Negative Impacts on Society

Hi again Syamsu,I haven't seen you posting for ages, are you just hanging out on the education board now for some reason?I was just wondering if you could direct us to a thread where we can see one of the many arguments you have won one on one, where anyone other than you has declared you the victor. Or is this not possible due to your never having been given a proper chance to go one on one. Perhaps you should ask the mods for a crack at the great debate in order to remove the problem of groupthink or getting ganged up on.Nice seeing you again,WK

What insight revealed to you the ultimate truth of the idea that beauty is subjective? Did you reach this truth guided by ideology, philosophy, experimental evidence or intuition?It may be popular to say that all standards of beauty are subjective, but it doesn't neccessarily have to be true. What makes you think that it is?I'm not saying this isn't the case, I'm simply asking what your reasoning was that brought you to this conclusion.TTFN,WK

Lets not forget there are also plenty of Feng Shui and astrology based self help books out there. You can write a self help book with any basis you like, it doesn't represent a good measure of how well accepted or how applied a field of science it is.[This message has been edited by Wounded King, 04-19-2004]

You realise of course Syamsu that simply because you observe unpleasantness, perversions and temptations in relation to this idea has no bearing at all on its validity.It is perfectly possible for something with unpleasant consequences to be true. Similarly even if all of the evils you attribute to Darwinism could be laid 100% to blame on modern evolutionary theory it would not neccesarily mean that it was untrue.I would not agree that the nervous system is highly unstable. There may be a fairly large level of plasticity in many areas of neural development but there are also many clearly specified regions and repeated structures in human brains.I don't see anything suggesting that noting 'unpredictibility' is not scientific, they suggest that symmetry is normally seen as pleasing and asymmetry as less so. Indeed if we accept the assertion that the human brain is fundamentally a pattern recognition engine then you would expect that objects not fitting a pattern would be highlighted in the brain, although whether the response to them would be -ve or +ve is another question. This may not neccessarily be the case of course as we must all be well aware that the mind is often all too ready to shoehorn outlying factors into a pattern.By the by, I can't find any references to John Cleese's scientific qualifications, I thought he trained as a lawyer, can you provide some guidance to a reference?cheers,
WK

How step by step a process would you like? Should every molecular biologist have to go back and do their own X-ray crystallography on DNA just to make sure that it really does have a double helical structure? Should I have to repeat every fundamental developmental biology experiment in several model organisms before I can address the question of neural development in the fly?The body of scientific knowledge is so broad and so deep that it is impossible for anyone investigating anything to work solely from first principles. The 'priesthood' of science has one big advantage over other historical priesthoods, it actually produces something concrete.TTFN,WK

So is your contention now that no field of science has an evidentiary basis and they are in fact all merely subjective systems of belief? This seems like rather a stretch even for you Syamsu.Your point that school teachers often present as well accepted facts things which have often been superceded or in some cases discredited is reasonable, but to a large extent the way science is taught in the school room is severely constrained. It might be better for producing well rounded individuals if science classes focussed on teaching scepticism and an aptitude for rational analysis and scientific methodology. Unfortunately such a scheme could well produce lots of people with a highly desirable, in my opinion, mindset but absoloutely no knowledge of the actual fundamentals of any particular field of scientific research. I feel one major failing in education is the fact that such a mindset is not required generally and indeed some schools, both secular and religious, may even actively discourage enquiring young minds, although this seems to be less common now than it once was when the majority of learning was strictly by rote.I don't see how what Loudmouth's teacher said to him could have much influence on the idea that the actual mechanisms governing a natural system work irrespective of your beliefs about that system, unless of course you are examining social interaction in humans, and psychical research apparently , in which case your beliefs may well affect it.TTFN,WK

That is a quite shocking post given the trend of this conversation. Not only do you misstate Avogadro's number, 6.022 X10^23 rather than 6.22 X10^23, but you say that Avagadro calculated this number when in what he did was hypothesise that there would be the same number of atoms in equal volumes of gases under the same conditions. To actually determine the number required lots and lots of good old experimentation.Obviously the science history you were taught in school was very poor.Or if you think I am wrong then give some guidance to sources confirming your version of events. As a starter here is a link to the paper in which his hypothesis is set forth.TTFN,WK

He didn't, as I pointed out, and as you would know if you had looked at his original paper which I linked to, what avogadro did was hypothesise that the number of atoms in a specific volume of gas under the same pressure would be the same for all gases. He derived no number whatsoever for this.The number we now use was derived experimentally using x-ray diffraction analysis of metal and salt crystals.For some more detail on this and related aspects here is another link.TTFN,WK

I don't believe that we should base our view of the physical universe on the aesthetics of elegant mathematics rather than on what we actually observe by experimentation.I'd say that subsequent repeated measurement and possible future techniques will allow us to refine the value but I don't see a major revsion coming from a purely theoretical corner.TTFN,WK

