That Louis Pasteur with his crazy ideas, like…vaccinating people and the germ theory of disease and treating food to make it safe to eat.
Next thing you know, they’ll be telling us it’s a bad idea to sleep with our cousins or eat lead paint chips.
Don’t oversell it. Science is our best understanding of the truth. But as the public saw during the pandemic, science can be messy and contentious before it gets close to the truth.
I guess, but it depends what we mean by “science”, which I know sounds weasely off the bat.
There’s a difference between scientists trying to analyze a rapidly-progressing situation and give the best analysis and advice they can, and scientific models that have been verified, and indeed proven useful, thousands of times.
The public can sometimes conflate the two, and believe that just because one guy said masks would completely prevent infection, therefore we can ignore what they say about climate change or whatever.
I had a roommate once who said he didn’t believe something like the Big Bang could have happened without God causing it. It “didn’t make sense” to him.
This quote is attributed to Neil deGrasse Tyson:
The Universe is under no obligation to make sense to you.
That quote is a lot older than NDT. I’m not sure the actual origin, though.
I mean, not this scientific method, or our using our best knowledge to prevent disease, but the rules of the universe. Pi will always be Pi, not 22/7, F will always = MA, and bacterial will propagate in raw milk and can kill you dead, no matter what the internet tells you.
The value might be a constant, but the ratio of any particular circle to its diameter will not be pi if there’s any mass-energy within it.
Nitpick: A better descriptor would be the net force on an object (Fnet), and lowercase “m” is typically used for mass and lowercase “a” for acceleration (with the bold text indicating they are vector quantities), but in any event, when expressed in this manner (Fnet = m a), this relationship is only true for Newtonian (non-relativistic) mechanics.
And that is the sort of absolutely true but absolutely to non-impacting to daily life fact that also corrodes the public perception of science.
I finally got around to watching the Cumberbatch ‘Sherlock’, and loved Watson’s disbelief about him not knowing the Earth revolves around the Sun. The fact had no affect on his life, so he saw no reason to retain it. Similar to the ‘people thought the Earth was flat’. Lots of people knew it was round, but the for the vast majority it made no difference so they probably didn’t think about it or care. If asked, they might have said ‘flat’, because, for any trip they were likely to take, calculating distance or elapsed time as though it were flat was plenty accurate.
Depends on how you define a. If you call it the derivative of proper velocity with respect to time, then F = ma works out just fine.
Oh, there’ll be movement all right, ironically while sitting stationary on the throne.
What alternative would you recommend, then? Yes, when dealing with something new science is messy because it changes its views to match the data.
As I have said in discussions, if you want a fact that is forever and ever amen, talk to your pastor.
That’s a feature, not a bug.
Nitpick on a nitpick (from my high school physics teacher): Better yet, force is the first derivative of momentum with respect to time
Does that mean if I punch you fast it will hurt more? [asking for a friend]
But if I push for hours on a wall, and it doesn’t move, so no “work” is done, why do I get tired?
Your so-called “science” can’t explain that!
I’m off to drink warm unpasteruized milk. Talk to ya later, sheep…
I’ve always framed it as “The universe is not limited by your inability to comprehend it.” But that’s my own particular coinage; the basic idea isn’t remotely new.
We need an investigation into harmful Republiopath emissions.
So if a company, after market research, determines their customers like a particular thing (climate change action), then these Republican fuckwits think the federal government is obligated to interfere with their business decisions?
They sound like communists