Dreamed of in your 16th century philosophy. The gaps for the god of gaps are getting very small indeed 400 years later.
Just saying
Steve
The Flat Earth society
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Dreamed of in your 16th century philosophy. The gaps for the god of gaps are getting very small indeed 400 years later.
Just saying
Steve
mikewint
Captain
I think that's called HUBRIS
William Thompson, Lord of Kelvin, in an address to an assemblage of physicists at the British Association for the advancement of Science in 1900 stated, "There is nothing new to be discovered in physics now. All that remains is more and more precise measurement." A similar statement is attributed to the American physicist Albert Michelson at the dedication of the University of Chicago's Ryerson Physical Laboratory:
"While it is never safe to affirm that the future of Physical Science has no marvels in store even more astonishing than those of the past, it seems probable that most of the grand underlying principles have been firmly established and that further advances are to be sought chiefly in the rigorous application of these principles to all the phenomena which come under our notice. It is here that the science of measurement shows its importance — where quantitative work is more to be desired than qualitative work. An eminent physicist remarked that the future truths of physical science are to be looked for in the sixth place of decimals."
William Thompson, Lord of Kelvin, in an address to an assemblage of physicists at the British Association for the advancement of Science in 1900 stated, "There is nothing new to be discovered in physics now. All that remains is more and more precise measurement." A similar statement is attributed to the American physicist Albert Michelson at the dedication of the University of Chicago's Ryerson Physical Laboratory:
"While it is never safe to affirm that the future of Physical Science has no marvels in store even more astonishing than those of the past, it seems probable that most of the grand underlying principles have been firmly established and that further advances are to be sought chiefly in the rigorous application of these principles to all the phenomena which come under our notice. It is here that the science of measurement shows its importance — where quantitative work is more to be desired than qualitative work. An eminent physicist remarked that the future truths of physical science are to be looked for in the sixth place of decimals."
Not really. From my own experience, I am a molecular biologist. We thought we knew a lot, until in 2009, we got our first vegetable genome sequenced. Then we realised we only have a mere idea how it works but reality is way more complex. I'm pDreamed of in your 16th century philosophy. The gaps for the god of gaps are getting very small indeed 400 years later.
Just saying
Steve
mikewint
Captain
Well Steve I gotta admit I surly wish that I could be as sure as you seem to be that all you know is true and correct,
But then you are in good company:
In his 1842 book The Positive Philosophy, the French philosopher Auguste Comte wrote of the stars: "We can never learn their internal constitution, nor, in regard to some of them, how heat is absorbed by their atmosphere." In a similar vein, he said of the planets: "We can never know anything of their chemical or mineralogical structure; and, much less, that of organized beings living on their surface."
Comte's argument was that the stars and planets are so far away as to be beyond the limits of everything but our sense of sight and geometry. He reasoned that, while we could work out their distance, their motion and their mass, nothing more could realistically be discerned. There was certainly no way to chemically analyze them.
Throughout the Renaissance and the early development of modern science, astronomers refused to accept the existence of meteorites. The idea that stones could fall from space was regarded as superstitious and possibly heretical – surely God would not have created such an untidy universe?
The French Academy of Sciences famously stated that "rocks don't fall from the sky". Reports of fireballs and stones crashing to the ground were dismissed as hearsay and folklore, and the stones were sometimes explained away as "thunderstones" – the result of lightning strikes.
The number of scientists and engineers who confidently stated that heavier-than-air flight was impossible is too large to count. Lord Kelvin is probably the best-known. In 1895 he stated that "heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible".
In March 1934 Enrico Fermi bombarded uranium with neutrons, producing what he thought were the first elements heavier than uranium. Most scientists thought that hitting a large nucleus like uranium with a neutron could only induce small changes in the number of neutrons or protons. However, one chemist, Ida Noddack, pointed out that Fermi hadn't ruled out the possibility that in his reactions, the uranium might actually have broken up into lighter elements, though she didn't propose any theoretical basis for how that could happen. Her paper was largely ignored, and no one, not even Noddack herself, followed up on the idea.
On 29 December 1934, Albert Einstein was quoted in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette as saying, "There is not the slightest indication that [nuclear energy] will ever be obtainable. It would mean that the atom would have to be shattered at will."
