Who Thinks the Earth is Flat?

[newhaul]

Originally Posted by Mike OReilly

Oh I dunno. It was a fact rattling around in my old brain, likely picked up through formal university course work or from reading. I did have to do a quick search to remind myself of the fellow’s exact name though.

yeah right . You have a time machine and just don't want to share

[RaymondR]

Originally Posted by Mike OReilly

Well, ain’t this a fun discussion…

Science, and scientists, did not exist in the way we are discussing it until after the scientific revolution. Prior to that there was natural philosophy and natural philosophers who would attempt to explain reality in the form of a logical argument.

Copernicus is credited with “discovering” the heliocentric nature of our solar system, however, there were multiple recorded thinkers dating back to ancient Greece that postulated the same. Look up Aristarchus of Samos.

A scientific understanding of a phenomena is not a fixed thing. It changes as new evidence (data) is unearthed and better theories are developed. There is no such thing as absolute certainty in science. All scientific understanding is contengent truth that can, and does change if and when new facts and theories come to light.

This is what makes science different than natural philosophy or faith-based ways of knowing. Scientific understandings evolve via the scientific method from hypothesis to models, to theories, and eventually to laws. A scientific theory is not some shot fired in the dark. It is an explanation for a range of phenomena under examination. A theory is built on experimental and observational facts that are reproducible, repeatable and predictive.

The flat Earth hypothesis fails b/c evidence and theory contradict it. Currently there are no such contradictions when it comes to the theory of evolution, the age of the Earth, anthropogenic climate change, ozone depletion, the Big Bang, or a whole host of other theories and scientific understandings.

Roger Bacon expounded on the scientific method and he was around in about the 12th century.

Galileo might be considered the first of the modern scientists in about the 16th.

Newton, Boyle, Descartes, etc were all described as natural philosophers. Science was much less specialized in those days.

I'm staying agnostic on the global warming thing because I'm of the opinion that we need many more decades of research into what is an extremely complex system before we draw firm conclusions regarding the end result.

With the onset of the global warming religion and that discussions on weather almost invariably lead into global warming, the weather needs to be included with religion and politics as taboos in subjects of dinner discussion.

[Wotname]

Originally Posted by Simi 60

Next you'll be telling us that sky fairies are holding the maglite. :-)

Nah, there is no evidence to support sky fairies...some evidence does exist for kitchen fairies, boat fairies and shed fairies but that is off topic - a Flat Earth does not require the existence of fairies - of any sort.

[Wotname]

Originally Posted by Mike OReilly

Well, ain’t this a fun discussion…

........
A scientific understanding of a phenomena is not a fixed thing. It changes as new evidence (data) is unearthed and better theories are developed. There is no such thing as absolute certainty in science. All scientific understanding is contengent truth that can, and does change if and when new facts and theories come to light.
..........

Freudian slip Mike????

It is only a short step from unearthed to underearth...

A flat earth provides for an "under earth" condition, a spherical earth - not so much.

[Jim Cate]

Originally Posted by Wotname

Freudian slip Mike????

It is only a short step from unearthed to underearth...

A flat earth provides for an "under earth" condition, a spherical earth - not so much.

Ahh, Wottie, ye are raking with a fine tooth harrow there, mate... but then I'd expect that!

But none of us HF enthusiasts would ever condone "unearthing" anything, would we?

Jim

[thinwater]

Originally Posted by RaymondR

...
With the onset of the global warming religion and that discussions on weather almost invariably lead into global warming, the weather needs to be included with religion and politics as taboos in subjects of dinner discussion.

Agnostics get splinters...

... although you taboo logic is undeniable.

[cyan]

Originally Posted by Mike OReilly

The flat Earth hypothesis fails b/c evidence and theory contradict it. Currently there are no such contradictions when it comes to the theory of evolution, the age of the Earth, anthropogenic climate change, ozone depletion, the Big Bang, or a whole host of other theories and scientific understandings.

