Forrest hasn't presented anything meritorious. There is not one whit of evidence in his remarks. He's simply pitching at windmills. He has no idea what any of the subjects he's griping about entail. He lacks the chops to understand even first principles of science. And apparently he has no math training either. By contrast, Russ has presented himself here as an expert in math & science, among other things. And no wonder: it turns out Russ actually developed his chops in college. So go figure.
What you call bluster are the facts gleaned through a formal education. Russ would be a great asset to you if you would approach him with humility, given your inability to accomplish what he has accomplished (i.e., pass the tests and graduate, for starters).
It's a dumb premise. Very few theories change, and changes are extremely rarely anything less than a boost to the world body of knowledge. But what's so stupid about this is the complete ignorance of the actual story of scientific discovery that leads to the new information which brings the "changes" you're needlessly worrying about. Case in point, since this came up again in Layman's post: the Earth was believed to be at the center of the universe, so the astronomers of Europe spent centuries trying to explain the "stars" (planets) which appear to stop, turn around and gyrate around some other axis. They even invented a rather elaborate system to explain this. But then one day, Galileo figured out how to make lenses, and then telescopes. Once he could train his low magnification scope on Jupiter, he discovered it was being circled by other "stars". He of course immediately recognized that these were Jupiter's moons, that Jupiter was a planet, trapped in the orbit of the Sun, just as the moons of Jupiter were trapped in their orbits. Tycho Brache charted the planets, Kepler analyzed the charts and discovered the planets were following certain laws (such as sweeping out arcs of equal area in equal time) and this became Newton's launch point for discovering the Law of Universal Gravitation. Newton not only solved Kepler's equations, but did so through the co-invention (crediting Leibnitz here) of modern calculus. And we can go on and on with this story, as each of you cynics ought to do, but for some reason you don't actually seem to care. You're not in this for the purpose of learning. You're just consumed by the desire to cast aspersions on scientists at large, based on a story you never bothered to study and absorb. If you had, you would not possibly harbor these complaints.
Pure crap. We are trusting in facts and evidence. Case in point: Tycho plotted the positions of the planets with several decimals of precision. They were doing something weird, but unknowable to him. Kepler discovered that they were all describing ellipses around the sun (do you even remember the formula for an ellipse? I doubt it. That's what makes the sniping so absurd.) Galileo plotted the positions of the "stars" near Jupiter every night for a month. And when you look at his plots (have either of you guys even bothered to do that? I doubt it) you immediately understand how Galileo must have felt when he realized he had cracked a huge riddle then unsolved by the whole human race. Of course Kepler uncovered the laws of motion which governed all such orbits and Newton discovered the underlying cause (gravity). And you have the audacity to blame the messengers for telling you what time it is? That's what makes your posts stink. They have nothing to do with the facts and evidence actually in play. You guys are making up your own science fiction version of what science entails and sitting on your laurels while they work their butts off to make some incremental increase in knowledge, then you blame them for "changing the theories". It's worse than ludicrous. It's mean and stupid.
It's utter nonsense. He is not in the field so he has no idea what he's talking about.
It's all styrofoam. Tell me how we know where the planets are, moment by moment. Can any one of you even begin to explain that? No. So how about getting off the gas and resuming your place as the science-illiterate folks you are? Geez, at least
try to be honest. Just admit it. You have no clue. You, Forrest, all the Farsights, RealityChecks, Reikus, yada yada. Come clean. Then start asking the folks here to help you learn some of the ropes. Otherwise you're just grandstanding.
That's not even a question. What you want to ask is what did the early Modern Physicists discover? What evidence confronted them and how did it force them to arrive at new theories not yet considered? This was a world waking up into the reality of electromagnetics and relativity and devoid of an aether. But the place I would begin with understanding the history of development of quantum physics is spectroscopy. Start there and learn what your nemesis Russ mastered in his first year Chemistry class - that the spectra reveal a series (beginning with the Balmer Series) which "changed
" as the experimental test fixtures were able to better resolve spectral lines -- and that leads to the understanding that there is a mathematical law that applies to all the elements, which is called the principal quantum number. Learn this, and you're at first semester freshman level, still years away from taking on advanced physics, but at least scratching at the door you seem to think you've busted through.
