The Ideal of the Noble Scientist

Discussion in 'General Philosophy' started by Magical Realist, May 29, 2015.

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  1. rpenner Fully Wired Valued Senior Member

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    That's not a quote. That's an embellishment of a quote from an interview where the interviewer was supplying the English phrasing he wanted to hear. Both "intuition/inspiration" and "imaginations/knowledge" were introduced by the interviewer with no context to indicate the precise meanings given to these words by Einstein. The article has scientific inaccuracies such as the shape of space. The article is near the beginning of Einstein's slide into irrelevance as he quixotically pursues a unified field theory that could never succeed because Einstein wasn't working with knowledge of the weak and strong nuclear forces.
    http://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/what_life_means_to_einstein.pdf
    "What Life Means to Einstein: An Interview by George Sylvester Viereck" Saturday Evening Post (26 October 1929) See p.117 (last page, first column)

    This quote lacks sufficient context to know exactly what Einstein meant, as opposed to merely quoting what he said, but in an earlier statement on the same page Einstein is quoted as pooh-poohing the notion that humanity progresses other than in "in organization" or that notable evolution would happen in less than "millions of years" so the embellishment is the antithesis of the Einstein portrayed in the article.
     
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  3. paddoboy Valued Senior Member

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    Do you know the difference between "he said such and such" and "what he meant was such and such"
    I'll stand by the judgement of our peers on this forum MR as you most also certainly will.
    I'll leave you to your own confused state by saying Albert would most certainly be rather puzzled and aghast at your own "imagination" and the ploy you are now conducting to somehow give credit to all the nonsense and supernatural rubbish you pepper this forum with.
     
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  5. brucep Valued Senior Member

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    I know who you're talking about. Next time think about putting your comments is a meaningful context. For instance they're plenty of arguments going on in this forum but not many arguments are being made in support of claims of new physics.
     
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  7. Magical Realist Valued Senior Member

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    Ok so he actually said this:

    “I am enough of the artist to draw freely upon my imagination. Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.”

    In the context of this debate, what difference does this make? It's the same thing.
     
  8. Magical Realist Valued Senior Member

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    He doesn't know how to post anything more than insulting and sarcastic one-liners. Context? There's never a context to his belligerent "remark", which he never fails to follow me around from one subforum to another depositing in my threads like a small turd.
     
  9. paddoboy Valued Senior Member

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    Pot, kettle. black!!!
     
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  10. brucep Valued Senior Member

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    He might be the most misunderstood 'fount of quotes' who ever lived. When I think of Einstein I think of the guy who wrote down the physics not the guy who has been misquoted by every crank who has an internet link. The disrespect for scholarship must be exceptionally distasteful for you.
     
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  11. Kittamaru Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. Adieu, Sciforums. Valued Senior Member

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    Plenty of them:

    You neglected to cite ANY of these...
     
  12. paddoboy Valued Senior Member

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    And since he finished the quote with, " It is, strictly speaking, a real factor in scientific research" common sense tells most of us that he was making a point that knowledge by itself was not sufficient...making a point by emphasis. You tell your girl she has eyes like diamonds that sparkle like the stars.
    You need to let go of your totally foolish beliefs in the ridiculous, non scientific fairy tales MR!
    And just as obviously Imagination does not apply to the nonsensical ridiculous such as ghosts, goblins, poltergeists, etc

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  13. Kittamaru Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. Adieu, Sciforums. Valued Senior Member

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    Indeed...

    Magical Realist has been issued a warning for continued personal attacks/insults against other members, plagiarism, defamation of character, and trolling:


    Plagiarism - see my previous post with the four uncited/unsourced quotes.
    Insults/Personal Attacks and Defamation of character - claiming several other members have lied despite evidence to the contrary.
    Trolling - refusing to answer direct questions being posed to him

     
    Last edited: May 31, 2015
  14. paddoboy Valued Senior Member

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    No, I did not lie.
    Which leaves the fact that you are somewhat confused. Let me state categorically that I know what Einstein said, and I was the first to vpost it in its full content. Got that?
    But Einstein being Einstein and a scientist, certainly did not mean it the way that cranks, trolls, alternative hypothesis pushers, and believers in ghosts etc would have us believe.
    He was emphasising a point, and a point I totally agree with.
    They most certainly do go together like a hand in a glove, otherwise it would not be science.
    You need to learn that.
     
