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by fractionalhare
2029 days ago
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> Every time there was a significant advance in physics, it tended to go towards simplification and unification. Geocentrism required epicycles. Then Keppler came up with his ellipses. Then Newton unified celestial and terrestrial laws. Maxwell & Einstein allowed us to view time as less special dimension than we thought it was… Unification, maybe. Simplification, no. That's evident if you just scroll down the list of Nobels in physics. You even mentioned Einstein, but I don't know how you could claim general or special relativity are simpler than Newtonian physics. |
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Careful there! You cannot compare both theories in isolation from observation. Newtonian theory fails to match observation if high velocities or big masses are involved.
In order to "fix" that using just Newtonian physics, we're back to figurative epicycles.
Taking observations into account, SR is simpler than Newtonian physics in that it has a greater predictive power.
Remember that if you come up with something simpler than SR it also has to match observation at least as well as SR.