Who are the scientists?

I wish it was that simple.
*gives self an uppercut*

 

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I'm not so sure it would be that good an idea, but then I have a bugbear against appeals to authority, which I fear would increase through such an endeavour.
Whether a poster declares they are educated in the subject or not should have no bearing on the credibility of what they type, whereas the content of what they type, and the support they provide for that content, is paramount. The education level they have within the subject matter should undoubtedly make it easier to provide that support, especially on the finer points of a subject.
And since I feel that declaring education level is irrelevant to the truth or otherwise of a post, I am not in favour of it.

I admit that sometimes it is our experience in the subject matter that is the support for our claims/opinions, and if this is the case then the nature of that experience should/could be declared as support. But since we are not in a position to validate such experience (unless a published author, or publicly known on interweb etc) it suffers the issue of an argument relying on invalidated claims of authority.

The issue would possibly be further exacerbated if some declare their expertise and others do not, and those that declare theirs are somehow seen as superior merely by dint of that declaration, while actually having lesser qualification and experience than those who may wish to remain silent, and who let their arguments do their talking for them.

And I, for one, have no desire to declare my own (lack of) expertise (what much or little their may be, in none, one or numerous subjects).

 

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Arne (and as an aside to exchem)

My point of view is merely that the first thing all good thinkers do is to soak up first principles. Lovers of science are lovers of nature, first and foremost. Therefore, people who love nature won't normally be consigned to the obscurity of laymen. They'll at least get the basics in high school (provided, of course they're not cheated out of the opportunity of a reasonably good education.) Consequently, a lay person has no basis for understanding any of the foundations of science that would lead to any useful innovations.

You missed my meaning entirely, Arne. I was expressing a sincere hope that someday you acquire some of the language of science that eludes you, for reasons that only you would know. I don't recall ever speaking with you about your own field of expertise, so I can't fill in that blank. Part of that language is a tacit understanding among all the branches of science, that there is no pecking order as you imagine it. The pecking order has to do with the proximity between a person's stated ideas about how the world works, and the evidence about how it works. Also, the language of science has nothing to do with the egocentric scenario you imagine, in which someone just dictates how nature works because they are in charge. None of that has anything to do with science. People may get praise for closing the distance to the evidence, but there is no dictatorship, except, of course, that Nature is the god of reality. It completely dictates every iota (OK jot and tittle if you want to snipe at me some more) of the physical world. And no person has dominion over that.

Speaking the language of science incorporates that notion. Nobody runs anything. We are all slaves to nature. The fact that I can describe some esoteric subject to you that probably bores you to death doesn't mean I'm vying for political power. It means I'm in the moment. I'm dwelling in the physical world, absorbing its essence (as good as my feeble brain allows) and echoing it, sharpening the focus a little, perhaps. But I'm not creating anything. All I'm doing is carving away all the styrofoam that detracts from that focus. And that goes for anybody, on any continent, who ever passed a lower division program in math, science or engineering. They all know what I mean. The laws all derive from nature, and we all are driven to dwell in nature and absorb as much of its essence as we can.

So that makes the political stuff (some kind of imposed pecking order) moot and irrelevant. I wasn't attacking you by saying this. I was attempting to pass clues to you, the way any person who speaks a different language will try to do during sincere exchange of ideas between two entirely different cultures.

When I said "Nothing is new under the Sun" I was referring specifically to first principles of science. So all of what you said in reply to me has no bearing on what I was talking about. This illustrates the breakdown in language I just mentioned. "First principles of science" would include. for example. the Universal Law of Gravitation and General Relativity (a simplified explanation, at least, based in the first principle of reference frames, for example). Therefore, the lay person who has no idea what these two principles are (classical gravity and general relativity), where they came from and why, who generated them, and how and why (or at least some portion of those facts) can not hope to find "something new under the Sun regarding gravity". Do you follow me now? If you don't feel like you were completely off in another direction, then no, you don't follow me at all. I have said nothing profound and nothing insulting. This is all just at the level of common sense and plain English.

Another big misunderstanding is that the insults I was slinging in the middle of my last post were not directed at you. They were directed at cranks. I think you're genuinely in error in some of your posts (like the discussion on historical Jesus) but your posts are not quintessentially crankish. There's a huge difference. I didn't even assume your allusion here to a "Lord of the New Church" was crank material, just that you're an outsider who is ignorant of the circumstances that make such a scenario impossible. (That there are sheep who blindly jump off the cliff just because the sheep in front went over.) Science is all about critical thinking. It's the opposite of learning by rote. And don't confuse this with learning formulas and even first principles by rote, if that's what it takes. That's all fine. Critical thinking involves the careful, deliberated treatment of all problems, such that no violations of those first principles occurs. For example, any solution that violates conservation of matter and energy is patently wrong. That's an axiom no one can rewrite. For that reason a lay person can't simply "dream up a new idea" which is remotely feasible, without first understanding the intractability of the laws of thermodynamics. Therefore the creative mind will have passed the tests in at least a few of the physical sciences (esp physics & chemistry) before even claiming to understand what the laws of thermodynamics state, much less any new idea based on them.

I was not responding to whether a layman can have a fresh idea, but whether it can be scientifically innovative and useful without mastering first principles. And that makes the lay person a graduate in science, which means they're no longer a lay person.

Fear and loathing refers to the state of mind that believes it's possible for people who are trained to check and double check their work to blindly throw out all of that work and start marching like ants to some dull beat, simply because there is a "high muckity muck" on deck. That may be the M.O. for a military unit, but it has no relevance to science.

Does that clear this mess up? Hope so.