Big Bang?
What type of contradictions would you accept, considering the prevailing model suggests that at the beginning of the Big Bang, the laws of physics (and time) were very different than our current laws- contradicting them all!

The lack of (visible) contradictions does not feel so comforting to the critical thinker...

Quantum Theory has many contradictions, yet it is the prevailing model. Einstein warned that it was incomplete. (and spooky)

One constant among humans seems to be hubris.
We mock the ancient ones who thought the earth was the center of the universe, yet we are SO convinced that WE have it right TODAY. (I'm sure the ancient ones, in turn, mocked the flat-Earthers before them) The big Bang MUST have occurred, simply because everything is still moving farther away from everything else. That's it. Seriously.

We collectively believe in this, yet we STILL cannot explain how gravity is related to the other forces. We now can demonstrate quantum entanglement, yet Einstein once warned that quantum theory was not complete enough to describe it. He was right. Now we have spooky magic that violates good math like the Bell inequality. We have yet to invent a decent theory for this spooky magic. (IE, I can change the state of something here, and it affects the state of something a thousand kilometers away- instantly. Relativity be damned.)

If we cannot explain this magic before us, or even gravity (fully), then how certain can we be about anything?

I give it better than a 50-50 chance that the current Big Bang "prevailing model" of the universe.will be mocked along side of the geocentric ideas from thousands of years ago. I give it less than 100 years.

Perhaps the clever ones are those who are aware that we are not so clever indeed?
Dunno.

[jimbunyard]

Robbed from a closed 'global warming' thread last year, this seems at least a little pertinent here...



These 'discussions' always bring to mind a paragraph in the prologue to G.G. Simpsons book 'The Meaning of Evolution', written in 1949, addressing this question of 'evidence'.

"On the other hand, it may seem a serious omission, or perhaps a a touch of naivete, that a basic philosophical position is taken without notice. It is assumed that a material universe exists and that it corresponds with our perceptions of it. The existence of absolute truth is taken for granted as well as approximation to this truth of the results of repeated observations and experiments. That such observations are debatable is evident from the violence with which they have been debated at various times. In practice, however, we all have to take it either that they are true or that we necessarily proceed as if they were true. Otherwise there is no meaning in science or in any knowledge, or in life itself, and no reason to enquire for such meaning." (my emphasis added)



So, if we generally agree with the above statement, science can be defined as 'the search for objective truth'.

Furthermore, we should characterize science as objective relative to the time it is understood, if only for the fact that it is possible that the 'laws' governing objectivity, and indeed, even nature itself, may not be immutable...

That the big bang, or Newtonian physics, or evolution or any other of the ideas that have served us so well are likely to be mocked by serious people is unlikely in the extreme (not least of all because the ideas replacing them will have these 'predecessor ideas' as their heritage)...mocking is generally done by unserious, frivolous people, often those with an axe to grind, and who are often the ones who should actually be mocked (if mocking were ever justifiable) for clinging to demonstrably false ideas and/or opinions.

Generally, one has to learn to think inside the box before they can think effectively outside the box...

[CatNewBee]

Well - science is the challenging / questioning of the status-quo and mocking is part of it.

mocking is generally done by unserious, frivolous people, often those with an axe to grind, and who are often the ones who should actually be mocked

This is the reason Galileo Galley has almost ended up on a pyre and he finally withdraw his statement of a spherical Earth circling around the sun. He was considered an unserious frivolous person with an axe to grind who should be punished for challenging the "predecessor ideas".

When science stops challenging something it becomes a doctrine like a flat earth, man made global warming or whatever.

There is a difference between a climate scientist and a global warming evangelist. The scientist always questions the results and is keen to understand the climate, the evangelist just searches for evidence, that siuts his opinion and ignores anything else, he does not question his hypothesis at all - instead he atacs everybody who challenges his theory.

[Benz]

Originally Posted by jimbunyard

That the earth is an oblate spheroid is fact, observable personally to any with the ability to make visual conformation (well, that it's a sphere is observable personally; to verify the oblateness takes some pretty sophisticated scientific observations...).

