The Problem—Argumentation
I have written before that Galileo Galilei is the founder of modern physical science. This because his book, Dialogues Concerning Two New Sciences, is its foundation. On May 30, 2016 I discovered Principia Scientific International (PSI). An article http://principia-scientific.org/prevailing-theories-have-been-proven-wrong-before/ by Keith Byer had been posted the day before. And May 30th I made my first comment of many to follow.
In this comment I reviewed: “Today, few scientists likely know that Richard Feynman gave a public address, The Value of Science, at the 1955 autumn meeting of the National Academy of Sciences unless they have read his book, titled “What Do You Care What Other People Think?””. At the end of this book, which was published in the fall of 1988, about 9 months after Feynman had died, was the transcript of this 1955 address with a preface which gave a context to the address.
In his preface Richard Feynman had written:
“When I was younger, I thought science would make good things for everybody. It was obviously useful, it was good. During the war I worked on the atomic bomb. This result of science was obviously a very serious matter: it represented the destruction of people. After the war I was very worried about the bomb. I didn’t know what the future was going to look like, and I certainly wasn’t anywhere near sure that we would last until now. Therefore one question was—is there some evil involved in science? Put another way— what is the valve of the science I had dedicated myself to—the thing I loved—when I saw what terrible things it could do? It was a question I had to answer. The Value of Science is a kind of report, if you will, on many of the thoughts that came to me when I tried to answer that question.”
In his address he stated:
“Scientific knowledge is a body of statements of varying degrees of certainty—some most unsure, some nearly sure, but none absolutely certain. Now, we scientists are used to this, and we take it for granted that it is perfectly consistent to be unsure, that it is possible to live and not know. But I don’t know whether everyone realizes this is true. Our freedom to doubt was born out of a struggle against authority in the early days of science. It was a very deep and strong struggle: permit us to question—to doubt—to not be sure. I think it is important that we do not forget this struggle and thus perhaps lose what we have gained. Herein lies a responsibility to society.”
Galileo’s struggle, as he defiantly wrote a book that he was forbidden to write, is that to which Feynman referred. I had concluded a problem is that too few of us English speaking scientists have ever read Dialogues Concerning Two New Sciences as translated by Henry Crew and Alfonso de Salvio and published in 1914. But now, after almost two years, I conclude that many who write articles and comments which are posted on PSI are following in Galileo’s footsteps, so to say.
For in his book one can read:
“But I, Simplicio, who have made the test can assure you that a cannon ball weighing one or two hundred pounds, or even more, will not reach the ground by as much as a span ahead of a musket ball weighing only half a pound, provided both are dropped from a height of 200 cubits. But, even without further experiment, it is possible to prove clearly, by means of a short and conclusive argument, that a heavier body does not move more rapidly than a lighter one, provided both bodies are of the same material and in short such as those mentioned by Aristotle.”
Then, after about 20 pages of a short and conclusive argument, Galileo had Simp. state: “The previous experiments, in my opinion, left something to be desired: but now I am fully satisfied.” Here I remind a reader that Galileo is writing everything. As he had Salv. later state: “I must neglect no experiment or argument to establish it.”
When I read many PSI postings and comments, I read a lot of argumentation and very little about the results of actual experimentation. And this argumentation is a big problem. For it is the exact method which the talented Aristotle used to establish his wrong ideas of physical science which caused Galileo’s great struggle.
For I read that Galileo refused to accept Tycho Brahe’s careful and reasonably precise naked-eye astronomical observations that allowed Johannes Kepler to finally conclude, by his mathematical analysis of them, that the orbits of the planets were elliptical instead of circular as held by Galileo to the end of his life. This result, I conclude, because evidently Galileo could not make a rational argument that the orbits should be elliptical.
Hence, it seems he could not accept either the validity of Brahe’s observations or the validity of Kepler’s calculations which allowed Kepler to conclude that there were three mathematical laws (scientific laws) which generally described the motions of the planets as they orbited the sun. Which Newton had to explain was the result of his theory of universal gravitation.
Feynman’s address is made in 1955, in 1961 he began to teach first year students at Caltech. The first lecture he stated: “The principle of science, the definition, almost, is the following: The test of all knowledge is experiment. Experiment is the sole judge of scientific “truth.” But what is the source of this knowledge? Where do the laws that are to be tested come from? Experiment, itself, helps to produce these laws, in the sense it gives us hints.
But also needed is imagination to create from these hints the great generalizations—to guess at the wonderful, simple, but very strange patterns beneath them all, and then to experiment to check again whether we have made the right guess.” (The Feynman Lectures On Physics)
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