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Re: (meteorobs) Science
Oops, sorry, Robert! Didn't mean to stir up a hornet's nest or anything. I
only mean to caution that we should not get overly comfortable in any state
of knowledge. Mother Nature is often one step ahead of us. Certainly, we are
striving and improving and will continue to do so, but will we ever finally
"get there"? Every answer we derive tends to generate ten more questions,
doesn't it? Sorry I worded that statement poorly. Don't want the
scientists of the world gunning for me! Paul
>From: Robert Gardner <rendrag@earthlinkdot net>
>Reply-To: meteorobs@atmob.org
>To: "meteorobs@atmob.org" <meteorobs@atmob.org>
>Subject: (meteorobs) Science
>Date: Wed, 24 Apr 2002 07:47:35 -0700
>
>I would certainly object to the statement of Paul Jones as follows;
>
>(and also again for the 1998 Leonids) that the more we THINK we know
>about
>natural events, the less we ACTUALLY do! We should never assume for one
>
>minute that we fully understand or can accurately predict how the
>natural
>world will behave.
>
>We may not fully understand nature but that does not prevent us from
>accurately predicting how the natural world will behave at many levels
>and we certainly understand the better part of it today. Recent
>predictions of meteor storms may not be perfect but they are far better
>than they were 10 years ago. Weather predictions are complained about
>but again it is so much better than it was 30 years ago. Further many
>disastrous storms are predicted accurately avoiding great disasters. The
>Law of Conservation of Energy holds perfectly true and has never been
>questioned since the early twentieth century when energy of mass and
>nuclear energy were added to the mix. I am reminded of the argument
>that was used against the very expensive science of space exploration;
>"It raises more questions than it answers.". That is untrue it answers
>the questions we wanted answered but the new knowledge enables us to ask
>questions that we could not ask before. A very simple example is that
>until you discover that the world is round, you cannot ask the question
>of "Why don't the people in China fall off?".
>
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