Posted on 08/31/2005 8:19:37 AM PDT by PatrickHenry
Does that solve your problem?"
Sort of.
It sort of solves the grammatical problem.
If I understand your suggested correction, the sentence could be restated thus:
"A brew of radiation inflated itselfit in an almost uniform manner"
Fair enough. Brews inflate themselves.
But brews inflate themselves according to certain laws -- or, perhaps, not "laws", exactly. The ways brews inflate themselves can, I think, be predicted because brews behave in a particular manner.
But I still do not know why the "brew of radiation" inflated itself in precisely the manner it did. I presume that, as it inflated itself, electrons had negative charges and protons had positive charges, and that electrons repelled other electrons and attracted protons.
But why is that? Why do the "laws" which we deduce from the way matter acts apply?
In other words, why, as the brew inflated itself, did the electrons have one negative charge and the protons have one positive charge, and why did the electrons and the protons behave as they did with each other?
His, of course.
There is no question that brews inflate waistlines.
It's the Force Luke.........
Are you asking what Socrates asked the nature philosophers? He was always asking why it was better one way rather than another."When I was young, Cebes, I was tremendously eager for the kind of wisdom which they call investigating of nature (physis). I thought it was a glorious thing to know the causes of everything, why each thing comes into being and why it perishes and why it exists; and I was always unsettling myself with such questions as these: Do heat and cold, by a sort of fermentation, bring about the organisation of animals, as some people say? Is it the blood, or air, or fire by which we think? Or is it none of these, and does the brain furnish the sensations of hearing and sight and smell, and do memory and opinion arise from these, and does knowledge come from memory and opinion in a state of rest? And again I tried to find out how these things perish, and I investigated the phenomena of heaven and earth until finally I made up my mind that I was by nature totally unfitted for this kind of investigation . . . I am far from thinking that I know the cause of any of these things . . . Then one day I heard a man reading from a book as he said, by Anaxagoras, that it is the mind that arranges and causes all things. I was pleased with this theory of cause, and it seemed to me to be somehow right that the mind should be the cause of all things, and I thought, 'If this is so, the mind in arranging things arranges everything and establishes each thing as it is best for it to be. So if anyone wishes to find the cause of the generation or destruction or existence of a particular thing, he must find out what sort of existence, or passive state of any kind, or activity is best for it. And therefore in respect to that particular thing, and other things too, a man need examine nothing but what is best and most excellent; for then he will necessarily know also what is inferior, since the science of both is the same.' As I considered these things I was delighted to think that I had found in Anaxagoras a teacher of the cause of things quite to my mind, and I thought he would tell me whether the earth is flat or round, and when he had told me that, would go on to explain the cause and the necessity of it, and would tell me the nature of the best and why it is best for the earth to be as it is . . . So I thought when he assigned the cause of each thing and of all things in common he would go on and explain what is best for each and what is good for all in common. I prized my hopes very highly, and I seized the books very eagerly and read them as fast as I could, that I might know as fast I could about the best and the worst.My glorious hope, my friend, was quickly snatched from me. As I went on with my reading I saw that the man made no use of intelligence, and did not assign any real causes for the ordering of things, but mentioned as causes air and ether and water and many other absurdities.
And it seemed to me it was very much as if one should say that Socrates does with intelligence whatever he does, and then, in trying to give the causes of the particular thing I do, should say first that I am no sitting here because my body is composed of bones and sinews, and the bones are hard and have joints which divide them and the sinews can be contracted and relaxed and, with the flesh and the skin which contains them all, are laid about the bones; and so, as the bones are hung loose in their ligaments, the sinews, by relaxing and contracting, make me able to bend my limbs now, and that is the cause of my sitting here with my legs bent. . . But it is most absurd to call things of that sort causes. . .to say that those things are the cause of my doing what I do, and that I act with intelligence but not form the choice of what is best, would be an extremely careless way of talking. Whoever talks in that way is unable to make a distinction and to see that in reality a cause is one thing, and the thing without which the cause could never be is a cause is quite another thing.
And so one man makes the earth stay below the heavens by putting a vortex about it, and another regards the earth as a flat trough supported on a foundation of air; but they do not look for the power which causes things to be now placed as it is best for them to be placed, nor do they think it has any divine force, but they think they can find a new Atlas more powerful and more immortal and more all-embracing than this [GUT], and in truth they give no thgouth to the good, which must embrace and hold together all things.
There's a problem with this view analogous to the idea that mathematicians have nothing to do with physicists or biologists. This is the problem involved with the concept of a grand unified theory. It's only so grand as the membership permits.
It's simple, really. Well, it isn't simple. Anyway, the Sun runs by electricty and not fusion. ("The Electric Universe.") Quasars aren't as far away as they look because some of them are sitting right next to closer stuff in the sky. ("Halton Arp.") The Earth used to be close to Saturn which was right over the North Pole but now Earth or Saturn has moved, I forget which. ("The Kronia Hypothesis.") Earth history has been spuriously expanded and needs to be recompressed. The Harrappan Civilization is really the same as the seemingly much later Persians, for one thing. ("Gunnar Heinsohn" or some name close to that.) Psychic parrots exist. (I forget the source of that one.)
Socrate asked the question I posed.
And Socrates did so better than I did.
All these topics were brought to FR by the poster named "medved," now banned. His real name is Ted Holden and you can Google to see how famous he has become.
Thanks for clearing that up.
But I suppose you get the idea.
cultural paleontology placemarker.
Cosmetology?
Rupert Sheldrake?
But wait, it's more than just an element transmuter; it's a Free-Energy source, too! Biblically inspired, too! (I'm not making this stuff up, folks.)
The rag-tag collection of weirdos, nutcases, and defrocked professors who worked dilligently in their garage/basement la-BOR-atories and dreamed up this lunacy suddenly disappeared just as their device was supposed to go into production. ("I'm shocked, shocked!").
The Freeper formerly know as "medved" was a big booster of these charlatans, and he himself is notorious on the 'net. MY favorite website dedicated to his scientific inanities is:
http://www.infidels.org/infidels/web.scan/1998/scan03.html
where he is affectionately referred to as "The Clown Prince of Astrophysics"
And you could buy your very own demo unit for a mere $1,500 if you got in fast. Apparently, if you didn't get in fast, you didn't get in.
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