This fundamental idea — that matter and energy tells spacetime how to curve, and that curved spacetime, in turn, tells matter and energy how to move — represented a revolutionary new view of the universe. Put forth in 1915 by Einstein and validated four years later during a total solar eclipse — when the bending of starlight coming from light sources behind the sun agreed with Einstein’s predictions and not Newton’s — general relativity has passed every observational and experimental test we have ever concocted.
How to understand Einstein’s equation for General Relativity
Sooner or later it seems Ethan Siegel will trot out every disingenuous argument employed by the Big Bang cult in support of its peculiarly unscientific belief system. Two big lies about General Relativity popular among the faithful are succinctly presented in the above quote. The first is that Einstein “put forth” the idea of that GR reduced gravity to the geometrization of a substantival spacetime.
Einstein opposed that view throughout the years subsequent to GR’s introduction, whenever it was proposed. That is a matter of historical record. The formulation that Siegel presents here is a paraphrasing of John A. Wheeler’s well known assertion. That assertion directly contradicts Einstein’s clearly and repeatedly stated position on the matter.
The second big lie is that GR “has passed every observational and experimental test…“. That is true only of tests performed on the scale of the solar system. GR does not pass tests on galactic and cosmological scales without the ad hoc addition of dark matter and dark energy. The existence of neither of those hypothetical entities is supported by direct empirical evidence; the only support they can realistically be said to have is that they reconcile GR with observations. Siegel knows this, he just chooses not to mention it. That is what is known as a lie of omission:
Lying by omission, also known as a continuing misrepresentation or quote mining, occurs when an important fact is left out in order to foster a misconception… An omission is when a person tells most of the truth, but leaves out a few key facts that therefore, completely obscures the truth.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lie#Types_and_associated_terms
For the believer no evidence is necessary, and for the skeptic no evidence is ever enough.
As you mentioned all empirical evidence available to us is “local” in space and time, and all empirical evidence is always acquired in very simple settings.
The observational anomalies that led to the postulation of dark matter and dark energy are only present in very complex star assemblies.
Quantity lead to new qualities, or as P. Anderson will say “More is Different”, or as Chaitin will say “Complexity is a source of new irreducible properties”.
Reductionism is intrinsically flawed.
Hi Jeremy,
Reductionism works when it works which isn’t all the time. Being able to distinguish between the two cases is absolutely necessary. For instance the reduction of matter to chemical elements and thence to atoms presents a clear and coherent picture that closely tracks observations. Beyond that things get dicey with a sub-atomic particle zoo that is anything but coherent and wildly divergent from observations. Nature doesn’t appear to have any quarks? Too bad, theory says they’re unobservable and so a failure of reductionism is converted to a feature. But yes, complexity not to mention chaos, defy reductionism.
The two standard models (cosmology and particle physics/quantum theory) have staunch, credentialed supporters who resemble nothing so much as the cult followers of a belief system. How and when science will recover from this mess is not obvious at this point.
I never say that Reductionism “never” works, but that it is intrinsically flawed, Reductionism never is universal.
For example even when Quantum Mechanics is good to describe with high precision simple quantum systems, it fails miserably in describing complex systems as living beings.
Again complexity place an upper bound into Quantum Mechanics explanatory/predictive power.
Exactly the same happens with General Relativity, the complexity of galaxies and assemblies of galaxies place an upper bound into GR predictive/explanatory power, leading to the artificial introduction of dark matter and dark energy.
Please don’t confuse “range/distances” with complexity, as for example you can have macroscopic systems showing clear quantum properties, but adding complexity to that system will destroy its quantum properties, and similarity GR works great in simple gravitational assemblies.
And that is what I meant when I said Reductionism is intrinsically limited/flawed, always is bounded by complexity.