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Re: so open your brain falls out



On Thu, 22 Feb 2001, Larry Smith wrote:

In science, "fact" can only mean "confirmed to such a degree that it
would be perverse to withhold provisional assent." I suppose that
apples might start to rise tomorrow, but the possibility does not merit
equal time in physics classrooms. -- Stephen Jay Gould

Excellent! (Worth stealing, I mean.)

The big trouble here is that one person's 'perversion' is another person's
'frontier science.' The classic example I always use:

"The demonstration that no possible combination of known substances,
known forms of machinery, and known forms of force can be united in a
practicable machine by which men shall fly for long distances through
the air, seems to the writer as complete as it is possible for the
demonstration of any physical fact to be." - astronomer S. Newcomb,
1906

In hindsight we can see that Newcomb was mistaken. But to Newcomb, the
Wright's claim to have invented a flying machine was probably just such a
'perverse' denial of physics that Gould describes. The impossibility of
powered flight was a "fact" as far as Newcomb knew.


If someone claims that sometimes a dropped apple falls upwards, most
people would dismiss this as stupidity, while a few eyewitnesses to such
a strange and rare event might judge differently.


Could the moon landings have been hoaxed? Sure. Is there good evidence?
Not that I've ever seen!


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William J. Beaty SCIENCE HOBBYIST website
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