I got into an argument with a friend who says logic and reason alone cannot determine the truth, and that we need emotions too. He says that Zeno’s Paradox is proof of the shortcomings of math/physics in determining the nature of reality. Is he right about this? I thought math/physics are the holy grails for understanding the nature of the universe.
In: Physics
This is based upon a misunderstanding of science and physics.
Physics does not enable us to understand the nature of the universe. Physics enables us to predict how the universe acts. We create models of the universe as ideas and as mathematical formulas and equations. Those models let us predict how the universe acts. They do not describe how the universe actually works.
For instance Newton’s second law is: The acceleration of an object depends on the mass of the object and the amount of force applied.
We usually write that as F=ma.
It does not say why this is true or give any explanation of how force causes an object to accelerate. It just says that this relationship exists.
We hope that we can understand the nature of the universe, but the test of science is not that it explains the nature of the universe. The test of science is that it is predictive of how the universe behaves.
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