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Physics, Astronomy & Cosmology / Re: Why no Æther
« on: 05/01/2012 21:22:35 »So from the fact that, as far as we can tell today, there is no studiable aether, do you conclude that there is no aether at all, or do you conclude that, despite its predictive power, relativity is metaphysically flawed and that there really is an aether. The first choice has been dismissed in this thread as philosophy rather than science, but I can't see that the second choice can claim any different.
Both can be dismissed as philosophy, as can anything in science which can't be proven by experiment. MM didn't disprove the idea of aether at all - claims that it did are both bad science and bad philosophy. Claims that it currently can't be detected may be good science (unless QM really has demonstrated faster than light phenomena, although even then it may not allow a preferred frame to be pinned down). Claiming that there must be an aether would be bad science unless there was a test that could be done to prove it, but it might not be bad philosophy to make such a claim, just as claiming that there is no need for an aether might not be bad philosophy either - that's an argument for elsewhere. What matters here is that MM didn't prove that there is no aether, and it's a pity that so many physics books say that it does, because a lot of people take everything they read in them as gospel. I'm not accusing anyone here of that - this looks as if it's the most rational group of people I've ever found on the Net.