GreekIslandGirl wrote:How is modern day physics/maths any different to magic/mysticism when their 'experimantion' depends on hocus-pocus?
Renormalisation involved resetting the electron's naked mass and charge to the finite empirical values, cancelling out all infinities. With this fix, QED made predictions more accurate than any other theory in physics. Of course, it was not a particularly satisfying solution. Instead of predicting the electron's mass and charge from first principles, the theory's mathematics had to be tweaked with experiment-bought information to make the sums work out. Feynman referred to it as "hocus-pocus" - but it worked.
New Scientist
Go with God.
Our dear GI Girl... you'll know better than most that (that unlike all-knowing religions) Science doesn't promise to have all the answers, but Science does promise to
search for the answers and to find more questions and Richard Feynman's quote above is really very much in keeping with the man's humour as a great populariser of Science, to put across to laypeople (!) in simple language just how massively difficult it is to predict values in the real world for fundamental particles and forces
from theory, of how much work is left to do in the field.
Easiest thing in the modern world to measure the charge and mass of a fundamental particle, but Science asks the "
why" question, something religions are rubbish at.
Why does an electron weigh this much, or
why is its charge such and such a value,
why is gravity so ridiculously weaker than the other forces etc etc
A reminder also that unlike religion and faiths, Science isn't afraid to say "we don't know" or "more work is needed" ...and sometimes to poke fun at our ignorance.
