"Saying what needs to be said about the most sucky parts of physics"   #001 We would be 1,500 years ahead if it hadn't been for the church dragging science back by its coat tails and burning our best minds at the stake. - Catherine Fahringer (09/12/1922-2008) Not much to add here. From the Big Bang on down, physics is ridiculously religious. And current "models" are hopelessly useless because of it. #002 Religious scientists who were foundational to their fields: - Antiseptic Surgery: Joseph Lister - Bacteriology: Louis Pasteur - Calculus & Dynamics: Isaac Newton - Celestial Mechanics: Johannes Kepler - Chemistry: Robert Boyle - Comparative Anatomy: Georges Cuvier - Dimensional & Model Analysis: Lord Rayleigh - Electronics: John Ambrose Fleming - Electrodynamics: James Clerk Maxwell - Electromagnetics: Michael Faraday - Energetics: Lord Kelvin - Entomology: Henri Fabre - Fluid Mechanics: George Stokes - Galactic Astronomy: William Hershel - Genetics: Gregor Mendel - Glacial Geology: Louis Agassiz - Gynecology: James Simpson - Hydrography: Matthew Maury - Hydrostatics: Blaise Pascal - Ichthyology: Louis Agassiz - Isotopic Chemistry: William Ramsey - Natural History: John Ray - Non-Euclidean Geometry: Bernard Riemann - Oceanography: Matthew Maury - Optical Mineralogy: David Brewster Fundamentally most religions are inconsistent*. You've got this big guy who is supposedly all powerful, yet he has kryptonite level weaknesses (like some clearly even more powerful devil dude). You see, being religious is supposed to be good for your life, as long as you fatalistically put all of your trust in it, and bet your life...on an afterlife. The net result is that any religious scientist has a major area of inconsistency in their life that can not possibly help their physics and will force its way out -- Alien-like -- at the most critical moments. Einstein, once again, should be given major credit for being philosophical, not religious. * - Buddhism as practiced by The Buddha was sound, but "all life is suffering" is not exactly well suited to describing the physics of the Universe. #003 Sometimes people hold a core belief that is very strong. When they are presented with evidence that works against that belief, the new evidence cannot be accepted. It would create a feeling that is extremely uncomfortable, called cognitive dissonance. And because it is so important to protect the core belief, they will rationalize, ignore and even deny anything that doesn't fit in with the core belief. - Frantz Fanon In every area of life, most people are prisoners of their feelings. They see a better way presented to them, often on a daily basis, yet they are seemingly powerless to change. Most tEmP theorists are comfortably immersed in their work and do not even see the need for change, let alone being at the point of seriously contemplating it. Blame here must be placed on the media, that seems to worship blinding explosions. If mainstream media had even a few picograms of credibility, they would hold tEmP theories to the fire. #004 Scientists have sometimes been the greatest offenders in adhering to dogmatic ideas against all the evidence. - Mary B. Hesse, 1955 In physics, for the past 100 years, scientists have always been the greatest offenders in adhering to dogmatic ideas against all the evidence. #005 The body is most fully developed from thirty to thirty-five years of age, the mind at about forty-nine. - Aristotle (384-322 BC) Even Aristotle, 2,300 years ago, knew that we did our best work later in life. Given that there is even more to learn today than in the time of Aristotle, we need to be even older today before we reach our mental peak. Yet the number bandied about these days is 30. Do your great stuff by 30, or become an Uber driver. tEmP theorists get this wrong, on purpose, to shut up the grey beards. Once you can turn a society against its elders, you will be in complete control of it. #006 Very few people do anything creative after the age of 35. The reason? Very few people do anything creative before 35. - Joel H. Hildebrand This is the real point. Rant In a world of tens of thousands of physicists -- a quadrillion neurons all focused on one subject -- the best you can do for a starting point is the Big Bang? Look, the Universe doesn't behave like something banging. Knock it off, wake up, and grow up. Anyone who believes in the Big Bang "model" is a bozo who will never accomplish a single worthwhile thing in their life. Before, after or during their 35th year. /Rant Ageism is an extremely effective way to control the majority. Physics takes many years to come up to speed with. By the time one is ready to open one's mouth, one must shut everything down because one's career is over. A perfect pre-emptive strike. By the