I don't know what to say

[ZetaX]

While I won't deny genetical or otherwisely hard to influence dispositions, a lot of these intuitions and connection finding skills can be learned and taught.

[Camacha]

You are conjecturing. You do not understand how the theory is built, so you assume that neither did people who built it until they did, in fact, build it. That's not how science works. I'm telling you that as a person who is actually involved in modern research

I have heard nothing but disdain in your remarks. That someone might not agree with you does not seem to occur to you. You simply deny that having an open mind, looking around you and creativity are part of the scientific approach. Having a methodical approach is certainly important, but denying the former will most probably lead to mediocre results and scientists.

Using fallacies like arguments from authority and indirect ad hominems does not strengthen your case. I would like to note that those are tactics usually employed in the absence of real content and knowledge. I choose not to use my education and experience as a shield or a club, and I suggest you do the same. Can we please continue the discussion in a civil way?

Edited December 30, 2013 by Camacha

[J.Random]

ZetaX mentioned it briefly already, but it follows neatly from electrodynamics. Ever wondered why it's called "Lorentz Factor" and "Lorentz Transformation" if Einstein was the one who came up with Special Relativity? Most of the ideas behind Special Relativity were already floating around in scientific community. Einstein's contribution was primarily in organizing it all, and in building a self-consistent set of axioms from which SR follows. No easy task, and quite a creative one in places, but it was not a leap of logic by any means. When Special Relativity got published, it was instantly accepted specifically because it was not a leap of logic. Note, by the way, that it was work of Poincare and Minkowski that lead to formulation of SR in terms of unusual transformations of space-time, which is how we know it today. Einstein's original work read more along the lines of, "If we postulate that speed of light is the same in every frame of reference, as Maxwell's equations and Michelson-Morley experiment suggests, we get transformation laws for coordinates that are consistent with what we know from electrodynamics." There was nothing revolutionary about the suggestion. Revolution came from what followed logically from that. The fact that Lorentz Transform is just a hyper-rotation in space-time. This gives you Poincare symmetry of space-time. This leads to stress-energy tensor being the conserved charge by Noether's Theorem. And this launches us straight into General Relativity. Of course, the final pieces only fell into places by the late 50's, early 60's. Yang and Mills came up with the way to build a field theory from the Lie group symmetries in Lagrangian. That lead to formulation of General Relativity as a Yang-Mills theory on Poincare group, which finally closed the gap between General Relativity and Quantum Field Theory and opened the road towards the Grand Unified. But that's a whole another story.

Whoa. I think I'm gonna dig into some books on this new year holidays. As I remember it, SR birth is often described simply as Einstein's gedankenexperiment of dematerialising the Sun and trying to answer the question of "How fast would we experience the change in gravity".

[Monkeh]

I love Michio. I love his enthusiasm. I love his face. I love his voice. I love the way he explains things. I love how he looks around 20 years younger than he actually is.

Michio is ace.

[Anton P. Nym]

Whoa. I think I'm gonna dig into some books on this new year holidays. As I remember it, SR birth is often described simply as Einstein's gedankenexperiment of dematerialising the Sun and trying to answer the question of "How fast would we experience the change in gravity".

Yes, but popular books of the day often described Columbus as the only man believing the world was round... when the spherical nature of the Earth was understood (and even the circumference measured geometrically) 1700 years before by Erastothenes, in Alexandria. Sometimes the history gets reshaped a bit to tell a good story.

-- Steve

[K^2]

I would like to note that those are tactics usually employed in the absence of real content and knowledge. I choose not to use my education and experience as a shield or a club, and I suggest you do the same. Can we please continue the discussion like adults?

As soon as you put down your strawman and make an actual argument. You've claimed that scientists need to, and I quote, "go way out into the crazy lands" to come up with a new theory. I challenged that assertion, to which you replied with a bunch of quotes saying that intuition and creativity matter. Since I never claimed otherwise, that's just a strawman argument. Now, in order for you to prove your assertion, you need to provide an example of just one scientific theory which would be constructed as you claim. In order for us to "continue the discussion like adults," you need to provide such an example. Otherwise we are stuck with proving a negative. Oh, and you've been on a thin line with arguing from ignorance at a few points.

