:chuckle:Quote:
Originally Posted by Robot_Butler
~
Printable View
:chuckle:Quote:
Originally Posted by Robot_Butler
~
"reversing" the Casimir effect? I think you mean the Casimir effect itself. Anyway, that just proves my point; the Casimir effect only acts on pico-scale distances and doesn't alter chemistry at all. Electrons are still electrons.Quote:
Originally Posted by Xaqaria
I'm only talking about science. Before the 17th century, it wasn't science at all. And what about 1700 and 1800?Quote:
Originally Posted by Xaqaria
When was the last time you traveled close to the speed of light?Quote:
Originally Posted by Xaqaria
Actually, I mean reversing it, although you are right; it's discovery in the first place was also within the last 70 years.Quote:
Originally Posted by esfx
Oh... my mistake. I guess we are discluding Galileo from the list of scientists as well.Quote:
Originally Posted by esfx
You said that science was only revolutionized once, at the beginning of the 19th century, and so I only needed to find a single example before then to prove you wrong. I thought that enlightening you about the Scientific Revolution should have been more than enough effort on my part, but apparently you want me to do all your homework for you. Alright then, see The Chemical Revolution(1700's) and Charles Darwin(1800's).
Wut?Quote:
Originally Posted by esfx
:confused:
Their were many science endeavors before the 1700 and 1800... Whether they set things up the same is up for debate, but people searching for the truth through testing only became mainstream in those ages... You think the Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, etc did nothing "scientific"?Quote:
Originally Posted by esfx
Not only do you doubt the ability of our ancestors, you think their are hardly any major discoveries to make... I disagree whole-heartily on both fronts.
What you're expressing is the Modern fallacy, that we live at the end of history, having corrected the errors of our naive forebearers, and all that remains to the perfection of human knowledge is the dotting of 'i's and the crossing of 't's. This view was losing currency in the 1930s and its coffin was nailed shut with the detonation of the atom bomb. It's a specific instance of the general phenomenon the Greeks called 'hubris.' History strongly suggests that truths we now take to be complete and self-evident will prove as provincial as a flat earth or indivisible atom given time. What has changed fundamentally in the last 70 years? How about solidity and location? Scientific orthodoxy maintained into the '50s or '60s that forms consist of some elementary particle occupying a specific space. Of course, it's still true and useful but, like Newtonian physics, incomplete.Quote:
Originally Posted by esfx
I expect that the more we look into the nature of things, the more provincial and provisional--the less complete--our current understanding will appear. There's no point where we will have it 'mostly figured out.' As has been the case for as long as we've been sapient, our notion of what constitutes the universe will continue to expand for as long as we're willing to investigate, meaning the pool of data from which we infer and about which we theorize will grow as well.Quote:
Originally Posted by esfx
Again, you have it backwards. More likely our whole current understanding will become relevant to an ever smaller frame of reference proportionate to our total knowledge in the future, for as long as our curiousity persists. How will we operate differently in an immaterial, non-causal, infinite universe? We can't know, anymore than someone 500 years ago knew what it would mean to live on a globe rather than a table.Quote:
Originally Posted by esfx