Biological evolution (as well as mineral, stellar, linguistic etc.) is a fact, again, observable by any individual with perceptual acuity and reasonably powerful scientific deductive ability.

Anthropogenic climate change is a fact, not so easily observable because of the observational biases and short, fallible memory spans of the observers, the conflation of 'weather' and 'climate', the desires of certain members of the culturally elite, and the intellectual manipulation of a (apparently growing) set group of people who are either truly disenfranchised or self-identify as disenfranchised (whether they actually are or are not).

The basic mechanism was identified in the middle 1800's, an accurate estimate of the amount of heating caused by the mechanism was made, fairly accurately, in 1896, and the actual physics of the mechanism was studied and understood by the early 1950's, largely due to research done by the US Air Force at Hanscom AFB in association with work on sensors for heat-seeking missiles...

There is essentially no disagreement in the scientific community about the causes of the increasing rate of warming; as always in science there is disagreement in details and interpretations.

The 'debate' is in the public perception, exacerbated by, among other thing, human nature, vested financial interests, apathy, laziness, fear and ignorance.



The hypocritical and lazy 'one scientist was wrong once, so they're all not to be trusted' is, at the same time, sad, silly and scary (and, unfortunately, predictable [ever hear of the 'Dark Ages'?])...

Aristotle is generally credited with the "Earth is the center of the universe' idea, which, while incorrect in the modern interpretation, is, perceptually and conceptually, actually not.

Modern cosmology postulates that there is no 'center of the universe', therefore, the human intellect requires that, if the location of the planet is to be determined, it be placed where the evidence shows it.

The evidence (to Aristotle at least) at the time was that Earth (known to be spherical by that time) was at the center of the 'universe', so his provisional placing of that sphere at the center of it all made perfect sense.

Were he alive today, there is no question that he would not hold that view...because it is not supported by the evidence.

Jim,
Sadly, it's not limited to one. There have been and are thousands of scientists who are wrong. And given mankind's penchant for having an agenda of some sort, we are right to be skeptical. The global warming establishment showed their hand when the minute the Imbecile was elected they started moaning that all their research money was going to dry up.

But as to the Big Bang, do you really believe that that is repeatable as an experiment? Science-real science-requires that things be observable and repeatable before they are accepted as facts. Unless you can repeat something in controlled conditions and always get the same results, you are not doing real science: you are guessing, or believing someone else's guess.

Have you done biological evolution experiments in a controlled environment? You have not. Therefore we CANNOT take biological evolution as fact, but must conclude that the data may have been (and very likely was, see above) misinterpreted.

So we return to: you are taking things very much on faith, no matter what you choose to believe. Whether a bunch of peer-reviewed papers, or ancient manuscripts, or cuneiform tablets found in the desert, or legends invented by your mother.

[robert sailor]

[QUOTE=Benz;2538511]Jim,
Sadly, it's not limited to one. There have been and are thousands of scientists who are wrong. And given mankind's penchant for having an agenda of some sort, we are right to be skeptical. The global warming establishment showed their hand when the minute the Imbecile was elected they started moaning that all their research money was going to dry up.

But as to the Big Bang, do you really believe that that is repeatable as an experiment? Science-real science-requires that things be observable and repeatable before they are accepted as facts. Unless you can repeat something in controlled conditions and always get the same results, you are not doing real science: you are guessing, or believing someone else's guess.

Have you done biological evolution experiments in a controlled environment? You have not. Therefore we CANNOT take biological evolution as fact, but must conclude that the data may have been (and very likely was, see above) misinterpreted.

So we return to: you are taking things very much on faith, no matter what you choose to believe. Whether a bunch of peer-reviewed papers, or ancient manuscripts, or cuneiform tablets found in the desert, or legends invented by your mother.[/QUOTE

Repeating the big bang in a controlled experiment, geez that should be easy enough. Let's not get ridiculous.
Evolution can be seen just watching bacteria evolve to become resistant to antibiotics.

