Re: Energy

["John S. Denker" <jsd@MONMOUTH.COM>]

At 07:45 AM 9/23/01 -0500, John Clement wrote in part:
> any argument which claims that a particular understanding is
> faulty, although it leads to the same end result, is a theological argument
> and not a physics argument.

1) I agree.

2) Obviously, unphysical theological arguments are to be avoided.

3) As a corollary:  When somebody says no, no, no, flow is wrong, wrong,
wrong, it is the nay-sayers (not the flow-sayers) who bear the burden of proof.

4) I'll go even further:  Even knowing that something is partly wrong is
not a sufficient reason to stop using it.  For example, we know that F=ma
is not relativistically correct, but we can (and should) continue to use it
and teach it.  (We ought to say something about its domain of validity, but
that is easy to do.)  See also footnote.

5) Therefore the nay-sayers have an even higher burden:  The rule is: don't
gripe about concept X or equation Y unless you can provide something
better, and can explain why it is better.





Footnote: The local conservation law, stated in terms of flow,
  change(energy inside boundary) = - flow(energy outward across boundary)
is relativistically invariant, which means it is actually _more_ generally
valid than F=ma, and less open to criticism.