Posted on 05/17/2016 7:54:31 AM PDT by Kaslin
New scientific discoveries in astrophysics and archeology make the notion of “settled science” risible. They also bring to mind the wisdom of Donald Rumsfeld in stressing the vital importance of “unknown unknowns.”
Of course, it has always been thus.
Once, an Indian mystic was explaining to an Englishman the structure of the universe. The world sits atop a giant elephant, said the holy man.
That’s all well and good, responded the Englishman with classic Anglican sense, but what does the elephant stand on? The wise-man’s eyes widened and he exclaimed, Why, it stands upon the shell of a grand and cosmic tortoise, of course!
That’s all well and good, again responded the Englishman, but what does the tortoise stand on
Surprisingly, this second question startled the fakir. Scratching his head, he thought for a minute, then replied with a single Hindi word that may roughly be translated as:
“Something I know not what.”
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
In Whom we live and move and have our being.
Poor Englishman. Doesn’t he know?
It is Turtles all the way down...
Settled Science is one of the few absolutes liberals believe in.
It was once settled science that the earth was flat.
It was once settled science that the earth was the center of the universe.
It was once settled science that bleeding sick people with leeches was an effective medical procedure.
Forty years ago it was settled science that the earth was entering a new ice age.
I would like to know the Indian mystic's explanation of what backs the U.S. Dollar.
Settled science is a nonsense concept even when a finding is correct, the discovery asks at least two more important questions. We aren’t anywhere close to a general theory of climate so the “science is settled” is a political statement.
While it is trite to press on the assumptions of this article, it is clear (to me) that little, if anything, shows failure of the scientific method of (generic) thesis, antithesis, synthesis [theory, disprove, adjust to new theory]. Dark matter / energy is an unknown but is roughly quantified and being actively explored. Anomalous ruins are not being explained away but rather are being explored to adjust current and possibly erroneous assumptions.
Within my lifetime we have had MAJOR upsets in non-political science that have rendered numerous textbooks obsolete. Continental drift, extinction events from space and the origin of our Moon just to name three. The proven record of true science takes given facts, hypothesizes causes and effects and then adjusts to account for new facts as needed.
As the late, great Science Fiction author, Roger Zelazny, once framed as an intellectual compass; "The four points of the compass be logic, knowledge, wisdom and the unknown. Some do bow in that final direction. Others advance upon it. To bow before the one is to lose sight of the three. I may submit to the unknown, but never to the unknowable.” ― Roger Zelazny, Lord of Light
Turtles.
All the way down.
Thanks for posting...
I’m still skeptical about Dark Matter and Dark Energy.
Galaxies rotate at a different speed than predicted by our theories of gravity. Therefore, 95% of the universe must be invisible, odorless, tasteless, and undetectable, in order to keep our theories inviolate.
The alternative to Dark Matter is MOND, Modified Newtonian Dynamics, which assumes that maybe gravity works a little different than we’ve discovered so far, when it acts over great distances. MOND can explain many of the galactic rotational discrepancies. Dark Matter is equivalent to saying the planets move because angels are pushing them.
Dark Energy is the explanation for discrepancies between the distance to far galaxies, and the Doppler shift toward the red in their spectra, which is interpreted as their speed away from us. Our measurements of such distances are based on a wobbly stack of assumptions. Rather than question the assumptions, it’s much easier to, again, invoke an invisible undetectable Something that explains the observations.
Ask Cthulhu. I think he'll know.
Dick Cheney. Not Rumsfeld. It wasn't original to Cheney either.
Darn, you beat me!
Paper, all the way down.
Toilet paper, that is....
"There are known knowns" is a phrase from a response United States Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld gave to a question at a U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) news briefing on February 12, 2002 about the lack of evidence linking the government of Iraq with the supply of weapons of mass destruction to terrorist groups.
Rumsfeld stated:
Reports that say that something hasn't happened are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns – the ones we don't know we don't know. And if one looks throughout the history of our country and other free countries, it is the latter category that tend to be the difficult ones.
He wasn't however the first one who used the phrase
The idea of unknown unknowns was created in 1955 by two American psychologists, Joseph Luft (1916–2014) and Harrington Ingham (1916–1995). They used it as a technique to help people better understand their relationship with themselves as well as others. It was also commonly used inside NASA.
And as you can see there is no mention of Dick Cheney
Great. Now I’ve got White Rabbit stuck in my head.
With wildly different lyrics.
Settled science used to include bloodletting, Earth as center of the universe, spunk-water to cure warts, fall-off-the-edge-of-the-flat Earth, witchcraft...
You might well be right about that,as a quick look at google agrees with you. I coulda sworn that Cheney was the one who took heat for that when it was first reported. I never understood the criticism in any case, because it seems perfectly logical and reasonable to understand that things you do not know that you do not know will bite you in the ass.
Actually it wasn't. Eratosthenes, born in 276 BC, not only knew that the Earth was a sphere, but through a clever experiment, measured its diameter, getting a value very close to the one we know today.
Moreover, the idea that people once believed the Earth was flat is a 19th Century bit of anti-Catholic bigotry.
For the complete story, see J. B. Russell's book Inventing the Flat Earth. As Russell says, the most interesting question is why we still believe this false legend, when there is ample evidence to the contrary.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.