Invisible <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> Well... there *have* been scientific theories which were considered 
> ridiculous for a long time, which eventually turned out to be correct. 

  I think this happened mostly at the latter half of the 1800's and very
early in the 1900's. Many prominent scientists had got a bit arrogant
because they believed that almost everything that there is to know about
physics and the Universe is known, that there's nothing new left to
discover. In other words, that the science branch of physics is "complete".
Measurements which contradicted established theories, while a bit
uncomfortable, were often just dismissed as having some simple explanation.

  While arrogant people will always exist, I think the scientific community
as a whole has learned its lesson and got mostly over this kind of mentality
after relativity and quantum mechanics basically showed that almost
everything we thought we know is inaccurate.

  New plausible theories are not immediately shut down and ridiculed.
There have been several examples posted in this very newsgroup (eg.
about those articles dealing with black holes and GR).

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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>> Well... there *have* been scientific theories which were considered 
>> ridiculous for a long time, which eventually turned out to be correct. 
> 
>   I think this happened mostly at the latter half of the 1800's and very
> early in the 1900's.
> 
>   While arrogant people will always exist, I think the scientific community
> as a whole has learned its lesson and got mostly over this kind of mentality
> after relativity and quantum mechanics basically showed that almost
> everything we thought we know is inaccurate.

There wre still lively debates about, e.g., whether H. floresiensis is a 
"real" new species or a small group of diseased H. sapiens specimins. 
Some claim that this absolutely is a brand new species, for a whole long 
list of reasons. And others simply laugh at the idea and claim it's pure 
moonshine. But...

>   New plausible theories are not immediately shut down and ridiculed.

...I think this is the bottom line. There is a contraversy here, rather 
than a "X is false, end of discussion".

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Warp wrote:
> Invisible <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
>> Well... there *have* been scientific theories which were considered 
>> ridiculous for a long time, which eventually turned out to be correct. 
> 
>   I think this happened mostly at the latter half of the 1800's and very
> early in the 1900's. Many prominent scientists had got a bit arrogant
> because they believed that almost everything that there is to know about
> physics and the Universe is known, that there's nothing new left to
> discover. In other words, that the science branch of physics is "complete".
> Measurements which contradicted established theories, while a bit
> uncomfortable, were often just dismissed as having some simple explanation.

	You mean, like today's theoretical particle physicists? From their
perspective, the Standard Model is complete. If the LHC finds the Higgs
Boson where they expect it, then that'll be the final evidence they need
to declare it so.

	As for within the scientific disciplines, and especially in relatively
new fields, I see this arrogance frequently. Someone puports a new
theory that explains certain phenomena (in some material, say). The
referees routinely reject it purely because it's not based on the
current model. These aren't big issues/theories, which is why usually
the only people who know about them are those directly involved.


-- 
!@#$%^&*: The most widely used computer term worldwide.


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                                   anl

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Warp wrote:
> after relativity and quantum mechanics basically showed that almost
> everything we thought we know is inaccurate.

I think it's probably also the case that at the time, there was little 
evidence that scientists were wrong in this respect. There were very few 
measurements that were different than theory predicted to the limit of 
accuracy of the instruments, relatively few "unexplained" observations, and 
so on. Nobody had seen the cosmic background radiation, nobody had seen 
enough quantum effects to realize what they were, nobody had measured the 
orbit of Mercury accurately enough to realize it was "wrong", and so on.

I suspect that had instruments started getting more accurate, the failure of 
reality to line up with theory would have triggered more explorations of new 
theories, just like photoelectric phenomena did.

>   New plausible theories are not immediately shut down and ridiculed.

Yeah. The difference is, new theories not only have to explain *some* of the 
results, they have to explain *all* of the experimental results, and 
hopefully *also* explain something the current theories don't. And as 
physics and other sciences get more and more complete, it gets harder and 
harder to come up with a new theory that still agrees with the old theory 
except in the places we haven't looked.

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   My fortune cookie said, "You will soon be
   unable to read this, even at arm's length."

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On 6-3-2009 10:24, Saul Luizaga wrote:
> I'd appreciate links if you have them.

what about simply: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origin_of_life

This in contrast to Josephs' "magical thinking of modern day scientists"
and "Most modern scientists reject God and in stead embrace a theology 
of miracles. Preaching that life came from non-life. From lightning 
bolts striking a random mixture of chemicals in a super natural organic 
soup. An idea so absurd and laden with magical thinking it is equivalent 
with discovering a computer on mars and claiming that it was randomly 
assembled in the m[?] sea. The theory of organic soup is a silly 
childish myth, only life can give rise to life, only DNA can give rise 
to DNA, the machinery of life."

