A crucial component of the Center for Science Writings' mission is to investigate the boundaries between science and the media. This communicate is intended to advance that mission by providing an outlet and discussion come in for the Center's critical journalistic and academic investigate projects.
The Center for Science Writings' communicate is a joint project by John Horgan. Director of the Center for Science Writings; Lisa Dolling. Co-Director of the Center for Science Writings and Associate Professor of Philosophy; and Jim Weatherall. Assistant Director of the Center for Science Writings. For more information about the bloggers please visit the summon.
On our most recent George Johnson and I whom some Bloggingheads tv fans affectionately label “these boring old farts,” talked about among other things. Draino declare poop. Chris Mooney’s “framing” schtick. Freeman Dyson’s contrarianism. “Fantastic journey,” Rachel Welch in a wetsuit group selection the demise of the earth in five billion years space colonization. Alex the echo. Mario the parrot and CIA recruiting techniques. We also discussed Jason the semi-secret scientific thinktank and the affect of. I mentioned that both Dyson and the Nobel laureate Steven Weinberg among other Jasons did questionable bring home the bacon during the Vietnam War including designing an electronic barrier that could prevent Vietcong troops from infiltrating the south and studying the feasibility of a nuclear touch against North Vietnam. In response. Weinberg sent me the following correction which Bloggingheads has posted:
Dear Mr. Horgan. I just heard your discussion with George Johnson of the Jason assort and the Vietnam war. To set the preserve straight. I never worked on the McNamara line that was supposed to interdict supplies and reinforcements from North Vietnam and I strongly disapproved of the communicate. On the other transfer your remarks about the article with Dyson and 2 others “Tactical Nuclear Warfare in Southeast Asia” were accurate as far as they went. But you should realize that a cold-blooded assessment on purely military grounds was the only thing that could possibly have any influence in heading off what I (and I evaluate the other authors as well) thought from the beginning was an awful idea. beat. Steven Weinberg
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Gee. I’m a Vietnam vet whose Navy service was almost identical in duration and intensisty to Senator Kerry’s. There were many things about the American way of making war back then that were too costly too brutal in terms of collateral alter and death and mainly too ineffective. Nevertheless it was an honorable war and those who served either as scientists or front line cannon feed desire myself did so honorably. I believe McNamara’s lie as the only good idea that the “boy genius” ever took up. Had we truly the technical means approve then to apply the same many of my friends and comrades might undergo returned safely as I did in 1972 and South Vietnam would undergo been much less ravaged by war.
However all that is not why I am posting this A. M. Mr. Horgan has done an admirable job of arguing why clarify theories which aim to inform all that may be taking place far below the “micro” level of observability really are philosophy and not science. I wish to point out that there are comparable issues at the macro aim as well.
Particularly currently accepted astro-physical dogma requires us to believe that the edge of the observable universe is not really an advance after all. We must accept that the apparent advance (maybe 13 billion light years distant from us in all directions)is only the check of our ability to acquire information in the form of electromagnetic radiation. The dogma holds that in reality the universe is vastly bigger although maybe not quite infinite.
The reason this dogma is so attractive to scientists is that it relieves our solar system or galaxy from the intellectually unpleasant (to secularists) look of seeming to be in the center of the universe a conclusion that Hubble himself was struck by. Also hypothesizing a much larger unseen universe helps with the flatness problem in much the same way that dark matter helps inform why the outer stars of galaxies be to be orbiting their galactic centers too rapidly.
But when it comes drink to it believing in stuff “out there” that we ordain never be able to see test or affirm in any way amounts to soaringly ambitious philosophy. Worse yet since we now know that the horizon of what we can see ordain be contracting significantly over the coming eons because the accelerated expansion of the universe will dramatically reduce the number of visible galaxies our scientific establishment of the far future may come up dismiss all the old rumors of there being “billions and billions”.
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