way, Spring-And-Loop Theory was conceived of by a 55-year-old. #007 Physics isn't a religion. If it were, we'd have a much easier time raising money. - Leon Max Lederman Cute. Spring-And-Loop Theory's definition of easy money? Being paid $5,000,000,000 a year to smash things together. The hosts of Mythbusters must be incredibly jealous. #008 Those observations that I made in Leipzig in my youth and up to my 21st year, I usually call childish and of doubtful value. Those that I took later until my 28th year I call juvenile and fairly serviceable. The third group, however, which I made at Uraniborg during the last 21 years with the greatest care and with very accurate instruments at a more mature age, until I was fifty years of age, those I call the observations of my manhood, completely valid and absolutely certain. - Tycho Brahe Dude is underrated. #009 Physics is becoming so unbelievably complex that it is taking longer and longer to train a physicist. It is taking so long, in fact, to train a physicist to the place where he understands the nature of physical problems that he is already too old to solve them. - Eugene Paul Wigner This is dogma raised to an artform. Dogma as Terminator. In fairness to this interesting man, it is not his fault that we end up pondering this point. Physics today is a Tower of Babel. It is on the verge of collapse. And thank goodness. Spring-And-Loop Theory will grow up through the rubble, drawing sustenance from decades of rich organic human waste. #010 Science and religion are two identical words. - Victor Hugo Well, no, they are not the same. In fact, they are more like the exact opposites. You have confused sameness with "found together". They represent the two natural boundaries on life: stuff we know and can trust, stuff we don't know and must make awkwardly embarrassing guesses about. That turn out later to be wildly wrong. tEmP theories manage to be both at once. #011 There is more religion in men's science than there is science in their religion. - Henry David Thoreau The first half is the main thesis of this web page. The second half is true by definition. Religions aren't scientific, are terrified by science, run away from science and when forced to face science are destroyed by science. Still, when a naturalist shows greater understanding than most scientists, clearly the scientists need to change. #012 Looking back at the worst times, it always seems that they were times in which there were people who believed with absolute faith and absolute dogmatism in something. And they were so serious in this matter that they insisted that the rest of the world agree with them. And then they would do things that were directly inconsistent with their own beliefs in order to maintain that what they said was true. - Richard Feynman (1918-1988) The first two sentences perfectly describe physics today. The last sentence perfectly describes Feynman himself. His conjecture about gravity being discountable in the nucleus is a brilliant bit of ingenuousness. Feynman's Ph.D. advisor was John Archibald Wheeler, a man whose quote headlines the main COASALT page: "Behind it all is surely an idea so simple, so beautiful, so compelling that when -- in a decade, a century, or a millennium -- we grasp it, we will all say to each other, how could it have been otherwise? How could we have been so stupid for so long?" Feynman appears to have led physics directly away from simplicity. Deliberately? #013 No man can thoroughly master more than one art or science. - William Hazlitt, 1817 Generalizations themselves are dogmatic. The "key" to the good life is to try to master numerous arts and sciences. i.e. there are multiple keys, that one must pursue often for extended periods of time, and that change, expand and contract in importance throughout our lives. We need to do this so that we can then see through the many lies and deceptions that form our physical, mental and spiritual prisons. Luckily, once you crack the first conspiracy, you can rest assured you will see that scam again in the next one, and the next. Scammers are serial plagiarists. Ironically, the first line of Hazlitt's wiki page says: "William Hazlitt was an English essayist, drama and literary critic, painter, social commentator, and philosopher." Quite the laundry list for someone "only good at one thing". I wonder what his one thing was? Wiki lists him as a "Shakespearean scholar", but clearly it was Edward de Vere who used the Shakes-a-spear pen name. Hazlitt never even figured that out, apparently. Never mind, I found out his strength: Not entirely satisfied with his [family's] Presbyterian faith, he became a Unitarian minister - wiki #014 It is rigid dogma that destroys truth; and, please notice, my emphasis is not on the