🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <snodgras.715040900@crash> snodgras@crash.cts.com (John Snodgrass)  
writes:
> 
>       If you suspected that Einstein's ideas might not be correct, you'd
> feel differently about this, because you would wonder how his ideas were
> arrived at. 
> 
>       This, IMO, is a grave mistake on the part of society in structuring
> education. Naturally, when a school of thought arises, its adherents wish
> to teach it and spread it. This leads to a desire not to introduce questions
> into the cirriculum which might create doubt on the part of students. 

While this is certainly true, the question is how crucial is
it to the development of science. I say not very, because:

(1) There is little point in questioning theories until they start to
    fail in the domain in which they were designed to succeed.
    (SR and GR have not, to date...) 

(2) The folks who are going to improve on existing theories or
    invent alternative/unifying  ones are not the casual students or the
    philosophical spectators. They are the researchers in those
    fields, who deal with those theories every day and have a good 
    grasp of the physics & experiments they pertain to.

So, on the whole I don't think your grave concern is justified. There
is no real evidence that science is being stifled by the teaching
of exisitng theories without dwelling on all the things that could
go wrong, or might be lacking. Those are details for the specialists
to deal with. just learn the theory and physics itself, first.

> 
>       You have identified far too closely with your social function,
> and ignored your own personal search for the truth. 

if you mean I'm a blatant scientist, then I agree.

> Your concept of man's
> struggle to understand the universe does not seem broad enough, IMO, for
> you to contribute creatively in any but the most narrow technical endeavor.

well, I'm working on building  nuclear fusion reactors to supply the 
future energy needs of mankind. If that is what you consider a narrow 
technical endeavor, well, what can I say. I certainly don't
feel embarassed about it.

--
Barry Merriman
UCLA Dept. of Math
UCLA Inst. for Fusion and Plasma Research
barry@math.ucla.edu (Internet; NeXTMail is welcome)