🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1149@3comvax.3Com.Com>, michaelm@vax (Michael McNeil) writes:
>So, if science really expects and thus *creates* whatever it discovers,
>how could it possibly be that Mercury rotates with respect to the sun?

Beats me.  I'd like to mention a more recent example of the same: this
past year Sky&Telescope reported that some high school students, as part
of a science project, found that a certain asteroid's period of rotation
was twice(?)/half(?) the rate previously assumed.

Let me recommend Pickering _Inventing Quarks_.  It's a beautifully writ-
ten history of HEP (high energy physics) from 1960-1980, stressing the
above philosophical point of view.  This is done partly to favor this
philosophical stance, but also as a counter to the standard scientist's
history, which tends to falsify so many things with the bias provided
by the successful theory.  This kind of false reconstruction is peda-
gogically useful, but it is philosophically very misleading.

ucbvax!garnet!weemba	Matthew P Wiener/Brahms Gang/Berkeley CA 94720