dogma, but on the rigidity. When men say of any question, "This is all there is to be known or said on the subject; investigation ends here," that is death. - Alfred North Whitehead This is the key point about dogma. It is a thought killer. And such a useful weapon for those wanting to keep us all stupid. Vaccinations are promoted in a dogmatic fashion. No one can question even a single vaccine. All vaccines are only good, with zero side effects. One's religious convictions are valueless in the face of the almighty vaccine gods. Fluoridation is promoted in exactly the same dogmatic way. Fluoridation is supposedly only good (when it turns out the human body has ZERO uses for the fluorine atom/fluoride ion). "Fluorine is safe" (when the "safe" dose equals the maximum safe dose, according to LD50 calculations). With such "safety" ignoring the dozens of other sources of fluorine in our increasingly toxic world. "Democratic socialism is good" because money grows on trees, apparently. Microwave radiation -- cell/cordless phones, cell towers, wireless routers, bluetooth & WiFi -- are all "totally safe" because?...ah, Reasons. Spelled M-O-N-E-Y. More here. #015 What we call 'science' is differentiated from the older myths not by being something distinct from a myth, but by being accompanied by a second-order tradition -- that of critically discussing the myth. In a certain sense, science is myth-making just as religion is. - Karl Popper It would be an improvement if many tEmP theorists thought this way. They would realize they need to elevate their thinking above this inferior level. Sadly most are below the level of awareness needed to see the flaws in physics today. By the way, it is important to point out that true science does not warrant a myth-making tag. Spring-And-Loop Theory is, if anything, a myth destruction machine -- operating with great bite strength and carborundum-like teeth.     #016 If I let myself believe anything on insufficient evidence, there may be no great harm done by the mere belief; it may be true after all, or I may never have occasion to exhibit it in outward acts. But I cannot help doing this great wrong towards Man, that I make myself credulous. The danger to society is not merely that it should believe wrong things, though that is great enough; but that it should become credulous, and lose the habit of testing things and inquiring into them; for then it must sink back into savagery. - William Kingdon Clifford credulous, adj. - disposed to believe too readily; gullible. The word "belief" has no constructive value. There is no reason to ever use it. #017 In physics, mathematics and astronautics, 'elderly' means over thirty; in the other disciplines, senile decay is sometimes postponed to the forties. There are, of course, glorious exceptions; but as every researcher just out of college knows, scientists of over fifty are good for nothing but board meetings, and should at all costs be kept out of the laboratory! - Arthur C. Clarke How does this sort of rubbish get started? Old is related to physical age and health whereas mental age varies with each individual. The value of youth is energy, and naivete. They don't know what they don't know, so are more willing to pound their head against a wall for extended periods of time. The value of the elderly mature person is greater experience, superior reasoning, intuitiveness cultivated from long hard decades of thought, levels of analysis that make the young look like children, and a Boss-level B.S. detector. At the start of the quantum era, youth won the day. And the nonsense level and complete inadequacy of quantum mechanics reflects this. Today every new observation breaks everything that went before it, yet lemming-like tEmP theorists charge toward each like rampaging hedgehogs. Only a much more developed mind can possibly cut through the innumerable layers of the rotting onion to excise the rot within. #018 If I make a decision it becomes a possession. I take pride in it, tend to defend it and will not listen to those who question it. If I make sense, then this is more dynamic -- I listen and can change it. A decision is something you polish. Sense-making is one's direction for the next period of time. - Paul Gleason There is little place for decisions in science. The decision to fix the speed of light, for example, was unwise. Deciding that things just attract each other for no reason is spectacularly foolish. Imaginging more than 3+1 dimensions, or 10500 universes? Looney bin material. Good luck to you. As to sense? That has also been called intuition. And is a much more reliable compass. By the way, a more productive analogy is that of a rock climber. When the climbing is easy, one has many choices and can recover quickly. As the