Hawkings is at it again

[Nashyboyo]

http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn6151

 

Has he gone over the hill? Or do you still have faith in him still?

[RyanJ]

http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn6151

 

Has he gone over the hill? Or do you still have faith in him still?

 

Everyone gets wrong, even the ones who know the most...

 

Did you look at the date of this article, its very old now: 19:00 14 July 2004

 

Anyway, its hard not too believe someone who knows so much

 

Cheers,

 

Ryan Jones

[Nashyboyo]

haha i should have checked the date. Damn it I thought he was gonna talk on the 17th of this month. I'll have a look around for what he said about that stuff now.

[swansont]

Faith doesn't enter into it. Science is, by its very nature, self-correcting. You follow the ideas that are confirmed to be correct, not the people that propose them. Some people get more consideration because they are right a lot more often than they are wrong and have great insight, but you never just take them on faith if you are doing science.

[BigMoosie]

Faith doesn't enter into it. Science is, by its very nature, self-correcting. You follow the ideas that are confirmed to be correct, not the people that propose them. Some people get more consideration because they are right a lot more often than they are wrong and have great insight, but you never just take them on faith if you are doing science.

 

Although you are quite a credible man, I cannot take your advice on faith, it would be unscientific.

[gagsrcool]

Hi,

 

Amazing find! Really too good! RyanJ is right. We cannot simply believe people who know this much. Even Einstein himself because his field equations gave way to time travel and he was not ready to accept such a theory. Then, soon after he agreed.

Do you know or have any idea of what he presented in the conference?

 

gagsrcool

[gcol]

You follow the ideas that are confirmed to be correct, .

 

Not many of them, then are there? Today's truth is so often tomorrow's busted theory.

 

(sigh) I suppose I'll just take things one day at a time, then.

[the tree]

Not many of them, then are there? Today's truth is so often tomorrow's busted theory.

Doesn't the vast majority of maths predate the Roman empire?

[swansont]

Not many of them' date=' then are there? Today's truth is so often tomorrow's busted theory.

[/quote']

 

 

Name some scientific theories that fit this criterion. And give the dates they were "busted," if you would.

[gcol]

You have called my bluff. Can't and can't, but I picked up two earlier statements of yours which I thought were rather good: "Science is by its very nature, self-correcting" and "you follow ideas that are confirmed to be correct". perhaps I took an unwarranted liberty by juxtaposing them, if so, apologies.

 

I tried to convey in a short phrase

 

1. It would be unscientific to believe today's truth will be the same as tomorrow's. Agreed?

2. If some present ideas appear to be written in stone, we may as well go along with them until someone with a bigger chisel comes along and rewrites them. Chisels get bigger and bigger, that's progress.

[the tree]

Accepting Newtonian physics until Einstien came along would not have been unscientific because it was a model that was consistent with observations at the time.

[gcol]

Yes. Einstein had the bigger chisel.

[the tree]

Niether mans ideas ever where set in stone, that'd be unscientific, they were/are just accepted though.

[swansont]

1. It would be unscientific to believe today's truth will be the same as tomorrow's. Agreed?

2. If some present ideas appear to be written in stone' date=' we may as well go along with them until someone with a bigger chisel comes along and rewrites them. Chisels get bigger and bigger, that's progress.[/quote']

 

No, for two reasons. First, something that is observed to be true will still be true even if the explanation for it is modified. So it depends on what you mean by "today's truth." Second, I draw a distinction between a theory that is wrong and one that is incomplete. To use the Newton-Einstein example already mentioned, the introduction of relativity didn't make Newtonian gravity suddenly give wrong answers, and similarly doesn't render classical mechanics wrong. They still work as long as you aren't travelling at high speed or in a strong gravitational field. So I wouldn't say that Newtonian physics is wrong or busted. It is, however, inadequate to address all situations, just as new science will undoubtedly be discovered in the future, and modify current theories.

 

It is not necessarily so that chisels get bigger. It's that you don't stop chiseling.

[Kermit]

When I first saw the title of the article, my mental image was of me pointing at Hawking and in a stuffy voice going, "Not again, Mr. Hawking!" and he'd type in "Uh oh."