 

OK the usual suspects are all caving in, so I'll show my cards a little against my better judgment. I'm an engineer. I completed the classes for the PhD and then quit before the rock N roll of candidacy, while pursuing a 20 yr career in military and aerospace system design and development, and while carrying on a nearly equal tenure with a jazz band. Along the way I picked up some classroom exposure to Theology, Fine Arts, Law, Education and Biology, to varying extents. It adds up to three normal four year degree plans spread out over about twice as much time, but who's counting? And who cares? I guess what I'm trying to tell you is that I have no idea what the hell I want to be when I finally grow up. I'm the joker in the deck here who has no business posting in 90% of the threads I post to, but so what? None of this really matters anyway. But I do I love to rage against the machines of propaganda and pseudointellectual prostitution. On a happier note:

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I do really like the endless pearls of wisdom the real McCoys here toss to us swine. But it's far from wasted!

I now return control of the transmission tower to the following blockhead, who will woo you without even a trace of woo. I promise. Trust me. I wouldn't lie to you, and neither will they

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:

 

accidental inventions and especially discoveries happen more often than you think.
the transistor, which could probably be seen as the greatest invention of all time, is one such invention.

in my opinion, all a person needs to be a scientist:
1. an insatiable thirst for knowledge.
2. an intellect appropriate for the job
3. uh, i can't think of any others.

 

oh no wait not leopold. i take back what i said about no woo.
just kidding leopold, please lower that shotgun. Thank you.

Uh to be a good scientist involves some kind of good education. For example Darwin fit your (1) and (2) as a child. His dad wanted him to be a doctor so he smuggled his pet critters in and out of the house and spent a lot of time studying nature in a vacant lot near their house. And he stumbled onto the job on the Beagle by accident. But when they set sail, he made the ship, and all of its ports of call his laboratory. He collected everything worth collecting, since he'd cut a deal with the Crown that he gets to keep his collection. He sketched his specimens, labored over classifying them, and collecting all the facts he could find about their habitats. Whenever they encountered coral reefs, he had the captain stop the ship so he could fathom the bottom of the ocean, to ascertain the heights of the coral towers, and from that, their approximate age,and noting the "gradual accumulated changes" where he found them. And he dug for fossils and certain rocks wherever they were likely to be found. And so on. But behind all of his was that he had studied botany and zoology, and did quite a bit of research into "husbandry" before he published. And evidently he had excellent schooling to prepare him for all of this. So that makes (3) look a "a good education"m even if only home schooled or self taught.

Einstein is another prime example. He obviously excelled in (1) and (2) but he also acquired a lot of knowledge about electromagnetics in the form of working electrical equipment his father designed and marketed. Thus, by age 16 he was already aware of Maxwell's equations, the constancy of the speed of light, and the implications of relativity, if only in the raw form presented by Poincare and Lorentz. And evidently his classroom preparation in basic principles of physics and math had become like a second skin for him. But I would count both his formal education, as well as the tutoring he got from his father, as a vital part of (3).

Similar stories apply for Maxwell and Gauss among others. A lot of these folks were child prodigies which supports (1) and (2) but we know they were reading and understanding advanced texts while still proverbial knee highs (certainly as young adults). That gives "education" as the best candidate for (3).

And I would further break that down as:

3a. book larnin', and
3b. lab and field experience

 

Quite right. There seems to be a sort of romantic mythology around, concerning people such as Einstein, that they had to prevail as outsiders against some sort of scientific "establishment" that tried to suppress their discoveries. It's nearly always nonsense and certainly is in Einstein's case.

And the innovator has to have learned the previous state of the art, in order to understand the problems that remain to be solved. In fact I can think of no example in science where the person overturning previous orthodoxy did so without first learning the orthodoxy. Though I'll be intrigued if other readers can think of some.

(Even in the celebrated case of Galileo, it was not fellow scientists but the church that opposed him, and there seems to be no consensus as to why they did this so violently when Copernicus, who first advanced the heliocentric theory half a century before, had received no such condemnation.)

 

probably because galileo had the visual evidence as opposed to something on paper.
it's pretty easy to write something down and say here are the facts.
it's a different story when you are forced to see it with your own eyes.

 

what woo do i dabble in aqueous?

 

Hiya FR...I have a slight suspicion here, that either [1] you have misread my post, [2] I have put it rather poorly, or[3] your remarks are TIC.

I'll put it again in more straight, to the point language.
I'm near sure, no, I'm near positive that life in the Universe, at all stages is rather plentiful.
Reasons why I am so sure of that is the near infinite expanse of the Universe, the near infinite numbers of stars and planets, and the stuff of life being everywhere.
I have argued this situation with a Dinosaur on this very forum, who claims we have no evidence of life off the Earth, and it's a 50/50 chance we are it.
Naturally without any "direct" evidence, there is maybe a non zero chance we are it.
I certainly do not believe that for one minute, and if that non zero chance were actual fact, then I would class it as a miracle. [the last phrase is slightly tic]

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And no, I'm Australian, but yes, we also have some Aussies with difficulties with larger numbers. [again slightly tic

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]
You seem to be agreeing with that. Am I reading you correctly?

 

:roflmao:

 

For those that like to pose the question, "why havn't we made contact?"
Even in a Universe plentiful with life the 13.83 billion years since the BB, and the near infinite extent of the Universe make contact rather difficult.
Tine and distance are the great barriers to inter planetary species contact.

 

The worst type of woo. are the closet wooers.
At least Arne is up front about his beliefs.

 

well?
i've been waiting for the past 5 days for an answer.
force this so called woo from me aqueous.
ask me questions about it right here so EVERYONE can see.

 

Well we have plenty of woo in the alternative theory section with claims to the effect that life maybe infinite, or that the Creationist myth is a possibility, and a few others, that I'm too lazy to resurrect at this time. :shrug: