Statements in Physics

Extract

Statements in physics are statements in physics. They are not statements connecting physical data with nonphysical conclusions.

Statements in physics are usually either true or false. Statements connecting physical entities with non-physical ones are usually neither true nor false but senseless.

Simple examples of such arguments can be taken from a field more limited and less involved than physics: elementary arithmetic.

Here, the statement 2 + 1 = 3 is true; the statement 2 + 1 = 4 is false; the statements 2+1 are green, or virtuous, or a solid body, are senseless.

This distinction is sometimes less obvious if the statement is given in the form of a conclusion. For example: if 1 + 2 = 3, then 2 + 4 = 6 is a true statement; if 1 + 2 = 3, then 2 + 4=7 is a false statement; if 1 + 2 = 3, then space has three dimensions, is a senseless statement, and it is senseless quite independent of the question whether space really has three dimensions or not.

Senseless statements of this type have been made regularly during the last half-century with reference to physical entities; and it is just these statements which have usually made the greatest impression on non-scientists, and even on occasions on scientists themselves. Thirty or forty years ago, when the phenomena of radioactivity were first investigated, it was found that it was not possible to predict whether a single defined particle of a radioactive material would decay within a given period, and that only statistical judgments could be made with precision.