So as long as you are going to keep to your logical fallacies, I'll keep my argument from authority and ad-hominems. And if you really do want to try arguing like adults, your thesis only leaves you one avenue of attack. So again, we're waiting for an example.

[ZetaX]

That someone might not agree with you does not seem to occur to you.

Are you a scientist yourself¿ Because he is, and I am (from a different field), and I can only agree with him on this.

You simply deny that having an open mind, looking around you and creativity are part of the scientific approach.

Yes, this part of the approach, but not at the level of free roaming creativity you mention. It is actually quite directed. Maybe some metaphors help: imagine yourself drawing a picture of a tree; you can choose the details, colors, forms, background, but you are still drawing a tree, not a wolf.

Using fallacies like arguments from authority

That's not a fallacy from auhority, as the argument is that a scientist knows almost by definition what science is, as science is defined (!) and also practiced by them. What anyone else thinks science _should_ be is irrelevant. The point of that fallacy is that someones status is not sufficent proof, but with added knowledge that this persons is an expert on the topic and gives further arguments (the examples from history, and the how science defines itself), this dwindles.

I would like to note that those are tactics usually employed in the absence of real content and knowledge. I choose not to use my education and experience as a shield or a club, and I suggest you do the same. Can we please continue the discussion like adults?

Sorry, but that looks more ad hominem then any previous comments to me. He mentioned a lot of real content (that long post on how relativity grew, for example) which you ignored.

[Camacha]

As soon as you put down your strawman and make an actual argument. You've claimed that scientists need to, and I quote, "go way out into the crazy lands" to come up with a new theory.

I can stop you right there, as I have said something quite different a number of times. They do not need to, but for some big leaps and insights it can be very much helpful. You denied this ever being the case, which I find hard to believe, as I carefully assume that you have not read every research paper on everything anywhere.

I will also point you to my original comment:

I think that is the point of being a scientist right out on the frontier. Unless you are really sure your current model is satisfactory, you will need to evaluate and look at proposed models, no matter how silly they look at first glance. Only after finding a flaw you can put them aside. And of course, even if your current model is satisfactory you would be wise to keep an open mind if you want to be a proper scientist.

To be honest, the scientists that are only adhering to known and proven models are never going to further science, and are actually not even proper scientists. Science is probing what you do not know, not just dishing up what you do know. That is the key.

You then felt the need to comment:

that's a load of crap.

Only to go on about how every discovery was based on previous work which is mildly related to my post, never properly explaining why you felt your strong wordings were necessary.

[Camacha]

Yes, this part of the approach, but not at the level of free roaming creativity you mention.

Can you maybe elaborate what you understood by that free roaming creativity? We might simply be miscommunicating.

That's not a fallacy from auhority, as the argument is that a scientist knows almost by definition what science is, as science is defined (!) and also practiced by them.

If you know enough scientists, you know that is a dangerous thing to assume

Sorry, but that looks more ad hominem then any previous comments to me. He mentioned a lot of real content (that long post on how relativity grew, for example) which you ignored.

I did ignore them, as I felt they were not relevant to my line of reasoning. I did change the wording of the last sentence, as I thought it was not entirely appropriate.

[rkman]

I'm not sure you understand what "theory" means in context of science.

Scientists themselves being ambiguous about their use of the term does not help public understanding of science in general and the meaning of the word "theory" in particular.

[ZetaX]

Can you maybe elaborate what you understood by that free roaming creativity? We might simply be miscommunicating.

That might be possible, yes. I was talking about the idea of considering things that are not close to what attempts or data you already have. Going from a magic force that lets two objects attract each other to the concept of matter bending spacetime is about the biggest it's gonna get, and it wasn't even that direct to begin with. And it sounded like you were allowing much greater leaps, but please clarify again what exactly you want to consider.

Scientists themselves being ambiguous about their use of the term does not help public understanding of science in general and the meaning of the word "theory" in particular.

Instead of giving such a useless (because unfounded) comment you might at least explain why it's the scientist's fault and not e.g. the public's for a) not knowing when the word is used in the scientific meaning having their own meaning of it. A quick search gave me that the scientific use of "theory" predates the public's use, by the way.

