For 'Just The Facts'

[ydoaPs]

 

The 'electric universe' is not rejected by EVERYONE because of us not being open minded; it's just simply wrong and goes against almost every area of science.

[Marat]

Very interesting presentation! I especially liked the remark between the film characters that 'girls don't live in radiators.'

 

However, I would offer some resistance to what was being said. First, science oscillates all the time between deliberate closed-mindedness and a cultivation of radical open-mindedness. It does the former by striving militantly to weave all new data into the existing paradigms of explanation, even though it may turn out that these data represent extensions of knowledge requiring new paradigms of explanation. Thus after the Michaelson-Morley experiment there were countless contrivances to explain this result in terms of existing Newtonian paradigms of explanation; it took about 20 years for Einsteinian relativity to be allowed to develop a new paradigm of explanation for this information.

 

But then science has some contrary phases when its existing paradigms of explanation open up to permit new data to enter with a deformative force which requires the construction of a new paradigm.

 

Also, I would not just say that I don't yet have enough evidence to say that I believe in God so I don't believe in him for now, but rather, I believe that a scientific approach to the data requires us to say now more assertively that God does not exist. If someone posits an extraordinary entity contrary to the most simple inductive projection of the data as we know them, then before we even hold open a space in our minds or theories for the possibility that this new entity exists, we need some very good evidence for it. Otherwise we just dismiss it entirely until that evidence appears. Hume stated this principle by declaring that 'extraordinary hypotheses require extraordinary evidence.' If we had to hold open in our minds and theories the active possibility that a self-contradictory (infinitely good, intelligent, and powerful, but the creator of an evil world) and fantastic (mind-reading, world-creating, immortal, omnipotent, etc.) being might exist if we could only someday conduct an exhaustive inventory of everything in the world to find it, we would also have to admit the possibility of the Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fairy, the Sandman, etc., and our thinking would become paralyzed with an infinite regress of 'really possible' hypothetical entities to worry about in all our inferences.

[swansont]

However, I would offer some resistance to what was being said. First, science oscillates all the time between deliberate closed-mindedness and a cultivation of radical open-mindedness. It does the former by striving militantly to weave all new data into the existing paradigms of explanation, even though it may turn out that these data represent extensions of knowledge requiring new paradigms of explanation. Thus after the Michaelson-Morley experiment there were countless contrivances to explain this result in terms of existing Newtonian paradigms of explanation; it took about 20 years for Einsteinian relativity to be allowed to develop a new paradigm of explanation for this information.

 

We have the benefit of history and perspective. I imagine it was much different at the time, when people didn't know what was going on (as with quantum mechanics as well), and had little data to go by. The grip on some piece of science is because it worked, or seemed to, for a fair amount of phenomena. In this case, classical physics, which holds for the vast majority of phenomena, especially up to that point in history. Also important is that the accepted physics was not wrong, per se; it was a matter of it being a very good approximation. We still use pre-1900 physics equations. They work. That the first instinct would be to tinker is understandable to me, as is the time lag during which the shortcomings of the theory sinks in.

 

Completely tossing out a theory is a very different matter. Proponents of relativity did not (AFAIK) start claiming that Galilean transformations were wrong all of the sudden. Relativity reduces to pre-1900 physics for weak gravity and speeds not near c. And from the other perspective, if some alternative to relativity had been proposed and made predictions that were not borne out by experiment, it would not have been adopted, except possibly by a few clueless twits who would insist that it was correct. (Which happens from time to time here)

[Marat]

It is an interesting question whether the shift from Newtonian to relativistic physics constitutes a true paradigm shift in science in the sense discussed by Kuhn and Lakatos. Some very clear cases of paradigm shifts in science would include:

 

1) The transition from Ptolemaic to Copernican views of the solar system

2) The transcendence of Aristotelian physics by Galileo and Kepler

3) Newtonian mechanics overcomes Cartesian subtle particle physics.

4) The mechanical theory of heat (Rumford) overcomes calorique.

5) A chemistry based on oxygen displaces that based on phlogiston.

6) Empty space and gravitational action-at-a-distance replaces a space filled with a suble aether.

 

Compared to these, is the transition from Newtonain to relativistic physics a paradigm shift or simply the addition of a new view of the physics of extreme velocities to classical mechanics? The one thing that would argue for the transition being a true paradigm shift would be the fact that in Newtonian physics the space-time framework, which for Newtonianism is a very odd thing -- a pure idea which nonetheless has physical properties -- is able to act on the mass contained within it but is not acted upon by the mass within it. Relativity corrects that incongruity, and positivistically transforms the ideal space-time framework into something real which interacts with the mass in the universe, and this seems like a major conceptual departure from Newtonianism rather than just an addendum for special situations.

[ydoaPs]

Why is this the one thread he won't pop in to derail?

[Sisyphus]

Why is this the one thread he won't pop in to derail?

 

He claimed he was permanently leaving because of members' Nazi-like requests that he support his extraordinary claims with anything.

[swansont]

Why is this the one thread he won't pop in to derail?

 

 

It doesn't have any "plasma" in it. There's actual substance. You've ruined the mood.

[ydoaPs]

It doesn't have any "plasma" in it. There's actual substance. You've ruined the mood.

My bad.

 

 

Plasma plasma plasma. Scientists are fools! You're all just a bunch of scientismist Nazis! Gravity isn't real. STOP BEING SO CLOSED MINDED.