I agree that there are counterfactual frameworks which require more complication to describe reality than Newton’s second law does. There are also counterfactual realities for which Newton’s second law would require more complications to work than other frameworks would. Are you trying to say anything else?
One way to restate my point is that Newton’s second law working well rules out many fundamental rules which might have described our reality, but it doesn’t directly map to any fundamental rules of reality. The larger point which I am trying to communicate is that physical models have a lot of structure which metaphorically defines terms which you can use to describe reality without actually mapping to anything in reality[1]. The theory as a whole doesn’t describe reality without those parts, but those parts don’t necessarily directly correspond to something in reality. A map describes reality, but latitude and longitude lines do not directly correspond to anything in reality even if you can stand at a place in reality and unambiguously use latitude and longitude lines to describe your location using the map. I can use an English sentence to describe the fundamental rules of reality, but the linguistic syntax of that sentence doesn’t correspond to anything fundamental in reality even if it is fundamental to mapping the sentence as a whole to fundamental rules of reality. My physics education presented physical models as package deals with every component corresponding to some intuition about reality, and that led me to confuse map and territory in ways that I wish I had been warned about. I am trying to warn others.
Ok, I think that makes a lot of sense. Newton’s 2nd law is the first step of constructing a model which is (ideally) isomorphic to reality once you’ve filled in all the details.
But you could equally well start off constructing your model with a different first step, and if you do it might be that some nice neat packaged concepts in modelA do not map cleanly onto anything in modelB. The fundamental concepts in physics are fundamental to the model, not to reality.
I agree that there are counterfactual frameworks which require more complication to describe reality than Newton’s second law does. There are also counterfactual realities for which Newton’s second law would require more complications to work than other frameworks would. Are you trying to say anything else?
One way to restate my point is that Newton’s second law working well rules out many fundamental rules which might have described our reality, but it doesn’t directly map to any fundamental rules of reality. The larger point which I am trying to communicate is that physical models have a lot of structure which metaphorically defines terms which you can use to describe reality without actually mapping to anything in reality[1]. The theory as a whole doesn’t describe reality without those parts, but those parts don’t necessarily directly correspond to something in reality. A map describes reality, but latitude and longitude lines do not directly correspond to anything in reality even if you can stand at a place in reality and unambiguously use latitude and longitude lines to describe your location using the map. I can use an English sentence to describe the fundamental rules of reality, but the linguistic syntax of that sentence doesn’t correspond to anything fundamental in reality even if it is fundamental to mapping the sentence as a whole to fundamental rules of reality. My physics education presented physical models as package deals with every component corresponding to some intuition about reality, and that led me to confuse map and territory in ways that I wish I had been warned about. I am trying to warn others.
I don’t know whether I am successfully communicating the thing which I am trying to communicate, and I am open to being told that I am wrong.
Ok, I think that makes a lot of sense. Newton’s 2nd law is the first step of constructing a model which is (ideally) isomorphic to reality once you’ve filled in all the details.
But you could equally well start off constructing your model with a different first step, and if you do it might be that some nice neat packaged concepts in modelA do not map cleanly onto anything in modelB. The fundamental concepts in physics are fundamental to the model, not to reality.