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I don't think the cannon ball example quite works because 18th century fluid dynamics wasn't up to the job. (People weren't firing cannon balls in a vacuum.) A

by foldr 3y ago

I don't think the cannon ball example quite works because 18th century fluid dynamics wasn't up to the job. (People weren't firing cannon balls in a vacuum.) Apart from that, I take your point, but I don't find Asimov's attempt to argue that Einstein's theory is just a minor correction to Newton's very convincing. If this were really the case it would make it a bit of a mystery why Einstein was a big deal. The two theories make very similar predictions in a wide range of circumstances, but they're very different conceptually. Asimov is similarly breezy about quantum mechanics, but physicists at the time didn't seem to see quantum mechanics as just a very minor adjustment to classical physics.

XorNot 3y ago
Except you don't need fluid dynamics for cannon ball trajectory over sufficiently short distances, or with the constraints on barrel quality and reproducibility of the time. The same is true of quantum mechanics: physicists were excited about it, but it went going to make existing experimental results and predictions incorrect in context. The Bohr model of the atom is completely "wrong" but it's still useful enough to foundational in understanding nuclear magnetic resonance analysis.
- foldr 3y ago
  Yes, scientific progress tends to be empirically conservative. But people outside science (like the Eng Lit major) are often less interested in specific predictions than in the overall picture of reality painted by our current best scientific theories. This picture does change quite radically from time to time. The history of different models of the atom (going back to the radically incorrect 'plum pudding' model) is a good example. To point this out is not to attack science. Indeed, science would be far less interesting and exciting if its entire history was nothing but a sequence of small and incremental refinements.

by foldr 3y ago

XorNot 3y ago

Except you don't need fluid dynamics for cannon ball trajectory over sufficiently short distances, or with the constraints on barrel quality and reproducibility of the time. The same is true of quantum mechanics: physicists were excited about it, but it went going to make existing experimental results and predictions incorrect in context. The Bohr model of the atom is completely "wrong" but it's still useful enough to foundational in understanding nuclear magnetic resonance analysis.

foldr 3y ago
Yes, scientific progress tends to be empirically conservative. But people outside science (like the Eng Lit major) are often less interested in specific predictions than in the overall picture of reality painted by our current best scientific theories. This picture does change quite radically from time to time. The history of different models of the atom (going back to the radically incorrect 'plum pudding' model) is a good example. To point this out is not to attack science. Indeed, science would be far less interesting and exciting if its entire history was nothing but a sequence of small and incremental refinements.