What is mass, force, length, time? If you ask it to any physics student then I am sure he won't be able to answer it. Infact nobody can (no?). Textooks always write about how we can measure one physical quantity but never define them.
But this always irritates me. How could scientists (including ...
Based on comments and some text I removed from the question, it sounds like this user is wanting someone to admit that we have no clue what of we are actually talking about in physics
physics.stackexchange.com/review/suggested-edits/287194 I think people need to do research before accepting edits like this... I find paper results for "symmetry protected trivial phases" written by Xiao-Gang Wen. I assume he knows what he is talking about when he chose those words.
@AaronStevens Questions like that are always difficult: They're not really about physics - they're about someone grappling with epistemology and philosophy of science in general. It doesn't help that a sizeable fraction of physicists considers that a waste of time and reacts with hostility, so the asker gets reinforced in their idea that they've seen a problem "scientists" just ignore
> Textbooks always write about how we can measure one physical quantity but never define them.
So they seem to hold the metaphysical belief that there is a difference between knowing how to measure something and knowing "what it is" (=having defined it)
Which is why I think the "correct" answer to that question is a philosophical one that explains that science does not need to subscribe to the idea that the entities in its models are "real" and that "time is what clocks measure" is a useful definition even if it doesn't define "what time really is".
@JMac I usually reject edits like that. Even if they could be correct. If there is something incorrect in a post then it should be pointed out in a comment.
reminds me of a jim al-khalili line, regarding the "shut up and calculate" philosophy: 'I prefer the “shut up while you calculate” view, which leaves me free to contemplate the relative merits of the different interpretations when I am not solving Schrödinger’s equation.'
@AaronStevens Yeah, I typically reject them too. I did reject that, and even looked it up to find the term did exist. I'm just always ranting about that queue because I find that stuff gets accepted all the time.
@skullpatrol Why should we? It was pinned and ran out of its 14 days of being pinned. Anyone who frequents this chat regularly has seen it by now, anyone who doesn't can still see it featured on the main site.