Quote:
Originally Posted by bojan
Well, this is a method - you have phenomenon, you try to explain it the way you can (for now).... you name the explanation in somewhat colloquial language (“dark matter” – nothing wrong with that (or any other) name IMO per se – it only reflects the behaviour (can’t see it)).
For example, I still can’t comprehend why gauge theories are called “gauge”, but I understand (or at least I hope so) what the theories are about. You just have to be member of gang to speak their lingo properly  |
You're bang on here and your last post in my opinion.
The main problem here is not that Science (and we're really just talking Physics here) has lost its way. It is that we have been so successful over the past 400 years that the remaining blanks are very difficult to fill in.
First, we only see things we can't explain under extreme circumstances that are very hard to create for testing purposes (LHC energies, inside a black hole, first nanosecond of the universe).
Second, the wiggle-room afforded by what we already know is very narrow in theoretical terms. Any theoretical explanation for the gaps
must reduce under less extreme conditions to QM, GR and SM (or something mathematically equivalent), since we already know these give the right results. This is a very tight restriction on 'theories of everything', and one of the main reasons string theory persists as a candidate.
Thirdly, QM, GR and SM are based on some fairly heavy-duty maths, and so any attempt to extend them is also going to be mathematically heavy-duty. If you are not on top of all that maths, you are really just blundering around blindly. (To be clear, I'm only claiming a limited understanding of this myself.)
Finally, while everyone is entitled to express an opinion, some (ahem) opinions on this topic are clearly just the peanut gallery sounding off about something they have no real understanding of and no intention of doing the work to develop an understanding. By which I don't mean normal questions, suggestions and observations that make forums like this fun, more the disparaging of science with nothing of substance backing it.