Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!linus!heart-of-gold!jc From: jc@heart-of-gold (John M Chambers x7780 1E342) Newsgroups: sci.misc Subject: Re: science is STILL religion Message-ID: <124@heart-of-gold> Date: 16 Mar 88 20:09:42 GMT References: <73600013@uiucdcsp> Organization: Mitre Corp, Bedford, MA, USA Lines: 103 Summary: testing, testing... [This is a test to see whether I can successfully followup articles and get them distributed from this new usenet installation. Please ignore any thought-provoking ideas which may follow... ;-] > I used to think that. A seminary student I once knew suggested to > me that maybe people really led better lives in the middle ages. > I thought he was crazy. Some of them did. Kings, princes, bishops, .... The rest didn't. There are also a lot of people in the world today who aren't any better off than their ancestors were 1000 years ago. The benefits of modernity have mostly applied to people in a few parts of the world. That doesn't mean that those benefits don't exist. > I will explain. The point I am making is that the widely published > and popularized discussions of what happened during the first instants > of the universe (if you can believe that there ever was such a thing) > are not science in the sense generating hypotheses that can be tested > by experiment but are very much science in the sense of religion. Nonsense. An important part of any science is taking the current theories and using them to make predictions (or postdictions, in this case) to the point of absurdity. This is commonly known at "testing to destruction", and it can be very effective. Unlike religions, science doesn't insist that its practitioners always be right. Just testable. Granted, it's hard to see how we might test theories about the first millisecond, but then, a couple of years back it was hard to see how we might test theories about the shape of the earth's core or the events inside a supernova. Now we know some ways of testing such things... > And my argument to support both assertions is that discussions > about this primordial instant can only be so much nonsense. Why? > because we don't even know about the world around us (witness > high Tc superconductivity--there is even talk now of a fifth force!!!!!) > So how on earth :-) can someone pontificate about a time billions > of years distant, at densities of matter never otherwise attained, > and when the whole fabric of the universe was small enough to dance on the > head of an extra-universal pin. In some cases (such as Einstein's famous Gedankenexperimenten), the absurd results turn out to be valid. If you think this isn't science, well, then, you just don't understand science. It also borders on being mathematics; it is in fact the application of mathematical methods to scientific theories. Historically, it has been quite productive in many scientific fields. The only real danger in such wild theorizing is that people may take it far too seriously, in which case it tends to become religion and not science. > Any physicist who seriously proposes that the laws > of physics as observed from earth are just as valid then and there > as they are here should be shot. Such discussion is, as science, absurd, > but as religion, right at home. Nah, he/she should just be subject to others discovering ways to test his/her wild calculations. That's the only way such ideas can ever make it into the realm of real science, anyway. But it's often rather embarassing for all parties involved. On the other hand, if we were to shoot all scientists who do wild, absurd conjecturing, we'd have knocked off many of our best scientists in their early days. For instance, back in the 40's, it was patently obvious to most scientists that the genetic code had to be carried in proteins. Some renegades suggested that it was in DNA, but that was absurd; DNA is far too simple a chemical to hold so much information. > > The God of Science differs from all others in favoring the > > intelligent, well-informed, and skeptical. For them she performs > > miracles. All other gods seem to avoid these people for their > > demonstrations. > > A sentiment > which everyone must recognize is not science but religion. In fact, > this is the very creed I imagine being intoned on NOVA every time > I watch it. :-) Nah, just history. Anyhow, don't tell me what I must recognize! (:-) Let's face it, faith healers are universally charlatans, out to get your bucks. If you believe otherwise, well, you are free to give them your money, sucker. Don't expect me to. > I would put at a higher priority: superconductivity, > peace in the middle east, truth, justice, better networks, parallel > computing, .... Oh, right! If we wait for these things to happen, we'll see the sun cooling down first. Well, maybe superconductivity and parallel computing; I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for the others. Better to waste money on research that just might pay off, than invest it on chasing such wild geese. > ... I'd like one of these guys that knows so > much about what happened during the first second of the universe > to tell me what its like at Neptune's core, or for > that matter two inches below the surface of Venus. Some of them are sufficiently arrogant to have made the calculations. And some of them just might be correct. Ya wanna hear about the super-conducting earth-size diamond that may be the core of Jupiter? How about the reasons why Jupiter (and possibly Saturn) may be the home of most of the life in the solar system? Now if we could only get funding to go out and test these and other absurdities... It wasn't so very long ago that even most scientists thought it absurd that rocks could fall from the sky. Now it's accepted that major extinctions have been caused by rocks falling from the sky. One could be headed our way right now. I'd like to know just how absurd this is, before it hits me.