Re: The Usual Heinlein Thing

On Mar 10, 8:38 am, Will in New Haven
<bill.re...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Mar 8, 11:45 pm, thro...@xxxxxxxxx (Wayne Throop) wrote:

: "dwight.thi...@xxxxxxxxx" <dwight.thi...@xxxxxxxxx>
: And, as always, thanks for acknowledging you were wrong about Planck's
: constant not being needed for QM.

I think you're making that up. How about a posting reference,
with message ID so I can check the context? By "that", I mean that
Gene stated Planck's constant is not needed for QM.

( Note that upthread of here is Gene's note that QM is not needed
for the constant, not that the constant isn't needed for QM. )

That is how I have read it too, to the small extent that I have
followed this. QM may be necessary for the constant to be all that
important but it can exist without QM, because apparently it DID.

Will in New Haven

I'm not sure what you mean by this comment about it existing without
QM. Because QM is in fact the accepted theory, and it's been
governing the processes of the universe, since, well, since possibly
before the universe existed, and certainly before Planck's constant
was discovered.

If you mean to say that the constant was discovered before QM, well,
sure. But so what? (In fact, this is one of those history things that
doesn't really have a good answer. For example an article in
wikipedia disagrees:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planck's_constant.

----begin----

The Planck constant (denoted h) is a physical constant that is used to
describe the sizes of quanta. It plays a central part in the theory of
quantum mechanics, and is named after Max Planck, one of the founders
of quantum theory.

----end----

Compare and contrast with:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathematical_formulation_of_quantum_mechanics

----begin----

The mathematical formulation of quantum mechanics is the body of
mathematical formalisms which permits a rigorous description of
quantum mechanics. It is distinguished from mathematical formalisms
for theories developed prior to the early 1900s by the use of abstract
mathematical structures, such as infinite-dimensional Hilbert spaces
and operators on these spaces.

----end----

So I could take the tack that to say Planck's constant was known
before QM was known is simply false. But I won't. Because it doesn't
make any difference, imho.)

As I've pointed out repeatedly, being able to talk about something
without making references to the underlying premises and implications
is certainly possible. When we were redoing our floors last August (a
_terrible_ time to be doing that sort of thing. But the wife
insisted, sigh.), the issue of current came up because the floor
sanders kept tripping the circuit breakers, and the contractor
suggested that our fuse box needed to be upgraded. When we talked to
an electrician he recommended against it and said that to do so
without thoroughly checking all the old wiring would be imprudent, and
that really 15 to 30 amps was all that was reasonably needed.

Were we able to talk about current without explicitly referring to the
fact that current is just moving electric charge? Certainly. Does
that mean it's possible to posit the phenomena of current while
explicitly rejecting the concept of electric charge? Emphatically
not.

Now, if people wanted to challenge the notion that my observation was
wrong, that Plank's constant does not imply QM or QM phenomena, and so
it's possible to have the Planck length without QM that's one thing,
and debatable. But that's not exactly people have been claiming.
Although to be sure, I'm kind of confused as to what people really are
claiming. Wayne and Gene both seem to be maintaining that a) Gene
mentioned that the Planck length meant you had to have QM before I did
and b) as you quote above, that Planck's constant does not imply QM,
and so it's okay to talk about it while explicitly rejecting any
quantum indeterminacy.

As I've stated a few times, it's logically possible that one of the
claims may be wrong, or both claims; it is, however, logically
impossible for both claims to be correct (in the sense that if he made
the first claim, no on called him on it for being wrong.)
.

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