Quote:
Originally Posted by HarryT
It's actually an interesting point: that there's a whole lot of physics that we know isn't "correct", but it produces good enough results to get the job done. Newton's law of gravity, for example, assuredly isn't "correct", but you can use it perfectly satisfactorily to get a spacecraft safely from Earth to Mars. It's only in extreme conditions that you need to switch to General Relativity (and even General Relativity we know is not "right").
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Absolutely, and that's in many ways a good indication about what science is all about. It's about building useful models which can make good predictions in certain circumstances, and knowing what the boundaries of those circumstances are. It's about improving the models, pushing back the boundaries within which they are accurate, or finding other models whose boundaries cover other areas.
What it's not about is some sort of metaphysical "truth". There are constant efforts to unify our theories as much as possible, with the eventual goal of having one which covers everything, but it's still "just" a model.
Going back to the point about understanding QM - it's not really clear to me what "understanding" means in this case. Does it mean "knows the equations and can do the maths"; does it mean "has a feel for the *consequences* of QM"; does it mean "has an intuitive understanding about how a QM system will behave"?
/JB