Physicists have this dogma that nature is a depository of physical laws and physicists are discovering them and formulating them as “general physical laws.” It can be shown that physicists mapped the catholic worldview into physics.

Catholic

Catholic means “general and universal.” Physicists are more obsessed with the absolute general and absolute universal than the Catholic church. So we can as well say physics deals with catholic physical laws.

Catechism

“Laws” sounds suspiciously like catechism. Because by laws physicists mean a combination of rules and mechanics. Look at Newton’s laws in the Principia. They are called axioms of motion. Newton’s laws are definitions that physicists market as the true laws of nature because they’ve built a mechanics, i.e. catechism, around them.

Orthodox

Orthodox is the corresponding word for physical. Orthodox means the correct opinion. Turning axioms into true laws of nature is orthodoxy. The word orthodoxy correctly summarizes what I was trying to write here about physicists’ habit of claiming that their opinions are the absolute correct opinions.

Catholic Orthodox Catechism

So, Catholic Orthodox Catechism describes physics rather well.

What about experiments?

This is a nice mapping but the problem with claiming that physics is Catholic Orthodox Catechism is that physics is said to be an experimental science. Physicists claim that physics is true not because it is their opinion but because physics is the true laws of nature discovered by physicists by experiments and codified into physics in rigorous equations. We must seriously investigate if this claim is professional propaganda or if it has any truth value. For now, the question I want to ask is not Does a physics experiment reveal any truth about nature? but this: Are there enough evidence to start doubting the claim that physics is an experimental science? I believe that there is plenty of evidence that physics is not an experimental science in its essence, not accidentally, but in its essence.

Experiment is definition with a gadget

Physics propaganda says that physics is an experimental science. Does this claim change the fact that physics is Catholic Orthodox Catechism? No. In academic physics experiment is 1) a definition with a gadget or 2) a test of catechism. Remember catechism is mechanics. In either case physicists use experiments to prove ideology. So we must not say that orthodoxy is physicists’ opinions but physicists’ definitions. Physicists transform legal definitions into orthodoxy through mechanics. So it is true that academic physics is Catholic Orthodox Catechism despite the claim of using experiments.

Mechanics are fits

It is a true observation that physics hosts a range of equations that have no experimental correspondence. Such as the string theory. Quantum theory has its origin in experiments but later acquired a vast system of philosophical baggage. There are also mechanics such as the standard model but as fitted observations they reveal no truth about nature.

Atomic materialism

In addition there is the fundamental ideology of physics which is religious to its core. This is the dogma of atomic materialism. Physicists assume atomic materialism as an unquestionable truth and fit observations into this ideology. Even when observations tell physicists that there are no particles and physicists had to model observations as fields, operations or probabilities — not as particles — physicists will still interpret their observations as material particles. This is Catholic Orthodox Catechism, not to say scholastic punning of a very low grade. Physicists fit every observation into the fundamental dogma of the existing orthodoxy.

The dogma of Nature is Physical

Bohr’s observation is also relevant here because physicists have been ignoring his advice not to confuse the map with the territory:

There is no quantum world. There is only an abstract quantum physical description. It is wrong to think that the task of physics is to find out how nature is. Physics concerns what we can say about nature.

Bohr is saying that physics must not be turned into a Catholic Orthodox Catechism by asserting with authority that nature of physics is the true nature and that nature is physical. The dogma of “nature is physical” or “physics is nature” is a strong assertion that map is the territory. But Born is telling physicists that the “physical” model is not the modelled. Circle is not the orbit. Do not reify your models and then claim that nature is your model. If you do that you will turn physics into Catholic Orthodox Catechism and yourself into scholastic doctors of philosophy.

Crystalline spheres

Packaging ideology as reified truth is nothing new. Professional ancestors of physicists have been doing this for millennia. Until Tycho Brahe they have been assuming that stars were attached to crystalline spheres. Physics today is full of crystalline spheres. A quantum world that exists independent of the model is a crystalline sphere. A scientific questioning of physical crystalline spheres and quintessences should be welcomed by physicists not objected to.

Physicists themselves question reified reality assumption

Therefore physicists’ dogmatic assumption that there are absolute true and general physical laws that exist in nature and that they are hidden like Easter eggs and physicists go find them must be questioned. Physicists themselves are slowly realizing that this is the case and they are starting to question their 18th century religious dogma of reified reality, for instance, with these experiments.

Related:

• Physical laws and heretical theories