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Missile Defense

Technology has always found its greatest consumer in a nation's war and defense efforts. Since the last attempts at a "Star Wars" defense system, has technology changed considerably enough to make the latest Missile Defense initiatives more successful? Can such an application of science be successful? Is a militarized space inevitable, necessary or impossible?

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rshow55 - 10:15am Sep 25, 2003 EST (# 13959 of 17697)
Can we do a better job of finding truth? YES. Click "rshow55" for some things Lchic and I have done and worked for on this thread.

I'm quoting things I wrote in " Black Holes and the Universe " now set out at http://www.mrshowalter.net/bhmath/

References to "loop tests" or "Bridgman" occur from 602-610 and 636-649 of http://www.mrshowalter.net/bhmath/ .

Here are passages, from 602-608 that I think are of interest - involve science - and help provide a referent to answer the question - What have lchic and I accomplished on the MD board and related boards?

_ - - - - - - -

"To fit the solution into a useful context, I think it is useful to consider some of the thoughts and difficulties of P.W. Bridgman , Nobelist in physics, arch- realist, experimentalist extraordinaire, and a central figure in the definition of the "engineering" view of "modeling rigor" - the notion that right understanding of a model IS an understanding of how to measure the quantities discussed in the model, neither more nor less. This is a very different notion of rigor from the one the pure mathematicians have. Both when I think Bridgman had it right, and when I think he didn't, it seems to me that his ideas throw an interesting light on the questions:

How do you go from a measurable model (territory) to a representation (map) in abstract mathematics, and wind up with a map that represents the territory well?

and

When you do that, how do you explain how you did it?

Our society has never been clear, or felt clear, about exactly how mathematical theory and experiment fit together. Thinkers who've tried to get clear have shown that they were not. We've used the connection between mathematized theory and the measurable world as a magic that somehow works. There's no hope of avoiding some philosophically unclear or arbitrary elements in the math- reality connection. But we CAN hope to get the grammar, the procedural steps, in the connection between the measurable world and the mathematical abstraction more clear than they are.

We need to get some nuts and bolts relations right.

People and institutions are conflicted about math and experiment. Most folks seem pretty comfortable about experiments, except that experiments are so expensive and difficult to do.

Math is different. Everybody I know, when you push them, is uncomfortable and conflicted about math.

. . .

There's no hope of avoiding some philosophically unclear or arbitrary elements in the math-reality connection. There's no hope of avoiding all fear. But we CAN . . . hope to get the grammar, the procedural steps, in the connection between the measurable world and the mathematical abstraction more clear than they are.

. . .

There are practical reasons we ought to know. Maxwell needed to know. Engineers trying to deal with COUPLED circumstances where the couplings really matter need to know.