I often hear statements such as these. Most people, if they “see” the errors, are likely ignore them because they usually seem trivial and inconsequential. Most are points that a majority of people consider to be established fact simply by usage; language is, after all, usage-defined. But if you scrutinize the statements a little more closely it becomes obvious they are really points of missed logic. They are simple but subtle points that lie at the edges of (easy) human comprehension, points that sometimes underlie pseudoscience.
Perhaps our “seeing” these misunderstood statements will offer us a starting point for helping at least some people see into the abstract territory of physics and to that place where the line between science and pseudoscience is obvious. Let's, as skeptics, collect such starting points, these misunderstood concepts, and explore their use. Once in hand, we use them as discovery paths to widely missed points. For each such statement we should identify the missed point, a clue, and perhaps some societal consequences of that missed point.
I have put a few dozen of these into an experimental web site where they are part of a puzzle-solving game. The game is a demonstration, an experiment with using this approach to reveal the simple but subtle concepts of physics. It's an “Adventure Cave” game like that of the ancient days of CP/M computers. You start in a gully next to a small building near some woods; you type in the direction you would like to go and the actions you would like to take. Soon you are in a huge cave full of secrets and secret passages, magic and mysterious forces, trolls and wizards ready to help or hinder. And somewhere there is a golden plover egg to find.
My web site has a platinum plover egg. It's well hidden, but the clues necessary to find it are there. And along the way there are many clues to help find the obvious yet unobserved line separating science from pseudoscience.
Let's develop this technique to reveal the true mysteriousness of science which today's open mindedness has let leak out of New Age minds. This could be the beginning of a long journey of true discovery. I would like to hear about some of the examples you encounter. What are the clues, what was missed, and what might be some consequences? And how might we structure a presentation that could direct someone toward that “Eureka” insight?
Statements that Give Clues
Examine the statement: “An effective Private Investigator must use his fists, just like in the movies.”The clue: A movie critic once commented, “The loud cracking sound you hear when the movie hero punches the villain in the jaw is the sound of finger bones breaking. Jaw bones are stronger than finger bones.” A few years ago several professional basketball players demonstrated the critic's point by throwing a few angry punches. We heard of no broken jawbones, just a lot of broken fingers.
Missed: Newton's law of action and reaction (third law of motion), which is the observation that forces are always interactions between two objects. The force on one object and the force on the other are equal in magnitude and opposite in direction. The two forces are inseverable parts of a whole, just like the two sides of a sheet of paper. This law is often mistakenly thought to be simply a statement that causes have effects, and effects have causes. But to Newton it was a previously unrecognized, profound insight into why the moon, planets and sun move the way they do.
Another common mistake is believing that intent is important. The hero did the hitting, but the villain hit too—with his chin. Newton says, “The force on the chin equals the force on the fingers, but in the opposite direction; the fingers, being weaker, break.” Seeing intent, instead of the physics, as important to the outcome is an egocentrism, which, it seems, is difficult to overcome.
Newton's third law also involves the relationship of mutual reciprocity: A is to B as B is to A. This is one element of symmetry, a set of abstract concepts prominent in modern physics. Carl Sandberg in the tall-tales chapter of The People, Yes tells of “skyscrapers so tall they have hinges on their tops to let the moon go by, and pancakes so thin they have only one side.” It is the symmetry of mutual reciprocity that underlies the humor of the pancakes. It's only a short step outward from comprehension of this easy concept to understanding mutual reciprocity in Newton's law of action and reaction—or even Einstein's energy-mass equivalence and Harvard sociologist Lawrence Kohlberg's social “implications of mutual reciprocity.”
Our blurry vision of mutual reciprocity leads us to perceive but one side of the two inseverable parts of a whole. It deceives us into thinking that intent breaks the jaw; that mass and energy are distinct entities, and mass gets “converted” to energy; and that perpetual antagonism as portrayed in the movies, rather than cooperation, is the “real stuff” of life.
About the author:
Phil Pennington is a retired physicist who taught on the faculty at PSU and has a special interest in problems of education and the misunderstanding of physics. You can find part of his game on his personal web page, located at http://www.pacifier.com/~ppenn/ and you may obtain the entire game on floppy disk by contacting him by e-mail at: ppenn@pacifier.com
