- #1
elerner
- 45
- 14
This continues the “Big Bang” thread which was locked. I trust this does not mean that scientific criticism of 'mainstream theories" is banned here.
I notice that “chronos” has not responded. Perhaps scientific debate is not his thing.
The question of scientific method is key—we debated this a bit at our conference in Moncao, although not in the same terms.
Let us see if we can get away from quoting authorities (not very scientific!) and determine objectively what the scientific method is.
How do we know science is true, that it gives us a more accurate view of the universe than say, magic? The ultimate answer lies in technology, and in the last analysis, in our own existence. We can “prove” the validity of our theories of chemistry and some of what we know of biology by producing artificial fertilizers, which really do greatly increase the production of food. No artificial fertilizers, no 6 billion people on earth. If our theories were wrong, most of us would not be alive to argue about it.
Technology requires predictability, that certain things you do in the world will produce predictable results. Trial and error could never get you too artificial fertilizer—there are too many variables. So a theory that makes wrong predictions, or does not make any predictions at all, even if it “explains” things you already know, is worthless.
This is true even in fields, like cosmology that are APPARENTLY far from technological use. In fact if we look at the history of science, valid science generally gets applied technologically fairly rapidly. Europeans had a great deal of interest in the motions of the moon and planets by the time of Kepler and Newton because if you could reliably predict where at a given moment these objects were against the background of distant stars, by observing them, you could tell time. If you knew the absolute time, and could figure your local time easily by sunrise or sunset, you could find your longitude. That was worth a lot of money and many lives in crossing the Atlantic and Pacific. The epicycles of Ptolemy could “explain” the motions of the plants—ignoring a few anomalies—but could not accurately predict them.
Similarly, the Big Bang is a sterile theory because with it you can’t predict new things, you can only ‘explain’ observations you’ve already got by fitting parameters or inventing new entities. Plasma cosmology, as a contrary example, is based on the close connection between the phenomena of the cosmos and that of the laboratory. Some of the very same theories that can explain cosmic phenomena, like quasars, may well be used to produce fusion energy here on earth.
One other point briefly—someone asked how do stars produce deuterium? This is well known—protons accelerated by stars as cosmic rays can collide with protons in the interstellar medium to produce pions and deuterium. This is later incorporated into new stars. Others pointed this out as well as I, and I made quantitive predictions back in ’89 of the D abundance, which worked out quite well.
Eric Lerner
I notice that “chronos” has not responded. Perhaps scientific debate is not his thing.
The question of scientific method is key—we debated this a bit at our conference in Moncao, although not in the same terms.
Let us see if we can get away from quoting authorities (not very scientific!) and determine objectively what the scientific method is.
How do we know science is true, that it gives us a more accurate view of the universe than say, magic? The ultimate answer lies in technology, and in the last analysis, in our own existence. We can “prove” the validity of our theories of chemistry and some of what we know of biology by producing artificial fertilizers, which really do greatly increase the production of food. No artificial fertilizers, no 6 billion people on earth. If our theories were wrong, most of us would not be alive to argue about it.
Technology requires predictability, that certain things you do in the world will produce predictable results. Trial and error could never get you too artificial fertilizer—there are too many variables. So a theory that makes wrong predictions, or does not make any predictions at all, even if it “explains” things you already know, is worthless.
This is true even in fields, like cosmology that are APPARENTLY far from technological use. In fact if we look at the history of science, valid science generally gets applied technologically fairly rapidly. Europeans had a great deal of interest in the motions of the moon and planets by the time of Kepler and Newton because if you could reliably predict where at a given moment these objects were against the background of distant stars, by observing them, you could tell time. If you knew the absolute time, and could figure your local time easily by sunrise or sunset, you could find your longitude. That was worth a lot of money and many lives in crossing the Atlantic and Pacific. The epicycles of Ptolemy could “explain” the motions of the plants—ignoring a few anomalies—but could not accurately predict them.
Similarly, the Big Bang is a sterile theory because with it you can’t predict new things, you can only ‘explain’ observations you’ve already got by fitting parameters or inventing new entities. Plasma cosmology, as a contrary example, is based on the close connection between the phenomena of the cosmos and that of the laboratory. Some of the very same theories that can explain cosmic phenomena, like quasars, may well be used to produce fusion energy here on earth.
One other point briefly—someone asked how do stars produce deuterium? This is well known—protons accelerated by stars as cosmic rays can collide with protons in the interstellar medium to produce pions and deuterium. This is later incorporated into new stars. Others pointed this out as well as I, and I made quantitive predictions back in ’89 of the D abundance, which worked out quite well.
Eric Lerner
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