Einstein's skepticism was, however, overtaken by events. By 1939, nuclear fission was better understood and researchers had realized that a chain reaction – one that, once started, would drive itself at increasing rates – could produce a huge explosion. In late 1942, such a chain reaction was produced experimentally and a project was proposed to produce such an ATOMIC bomb. Fleet Admiral William Leahy told President Truman: "This is the biggest fool thing we've ever done – the bomb will never go off – and I speak as an expert on explosives."
And some EXPERTS weigh in on computers:
"Computers in the future may weigh no more than 1.5 tons."
- Popular Mechanics, forecasting the relentless march of science, 1949.
"I think there is a world market for maybe five computers."
- Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM, 1943.
" There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home."
- Ken Olson, president, chairman and founder of Digital Equipment Corp., 1977.
But then you are in good company:
In his 1842 book The Positive Philosophy, the French philosopher Auguste Comte wrote of the stars: "We can never learn their internal constitution, nor, in regard to some of them, how heat is absorbed by their atmosphere." In a similar vein, he said of the planets: "We can never know anything of their chemical or mineralogical structure; and, much less, that of organized beings living on their surface."
Comte's argument was that the stars and planets are so far away as to be beyond the limits of everything but our sense of sight and geometry. He reasoned that, while we could work out their distance, their motion and their mass, nothing more could realistically be discerned. There was certainly no way to chemically analyze them.
Throughout the Renaissance and the early development of modern science, astronomers refused to accept the existence of meteorites. The idea that stones could fall from space was regarded as superstitious and possibly heretical – surely God would not have created such an untidy universe?
The French Academy of Sciences famously stated that "rocks don't fall from the sky". Reports of fireballs and stones crashing to the ground were dismissed as hearsay and folklore, and the stones were sometimes explained away as "thunderstones" – the result of lightning strikes.
The number of scientists and engineers who confidently stated that heavier-than-air flight was impossible is too large to count. Lord Kelvin is probably the best-known. In 1895 he stated that "heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible".
In March 1934 Enrico Fermi bombarded uranium with neutrons, producing what he thought were the first elements heavier than uranium. Most scientists thought that hitting a large nucleus like uranium with a neutron could only induce small changes in the number of neutrons or protons. However, one chemist, Ida Noddack, pointed out that Fermi hadn't ruled out the possibility that in his reactions, the uranium might actually have broken up into lighter elements, though she didn't propose any theoretical basis for how that could happen. Her paper was largely ignored, and no one, not even Noddack herself, followed up on the idea.
On 29 December 1934, Albert Einstein was quoted in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette as saying, "There is not the slightest indication that [nuclear energy] will ever be obtainable. It would mean that the atom would have to be shattered at will."
Einstein's skepticism was, however, overtaken by events. By 1939, nuclear fission was better understood and researchers had realized that a chain reaction – one that, once started, would drive itself at increasing rates – could produce a huge explosion. In late 1942, such a chain reaction was produced experimentally and a project was proposed to produce such an ATOMIC bomb. Fleet Admiral William Leahy told President Truman: "This is the biggest fool thing we've ever done – the bomb will never go off – and I speak as an expert on explosives."
And some EXPERTS weigh in on computers:
"Computers in the future may weigh no more than 1.5 tons."
- Popular Mechanics, forecasting the relentless march of science, 1949.
"I think there is a world market for maybe five computers."
- Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM, 1943.
" There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home."
- Ken Olson, president, chairman and founder of Digital Equipment Corp., 1977.
I'm not sure at all and I too have a background in science as a chemistry graduate, though I quickly got bored working for a multi national company and opted for a career change. I'm just pointing out that the gaps are smaller now than 400 years ago. Confronted with the vast majority of the 'observable' universe actually being invisible to us we are unlikely to suggest god as an explanation, but there is plenty to know and inevitably there will be much to unlearn. Plus ca change
Robert Porter
Senior Master Sergeant
Don't forget the still living Bill Gates "No one will ever need more than 640K of memory."
No, I have two eyes and I see the near side of a sphere. You can put 6 discs in my garden and 6 spheres of the same size and colour and I guarantee I will not mix up the two types. You can quote the extremely small angles involved, in fact our eyes can tell the difference.
