Re: PSEUDO-SCIENCE ?

[brian whatcott <inet@INTELLISYS.NET>]

At 10:18 2/29/00 -0700, C J MacCallum wrote:
> On Sun, 27 Feb 2000, Leigh Palmer wrote:
> > > It was Gauss who called Math, "the Queen of the Sciences."
> > > I expect it could be argued he had an interest in the matter
> > > (Natural Philosophy Envy?) as he was an exceptional mathematician.

> > Gauss was also an exceptional physicist. His algorithm for the
> > detrmination of the Keplerian elements from three obervations
> > is still (to me) a marvel.
>
> His attempt to measure whether real space had positive curvature using
> three lamps on mountain tops to form a triangle was also a marvel of
> audacious physics.


It has been intimated that one cannot expect to really know a person
one does not love. In this context, an admirer's description of
Gauss's method of least squares - a method he introduced - as applied
 to Gauss's prediction for the reappearance of Ceres, would be
well-received.

 More tantalizing still (for a person who has not previously
examined the proposal) is the suggestion that spatial distortion
might be probed with three spatial co ordinates. The backfile offers
 only the milking stool, adapted to providing a plane mapping to three
spatial points limited only with minimal constraints of which
space-time curvature was not thought (by me) to be one.

Brian W





brian whatcott <inet@intellisys.net>
Altus OK