  15. Kittamaru Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. Adieu, Sciforums. Valued Senior Member

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    P.S. - to clear ANY confusion about what constitutes a sufficient citation - a link to the source material that contains the name of the source is generally good enough. Better still is giving the page number or other descriptive location of the text being quoted, as well as including the author, et al.

    Of course, you could always do it the way academia handles it:

    That is a simply beautiful citation that leaves no chance of confusion.
     
  16. brucep Valued Senior Member

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    In my estimation the first post for this thread was a troll. It's an old one. The theme that all the work scientists do to improve their scholarship tools can be replaced by sheer imagination power. Another endearing theme is the power of non mathematics. I don't envy your moderating duties. It must be a pain in the ass.
     
  17. Kittamaru Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. Adieu, Sciforums. Valued Senior Member

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    Yeah... it can be at times. Does anyone see a reason to leave this train wreck of a thread open any longer?
     
  18. Daecon Kiwi fruit Valued Senior Member

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    Um, okay?

    I'm not sure I fully understand what you're getting at.
     
  19. rpenner Fully Wired Valued Senior Member

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    Just to set the record straight, this full quote does appear legitimate.
    From a 1931 collection of Einstein's aphorisms "On Science" published by Einstein in Einstein on Cosmic Religion and Other Opinions and Aphorisms and reprinted by Dover Press, and others.
    https://books.google.com/books?id=Y_XVCg7uvkEC&lpg=PA97&pg=PA97

    Not an essay -- it looks like Einstein paraphrasing his own 1929 interview to be more poignant. But it doesn't help trace his thinking more than the text which paddoboy correctly points out that scientific research is the vehicle which Einstein points out is partially pulled by imagination.
     
  20. paddoboy Valued Senior Member

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    Not from where I sit/stand.

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  21. Kittamaru Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. Adieu, Sciforums. Valued Senior Member

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    Which, to me, reads as you can't make use of one without the other; would you concur with that understanding?
     
  22. exchemist Valued Senior Member

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    Sure, of course imagination and intuition play a part in science, just as they do in a host of other intellectual pursuits.

    Only someone who (like MR?) doesn't understand science at all would think it proceeds only by deduction, or whatever it is he thinks. Coming up with, or extending, a theory or a hypothesis is a creative act and all routes to such creative acts are allowed, of course they are, why not? (A famous example in chemistry is Kekulé's feverish dream in which he had the idea of the benzene ring: "I turned my chair to the fire and dozed. Again the atoms were gambolling…….….the form whirled mockingly before my eyes", etc.). I do not understand why anyone would think that imagination doesn't play a part in science. How crazy.

    The distinguishing point about science is not the process of creation of ideas, it is that whatever idea is created then has to be put to the test, by means of the reproducible observations of nature that it accounts for, and, equally crucially, those it predicts.
     
  23. wellwisher Banned Banned

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    Putting a theory to proof requires resources. If one does not have access to the needed resources, the theory, right or wrong is assumed to be nothing but a creative act. That being said, science can cheat the system of truth by stacking the resource deck to one preferred theory. The other theory is never really proven, by default. This is manmade global warming in a nutshell. The resources are not shared with all theory, to help narrow down the alternatives.

    To prove this resource stacking premise; go to any university that does research, and just randomly take all the resources away from half the faculty. Only half will now have the means to prove anything. This experiment would not guarantee that the best theories will be the ones in the journals.

    I used to do blue sky development science, which is the one area of science anything goes, in terms of being allowed to use and test the imagination. On top of this, I was hands on, and had access to any resources needed to test any idea. I had a nice fully stocked lab, I had a nice pilot plant area, for concept scale up. I also had access to any type of skilled craftsmen needed to build anything I could dream up. Instead of buying off the shelf, I practiced my creativity, by designing my tools, and getting the guys to build me them; one of a kind.

    I was also allowed to skip all the regular steps, such as long winded statistical fudging experiments, that create the illusion an idea works at the edges. That is called science proof but, is it really pseudo-proof. There is pseudo science theory, that lacks proof, but there is also pseudo science proof that has too many exceptions to be real.

    That is an unspoken scam in science. If the data does not fit the curve of theory prediction, it is a scam to fudge over the misses with statistical math. Thus allows bad theory to get a pass, based solely on resources. If I ran one test, and it did not work, I needed a new theory. I did not need more data to find a couple of good points to fudge with statistics. That is pseudo-proof and should be called what it is.
     
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