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From: lew@ihlpa.UUCP (Lew Mammel, Jr.)
Newsgroups: net.origins
Subject: Newton debunked
Message-ID: <135@ihlpa.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 28-Feb-85 10:12:20 EST
Article-I.D.: ihlpa.135
Posted: Thu Feb 28 10:12:20 1985
Date-Received: Fri, 1-Mar-85 20:22:27 EST
Distribution: net
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories
Lines: 22

Ken Arndt posted a set of quotes to net.religion on Feb 3 which were intended
to show the unscientific nature of evolutinary theory . This included a quote
from Karl Popper characterizing evolution as "a metaphysical research
programme". This rang a bell, and I see now that Ken didn't go far enough
in his debunking. Even the hardest of hard sciences, Newtonian mechanics
is susceptible to this sort of quote-attack.

From Feynman's Lectures on Physics:

	... if we study the characteristics of force as a PROGRAM
	OF INTEREST, then we shall find that forces have some simplicity;
	the law [i.e. F=ma] is a good PROGRAM FOR ANALYZING NATURE,
	it is a SUGGESTION that the forces will be simple.

Here we have Newton's Second Law reduced to a suggestion by a Nobel
Prize winner in physics. Have at 'em Ken!

	"And I gave my heart to know wisdom and to know folly
	 and perceived that in this also was madness
	 and vexation of the spirit."

	Lew Mammel, Jr. ihnp4!ihlpa!lew