'Because things don’t appear to be the known thing; they aren’t what they seemed to be neither will they become what they might appear to become.'
Posted by Thomas Scarborough
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| Buckled railway line near Glasgow, 25 June 2018. |
The thermal expansion of railway lines is governed most simply by the formula
Δ L ≈ α L Δ T
This formula failed near Glasgow on 25 June 2018, when railway lines buckled in the heat. In fact they buckled in heatwaves all across Europe in the 2010s. Why? The answer is simple. This formula, and versions of it, failed to include environmental factors—at least, not those which mattered.
It is not only railway lines which buckle. Oceans are polluted, glaciers retreat, bees are poisoned, toads go blind, groundwater is poisoned, people suffocate—in fact, thousands if not millions of things go wrong besides—all without their being included in the formulae.
Here is the problem. We take at face value that physical laws are true of this world. It is the heresy of Plato. Ordinary things, held Plato, imitate forms. We hold up forms to reality, which is formulae: 'This is how it is!' It is not. And so the world is continually bedevilled by negative consequences.
