Scientists go BOINK! [or maybe oops, or NARF!]
Posted: Thu May 16, 2013 5:22 pm
This isn't ONLY a sneaky way to include some of my favorite strips/comics/artists in science...but I admit I couldn't resist thieving humor for the topic title. [and does have some scienc-y-ness-es!]
The article is about a book, has some summaries of mistakes from it...not sure if really the 5 biggest.
The weirdest, and something I didn't know, in it isn't really the mistakes though. It's the very end, after talking General Relativity issue, where the author says
Heh...so the Universe is, physically, a Communist State!!
[it's called Gell-Mann's Totalitarian Principle, is apparently true, was taken from Lit [once and future king] represented by Ants but inspired by actual political thought/philosophy. All kinds of fun.
Anyway, anyone have favorite screw-ups besides the ones mentioned?
For instance, sticking with Einstein, I think his greatest mistake was more philosophical/stubborn...he disliked the indeterminate so much that he spent decades trying to counter it, or at least tell "the rest of the story."
Sure, it led to a lot of cool things, and his ongoing argument with Bohr was classic and fruitful. HOWEVER...at the time there were many [relatively speaking] people with the wherewithal to fill the oppositional role he did. But I think, all things considered, especially his creativity, few if any could have been more insightful in advancing it...if he'd accepted it and tried to see where it led, all of physics might be 5, 10, 20 years further along.
heh...with all my finger-blather, I almost forgot. Here's the link:
news.yahoo.com/oops-5-greatest-scientific-blunders-135836365.html
The article is about a book, has some summaries of mistakes from it...not sure if really the 5 biggest.
The weirdest, and something I didn't know, in it isn't really the mistakes though. It's the very end, after talking General Relativity issue, where the author says
"The theory allowed him to put it in. We've since learned that everything the theory allows appears to be compulsory."
Heh...so the Universe is, physically, a Communist State!!
[it's called Gell-Mann's Totalitarian Principle, is apparently true, was taken from Lit [once and future king] represented by Ants but inspired by actual political thought/philosophy. All kinds of fun.
Anyway, anyone have favorite screw-ups besides the ones mentioned?
For instance, sticking with Einstein, I think his greatest mistake was more philosophical/stubborn...he disliked the indeterminate so much that he spent decades trying to counter it, or at least tell "the rest of the story."
Sure, it led to a lot of cool things, and his ongoing argument with Bohr was classic and fruitful. HOWEVER...at the time there were many [relatively speaking] people with the wherewithal to fill the oppositional role he did. But I think, all things considered, especially his creativity, few if any could have been more insightful in advancing it...if he'd accepted it and tried to see where it led, all of physics might be 5, 10, 20 years further along.
heh...with all my finger-blather, I almost forgot. Here's the link:
news.yahoo.com/oops-5-greatest-scientific-blunders-135836365.html