While flying over the North Sea and looking across East Anglia and Kent I was looking at the extreme on the disc of the French Belgian and Dutch coast, my line of vision being at a tangent to the extreme not the limit of how far I can see, If I stand close, or not so close to a straight wall it never looks anything but a straight wall, while if i stand next to a curved wall (circular around a property) it looks just like what it is.
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Robert Porter
Senior Master Sergeant
Had not thought of it that way but you are correct.
A "trompe de -l'œil can fool the eyes to the extent that we think "that is clever" but seeing this picture
Do you actually believe a boy is jumping from a picture frame?
Trompe - Wikipedia de l'œil
When you consider the calculations a "catcher" in baseball or cricket has to make in space time and ballistics to make a catch it is unwise to underestimate our senses. Within a small fraction of a second the catcher knows if a catch is possible and heads to the place to catch it, even though the ball is not actually heading towards them just in their general direction. Of course there are other animals with more developed senses but ours are none too shoddy.
mikewint
Captain
Steve, if anything the gaps have grown out of all imagined proportion
We don't know why the universe exists: This is really quite unfair, and could be grounds for doubting that the cosmos knows what it's doing. But in terms of physics, although there are some really very appealing, very promising, theoretical frameworks that begin to answer the question, the simple truth is that we're not sure which might be right. It may be that the universe springs from an inherently unstable 'nothingness'. The most void-like void, prone to spontaneous generation of matter and energy in proportions that always balance out to zero (yep, really, read Lawrence Krauss's great book on this). Furthermore, this may not be the only universe (a terrible linguistic fail, I know), but rather one of a vast array, part of a multiverse of more than 10 to the power of 10 to the power of 16 distinguishable realities. But a big piece of the problem is that we're still waiting for the next generation of cosmic measurements to chip away at the models, and we're still waiting for theories that provide more readily testable hypotheses, not just mathematical elegance. So we don't know why the heck all of this exists.
We don't know what dark matter, or dark energy, is: Big problem, honking big problem. Normal matter, the stuff of you, the stuff of me, planets, stars, and cheese sandwiches, amounts to only about 4.9% of the total matter and energy content of the universe. 26.8% of matter is 'dark', we know it's there because on large, cosmic, scales stuff moves around faster than it should and because the way that galaxies strew themselves across space is consistent with the existence of vast amounts of slow-moving gravitating 'stuff' that never turns into stars or planets or anything, just stays as diffuse, invisible, incredibly antisocial particles. Except we really have no idea what these particles truly are - a situation beautifully summarized recently by Mario Livio and Joe Silk. That's nasty, but perhaps nastier is dark energy. Something is causing the expansion of the universe to accelerate. It didn't used to. Until about 5 or 6 billion years ago the stretching of space following the Big Bang was in decline, but then something started to counter that, another unseen component, perhaps a type of vacuum energy density that fills up space as space itself grows. What exactly is it? We do not know. We have lots of ideas though, which is great, always good to have ideas about 68.3% of the universe.
We don't know whether life exists anywhere else: This one is close to my heart. Here we are, sentient beings on a planet seething with life (although perhaps not as seething as it could be) that's been busy sculpting and re-sculpting the physical and chemical environment for much of the past 5 billion years. And now we're confident that there are lots of planets out there, and that many of them could have an equal shot at playing host to life. But we still don't know whether or not we're alone. No clue. That's quite a problem. Don't get me wrong, it's a good problem, a juicy problem, one of the best. But even when the President of the United States introduces a lovely glossy TV series all about science, science that addresses the question of life in the universe, that doesn't mean that governments or industry give a fig about paying to solve the problem. As Lee Billings writes in his recent book, the lack of a sense of urgency is a little bewildering. So we continue to bumble along in splendid isolation.
We probably haven't really figured out the quantum world: What!? While it's true that our present mathematical framework of quantum mechanics can do wonders, from describing atoms and molecules to the bizarre nature of entanglement and qubits, BUT… One need only cast a look over the literature to see that the most fundamental aspects of the quantum nature of the universe are still causing headaches and disagreements. People are still reformulating the ways in which we cope with the quantum nature of reality so it's clearly too soon to call this understood. Not only that, but the possibility of pure quantum effects reaching into the realm of soft, wet, and warm biology has also raised its head, a rather unnerving notion. . Oh, and then there's black holes and quantum firewalls...
