Re: [APD] Science

[Rachel Sandage <rachelsor at gmail_com>]

You wrote:

. What I'm trying to get across is that anyone who stands on a
> box, you know who you are and there are several of you, and says this is
> the "enter name" law or make any innuendo of said theory being fact, is
> making a somewhat asinine comment. because to call anything scientific a
> law or claim it to be a definitive fact is ridiculous.

 No, there are millions of definitive facts. If you drop an apple, it will
fall. If you watch the motion of the planets, they move in a particular way.
If you put x amount of sugar in y amount of water at z degrees, it will or
will not entirely dissolve, depending on the amount of sugar and the amount
and temperature of water. These are scientific facts and they will not
change - or do your apples float around when they come off the tree?
 Where bad science comes in is in the scientist's interpretation of the
facts. Newon observed that apples fall, but he had the wrong reason. Early
astronomers watched the planets move, and insisted that they were revolving
around the earth - even if it meant that the planets had to somehow stop and
go backwards.
 The point is that while our interpretation of the facts might change, the
behavior of the physical world does not change. Apples still fall, sugar
still dissolves, and planets still whip around the sun in their elliptical
orbit, sweeping out equal areas in equal amount of time, just as Johannes
Kepler said they would.
 So if someone comes up with a hypothesis (an idea based on observation,
which is tested by experimentation to become a theory) which says that the
physical behavior of something is different from what other people say it is
then that needs to be proved. Remember that the ancients all agreed on what
the position of the planets was, they disagreed on what it meant. And
rigorous scientific procedure requires control of variables. It's not Enough
to say "I saw it, and so it is true", because your interpretation of what
you see may be proved. Increased plant growth doesn't necessarily mean that
a physical law has been violated - in fact, they may be completely
unrelated. No-one is disagreeing with Tom about the increased plant growth -
just about his claim that it proves that a scientific theory about the
dissolution of gas in liquid is wrong.
 There is a crisis of scientific education in this country, and your
statement that there are no definitive facts is just one facet of it. The
whys may change, but the facts just don't - or would you like to stand under
a suspended piano and see what happens when I cut the rope?
 Rachel
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