Nice John Archibald Wheeler Quote
Knecht
"How can physics live up to its true greatness except
by a new revolution which dwarfs all its past revolutions?
And when it comes, will we not say to each other,
'Oh, how beautiful and simple it is!
How could we have missed it for so long!'."
John Archibald Wheeler, 2000
Amen, brother
dlzc
On Nov 20, 9:28 pm, Knecht <rlolders...@amherst.edu> wrote:
> "How can physics live up to its true greatness except
> by a new revolution which dwarfs all its past revolutions?
> And when it comes, will we not say to each other,
> 'Oh, how beautiful and simple it is!
> How could we have missed it for so long!'."
>
> John Archibald Wheeler, 2000
>
> Amen, brother
I find it funny that people concentrate on the "answer", when the
"beauty" and "simplicity" derive from the complexity of data via the
actions of people that are not afraid to deal with it.
You will be all happy if the accountant tells you you have money after
all (or get a refund, whatever), but seem to have little grasp of the
crap he / she had to tunnel through to get to the answer.
There is an answer out there, better than GR + Dark Matter + Dark
Energy. It will be a simple shift in thinking to get us there. It
will take this little boy to find it:
A little boy, when being shown a pile of horse manure, jumped on the
pile and started digging furiously. When asked what he thought he was
doing, he replied... "with all this horse poop, there has to be a pony
in here somewhere. I just have to find it!"
I just wonder if the internet would have immasculated Einstein, as it
seems to have done to so many "great thinkers" here.
David A. Smith
Knecht
A very interesting response.
Regarding the switch from the Ptolemaic paradigm to the Democritus/
Kepler/Galileo paradigm, the beauty and simplicity are in the elegant
concepts and principles that form the natural philosophy of the latter
paradigm. The complexity is in the physical and analytical details,
which actually increase exponentially as we learn more.
It is quite likely that the next major paradigm shift will follow the
same pattern.
Yours in definitively testable science,
RLO
www.amherst.edu/~rloldershaw
John Curtis
> "How can physics live up to its true greatness except
> by a new revolution which dwarfs all its past revolutions?
> And when it comes, will we not say to each other,
> 'Oh, how beautiful and simple it is!
> How could we have missed it for so long!'."
> John Archibald Wheeler, 2000
>
On the other hand, revolutionary ideas posess diagnostic
features:
"All great truths begin as blasphemies" G.B. Shaw 1917
"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed.
Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being
self-evident." Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860).
John Curtis
Knecht
>
> On the other hand, revolutionary ideas posess diagnostic
> features:
>
> "All great truths begin as blasphemies" G.B. Shaw 1917
>
> "All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed.
> Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being
> self-evident." Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860).
> John Curtis
---------------------------------------------------------------------
or how about:
(1) “When a[n idea of] true genius appears in the world,
you may know [it] by this sign, that the dunces are all
in confederacy against [it].”
Jonathon Swift
(2) “Theories have four stages of acceptance:
i. this is worthless;
ii. This is interesting, but perverse;
iii. This is true, but quite unimportant;
iv. I always said so.”
J. B. S. Haldane (1963)
Same as it ever was,
RLO
www.amherst.edu/~rloldershaw
Androcles
"John Curtis" <jo...@curtis.ms> wrote in message
news:72a828da-bb12-4c92...@2g2000prl.googlegroups.com...
'By denying scientific principles, one may maintain any paradox.' - Galileo
Galilei
Wheeler was a bigot, as are all relativists and all aetherialists.
Physics was already beautiful and simple before Goodricke
denied scientific principles:
http://www.androcles01.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/Algol/Algol.htm
How could YOU have missed it for so long!
--Androcles
zzbu...@netscape.net
> "How can physics live up to its true greatness except
> by a new revolution which dwarfs all its past revolutions?
> And when it comes, will we not say to each other,
> 'Oh, how beautiful and simple it is!
> How could we have missed it for so long!'."
They will say exaclty that. Since Aristotle's theory of gravity
is so simple and wrong, the religous have never abandoned it.
And Newton's Universal theory of motion is so elegant, smug
First Law of Thermodynamics idiots like mathematicians will never
be woken up from their infinite series stupors.
And since the only people who even study String Theory are
Physicists
it will of necessity be a Gallileo simpleton theory.
Knecht
wrote:
> And since the only people who even study String Theory are
> Physicists
Speaking of "String Theory" and its 10^500 cat's cradles, one cannot
help but think of the great Maxwell's comment:
“I have no reason to believe that the human intellect is able to weave
a system of physics out of its own resources without experimental
labour. Whenever the attempt has been made it has resulted in an
unnatural and self-contradictory mass of rubbish.”
James Clerk Maxwell
Amen, brother!