We don't understand our own biology: It's not too radical to say this, after all, if we did understand every detail of how we worked we'd presumably be able to eliminate disease (assuming that's actually better for us, which it clearly is individually, but perhaps not as a species). We'd also be able to customize ourselves by reaching into to those 3 billion or so nucleic acids in our DNA and doing a spot of molecular engineering, getting those purple earlobes we've always wanted. But we're not close to doing this any better than we can come up with 'engineered' crops - lots of misses and a few hits. Want a good example of our pitiful lack of knowledge? It's the microbiome. Our ten trillion human cells are augmented, exploited, nurtured, by a hundred trillion microbial cells - a couple of pounds of bacteria and archaea that we all carry around and can't live without. They're in our guts, our lungs, up our noses and in every other dank corner. We're just cruise ships for the ultimate microbial Club-Med, and we simply don't know what that all means.
We don't know how the Earth works: Let's lurch back to a grander scale. No human, or robot, has ever physically traveled deeper than a few miles into the Earth's crust, everything else is extrapolation and interpolation from 'remote sensing' and clever physical analyses. It took us a ridiculously long time to figure out that the outer planetary skin is moving and sliding around; plate tectonics was not generally accepted until the mid-20th century! We're still not sure exactly how the inner dynamo works, how rolls of convecting, conducting material in the outer core generate our planetary magnetic field. There's also so much mess after 4.5 billion years of geophysics that some of our best information about the planet's origins come from meteorites and the cratering of other worlds - outsourced. Speaking of other worlds, we're not even sure we understand where the Moon came from, maybe it was a giant impact, maybe not. For an allegedly clever species on a small rocky planet this is a bit of an epic fail.
We can't prove or solve many of our own mathematical conjectures and problems: Lest mathematics thinks it can escape this festival of ignorance, just remind yourself that there's a long list of unproven, unsolved problems and unproven conjectures.
We don't know how to make an artificial intelligence: I'm putting this here because it's a perennial problem, and one that speaks to both our desire to understand ourselves (if you can make an artificial being you may find the secret sauce behind your own intelligence, even if ultimately it's just an emergent phenomenon) as well as to understand what might be 'out there' in the vastness of the cosmos, wrought by billions of years of alien evolution, and really quite depressed by it all. Although we've come a long way with our machines, it's not clear that predictive text or automated suggestions for shopping and movie streaming are really assembling information in any way that resembles how our minds generate ideas. This is truly a frontier and a VERY scary one if we ever actually succeed.
Why would it need a reason? This is scientific Anthropomorphism. Humans think that things happen for a reason, so because the universe exists it must exist for a reason, maybe it doesnt.
Robert Porter
Senior Master Sergeant
The old saying "the more we learn, the more we realize what we don't know" applies. I agree gaps in our knowledge are growing not shrinking. We are realizing more of what we don't know.
The gaps are not growing, it is not necessarily so that the more we know, the more there is to know, but science should always assumes that it is.
We don't know why the universe exists:
There doesn't have to be a why? What we want to know is how?
We don't know what dark matter, or dark energy, is:
Give us a chance. It's theoretical existence is postulated by a model of the universe that is certainly not 100% correct, and even in human terms very recently. Given time we will sort this one out.
We don't know whether life exists anywhere else:
We don't. Our hypothesis is that the universe should be teeming with life, but given the factors of astronomical distances and time beyond the conception of human beings who have been genetically programmed to understand such things in terms of our own planet and lifespans we have to accept that we might never know, unless of course we find life close at hand, in our own solar system.
We probably haven't really figured out the quantum world:
Another concept that has been around for barely 100 years. There is no quantum world. It is a theoretical construct which seeks to explain what has been described as the 'universe of the very small'. Like all chemists my studies brushed up against quantum mechanics and I found it almost completely irrelevant to day to day chemistry in the agro-chemical industry
We don't understand our own biology:
We understand it a lot better than we did 5,10, 50, 100, 1000 years ago. The level of understanding, down to a molecular level is astonishing and it is a field that moves rapidly forward. From Watson and Crick's elegant and intuitive model of the DNA molecule to a complete human genome in less than fifty years is a stupendous achievement.
