Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!uwmcsd1!ig!agate!garnet!weemba
From: weemba@garnet.berkeley.edu (Obnoxious Math Grad Student)
Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.tech
Subject: Re: Mercury's day and other mysteries
Message-ID: <8314@agate.BERKELEY.EDU>
Date: 4 Apr 88 10:53:20 GMT
References: <26193@cca.CCA.COM> <8087@agate.BERKELEY.EDU> <1149@3comvax.3Com.Com>
Sender: usenet@agate.BERKELEY.EDU
Reply-To: weemba@garnet.berkeley.edu (Obnoxious Math Grad Student)
Organization: Brahms Gang Posting Central
Lines: 18
In-reply-to: michaelm@vax.3Com.Com (Michael McNeil)


In article <1149@3comvax.3Com.Com>, michaelm@vax (Michael McNeil) writes:
>So, if science really expects and thus *creates* whatever it discovers,
>how could it possibly be that Mercury rotates with respect to the sun?

Beats me.  I'd like to mention a more recent example of the same: this
past year Sky&Telescope reported that some high school students, as part
of a science project, found that a certain asteroid's period of rotation
was twice(?)/half(?) the rate previously assumed.

Let me recommend Pickering _Inventing Quarks_.  It's a beautifully writ-
ten history of HEP (high energy physics) from 1960-1980, stressing the
above philosophical point of view.  This is done partly to favor this
philosophical stance, but also as a counter to the standard scientist's
history, which tends to falsify so many things with the bias provided
by the successful theory.  This kind of false reconstruction is peda-
gogically useful, but it is philosophically very misleading.

ucbvax!garnet!weemba	Matthew P Wiener/Brahms Gang/Berkeley CA 94720