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Has using a quote from 4 centuries ago to try to prove a point ever worked out for anyone? It sounds about as effective as "Newton didn't use vaccines, so why s
by rococode 8y ago
Has using a quote from 4 centuries ago to try to prove a point ever worked out for anyone? It sounds about as effective as "Newton didn't use vaccines, so why should we?". Perhaps there is some merit to the idea, but talking about 17th century science is probably not the most convincing way to make the point. That aside, here is Newton's actual quote from Cohen and Whitman's translation of Principia:
> I have not as yet been able to discover the reason for these properties of gravity from phenomena, and I do not feign hypotheses. For whatever is not deduced from the phenomena must be called a hypothesis; and hypotheses, whether metaphysical or physical, or based on occult qualities, or mechanical, have no place in experimental philosophy. In this philosophy particular propositions are inferred from the phenomena, and afterwards rendered general by induction. [1]
To me, this appears to be a very different sentiment. Newton seems to be saying "I don't try to guess about things I don't understand", not "You don't need to have a clear plan before doing research". Even if it is true that Newton never framed a hypothesis in his life (which strikes me as blatantly false), he didn't live in a world with thousands and thousands of researchers funded by taxpayer money. When commitees have to decide how to spend money, of course it's more logical to fund a project with a well-formed question.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypotheses_non_fingo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypotheses_non_fingo
- mannykannot 8y agoA little further into the article, the author presents many other arguments in support of his point, and discusses why some types of experiment (e.g., typical medical investigations) may need hypotheses, while others need not (the Hubble telescope was not built to investigate a specific hypothesis.) This article deserves more of a response than one that ignores anything not mentioned in the title.
- gowld 8y agoI'm reminded of research in Computer Science, that generally looks like this: "In this paper we investigate the hypothesis: Is it possible to build something cool? First, we briefly summarize cool things that already exist, then we show how we were able to build something cool, we measure how cool it is (it's cooler than a bunch of competing things!), and finally conclude with some cool ideas that we or you might pursue the future."
- gowld 8y ago> When commitees have to decide how to spend money, of course it's more logical to fund a project with a well-formed question. It's not logical to me at all. It might be true, but it excludes every creative invention by every tinker, explorer, and artist.
- AnimalMuppet 8y agoIt seems to me that Newton did frame hypotheses. The inverse square law is a hypothesis - a proposed explanation of phenomena (the orbits of the planets). It's just that Newton stopped there - he didn't propose a hypothesis for why gravity follows an inverse square law.