein believed that the mathematical truth is independent from human experience (that’s another post). Our knowledge about the world has been accumulated with abstract ideas that require abstract tools (i.e., math) to get full understanding of them. How can we understand the world with human perceivable physics again? Is it even possible?
The physical theories were once developed based on things that people were able to experience without much efforts. However, modern physics are no longer human perceivable. In our everyday lives, it seems impossible to observe, learn, and test modern science ideas, such as gravitational waves, cold fusion, EM-Drive…etc. We can only learn about them from one-way media (newspapers, scientific papers, videos…etc). We are not able to do any experiment with them. Is it a dilemma for sciences? Or have sciences become more exclusive to specialized scientists than ever?
About two millenniums ago, Aristotle observed and theorized that “heavier objects are falling faster”. This experiment can still be done easily when a person holds two objects. When being dropped, the heavier object would likely fall onto the ground first. Galileo improved the way of doing this experiment by having two objects with “the same shape but in different weights.” He showed regardless of the weight, both objects fell on to the ground at the same time. This free-falling experiment has been interpreted differently with additional imaginary elements. For example, how about we take out the air and do it in vacuum? what was the little invisible force stopping the objects falling in air and water?
More imaginary elements have been added into the human perceivable physics. This could be the main reason why the physic is not an easy subject anymore. Since Newton’s Principia Mathematica, Sir Newton attempted to describe the natural phenomena in axioms, logic, and math. By adding more abstract rules, logic may lead sciences to explore more. On one hand, it opened up the possible outcomes of sciences with deductible results. On the other hand, it became more counter-intuitive and rejected Aristotle’s sciences because more hidden and imaginary elements are not meant to be observed via human eyes, but by reasoning and calculations.
It is harder to do exploratory experiments in the present world. We can certainly verify Aristotle’s “heavy things fall faster” easily. Don’t get me wrong, it is not even easy to do Newtonian classic mechanics because experiments got extra “noise” from air friction if not conducted in vacuum. In fact, Aristotle’s theory was actually correct — heavier objects do fall faster when we assume a spherically symmetric gravitational field immersed in a fluid (air or water).
There is still a hope for the rest of us since it is relatively easier to get to the zero gravity environment (i.e. outer space or virtual reality). The major parts of physical sciences have been tested under the earth’s influence. Let’s hope we can have a playful world for physical sciences again soon.
