On January 9th of 2004 in his BEL program (titled “”Can I Get a Big Mac Please?”), starting a little after 53 minutes in, Bob makes a point that he brings up occasionally:
Big talk? No. It’s just that since Newton, the knowledge that underlies science has expanded very literally a hundred-fold. Typical engineering students take mathematics classes that weren’t even conceived of when Newton lived. One problem that Newton worked on for a couple of decades was about how the gravity changes as you descend into a planet. Freshman or Sophomore Physics students solve that same problem today.
It may be that Newton, if he could be time-warped to today, could soon advance to the forefront of science once again. But is it likely that in so doing he would come to a conclusion diametrically opposite the army of today’s astrophysicists who feel that there is an immense amount of theoretical and observation evidence that solar systems can and do form from gas and dust clouds? Are today’s astrophysicists uniformly deluded?
Bob goes clear back to Newton for support against solar systems condensing out of clouds, rather than accepting the judgement of hundreds of physicists today. So if Bob had a question about how to carry hundreds of people across the ocean at 40,000 feet altitude in air conditioned comfort, who would he turn to? Not Airbus or Boeing – but to the Wright Brothers. Yeah, they are the ultimate authorities on flight, since they helped to start the field. And faced with a need to communicate with the distant Voyager spacecraft, certainly we should not ask Rockwell-Collins or Raytheon, but Marconi. After all, wasn’t he one of the fathers of radio?
Many scientists are jealous. Of Newton. They wish they had the insight and mental clarity that Newton had. And many of them can beat him silly in a scientific contest.
Big talk? No. It’s just that since Newton, the knowledge that underlies science has expanded very literally a hundred-fold. Typical engineering students take mathematics classes that weren’t even conceived of when Newton lived. One problem that Newton worked on for a couple of decades was about how the gravity changes as you descend into a planet. Freshman or Sophomore Physics students solve that same problem today.
It may be that Newton, if he could be time-warped to today, could soon advance to the forefront of science once again. But is it likely that in so doing he would come to a conclusion diametrically opposite the army of today’s astrophysicists who feel that there is an immense amount of theoretical and observation evidence that solar systems can and do form from gas and dust clouds? Are today’s astrophysicists uniformly deluded?
Bob goes clear back to Newton for support against solar systems condensing out of clouds, rather than accepting the judgement of hundreds of physicists today. So if Bob had a question about how to carry hundreds of people across the ocean at 40,000 feet altitude in air conditioned comfort, who would he turn to? Not Airbus or Boeing – but to the Wright Brothers. Yeah, they are the ultimate authorities on flight, since they helped to start the field. And faced with a need to communicate with the distant Voyager spacecraft, certainly we should not ask Rockwell-Collins or Raytheon, but Marconi. After all, wasn’t he one of the fathers of radio?
