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From: rte@houxl.UUCP (R.EDWARDS)
Newsgroups: net.physics
Subject: Arrogance and Physical Laws
Message-ID: <699@houxl.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 4-Apr-85 15:32:58 EST
Article-I.D.: houxl.699
Posted: Thu Apr  4 15:32:58 1985
Date-Received: Fri, 5-Apr-85 04:07:19 EST
Organization: AT&T Bell Labs, Holmdel NJ
Lines: 48

Recently this flame appeared in net.physics:
>
>I've never seen a demonstration of the (perpetual motion) machine, and I
>don't know if it works or not.  What bothers me is the indignant and
>arrogant attitude of all those who appeal to the "fundamental laws of physics"
>to ridicule any theory or device which does not fall within the current
>scientific paradigm.
>
> Knee-jerk skeptics who dismiss ideas that don't happen to correspond to
> their own beliefs would probably have laughed at Copernicus for suggesting
> that the earth was not the center of the universe, or Columbus for suggesting
> that the earth wasn't flat.

>
Several people have pointed out the Columbus half truth.
No one so far has pointed out that it was Galileo who really got in hot
water over the which revolves around who broohaha.
But beyond this, there is a far deeper misunderstanding evidenced here,
a misunderstanding of what science is, and how scientists act.

Science is not a system of belief, religions are systems of belief,
science is made up of careful, systematic, open minded observations.
Scientific theory is an attempt to describe the observations in the
most compact, precise, and understandable way possible.
Scientists don't go around trying to sweep disagreeable facts under the rug.
If you think that, you simply don't know any scientists.

As a scientist I participated in a series of experiments all of which got
the expected answers, over a period of a bout 10 years.  I then participated
in a series of experiments that got quite unexpected results.  When you get
an unexpected result first you check it very carefully, because it may be
wrong, but when you are sure it's new, that's the whole justification of your
life, it's so much more pleasing than the other.  When you start giving talks
you start out with, everybody knows..., and then switch to your results.
Every scientist in basic research wants new and unexpected results.

But, there is a difference between being open minded and empty headed,
saying that basic physical laws say you can't get something for nothing,
is a shorthand way of saying that over the last 200 years thousands
of people have examined very carefully the question of conservation
of energy, and every time there appeared to be some question about it,
the explanation was not in doing away with the principle.
Who is arrogant, the guy who suggests that these thousands of careful
experimenters are wrong, or the guy who suggests that each new crackpot
probably isn't up to the standards of Galileo, Newton, Maxwell, and Einstein.

I would hope that people who write on net.physics would not get their
ideas about science and scientists from a Steven Spielberg movie.