The Periodic Table of Irrational Nonsense.

[Rune Nyrup]

Originally Posted by Flower

I honestly don't agree on that one. Newtonian Mechanics is an OK model, as long as you deal with most normal macroscopic phenomena at moderate velocities. (Where quantum effects are negligible)
It will give you perfectly usable results as long as you are in that regime. Go to the "extremes", and yes, you will need to supplement with quantum mechanics to describe the world.

It depends on what reading you give the claim that a theory is true.

If you're an instrumentalist with regards to science, that is if you think that science doesn't tell us about the world as such but simply helps us predict things and do stuff, then you are right: With regards to medium-size, slow objects, Newtonian mechanics is a brilliant model (much more useful than quantum mechanics and general relativity!) and allows us to do all kinds of stuff.

I meant that Newtonian mechanics is false in a realist sense: It doesn't describe the way the world works. In this sense it is indeed a very useful approximation in some situations - a useful fiction - but not a true theory.

Of course general relativity probably isn't the final word either. But since it can explain all the same things as Newtonian mechanics (although in a more complicated way) as well as a host of phenomena that Newtonian mechanics cannot explain, most scientists tend to regard general relativity as more 'true' or 'correct' than Newtonian mechanics.

(it more difficult to judge what to say about quantum mechanics, since our understanding of the theory is still very meager)