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Re: [Phys-l] About the "why" and "how" questions.



On 12/22/2010 12:40 PM, John Mallinckrodt wrote:

I have no doubt that examples exist of "scientists overstating what
science can do," but I don't think it is at all representative of
what scientists do or even common and I *especially* don't think that
it is common for the scientific community to do so. It seems to me
that, if anything, the scientific community almost always errs on the
side of caution.

I agree with every word of that, upside and downside.

So, I'd be interested in having you provide a specific example or two
of what you have in mind.

Well, since you asked, let me play *devil's advocate* and
give one example that is *very exceptional* and IMHO
*very deplorable*.

Consider the book _Statistical and Thermal Physics_ by
Michael Sturge. In the second paragraph on page 1 it says
«Thermodynamics is beautiful in the sense that mathematics
is beautiful, because it is /true/. Just as no one will
ever prove that we've been wrong in believing 1997 to be
a prime number, so the second law of thermodynamics will
never be proven false.»

I actually knew Michael Sturge. He was an affable gentleman
and a skilled scientist. Yet he went off and wrote a book
that starts out by claiming eternal truth. That's an amazing
display of hubris, arrogance, immodesty, and recklessness.
I expect to hear about eternal truth from Sharon Falconer,
not from scientists.

This is all the more amazing because at some level, Sturge knew
better. On page 33, the book says «In classical statistical
mechanics, this assumption follows from the /ergodic hypothesis/.»
Wow. In just a few pages we have gone from eternal truth to
assumptions and hypotheses. Just to rub salt in the sucking
chest wound, on page 47 entropy is defined using a less-than-
general formula (to say the least) ... which means that the
second law _in the form given by Sturge_ is not 100% true.

It's a Greek tragedy. It's an object lesson in how things
should not be done.