Theos-Talk Archives (November 2002 Message tt00467)

--- In theos-talk@y..., Bart Lidofsky <bartl@s...> wrote:
> I once heard a wonderfully elegant definition of
> a field: Something which takes up space, has a measurable and
> predictable effect on matter and energy, but of which we otherwise 
know
> nothing.

That is very similar to what I was taught in my second semester of 
electromagnetic fields in college. The professors told us we had to 
adopt the mind set that we could get useful results working with 
fields without having the slightest idea what they are and that this 
is OK. If you have to know what they are you cannot work with them. 
(The lecture was about waveguides.) The same thing holds for quantum 
mechanics, which is why I stayed away from both of those. As 
Heisenberg once said (this is from memory): "You can get interesting 
results without knowing what you are talking about." I CRINGE when I 
see some book by a New Age type who doesn't understan the mathematics 
trying to use quantum mechanics to give a scientific air to some 
cockamamie idea of his. Probably the worst offender nowadays is 
Peter Carroll, with his "chaos magic," but itis a popular shtick. 
Most people do not know what the writer is talking about and 
therefore do not notice that the writer doesn't know what is is 
talking about, wither.