Re: Labels and Obfuscations

ekurtz99_at_WhoKnowsWhere.com
Date: 02/23/05 

Date: Tue, 22 Feb 2005 22:42:22 -0500 (EST)

> Larry Moran wrote:
>>Kooks often challenge well-accepted ideas in science
>>and promote their own peculiar versions of reality.
>>They also like to propose new theories that will
>>overthrow the establishment. Kooks see themselves as
>>superior intellects and that's why they can see
>>things that the average scientists can't grasp.
>
Jim McGinn wrote:
> Yeah, who was that guy, about a hundred years ago,
> that tried to convince everybody that energy equals
> mass multiplied by speed of light squared?

By the time Einstein published the Special Theory he had already made
his name with a now-classic paper on the photon and the photoelectric
effect, for which he received the Nobel in 1921. Acceptance of the
Special theory came almost immediately, since it explained much that was
otherwise inexplicable - eg the precession of the orbit of Mercury.

> And on
> top of that, this kook hardly ever combed his hair!
> And then there's that bearded guy, about 500 years
> ago, who tried to convince everybody that the sun
> was the center of the solar system. Can you believe
> that! As if it isn't obvious that the earth is an
> immovable object.

Yes, but Copernicus thought the Sun was the center of the *World*, so
although he was closer to the truth than Ptolemy, he was still some way
away from it. Also he had not escaped the Greek reverence for circles,
and inevitably had to include many epicycles to make his model work.

Neither of these cases is relevant, since Einstein was not a struggling,
ridiculed outsider, and Copernicus was fighting the religious, not the
scientific establishment.

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