Re: [asa] YEC--What can we offer them?

Wayne wrote:
"I don't really see things like relativity theory being
as much a paradigm shift as an extension of the limiting
case of Newton's law of gravitation."

Newton's gravity is rather the low-velocity limit of general relativity.
And the jump to general relativity constitutes a paradigm shift if there
ever was one: With Newton, there's an attractive force between objects at a
distance that determines relative trajectories; with Einstein, four-space
geometry determines trajectories, where the shape of the four-space depends
on the masses within it. There's no attractive force; objects simply follow
their geodesics in space-time.

General relativity differs radically from Newton in its way of looking at
space, time and motion. The practical consequences are minuscule compared
with the magnitude of the paradigm shift behind them! Newton was not wrong,
but his theory lacked generality.

Quantum mechanics revealed that entities at micro-scale behave nothing like
entities at macro-scale. So QM also introduced a paradigm shift, because
the general assumption had been that objects should behave similarly at all
scales.

In this case physicists were wrong (their "theories were invalidated")
because they assumed objects should behave similarly at all scales.

Earth scientists early last century were wrong about plate tectonics because
they (often vociferously) derided the idea of continental drift.

In both these cases--QM and plate tectonics--experimental data shoved
scientists by the seat of the pants kicking and screaming into new
paradigms.

Therefore I'd revise Randy's claim as follows: Scientific theories go where
experiments lead. In no case have scientists gone back to an old theory
once data and theorists made it clear there was a better theory.
(Exception: Sometimes an old theory still has pedagogical or computational
uses.)

I'd never say a theory had been validated. Consistent with all data and
able to make good predictions--that's as good as it gets.

Don

  ----- Original Message -----
  From: Dawsonzhu@aol.com<mailto:Dawsonzhu@aol.com>
  To: asa@calvin.edu<mailto:asa@calvin.edu>
  Sent: Wednesday, July 04, 2007 7:01 AM
  Subject: Re: [asa] YEC--What can we offer them?

  Randy wrote:
    By the way, in my talk I ended up claiming that, as far as I could tell,
    there has been no case where a scientific theory which has been
validated by
    data from many independent sources and which is accepted as consensus by
the
    mainstream community, has been later invalidated. I'd love to hear of
any
    examples that any of you might think of.

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Received on Thu Jul 5 02:04:33 2007