Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!tektronix!zeus!amadeus!rob
From: rob@amadeus.TEK.COM (Dan Tilque)
Newsgroups: sci.misc
Subject: Re: Science IS a religion.
Message-ID: <3249@zeus.TEK.COM>
Date: 13 Mar 88 11:33:02 GMT
References: <73600008@uiucdcsp>
Sender: news@zeus.TEK.COM
Reply-To: dant@mrloog.LA.TEK.COM (Dan Tilque)
Organization: Tektronix, Inc., Beaverton,  OR.
Lines: 33
Summary: Ain't not!

In article <73600008@uiucdcsp> pax@uiucdcsp.cs.uiuc.edu writes:
>
>	The first has been the discovery of high temperature super-
>	conductivity--a real discovery that exposes other contemporary
>	physics as a species of bookkeeping and the artificiality
>	of theory.  Really, how much confidence can you have in some
>	arrogant astrophysicist's elucidation of the first millisecond
>	of the history of the universe when a phenomenon like 
>	high-temperature superconductivity wasn't even known.  It's
>	not science, it's religion.

I don't understand.  What possible connection could high Tc
superconductivity have with cosmology?  From what I know of these
materials, it's extremely unlikely that they could occur in nature.  

In any case, it doesn't matter.  Even if superconductors did have some
direct relationship to cosmology, does that mean that no one should
propose theories about the origin of the Universe just in case some new
discovery will come along and invalidate it?  Or if they did propose one,
we should have no confidence in it?   

With this kind of thinking, we'd still be assuming that the Sun goes
around the Earth, because no one could propose a heliocentric theory. 
After all, some new discovery may come along and we'll find that the
planets really go around the Moon.

I do not mean to say that scientific theories can't be proven false.  They
wouldn't be scientific if they can't.  And this is the primary difference
between science and religion.  


---
Dan Tilque  --  dant@mrloog.LA.TEK.COM