OT: Conservative Fields and Path Independence

[Joe Gwinn]

The beauty of a lot of this thing we call 'science' is that it allows a person to formulate ideas which are very intellectual yet never have to be proven. This, in many cases, also allows people who can talk the talk to make a very comfortable living without ever having to walk the walk.

...

I'd like to see legislation passed that requires anyone seeking employment as a scientist or researcher - if they are to receive any government funding of any sort - to first complete a 5 year internship digging ditches or washing dishes.

Yeah. They're called postgrads, a form of slave labor.

 

[jim rozen]

"I'd like to see legislation passed that requires anyone seeking employment as a scientist or researcher - if they are to receive any government funding of any sort - to first complete a 5 year internship digging ditches or washing dishes."

OK that's good as long as every machinist has to get a PhD in theoretical physics.

=)

You don't get how science works eh. 1) theory 2) hypothosis 3) experiment 4) data, then 5) refine theory.

Very intellectual ideas that have yet to be proven. This is the 'gedankenexperiment' which some ditch-digger guy named.

 

[Comatose]

Science can do what it pleases. Engineering always asks the more important question "Eh, whatsitgudfor" Once the scientists have an answer for that, THEN we get computers or nuclear bombs or whatever you like.

Either way, there are ZERO legitimate scientists or engineers working on perpetual motion or zero field energy or whatever the cranks want to call it these days. Nobody would get funded. Even fields where there might be something there, like cold fusion, or where eventually it probably is a solvable problem, like cryonics, get dropped by real science when the claims get bigger than the results and the cranks move in.

If you want to faff about in the realm of the purely theoretical and unprovable (say, string theorists), that's fine, but that's not science anymore. That's mathematics, or else it's philisophy, or else it's woo. Either way, hard to see what it has to do with machining.

 

[GregSY]

"You don't get how science works eh. 1) theory 2) hypothosis 3) experiment 4) data, then 5) refine theory."

Sadly, I do know how science works. Some science abides by the above formula; too much of it does not. One need look no further than the recent spate of 'follow the science' morons to see that.....imagine, people forcing 'science' down others' throats when it wasn't even science (per the above description).

Then, as I noted, we have science that can and will NEVER be proven within any reasonable standard. The bottom line is while some of us have been digging useful ditches, an alarming number have been very well paid to produce nothing of any use.

 

[dcsipo]

The question that never gets a real response is if the universe is expanding what is it expanding into. If there is nothing beyond the edge of the universe how can it expand. Is there something beyond the end of the universe that will stop it from expanding?
Bill D

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[jim rozen]

"Some science abides by the above formula; too much of it does not."

I am lucky to work with some very smart people. Indeed you could say I am the stupidest person at my workplace. (this is not a disadvantage as I learn something new every day from the others)

But one thing I can assure you with great confidence, is that in the rooms where science is really done, the sequence of events I enumerated above, happens EVERY DAY, ALL DAY LONG. This is how progress happens. I have been unusually lucky to have been on a very complicated, long-term project from the beginning, and the short story is, all the progress that happens, from engineering, to experimental physics, to theoretical physics (some of which honestly extends into the realm of mathematics, pure and simple) has happened, as I put forth in those simple steps.

For those of you who would denigrate the contributions of the theory folks I work with, I guarantee without a shadow of a doubt, that the machine we are building will NEVER work if they were not there doing their jobs. Basically this project needs to have all the huskies hitched to the sled, all pulling in the same direction, more or less. The huskies are:

Engineers
Machinists
Experimental physicsts
Theoreticians
Technicians
Facilities folks who keep the infrastructure running smooth

Pull any catagory out of there, the job won't get done.

 

[EPAIII]

Thanks for bringing out that key point which is the very essence of science. Far, far too few people understand this.

What you left off is that the cycle repeats. Not once. Not twice. Not several times. Not even many times. It repeats FOREVER! There is no end to the additional data that is gathered and observed. There is no end to the revisions of the theories or the creation of entirely new theories.

And this actually means exactly what it seems to mean, science is never complete. Science is never done. Science is never SETTLED. When someone says that, "The science is settled." they are only exhibiting their own ignorance.

True science will never be settled. It will never come to an end where we know all there is to know about any aspect of it. NEVER! "The earth, overall, is flat." That was considered "settled" science. Not only was that not true, but the actual truth was not even just a refinement of it. It was the total opposite.

And don't think that we are so much more informed, so much smarter today. WE ARE NOT! The deeper you dig into science, the more blurred it becomes. And the bigger the differences among the various theories are. Some things even become blurred to an infinite extent.

There are no "laws" in science. Only theories and those theories are ALL WRONG to one extent or another. Sooner or later we will have better theories to replace ALL of them. And then those better theories will also get replaced, etc., etc., etc. There is no end to it. Just more and more refinement.

Don't believe me. Consider; a science like biology rests atop organic chemistry. And organic chemistry rests atop chemistry. And chemistry rests atop physics. And physics rests on ideas like space and time being the same thing. Like matter and energy being the same thing. Like you can NEVER resolve
both the position and the momentum of a single elementary particle beyond a certain level of error, at a given instant in time. And many other seemingly contradictory ideas. Oh, and now they are saying that gravity is not a force. I suggest that you do not test this by jumping off the Empire State Building.

But even worse, physics and much of the rest of science uses mathematics to describe how things act. Theories use mathematics. But at the very heart of mathematics you also find that the most basic concepts are NOT PROVEN and likely will never be. The very logic that is at the root of all mathematics is seriously questioned.

And yet we use mathematics to calculate how things will act. What if that is in error. By a small amount, you say. Perhaps. But perhaps not so small of an amount. We do not know for sure. We just HOPE it is a small error.

Sorry, this is one of my soap box subjects.

...<snip>...

You don't get how science works eh. 1) theory 2) hypothosis 3) experiment 4) data, then 5) refine theory.

...<snip>...

 

[Scottl]

What I want to know is whether or not the subject of conservative fields will answer the chicken first or egg first riddle.

 

[jim rozen]

The ziggurat of science:

Top
Physics (obviously the most important)
Math (needed for physics so pretty important)
Biology (many family members in this catatogory so I move it up)
Chemistry (second rate physics)
Psycology ( not a science)
Sociology (definitely not a science)

 

[Joe Gwinn]

It was traditional to make human sacrifices at the top of the Ziggurat, so Physicists were first in line?

 

[Bill D]

It is obvious that the egg came first before the chicken hatched from the egg laid by a dinosaur.
Bill D