There is of course the ridiculing of all other less intelligent people 
that is a sure sign that what follows is a strawman argument. And 
indeed, I don't think you can find a modern scientists that thinks that 
life originated from lighning bolts in a mixture of chemicals. That 
refers to the famous http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miller_experiment that 
resulted in organic molecules, most importantly aminoacids. Note however 
that they are merely building blocks used by life but Miller, nor 
anybody else would claim that it *is* life. In fact nobody knows how 
that came about. So, claiming that you know what "most modern 
scientists" think happened is plain silly and uninformed. We also know 
that many organic molecules form in outer space, a fact that is 
apparently not relevant at this point, though no doubt somewhere in the 
video that will be mentioned.
I have not a clue what the computer is doing in the next sentence so I 
won't comment.
Then there is the claim that "only life can give rise to life" which 
either implies that life has been there since whenever the universe 
begun or that there is none now. I don't believe either of these 
positions, so I believe this is factually an incorrect statement.
Followed by "only DNA can give rise to DNA", which is for the same 
reason nonsense. Besides in order to make DNA you need to have RNA as 
well. Moreover there is life that does not contain DNA but only RNA. In 
fact as you will see in wiki, there are quite a lot of people that think 
it is likely that before DNA we had purely RNA based life and before 
that we might have even had other reproducing systems. Oh and note also 
that we also know that there is more to genetics than merely DNA and RNA.
In short, I don't like his attitude. I know that he is factually wrong 
on almost everything in the first few minutes of this video. (As if he 
has read a few pieces in the general papers and stopped reading anything 
after the 80's.) It also makes me sad that somebody spends so much of 
his time in spreading his own misformed view of science and his personal 
pet-theories.
There may be some more factually correct statements after 2:45, but it 
is not likely that I will find out.

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Darren New wrote:
> Yeah. The difference is, new theories not only have to explain *some* of
> the results, they have to explain *all* of the experimental results, and
> hopefully *also* explain something the current theories don't. And as
> physics and other sciences get more and more complete, it gets harder
> and harder to come up with a new theory that still agrees with the old
> theory except in the places we haven't looked.

	A philosophy I never quite understood.

-- 
Always remember that you are unique, just like everyone else.


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                       >>>>>>mue### [at] nawazorg<<<<<<
                                   anl

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Mueen Nawaz wrote:
> Darren New wrote:
>> Yeah. The difference is, new theories not only have to explain *some* of
>> the results, they have to explain *all* of the experimental results, and
>> hopefully *also* explain something the current theories don't. And as
>> physics and other sciences get more and more complete, it gets harder
>> and harder to come up with a new theory that still agrees with the old
>> theory except in the places we haven't looked.
> 
> 	A philosophy I never quite understood.

You don't understand why a new theory has to explain all the experiments the 
old theory does too? It's because if it doesn't, then the experiments you've 
already done are disproving your theory.

Surely I'm misunderstanding you.

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   My fortune cookie said, "You will soon be
   unable to read this, even at arm's length."

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Darren New wrote:
> Mueen Nawaz wrote:
>> Darren New wrote:
>>> Yeah. The difference is, new theories not only have to explain *some* of
>>> the results, they have to explain *all* of the experimental results, and
>>> hopefully *also* explain something the current theories don't. And as
>>> physics and other sciences get more and more complete, it gets harder
>>> and harder to come up with a new theory that still agrees with the old
>>> theory except in the places we haven't looked.
>>
>>     A philosophy I never quite understood.
> 
> You don't understand why a new theory has to explain all the experiments
> the old theory does too? It's because if it doesn't, then the
> experiments you've already done are disproving your theory.
> 
> Surely I'm misunderstanding you.

	Reference: "Light is a wave" vs "Light is a particle"

	By your logic, if the current theory doesn't explain some known
phenomenon, it should be abandoned as well.

	Sure, the new theory has clear flaws, but so does the old one. Perhaps
one day a new theory will be developed that can, in a sense, combine the
two. That can't happen if the new theory is summarily rejected and the
majority of physicists don't even get a chance to think about it.

-- 
Guitar for sale. Very cheap. No strings attached.


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                       >>>>>>mue### [at] nawazorg<<<<<<
                                   anl

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Mueen Nawaz wrote:
>> Surely I'm misunderstanding you.
> 	Reference: "Light is a wave" vs "Light is a particle"
> 
> 	By your logic, if the current theory doesn't explain some known
> phenomenon, it should be abandoned as well.

OK, maybe I misspoke. If a theory is silent on some current observations, 
then it's reasonable to consider it. If a new theory contradicts things the 
current theory explains, there's no good reason to consider it until it has 
been adjusted to explain that which it says shouldn't happen. Or until you 
do experiments that show the previous measurements were wrong somehow.

In the wave vs particle stuff, for a while, neither could explain *all* the 
phenomena, so people knew they didn't have the right answer. But if your 
theory of light as a wave says fluorescence shouldn't happen, it's not a 
very good theory.

Most crackpot theories explain something that the accepted theory says "We 
don't know", but in so doing ignore the vast piles of evidence they're at 
odds with that the current theories explain. If you came up with a "light is 
particles" theory that didn't explain interference and/or claimed 
interference doesn't happen, it would be a crackpot theory.

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   My fortune cookie said, "You will soon be
   unable to read this, even at arm's length."

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Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> If a new theory contradicts things the 
> current theory explains, there's no good reason to consider it until it has 
> been adjusted to explain that which it says shouldn't happen.

  Perhaps nitpicking, but don't GR and QM contradict each other in some
aspects, yet both are considered the current status quo, to the best of
our knowledge? In other words, a theory contradicting another establishing
theory is not *always* grounds for dismissal.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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