But this is about reality, not abstractions, no matter how beautiful or useful they may be.
And then you go straight to the concretization of the intangible:
For instance, to follow your logic on just continuing with abstractions of light propagation in a non-medium because we have no knowledge of a medium, is like saying we can continue with abstraction of electric current and just assume that the copper wire does not exist.
That's the defect in reasoning you just gave above. Now let's look at the fallacy in this from a strictly physical point of view. Suppose the material in question is not copper but glass. Waves of certain frequencies will readily pass through the glass - RF, light, heat . . . - while others, such as the 20 kV high voltage at 60 Hz will not, and thus the glass is a useful material as an insulating arm to support power lines. Furthemore, when drawn into small fibers, the glass will send light in the manner that copper will send the electric field when surrounded by a dielectric and a shield (coax), i.e., TEM mode. Then again, if we consider propagation at the phonon level, down at the level of particle excitations of the crystal lattices (copper and various forms of silica) we see the excitation of the
medium you seek, and we can now force the square quantum world peg into our round-hole sensible-world POV, by the
abstraction which gives the crystal lattice a mechanical dual of a line of billiard balls being hit by a cue stick. The problem with your belief that free space contains billiard balls is that the sensible
medium really
does and free space really
doesn't. The lack of billiard balls is what gives space its excellent insulating properties against conduction. For the same reason only conduction allows DC. And now we get to the huge difference between conduction and radiation. Therein lies the rub. They never were the same thing to begin with. One occurs in a medium, and the other occurs in a vacuum. It was simply a flawed
abstraction, the same flaw Michelson and Morley discovered when they disproved the aether wind.
See? It's not that the abstractions are questioned AS the abstractions per se, its that such abstractions do NOT remove the onus for scientists to actually try to ALSO keep trying to discover what REALITY (medium or whatever) that abstraction is based ON and happening IN.
Perhaps I've settled a little of that for you now. Phononic transmission, or transmission in a conductor, or conduction, is completely different than radiation. The crystal lattice (and a few other configurations of various materials) is what we mean by a medium in terms of
reality, whereas the
reality of free space is that
no such medium exists. Thus the conduction
reality is phenomenally different than the radiation
reality, which is what makes the
abstraction you're using a false one. Hence the term
pseudoscience. Confusing conduction and radiation and forcing square pegs into round holes is fine as an
abstraction, but never as good science, which can only marry the
abstraction to
reality via
phenomena (confirmed
reality). The absence of phenomena is the criteria for rejection, (i.e. even by affirming the null hypothesis) by which scientists are not only brainstormers, but also gatekeepers, constantly winnowing the wheat from the chaff. Part of
trying to discover what nature
is doing involves a process of elimination--rejecting what it's
not doing. No wind, ergo no aether.
It's not an either or situation; it's a one AND the other approaches towards getting REAL PHYSICAL completion of the TOE
That's ludicrous. Nature doesn't care if you put the Humpty Dumpty together again or not. Dreams of a TOE have nothing to do with reality, only with self-glorification (
and said what a good boy am I!) which speaks to Origin's remark about arrogance, or Cheezle's comments about pandering to it.
Before you jump to the big TOE you have to grapple with the more modest Maxwell's equations which care not one whit for any aether. It's all about the vacuum. It's all about the intrinsic impedance of free space in which charge induces field, transverse field induces transverse field, and there is an electric current and a dipole. None of this has anything to do with the colliding billiard balls of aether. And without the aether wind, the abstraction is trapped in the abyss of denial.
That's where I am coming from. My science is aimed at reality discovery/explanation, not just adding to the current fashion for abstraction without end.
Perhaps "my" says it all. I've only been speaking about the science of nature. I'm not sure if you know what that means, given that you consider science a subjective vs collective experience. From your comments it sounds like you've had no practical experience in the field, or you wouldn't refer to systematics and processes as fashion, or theory as endless abstraction, nor would you mix the sense of dreams and pipedreams.
I think you completely missed the point of my earlier post relating the velocity of light in terms of the inverse geometric mean of the permittivity and permeability of free space. This is a perfect dual for the aether mongers who want to analogize the acoustic wave phenomenon, since the formula is identical--just insert air density and reluctance and you're home.
The point is this: the nature of spacetime is to propagate fields at a fixed rate. No billiard balls, no pipedreams, no fashion and no
me. It's all about
it. You seem to have completely sidestepped my remark that free space impedance and lightspeed are essentially one and the same. This is hugely different than establishing the speed of sound from air (a
medium) density and acoustic compliance. I think if you were to seriously confront this observation you'd come around to what I'm saying in a heartbeat. I'm just not sure if your . . . (what? anti-science bias?) . . . precludes that.
