Re: Refs, please... was... Re: AAT Theory

H. M. Hubey (hubey@pegasus.montclair.edu)
14 Oct 1995 20:25:27 -0400

clarke@acme.ist.ucf.edu (Thomas Clarke) writes:

>> >"A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its
>> >opponents, but rather because its opponents die, and a new
>> >generation grows up that is familiar with it."
>> > Max Planck
>
>> More "scientific name dropping." Planck was wrong. He was proven
>> wrong by his _own_ new ideas. Planck was still very much alive when
>> Einstein took his idea of a constant relationship between frequency
>> and energy and expanded on it.

>Einstein, the 26 year old patent clerk, wasn't part of the new generation?

I ignored this the first time around because Burkhead's response
was so childish. Planck is almost the father of QM and Burkhead
is trying to tell us he was wrong, and is ignoring (as you point
out) that Einstein was also one of the rebels.

>> He was still alive (as were many of
>> his peers) when it was adopted by others to become the basis of
>> quantum theory.

>I think you have to interpret his statement as not being about
>biological death but about scientific death. It is pretty
>well know that if you havn't done great work in physics by age 30
>you are washed up.

The father (in some sense) of quantum theory (the discoverer
of the electron) about a year before the atom bomb exploded gave
a speech in which he said something like

"all this talk about the energy locked up in the atom is
moonshine..."

Even someone of his stature wasn't ready for the new science.
There were other physicists who wouldn't change either.

Besides, everyone knows that as the twig is bent, so grows
the tree. There's a limit beyond which people can't go.

At the turn of the century, the president of the American
Coachman Association (or some name like it) gave a rousing
speech in which he said that cars would never take off, and that
the golden age of the horse-drawn carriage was still in the
future! So it's not only scientist !

-- 





				Regards, Mark

				http://www.smns.montclair.edu/~hubey