Comments on “Reductio ad reductionem”

A couple of minor typos: “reduction coud deliver”; “from a combination of quantum with relativity” should be “quantum mechanics”?

That’s a pretty mind-blowing fact; that the color of gold is a relativistic phenomena.

This page made me wonder how The Machines in The Matrix handled nebulosity and ‘leaky ontologies’.

One of my favorite physics factoids is along the same lines: the Sun should not be heavy enough to produce fusion under classical mechanics. Instead it’s accomplished through quantum tunneling.

One way I’ve read it described is this: The pressure in the Sun’s core severely restricts the possible velocities of the protons in there. This increase in certainty about velocity causes a corresponding decrease in the certainty about position. As the positions of the protons gets fuzzier – more nebulous, you might say – eventually they start overlapping. This gives them an opportunity to bypass their repulsive forces and fuse.

Thank you very much for the examples, I finally understood how postmodern critique also applies to natural sciences. Before that I assumed that it mostly applies to social sciences.