[rkman]

The term "string theory" was not conceived of by the public.

According to Edward Witten as explained by him in the pbs/nova documentary "The Elegant Universe", it is not so much a theory as it is a "mathematical construct", that is not even fully explored yet. If anything it is more hypothesis than theory, yet everyone (not only the public) calls it "theory". Ask any scientist in that field about "string theory": i don't expect many to correct you by saying that it is not a theory.

"Big bang theory" - in spite of what the wiki page says, the big bang itself is not part of the scientific (cosmological/physics) standard model, which covers things that are explained by the two currently most basic physics theories: relativity and quantum theory. Going back in time, those theories break down a small fraction of a second after the (hypothetical) big bang. Everything after that is explained by big bang theory's big brother: cosmological inflation (which is a proper theory). So there really is no actual theory that includes the big bang, yet just about everyone calls it that.

Among the first results of a google search on "dark matter theory" are several examples where the term theory is used to refer to a scientific idea about how something that is as of yet poorly understood might work. Such a "theory" is not at all verified/corroborated, so it should not be called theory - and yet it is called that.

New, simple theory may explain mysterious dark matter

http://news.vanderbilt.edu/2013/06/dark-matter/

Just about everyone who publishes about science for the popular press - including many scientists, uses the term "theory" both for well-hammered out theories, and for brand-new untested (even though not unfounded) scientific ideas.

[ZetaX]

Because it means both. What exactly is your point¿ That all this is science's fault¿ Since when is "science" even a unified body who you can hold responsible for the actions of a few of it's members¿

A mere mathematical theory, like string theory, is a consistent system and not required to apply to reality. Thus this is just another example of misuse of the meaning of the word (Wikipedia has a disambiguation page on the exact meanings of "theory").

The big bang theory is a theory in the physical sense. That it doesn't fully answer what happened at "time" 0 or before is beside the point again. At most the error is the "big bang", not the "theory", but the name is still coherent as the goal is to describe what followed that event and what influence it has till today and the future.

Thus as demonstrated above there are several meanings, depending on context. Anything else to say¿

[rkman]

Because it means both.

If it does mean both (or even more than two meanings, as it seems), then it's not helpful to not make a distinction in terminology regarding such vastly different types of "theory" - if that is what they both are.

But i'd think that "brand-new untested (even though not unfounded) scientific ideas" would qualify as "hypothesis", not a variation of "theory".

That all this is science's fault?

I was thinking more along the lines of individual scientists' ability to be helpful here by making the distinction between theory and hypothesis when addressing the public.

Thus this is just another example of misuse of the meaning of the word

Which scientists take part in, which helps perpetuate the misconceptions. (no that does not mean i think all this is science's fault).

By saying "just another example" you seem to acknowledge this misuse is a common phenomena, which is pretty much the point i was making.

You may have a point re big bang theory (though the wiki on it does include time = 0 as the moment of the bang), but what about all those dark matter theories?

[rkman]

More on topic: i have seen a chart of number of peer-reviewed published papers versus number of published books by contemporary scientists. Kaku was high on books, low on papers.

I've seen him on FOX TV once about the sun, its magnetic pole cycle, solar eruptions: certified dooms-day prophet. Not my favorite brand of scientist.

[check]

Kaku annoys me. He's made sure that every news organization has him in their Rolodexes for any time they have a science story that they want someone to comment on. Often times it's to comment on a topic that he's not an expert in (geology, geophysics, climatology, biology etc.) and many times he makes ridiculous claims or errors. Even on the odd occasion when he's talking about an astronomy or astrophysics story, he'll make make some silly exaggeration or mistake. Nobody's perfect, I get that, but he likes to hype the hell out of stories to the point where seems like he's just making stuff up. I wish that when the news people needed a scientist's perspective on something, they would contact an expert in that particular field and not a media whore.

[mdatspace]

Kaku tends to get things wrong or hype things up(could be both) when it comes to things other than what he specializes in. "Gasses from Yellowstone could kill people out to a thousand miles". I would be more worried about ashfall than a dilute plume of volcanic gasses.