The point I’m trying to make is that science is a method of discovery, not a list of facts, and if we want to excite people we will be better off stressing the discovery aspect.

Also see my review at http://homepages.ihug.co.nz/~fiski/ouu_review.html

The flaws of this crackpot book are many and include:
* Redefining the concept of infinity as a length with magnitude.
* Defining a line as a series of points written as zeros, treating them as numbers so that they add up to zero and then treating the number zero as a point again!
* A really bad atomic model “proving” that a electron orbiting a proton has a ground state that it cannot decay from by creating a new physical law.
* Using the high school description of a neutron as a proton plus an electron and not realizing that this is just his atomic model!
* Postulating that galaxies have “galactic cores” which are super massive objects that are not quite black holes and not realizing that the centre of the Milky Way is well observed. These recycle stars into hydrogen. Oddly enough astronomers have not noticed dozens of stars vanishing from the galactic centre in the many images that they have taken over the last few decades.

Conclusion: Bad mathematics and even worse physics.

So you’ve decided have nothing to say on Neurologica isn’t enough?

I don’t know about the ‘Big Bang’ – cosmology is too weird to me.

However, I doubt anyone will be laughing at evolution in 100 years or even in 1000 years. Not everything is known and the theory as a whole will continue to be refined, but I doubt it will be thrown away.

Have a look at Newton’s laws of mechanics. Even Newton was aware of severe deficiencies (there were a number of things he couldn’t explain) and yet Newton’s laws still stand. It’s just that on a scale of very big and very small things don’t work so well and even Newton was well aware of that horrible rock called “Mercury” which just didn’t quite behave as anyone’s model predicted – an unfortunate side-effect of the (incorrect) assumption that gravity acts instantaneously. Then again, Newton wasn’t to blame for that – how do you design an experiment on earth with Newton-era technology to demonstrate that gravity isn’t instantaneous? Newton never seemed content with his explanation of colors either, and no one could satisfactorily explain polarization of light, but those challenge would remain for over 200 years. Newton was an ardent mystic and I laugh at that part of Newton’s history, but no one laughs at his pioneering work in mathematics or the more notable of his contributions to physics.

“Religion is a culture of faith; science is a culture of doubt.”

“Our freedom to doubt was born out of a struggle against authority in the early days of science. It was a very deep and strong struggle: permit us to question — to doubt — to not be sure. I think that it is important that we do not forget this struggle and thus perhaps lose what we have gained.”

Richard Feynman

“We have no right to assume that any physical laws exist, or if they have existed up until now, that they will continue to exist in a similar manner in the future.”

Max Planck

I will take Feynman and Planck over any living scientist on the nature of science. (And yes, I feel free to recognize their ignorance)
If you can’t imagine that the ‘big bang theory’ and ‘the theory of evolution’ won’t be laughable farces in 100 years, you have no business teaching science. It is those who teach these (and any other aspect of current science) as indisputable fact that makes science a religion and therefore properly shunned by any thoughtful person.

“Should we teach the controversy?” You thought science was something other than controversy?

NatGeo aired their special on Blue Whales a week ago; I was glued, as always, nature is simply astounding, especially at 400 tons of it in a single organism. My daughter was supposed to be paying attention to it, as we were watching together. It was obvious she wasn’t. When asked why she wasn’t interested in the show, the reply was that “science isn’t interesting, it’s boring”. That was like a sledgehammer to the face, actually just sat there dumbfounded for a moment.

After a bit of lengthy discussion, it became apparent what another major issue is, just as Dr. Sanford pointed out: sensationalism.

Youth in this country are incessantly bombarded with sensationalist tripe, garbage and non-information. So “discovery” from the scientific frontiers just doesn’t quite give the proper biochemical punch to the cerebrum in comparison.

No clear answer seems to make itself apparent at this time …

Great article, the real world ending for the central theme seems rather bleak though.