> > > Well, this may seem a little odd, but why not. I tend to think of the apparent rift between our daily life (mortality) and Transcendance as being paralleled by the ongoing "Theory of Everything" debate in Physics. Here's the scenario: in Physics, we have two separate sets of frameworks to describe the Universe around us. There's classical Newtonian mechanics to explain the rules of the macroscopic world; and then there's quantum mechanics to explain the wonderful strangeness of the sub-atomic world. There is plenty of objective evidence to support both frameworks, and both work extremely well within their own individual demesnes.
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> > Actually, there isn't really a conflict between classical and quantum mechanics, as long as you remember that quantum theory is the 'real' theory and classical mechanics is a good approximation when things are relatively big (larger than the atomic scale or so) Quantum theory can describe the motion of large celestial bodies just as well as classical mechanics, but to actually work out the incredibly messy equations for such large bodies is absurd when Newton's simpler mechanics gives almost exactly the same answer.
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> You may be correct, Bal. My information on the subject is over ten years old. However, reason suggests that if the conflict were a mere matter of dimensional scaling and messy math, then all we'd have to do, to resolve things, is generalize the math symbology to cover each specific case -- in either Quantum or Classic field theory. But awareness of a gap dates back to Einstein's time; back then the attempt at reconciliation was called the Grand Unification Theory.
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> I think -- I may be in error here -- that you may be confusing Einstein's Theory of Special Relativity with his General Theory. Special Relativity is an extension of Quantum Mechanics and is the physics of the very small; it describes the interaction of matter by the 3 forces of electromagnetism, strong nuclear, and weak nuclear forces. On the other hand, General Relativity extends Newtonian physics by describing gravitational effects. This is what you mean by the motion of large celestial bodies. It is a large-scale physics that explains the perturbations of planetary motion as well as the bending of light (quanta) by gravity, and it is confirmed by astronomical observations.

Hmm. You might be right, but I was always taught that SR reduces to "slow" (ie Newtonian) kinematics when v The reason why I said "the twain do not meet" is that I understood the math to be mutually incompatible. For Quantum Field Theory to work, the gravitational constant must be assumed insignificant (i.e., G=0). And for General Relativity in the Newtonian model to work, Planck's constant must be set to zero (h=0). Obviously you can't have both set to zero at the same time. :-) Hence, the conflict.
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> Wolfspirit


h=0? As far as I know, both the strong and weak forces require h to be some small but nonzero number. (Anyway, we found h in a lab project last month. Trust me, it's not zero :-))

Also, I don't think any physicist is trying to reconcile GE with classical mechanics. Dirac formulated a quantum theory in the 60's that was SE-compatible; I think the challenge now is to figure out how gravity is quantized.

Bal "If you're reading this, you're a nerd" anthalus