Talk:The Mediocrity Principle
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[edit] Mediocrity and symmetry
Phildonnia:
- The Mediocrity Principle suggests that in natural law, there should be no special exceptions for the Earth. This agrees with the scientific principle that natural laws are universal. It is related to the idea of translational symmetry which states that
- The laws of nature are invariant under any change in position.
- All known physical laws exhibit translational symmetry.
I'm sorry but this is conflating two quite separate ideas. The mediocrity principle has nothing to do with the laws of physics. It is a meta-principle or philosophic position regarding the Earth in its location in the Universe. There are no equations in Physics which establish the Mediocrity principle to physical law.
I've also never seen "translational symmetry" used in this context. Translational symmetry is usually described thus (from Wikipedia):
- A translation "slides" an object by a vector a: Ta</b>(p) = p + a.
- In physics and mathematics, translational symmetry is the invariance of a system of equations under any translation.
- Laws of physics are translationally invariant if they do not distinguish different points in space. Because of Noether's theorem, translational symmetry of a physical system is equivalent to the momentum conservation law.
I think what this piece should refer to (if anything) is the meta-principle of Einstein "The Principle of Relativity" which states that there is no preferred frame of reference, all reference frames see the same laws of physics regardless of position or relative motion.
The principle of relativity is not the same as translational symmetry; relativity involves the equivalence of different inertial frames, while translation is the much weaker notion of the equivalence of frames originating at different points.
Be that as it may, you are correct that neither of these is equivalent to the mediocrity principle, which is why the article describes this as a "related idea".
But it may be that the identification of the two ideas in the article may cause unnecessary confusion. I will adopt your suggestion of trying to clarify this, but I think it's wrong to bring relativity into this. Phildonnia
[edit] Giordano Bruno
As pointed out on the JREF forum thread, "Is religion slowing us down?:
- Giordano Bruno was killed by the Church but not for his defense of Copernicus.
- Michael White's book 'The Pope and the Heretic' says that the record of his trial in January 1599 listed 8 counts of heresy but does not detail what they were (And White is no apologist).
- --snip--
- So unless you have any source giving other information it is almost certain that Bruno's scientific ideas played no role in his conviction.
--J. J. Ramsey 18:19, 25 January 2006 (GMT)
[edit] Quick Question
I believe the following line has an extra word but because of my ignorance of the topic I'm not 100% sure what it should say. Could someone who knows what they are doing reveiw this:
"The Temporal Mediocrity Principle assumes that there is nothing special about the our current time. "
--LLH 13 March 2006
- Fixed it. Thanks for your recent attention to spelling and grammar. Phildonnia 14 Mar
[edit] Mediocrity Principles in other disciplines?
Should there be a mention of the mediocrity-principle-like discoveries made in disciplines other than Astronomy?
F'rinstance, it could be said that Charles Darwin's The Descent of Man applied the mediocrity principle to the human species, declaring man to be just another primate species no more different or special than any of the others.
It has even been argued that Freud was to psychology what Darwin was to biology and heoliocentrism was to astronomy. Freud posited human motivations to be basic animalistic drives with an intellect piled on top of them in service of those drives, rather than the other way around; so human motivations were no different than those of more "primitive" species.
