11-22-2006, 06:29 PM
Hi
well I tend to be consevative.
I do feel that changing mind sets is fine but one still has to stick to the rules. In other words you can have your mind set to something and yet that something be impossible. I am skeptical of minds. People have not only good ideas but mostly bad ideas and some even mad ones. The notion that new ideas or a new mind-sets are automatically good because they are refreshing and get things moving after stagnation is a myth.
I've used the following example before: people, some very intelligent and very creative, used to try, and some still try, to invent perpetual motion machines. One can have all the creative and innovative mind-sets he wants but pertual motion machines just don't work! The same goes for other natural phenomena and laws. They are called laws but do not think they are similar to human laws (legislation). The latter do evolve as society does evolve and mind-sets change. But natural laws are different. For example energy is conserved! And if one finds an instance where it seems not to be then it is actually more useful and, if you think about it more courageous, to insist to consider it conserved and look for a reason rather than dismiss the law as simply being wrong in your particular instance.
This actually happened in the thirties. Very intelligent people really did for a moment think that maybe energy was not conserved in nuclear reactions of a particular type ("weak" decays). Everytime they measured the energy at the end of the reaction they found that it was less than the energy at the beginning. A few, including Fermi, thought that the missing energy was taken away my a special as of yet un-observed particle called the neutrino. It was a brave hypothesis. Fermi believed it enough to set to work to deduce the properties of this mysterious particle. It was a great work of theoretical physics. Twenty years later in the fifties the particle was "observed" and just a couple of months ago a whole beam of these neutrinos were shot straight from Geneva into the Earth aimed at Italy and successfully detected! The neutrino was found and is used because the idea that energy was conserved was USED and not prematurely abandoned. The mind-set of Fermi was more creative and brave than the mind-sets of those that too soon were willing to give in and allow the law of conservation of energy to have an exception. So it is not at all obvious when to give up an idea or change mind-sets. The worst thing you can do is assume an idea or mind-set is good just because it is new.
A law of science is a tool for looking at nature in a powerful way and not a castrating straight-jacket for hindering people in arbitrary ways. Human laws do that.
well I tend to be consevative.
I do feel that changing mind sets is fine but one still has to stick to the rules. In other words you can have your mind set to something and yet that something be impossible. I am skeptical of minds. People have not only good ideas but mostly bad ideas and some even mad ones. The notion that new ideas or a new mind-sets are automatically good because they are refreshing and get things moving after stagnation is a myth.
I've used the following example before: people, some very intelligent and very creative, used to try, and some still try, to invent perpetual motion machines. One can have all the creative and innovative mind-sets he wants but pertual motion machines just don't work! The same goes for other natural phenomena and laws. They are called laws but do not think they are similar to human laws (legislation). The latter do evolve as society does evolve and mind-sets change. But natural laws are different. For example energy is conserved! And if one finds an instance where it seems not to be then it is actually more useful and, if you think about it more courageous, to insist to consider it conserved and look for a reason rather than dismiss the law as simply being wrong in your particular instance.
This actually happened in the thirties. Very intelligent people really did for a moment think that maybe energy was not conserved in nuclear reactions of a particular type ("weak" decays). Everytime they measured the energy at the end of the reaction they found that it was less than the energy at the beginning. A few, including Fermi, thought that the missing energy was taken away my a special as of yet un-observed particle called the neutrino. It was a brave hypothesis. Fermi believed it enough to set to work to deduce the properties of this mysterious particle. It was a great work of theoretical physics. Twenty years later in the fifties the particle was "observed" and just a couple of months ago a whole beam of these neutrinos were shot straight from Geneva into the Earth aimed at Italy and successfully detected! The neutrino was found and is used because the idea that energy was conserved was USED and not prematurely abandoned. The mind-set of Fermi was more creative and brave than the mind-sets of those that too soon were willing to give in and allow the law of conservation of energy to have an exception. So it is not at all obvious when to give up an idea or change mind-sets. The worst thing you can do is assume an idea or mind-set is good just because it is new.
A law of science is a tool for looking at nature in a powerful way and not a castrating straight-jacket for hindering people in arbitrary ways. Human laws do that.
Jeffery Wyss
"Si vos es non secui of solutio tunc vos es secui of preciptate."
"Si vos es non secui of solutio tunc vos es secui of preciptate."
