On Wednesday, October 3, 2018 at 4:43:36 PM UTC-6, Chris L Peterson wrote:
On Wed, 3 Oct 2018 13:42:30 -0700 (PDT), Quadibloc
wrote:
On Wednesday, October 3, 2018 at 7:24:01 AM UTC-6, Chris L Peterson wrote:

It is because it isn't what I'm talking about as "knowability". There
are certainly "things" we can't know. That's not important. The
question is are there rules of nature we can't know? I don't see
evidence of that. I think our understanding of nature can be complete.

It took a long time, and it was awfully hard, to find out that Fermat's last
theorem was true. The Riemann hypothesis still awaits solution.

But math is endless, whereas physics presumably proceeds from a few basic facts.
So, indeed, perhaps we could know all of them. But until we do, and know that we
know all of them, how much complexity nature has is open to question.

Certainly. But I'd say the evidence is that our knowledge is
approaching complete. That we have a finished jigsaw puzzle that's
just missing a few pieces. They're some very important pieces, of
course, but not ones that are going to make the whole picture look
different.

I note that our core theories have been stable for a very long time
now. New discoveries (e.g. dark energy) result in tweaks to existing
theory, not throwing out major areas of physics and replacing them
with something completely different (the sort of thing that did happen
150 years ago). I take that as in indicator that our theories are
converging on ground truth.

Yes, but that much has been true since Newton. Relativity and quantum mechanics
are also "tweaks" that didn't overturn the basic physics on which most of our
technology is based. To say that they overturned everything, while dark matter
is a "tweak" is debatable.

Although it is true that relativity and quantum mechanics did revise the very
roots of physics, even if the outcome in everyday life didn't change much. But
then, what about the much later discovery of quarks?

John Savard