you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] 18 points 3 months ago (10 children)

Whenever I think about magnets I remember this Feynman interview where someone asks him why magnets behave the way they do, and he says that to answer a "why"-question you need a foundation where something is agreed to be true, and it seems like for electromagnetic forces we end up in " because that's how the universe is apparently".

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 10 child comments
  • [–] 11 points 3 months ago (3 children)

    Sure, but between nothing and the axioms of the standard model we end up with a fairly comprehensive description which can predict how different kinds of magnets behave in a wide variety of situations.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 3 child comments
  • [–] 2 points 3 months ago (2 children)

    That's knowing how to use it, not how it works.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
  • [–] 5 points 3 months ago (1 child)

    No, the theory of electromagnetism and by extension physics in general is knowing how it works. How to use it is engineering, a different set of knowledge which we also have some of.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 1 child comment
  • [–] 2 points 3 months ago

    I think they mean more the difference between what rules it follows and why it follows those rules. It sounds like we know more about the "what" but not much about the "why" for magnets (or any of the fundamental forces).

  • source
  • parent
  • [–] 7 points 3 months ago (5 children)

    Feynman was a bit pedantic sometimes.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 5 child comments
  • [–] 2 points 3 months ago (1 child)

    That is sort of how the universe operates though. You can have a greater and greater understanding of the underlying principles of physics but eventually you do get to "that just how it is". Why is there no such thing as a negative photon, apparently we just can't have a negative excitation in the photon field, no one knows why.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 1 child comment
  • [–] 1 point 3 months ago*

    I mean one of the points he's making there comes up in every good science class: science doesn't answer 'why' it answers 'how'. The goal of science is to describe what we see in the world; science less about explaining things. Its easy to do without being a pedant. He's absolutely being pedantic on camera in that clip.

    Like if you look at how people treat science now: MAGA completely pissing on it because its funded by snake oil people. Rich guys like Elon Musk cynically using it as a way to bilk the public and government. The press just has different goals than the scientific community and I would say that clip showed some of that friction manifest.

  • source
  • parent