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Old 09-05-2012, 10:37 AM
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Dave2042 (Dave)
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Quote:
Originally Posted by cwjohn View Post
Steven

I agree with absolutely everything you say here if you replace the word "explain" with "describe".

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A fascinating debate, but I think the above comment really demonstrates the semantic problem I've mentioned earlier.

In the highly abstract arenas of QM and GR, it's not entirely clear (to me at any rate) what "explain" means, and whether it means something different from "describe". My (fairly out-of-date) experience is that many physicists use the word "explain" on a day-to-day informal basis to describe (ha ha) what they do. Then when pressed about what's really going on, there is a tendency to acknowledge that "explain" might overstate things a little and retreat to "describe".

My personal view is that good physics always does something more than just describe, but provides some level of insight into why phenomena occur the way they do. For example, the QM explanation of superconductivity is not just an equation that describes it, there is the physical insight of how pairs of electrons link up and change how they interact. This seems to me to be beyond mere description.

It's a bit like the words "prove" and "show". Informally, they really mean the same thing. Only when you start arguing about fine technical details of epistemology do you need to start worrying about the difference.
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