Actually Kofh2u what started this line of discusssion was you using an example of the sort of proper 'good' science history that should be taught in schools which was totally lacking in any basis in either history or science and seemed to have been pretty much generated solely in your head or from a very specious source. Where did your strange misconceptions about the origin of Avogadro's number come from?TTFN,WK

Dear Kofh2u,I'm not sure if you are being disingenuous or if your reading comprehension is merely as tenuous as your grasp of science.You said in the original post i Objected to Pretty much all of which is completely wrong in every respect. If you can provide some support for any of the things you said in what you gave as an example of the 'good' sort of history of science that should be taught then I would be grateful.The initial site I linked to was the text of Avogadro's own paper in which he put forward his hypothesis that there would be equal numbers of molecules in the same volume of any gas under the same conditions. Since this was Avogadro's hypothesis for which his name is attached to the value known as Avogadro's number it was directly relevant to your contention that Avogadro derived the value known as Avogadro's number, which he did not. Unless you believe that your initial misstatement of the number was in fact correct I don't see why a link to a site stating the correct value is neccessary, anyone with a phtsics or chemistry textbook should be able to find out at least an acceptable aproximate value.I then subsequently provided a link to a page with more general information on Avogadro's number and Loschmidt's number which gave one of the most recent values derived by experimentation. I would suggest that this value derived by repeated direct experimentation would be the most 'correct' compared to the 60+ year old values derived mathematically by Einstein and others.cheers,WK

Dear Kofh2u,Unless you start sourcing some of the rubbish you come up with, or at leat putting it forward in a clear way, I don't see any point discussing things with you.Are you claiming that Avogadro himself said those things about 22.4 liter volumes of gas? Or is this you formulating your new definition of the AMU? Is your only contribution to suggest that we should swap one arbitrary unit for another, this time using protonium as a baseline?No number is Avogadro's own number, it isn't Fermat's last theorem, no matter what you believe he didn't come up with the 'correct' number which has subsequently been lost to posterity and which we now have to try and guess.I am not going to say that the number derived from direct observation is less 'correct' than a number you have come up with by choosing a new arbitrary starting point using protonium, nor am I saying that the number cannot be refined and better ascertained as our understanding and technology improves.Have you been counting the molecules in 22.4 L of protonium or is this a theoretical estimate you have com up with? Why should your number be better than one experimentally derived? How will your alternative number in anyway obviate the problem of many isotopes being present in a sample?Please be prepared to provide something more than bland assertions of your own superiority and everyone elses close mindedness if you wish to continue discussing things.TTFN,WK

Dear Kofh2u,I'm sorry if you find my manners to be lacking but your continual refusal to back up anything you say with more than handwaving suggests that your view of science is that it is some sort of post-modern relativist liberal arts discipline where everyones answer is equally valid.I didn't say that the number you misstated was shocking. What I said was shocking was you holding up what was essentially a piece of fiction as an example of a 'good' history of science.Avogadro created no number as 'his' number, his name has been associated with the value known as 'Avogadro's number' because of his hypothesis relating to gases which we have discussed previously.Can you quote from Avogadro's manuscript to show where he said any of the things you attributed to him, even showing what you say is a rough paraphrase would be fine.Einstein, Planck, Millikan, Loschmidt et. al had a pretty open field since the varying theoretical bases of their estimates were all tenable sources. Such theoretical attempts have been superceded however by our current ability to actually directly measure the number of atoms in a specific volume.You have bought no pearl to my attention, do you contend that 6.22X10^23 was not in fact a misstatement but an alternative suggestion for Avogadro's number? This hardly jibes with your hypothesis that the number is actually just a little under 6X10^23.Can you be more specific about what wonderful insight you think you have revealed to us?As to your final point, no you are not correct. There has to be some scepticism in our scientific methodology. Self correction and self review are some of the most important aspects of scientific endeavour. If something goes completely against what we think to be true then it must be subjected to the hardest scrutiny, if it then withstands that then the current theories will have to shift to allow for something with hard theoretical/evidentiary backing. Science is full of examples where a previous paradigm has had to make way as new understanding was gained. These understandings were gained with proper experimental work however, not with claiming to have a value for Avogadro's constant derived purely from a theoretical basis superior to that derived from direct observation.I'll admit that I have been a bit brusques if you'll admit that your example of 'good' science history was a load of made up claptrap bearing absoloutely no resemblance to the actual facts surrounding Avogadro's work in relation to the number to which his name is attached.Where I went to school things certainly weren't taught as a history of science, maybe its just a different school system type thing.TTFN,WKP.S. I relise this is getting pretty much totally of topic, I'll see if I can get a thread up on the 'Kofh Number' so we can discuss your theories.[This message has been edited by Wounded King, 04-28-2004]

Dear Kofh2u,There is now a Avogadro's number Vs The Kofh number Thread in the 'Is it science?' forum.I look forward to your comments, and to no longer deviating this thread.TTFN,WK[This message has been edited by Wounded King, 04-28-2004]