We don't know how the Earth works:
Same as above. We've got a good model now, but of course the science evolves. There is no room for the gods in volcanoes, tsunamis, earth quakes or the aurora anymore.
We can't prove or solve many of our own mathematical conjectures and problems:
If there weren't unsolved conjectures and problems, let's call them hypotheses, then people wouldn't be doing science and mathematics properly.
We don't know how to make an artificial intelligence:
In 1944 we didn't know how to manufacture an atomic weapon. We do now.
Cheers
Steve
We don't know why the universe exists:
There doesn't have to be a why? What we want to know is how?
We don't know what dark matter, or dark energy, is:
Give us a chance. It's theoretical existence is postulated by a model of the universe that is certainly not 100% correct, and even in human terms very recently. Given time we will sort this one out.
We don't know whether life exists anywhere else:
We don't. Our hypothesis is that the universe should be teeming with life, but given the factors of astronomical distances and time beyond the conception of human beings who have been genetically programmed to understand such things in terms of our own planet and lifespans we have to accept that we might never know, unless of course we find life close at hand, in our own solar system.
We probably haven't really figured out the quantum world:
Another concept that has been around for barely 100 years. There is no quantum world. It is a theoretical construct which seeks to explain what has been described as the 'universe of the very small'. Like all chemists my studies brushed up against quantum mechanics and I found it almost completely irrelevant to day to day chemistry in the agro-chemical industry
We don't understand our own biology:
We understand it a lot better than we did 5,10, 50, 100, 1000 years ago. The level of understanding, down to a molecular level is astonishing and it is a field that moves rapidly forward. From Watson and Crick's elegant and intuitive model of the DNA molecule to a complete human genome in less than fifty years is a stupendous achievement.
We don't know how the Earth works:
Same as above. We've got a good model now, but of course the science evolves. There is no room for the gods in volcanoes, tsunamis, earth quakes or the aurora anymore.
We can't prove or solve many of our own mathematical conjectures and problems:
If there weren't unsolved conjectures and problems, let's call them hypotheses, then people wouldn't be doing science and mathematics properly.
We don't know how to make an artificial intelligence:
In 1944 we didn't know how to manufacture an atomic weapon. We do now.
Cheers
Steve
But often they are true
One of my favourites.
"If there's no such thing as simultaneity [as shown in Eistein's man on platform, woman on fast moving train thought experiments] then there's no such thing as absolute time everywhere throughout the universe, and Isaac Newton was wrong." Sean Carroll, California Institute of Technology, trying to explain special relativity and why James Clerk Maxwell was correct about the speed of light.
We can send our unmanned probes throughout the solar system and beyond using Newton's equations, but he was wrong about some things!
Cheers
Steve
One of my favourites.
"If there's no such thing as simultaneity [as shown in Eistein's man on platform, woman on fast moving train thought experiments] then there's no such thing as absolute time everywhere throughout the universe, and Isaac Newton was wrong." Sean Carroll, California Institute of Technology, trying to explain special relativity and why James Clerk Maxwell was correct about the speed of light.
We can send our unmanned probes throughout the solar system and beyond using Newton's equations, but he was wrong about some things!
Cheers
Steve
I'm not sure my small ape like brain can handle all this...
I am always fascinated by people discussing "understanding" earthquakes and volcanoes. This is based on a human emotion, understanding must lead us to be able to predict when and where they will occur. Well they occur all over the place it is purely a question of magnitude and local building regulations.
mikewint
Captain
Newton was indeed wrong, because he did not take into Relativity into account. Accurate measurements of motion and Newton's equations predictions showed errors even in his time BUT they were ascribed to experimental error and it was felt that the errors would vanish when measuring instrumentation improved. That was not the case and more accurate measurements simply verified the errors.
Newton's equations required a Privileged Position an absolute time/space co-ordinate. Since there is no such Privileged Position all measurements are subject to variation as they are viewed from other locations, measurements are RELATIVE. Objects, e.g., do not all fall at the same rate everywhere on earth as gravity varies with location.
Indeed we can BUT with, in some cases, several orbital corrections due to the increasing error build-up. Newton's Laws of Motion are very close approximations and they work very well in the short term. Much as surveyors surveying small parcels of land use PLANE Trigonometry. It is only when large tracts need to be surveyed that Geodetic survey techniques become necessary.
