Truth vs. accuracy: Dr. Sylvester James Gates at TEDxUMD 

The determination of the speed of light being a constant is a choice for representing the model. Just like placing the sun at the centre of our solar system is a choice to model our solar system. In reality when there are just two objects observed, it's impossible to determine whether one revolves around the other, vice versa or that both revolve around a point in space in between them. People may have heared about the model putting the earth as central unmoving point in conflict with the model putting the sun as central unmoving point. Both are mere models and depending on what question one wants to answer one is a more usefull model than the other, though the laws about gravity in physics inform us that neither of these two models is correct, and that apart from revolving around a point in between the sun and the earth, both earth and sun are also revolving around the gravitational centre of our galaxy. However if one just wants to know how the planets move in relation to the sun, the latter notion is insignificant and can be left out of the equation making the calculation a lot easier. Models are simplifications of reality. We don't know reality, all we know about are the models we have for reality and our observations that may be consistent or inconsistent with the model. If the latter becomes relevant we require a modification of an existing model creating a new model.

@@BlacksmithTWD Meaning science itself is a model, which does more to support what I'm saying than to snuff it out. I think we are saying the same thing actually. Defining science differently = changing the model of models, which indeed would happen if it was discovered that the speed of light was not always or everywhere constant for any arbitrary relative frame of reference. This goes back to the 1850's. And yes I concur we do not know everything of reality. But I assure you, before there ever was a notion of a model, people knew things, empirical concrete things. We know facts (through observation) as you stated, but those exist independent of any model. It's like the age old question, was math discovered or invented? Models are inventions hence the inevitable inconsistencies between them and reality as you also mentioned. Yet observations are knowable, they are discovered and thereby known independent of any model. We can know much of reality without models only if we observe. An observation of fact will never be inconsistent with another observable fact. It's the models (interpretations of the facts) that produce inconsistencies with other models or observable facts. So to sum up, we do not know models, we believe them. All we know is observations of reality or fact.

@@michaelseymour6313 It wasn't intended as disagreement. I know too little to say something about the first part so my comment was merely about the lightspeed part. As far as there is a disagreement in it, it is in that we don't have to wait because it has been known since Einstein that the speed of light being a constant was a choice when making the model, at least by Albert himself.

@@BlacksmithTWD Einstein didn't choose that. In 1887 the Michelson Morely experiment showed the 2 way speed of light to be the same in multiple directions. This was considered by Einstein before deriving special relativity in 1905. It was not his choice, rather a prior observation. But it was in fact predicted far before that when JC Maxwell derived the speed of electromagnetic wave propagation to be at the exact observed 2-way speed of light. This turned out to be universal for all relative reference frames at the time Michelson and Morley observed it. So all we know is that in the recent past the 2-way speed of light was universal for all directions. The question I posed was has the speed of light always been constant? Einstein wasn't even the one who established the constant speed of light, Maxwell was. So is there some underlying till now unknown value in a variable inside the equations of Maxwell that would change the speed of light over larger time frames? No we do not know this. No one does. There are serious fields of study into this very fact right now. So why would they be experimenting if it's been settled? One such study has shown that structured light can in fact be slowed through a vacuum only by the photon's structure. Has light's structure always been the same as it is now? So no we do not know the speed of light is constant across all times. It's just that you believe Einstein's model is fact, when it isn't.

@@michaelseymour6313 I wouldn't even go as far as to claim that we know observations of reality, the only way we 'know' about them is through our senses, and they can be fooled and might be incomplete. Though when 3 of our senses point towards the same thing, there is more reason to believe it than when it's only observed by one of our senses, but mere belief nevertheless.

No he's not. I bet he laughs at you fools.

To be precise, Dr. Gates did not say or even imply that it necessitated God. God would be too broad a concept for this talk. He intentionally uses the word faith which one can have with or without a belief in any God at all. Deists are examples of this although the name 'Deist' is often narrowly defined as God when it actually simply describes a Supreme Being, Beings or Ancients ie: it could be anything. Yet deist can have a level zeal that rivals the most devout christian. I think that this what Dr. Gates is saying. In this way he doesn't get into the mud of which God or Gods do exists.

L

LELIFER Nope

Seems to be a combination from 2 borrowed arguments, first one from Thales (everything is made from one element, which is water) & second one from Plato, there exist a 'world of ideas, universals' from which every particular object is a physical manifestation. The origins of the physical world lie within this platonic world from which the particular objects (physical manifestations, or 'living things') have been parted from their ideal forms (in your case, from the ideal forms that are present in 'the heavens'). Further, the (minimal) coherence of a unproven hypothesis with a proven one (which we accept as fact) does not imply that the former is therefore necessarily true (or acurate). It might however have a positive influence (again, not necessarily, can also be negative or neutral) on the possibility of it to be true. To give a more applied example: The claim that there is a teapot burried somewhere under the surface of the moon is perfectly coherent with every physical law that we know. The burden of truth, however, lies upon the person who makes the claim that such thing as the teapot exists. So to say that it is coherent with what all other scientific hypotheses claim is not a proof of it's truth/accuracy. Last, but not least, one should use the most acurate hypothesis or body of evidence to proof the thing that still needs to be proved. When one starts with the empirically unproven thing to verify wheter the empirically proven hypothesis is true or not, one will necessarily fall into a dogmatic thinking.

Funny, lol