[Polux]

Originally Posted by Benz

...
Have you done biological evolution experiments in a controlled environment? You have not. Therefore we CANNOT take biological evolution as fact, but must conclude that the data may have been (and very likely was, see above) misinterpreted.

So we return to: you are taking things very much on faith, no matter what you choose to believe. Whether a bunch of peer-reviewed papers, or ancient manuscripts, or cuneiform tablets found in the desert, or legends invented by your mother.

There is in fact a parallel between the ones that believe that Earth is flat and the ones that deny the evolution of life or think that is a question of faith.

You don't need to do evolution experiments on a laboratory (crazy concept) to have facts that documente the species evolution. They are well documented on the nature, from species to species.

The bottom point regarding evolution is the creation of life itself, the rest is self-explanatory at the knowledge we have through an evolution process based on trial and error over aleatory mutations.

Life has already been created on a laboratory. The Evolution process cannot be recreated on a laboratory due to the amount of time required for the blind mutations to prove successful (over the vast majority that prove unsuccessful). We are talking about hundreds or thousands of years.

However evolution can be created not on an aleatory blind way through genetic modifications and that is done today regarding many improved species, animal and vegetable mostly for human consumption purposes.

Nothing of this has to do with faith but only with science.

[Polux]

Originally Posted by robert sailor

Evolution can be seen just watching bacteria evolve to become resistant to antibiotics.

Didn't thought about that. Yes, that is a case of fast successful evolution of a primitive organism even so we are talking about years for that evolution to happen on a life form with a very short life span.

[robert sailor]

Originally Posted by Polux

There is in fact a parallel between the ones that believe that Earth is flat and the ones that deny the evolution of life or think that is a question of faith.

You don't need to do evolution experiments on a laboratory (crazy concept) to have facts that documente the species evolution. They are well documented on the nature, from species to spices.

The bottom point regarding evolution is the creation of life itself, the rest is self-explanatory at the knowledge we have through an evolution process based on trial and error over aleatory mutations.

Life has already been created on a laboratory. The Evolution process cannot be recreated on a laboratory due to the amount of time required for the blind mutations to prove successful (over the vast majority that prove unsuccessful). We are talking about thousands of years.

However evolution can be created not on an aleatory blind way through genetic modifications and that is done today regarding many improved species, animal and vegetable mostly for human consumption purposes.

Nothing of this has to do with faith but only with science.

Good post

[GordMay]

Originally Posted by Benz

... Have you done biological evolution experiments in a controlled environment? You have not. Therefore we CANNOT take biological evolution as fact, but must conclude that the data may have been (and very likely was, see above) misinterpreted...

No. But, others have.
Like any scientific theory, the theory of evolution by natural selection can be tested by experiment. Since the publication of On the Origin of Species in 1859, biologists* have devised many ingenious ways to examine the effect of natural selection on living organisms.
* Google:
Experimental Evolution**
Richard Lenski - http://www.msu.edu~lenski/ , : http://www.msu.edu/~lenski/sciencearticle.html
John Endler
H. Bernard Kettlewell
Stanley Miller & Harold Urey
Jeffrey Bada
Diane Dodd

** What is experimental evolution? We use the term to mean research in which populations are studied across multiple generations under defined and reproducible conditions, whether in the laboratory or in nature ...
➥ http://biology.ucr.edu/people/facult..._Evolution.pdf

As to the "Big Bang", CERN scientists are experimenting with certain aspects of the theory ,hoping the Large Hadron Collider can approach, on a tiny scale, what happened in the first split seconds after the Big Bang.


Back on topic:
Tesla knew Gravity was just a bogus theory and that Einstein was a shill

Tesla knew that Gravity was nonsense, that is why you never learned about him in school (Well, I did). Instead we were taught the theories (assumptions) of Capernicus*, Newton and Eistein* to embed in your brain that we live on a 'ball'! Tesla had it right, electromagnetic realm.
More (drivel) ➥ https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC23...5vhpa8A/videos

* They don’t use conventional spelling, either.