Axioms are arbitrary definitions

In a comment in A Quantum Diaries Survivor Carl Brannen mentioned this paper by David Hestenes.

In the Introduction Hestenes quotes Poincare:

One geometry cannot be more true than another; it can only be more convenient. Now, Euclidean geometry is and will remain, the most convenient. . . .

How true. It took humans 2000 years to recognize that Euclid's axioms are arbitrary, there is nothing self-evident or true about them. The standard is the thing. By choosing Euclid as their perception template humans perceived the world as Euclidean.

• Who defined arbitrary axioms of Euclid as self-evident truths?
• Who enforced arbitrary Euclidean axioms as self-evident truths for 2 millennia?
• Who then made a big deal out of their realization finally that Euclid's axioms were arbitrary?
• Who then remade Euclid the standard geometry by labeling all other geometries non-Euclidean geometry?

The answer: Scholastic doctors.

Force is an arbitrary definition

Today doctors are going through the same growing up process regarding Newtonian mechanics.

Newtonian doctors defined Newtonian occult as the true axiom of motion. Doctors will eventually realize that Newton's force is occult and it is not the ultimate and unique cause of everything. But this has already happened! Doctors long ago invented non-Newtonian physics. Whatever their faults doctors are predictable. They will go through the same process again and again.

1. Make an arbitrary definition.
2. Sanctify the definition.
3. Enforce the sanctified definition as the absolute truth.
4. Two millennia later have an epiphany and dump the old sanctified definition as nothing special.
5. Create a new definition and start the process all over again.

But in scholasticism old doctrines cannot be dumped. Euclidean axioms still have their "every day validity" while "Non-Euclidean" geometries are valid in Non-Euclidean space. Doctors still do not get that all axioms are arbitrary. All geometries are arbitrary.

Metric axiom

On Section IV, Hestenes makes this claim:

Every real entity has a definite location in space and time — this is the fundamental criterion for existence assumed by every scientific theory.

This doesn't sound right to me.

This is a statement of an arrogant professional selling his beliefs as truth. Doctor Hestenes decided to define existence in terms of "real" entity in a "definite" location. Then he made his atomic materialist absolutist doctrine the fundamental criterion for existence used in every scientific theory.

Hestenes just decided that because he believes in the metric axiom, then metric axiom is the self-evident truth. Not only self-evident truth, the only truth. The real and definite truth. The scientific truth.

But metric worldview is an arbitrary representation of motion which happens to be sanctified by modern doctors of physics. There is nothing real or definite or self-evident about it.

This is what happens when you let professionals to have unbounded authority to define.