Re[3]: My view of science and science teaching

[Leigh Palmer <palmer@sfu.ca>]

> Hey, guys, the history of science is much more involved than the usual
> physicists' tales.  In particular, Newton's analysis of the acceleration of
> the moon appears to have been fudged.  See "Newton and the Fudge Factor" by
> Newton expert Richard Westfall, published in _Science_ in 1971.  (Sorry I
> can't give you a more precise citation at the moment.)

Newton fudged, but was that one of the times? One example was
his theory of sound transmission in air. He deduced a speed that
was greater than the measured speed and explained the difference
by saying that what he had done was to determine the relative
"crassitude" (size) of the constituent particles of which air is
made up. Since his theoretical speed was too high by 10% or so,
he presumed that his number was correct for the speed with which
sound was transmitted *between* collisions, and that it
propagated instantaneously from one side of each particle to its
other side. Thus particles 10% as large as the distance between
them would tranmit sound 10% faster than his unerring theory
predicted.

Please, gentle colleagues, do not condemn him for this excess.
Similar acts of hubris occur every day in both theoretical and
experimental contemporary science.

(It should be unnecessary to do so, but let me hasten to warn
the more naive out there that I am no historian. You are getting
oral tradition, not history, here.)

Leigh