Re: Non-conservative forces in a liquid dielectric

[pvalev <pvalev@BAS.BG>]

--- Ludwik Kowalski <kowalskil@MAIL.MONTCLAIR.EDU> wrote:
> I was speaking for myself only. If it was my "wild guess"
> I would probably react differently. But when somebody
> else wants me to perform an experiment based by "it
> seems to me" I am not sufficiently motivated. Time and
> resources are limited and trying to be efficient is not a
> bad think. As a teacher I would ask a student "why do
> think so?" and try to reason first. But, as I said before, I
> would accept experimental evidence, no matter how
> much it  disagrees with logical thinking. I suppose that
> some accepted findings about nature did start as wild
> guesses. Can somebody give a good example?

Let me explain my objection to "wild guess". It is by no means
emotional. If the statement "perpetual motion machine of the second
kind is impossible" had been tested and respectively confirmed many
times, my idea to test it once more would indeed be a "wild guess" -
there can be no doubt about that. But I have been looking for such
tests in the literature for many years and have found none. I have
asked many people to describe at least one such test - they have
failed to do so. So it seems that the experiment I am offering is the
first of this kind. If so, why should we call it "wild guess"? On the
contrary, there is something wild in the fact that the statement has
not been tested for more than a century.

Pentcho