climbing gets more difficult, we need to up our game. We need the right clothes, the right food, the right methods and the right climbing partner. But when faced with previously unclimbed pitches, something else is needed. We need to know our own weaknesses. Others may think we are the world's best climbers. We have to know exactly what we are capable of, what might be doable if we work at it, and what is clearly off the table. If we blindly and dogmatically decide we will climb to the top, no matter what, we might just do that. And/or end up dead. tEmP theorists are the opposite of rock climbers. They are rock smashers, pumping up their courage with the steroids of belief. They admire quantity of measurements over quality of analysis. Their heroes are the circus masters like deGrasse and Kaku. Long long ago they got off the mountain of physics, when they left the ether behind. Sucks to be them. #019 Science is the record of dead religions. - Oscar Wilde Oscar Wilde was a brilliant playwright and legendary wit. Not much of a scientists, though. This quote might be improved with the word "bad" like so: Bad science is the record of dead religions. There are other issues with the quote. For example, religions never die (because they are stillborn) so one can't actually refer to a dead religion. Hence: Bad sciences are like dead religions. And in that weird, divide-by-zero sense, tEmP theories are exactly like dead religions. tEmP theories never die because they have never lived. Once they discarded the ether, their theories were broken. They couldn't be confirmed. They couldn't be built off of. And they can't be killed because they are already dead. tEmP theorists are zombies, basically. And zombie movies and episodics are quite popular on Netflix. Does that mean dead religions would be quite popular on Netflix? #020 We have two alternatives: either we question our beliefs, or we don't. Either we accept our fixed versions of reality, or we begin to challenge them. - Pema Chodron We have two alternatives: either we poke ourselves in the eye with a sharp stick, or we don't. Hmmmm, that's a tough one. How about: Give me truth or give me death. And if truth doesn't yet exist in a field, count me in. What can be more interesting than pursuing truth? More rewarding than cordoning off of blind alleys? #021 It is exceptional that one should be able to acquire the understanding of a process without having previously acquired a deep familiarity with running it, with using it, before one has assimilated it in an instinctive and empirical way. Thus any discussion of the nature of intellectual effort in any field is difficult, unless it presupposes an easy, routine familiarity with that field. - John von Neumann Right. One needs a simple basic model, plus a lot of time, to get an intuitive understanding of a field. Physics today is a million lightyears from this, because it is so badly and deliberately broken. This is why physics has become phantasy -- faster than light travel, 10500 universes, more than 3+1 dimensions, dark matter, dark energy, etc. etc. etc. To counter this nonsense, you need "older" minds to wade through all that crud and come up with something better. Dogma sweeps over and drowns young minds the easiest. Think Hitler Youth. #022 I am an atheist, out and out. It took me a long time to say it. I've been an atheist for years and years, but somehow I felt it was intellectually unrespectable to say one was an atheist, because it assumed knowledge that one didn't have. Somehow, it was better to say one was a humanist or an agnostic. I finally decided that I'm a creature of emotion as well as of reason. Emotionally, I am an atheist. I don't have the evidence to prove that God doesn't exist, but I so strongly suspect he doesn't that I don't want to waste my time. - Isaac Asimov, "Free Inquiry", 1982 "Is it time wasting?" is possibly the GREATEST metric of them all. I don't waste time on fiction. Haven't for decades. What a fabulous time saver. Similarly, I don't waste on tEmP theories. Haven't for years now. So much more productive in coming up with new physics. No one is forced to listen to a preacher, so most don't. Similarly no one has to listen to tEmP theories. Time to completely shut off the dogma tap. #023 None of us wants to reject our core assumptions about the universe and start all over again. It is hard work, and it deprives us of nearly everything that makes us feel secure. - Michael Austin Yet it is the ONLY way forward in physics. Dogma survives because the opposite approach takes work. Actual effort. What a wild idea. #024 We call the one side religion, and we call the other science. Religion is always right. Science is always wrong; it is the very artifice of men. Science can never solve one problem without raising ten more problems. - George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) Shaw's expressed views were often contentious; he promoted eugenics and alphabet reform, and opposed vaccination and organised religion. - Wiki I guess what Bernard Shaw is saying here is "science is wrong, from religion's point of view, precisely because it isn't dogmatic." Times have changed and physics is now jumping the same dogmatic skipping rope as religion.     #025 If history and science have taught us anything, it is that passion and desire are not the same as truth. The human mind evolved to believe in the gods. It did not evolve to believe in biology. - Edward O. Wilson, "Consilience: The Unity Of Knowledge" Humans do appear to be inclined toward religions, through the circumstantial evidence of this very religious world. Pagans might not agree with such a sweeping generalization, however. And given how remarkably useless religions tend to be, this is ultimately a fatalistic quote. Then there is the fact that Edward Wilson is a deist, where wiki define deism as "a philosophical belief that posits that God exists as an uncaused First Cause ultimately responsible for the creation of the universe, but does not interfere directly with the created world" So a religious guy says humans are inclined to religion. Believe it (dogmatically) or burn in hell! Thanks, Edward, for making a fool of yourself. #026 A fool's brain digests philosophy into folly, science into superstition, and art into pedantry. Hence University education. - George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) Yes, universities are a breeding ground for the next generation of communists. By the way, is anything more dogmatic than communism? Preaching the same tropes decade after decade, flying blindly in the face of numerous communist dictatorship fails and not being able to stand up to scrutiny? All staples of communism. Both universities and communism have the same goal, of course. Teaching humans to behave like docile sheep. So they can be shorn whenever the wool prices are highest. #027 A man ceases to be a beginner in any given science, and becomes a master in that science, when he has learned that he is going to be a beginner all his life. - R. G. Collingwood No one would listen to this today. It is all about how to get clicks and likes. Being like-able or click-able implies that one is special, not a beginner. So we're doomed. Back to that quote for a second... It pays to be humble, yes. We need to bring fresh eyes and fresh approaches to things. And the more "stuck" a given field is, the more we need to look at things with beginner eyes. But we aren't beginners. That is just smarmy. And the idea that, as soon as we say we are beginners, we become masters, is downright stupid. Or smarmy2. #028 Science has made gods of us before we have deserved even to be men. - Jean Rostand, 1939 This was said just a few years before the first atomic bombs were detonated so it was rather prescient. A better word than 'gods', in this quote, would be power. Science is like a crude form of power that can be used for good or bad. Adding another power to man, who doesn't even understand that his name creates his nature; knows nothing about the cycles of time and thinks meat sounds appetizing? Not the greatest plan. Why do we do it then? Science is financed by the power hungry. More powerful computers, after all, can monitor and control us much better than weak computers. So, if you truly want a better world, get philosophical first. Science/power will come soon enough. Best have all the rules (and more importantly all the consequences) nailed first. #029 I was pretty good in science. But because of the small budget in science class, we couldn't do experiments in order to prove theories. We just believed everything. Actually I think that class was call Religion. Religion was always an easy class. All you had to do was suspend the logic and reasoning you were taught in all the other classes. - George Carlin Nobody sees the lunacy of religion, and dogma, than a comedian. I yield the rest of my time to Sir George. #030 A system such as classical mechanics may be 'scientific' to any degree you like; but those who uphold it dogmatically -- believing, perhaps, that it is their business to defend such a successful system against criticism as long as it is not conclusively disproved -- are adopting the very reverse of that critical attitude which is the proper one for the scientist. - Karl Popper Yet it happens a lot. Why? Because dogmatic people are controlled people. Do you think that the top religious people are dogmatic? Not a chance. They are as practical and materialistic as any person you will ever meet. They are carnival hucksters, vacuuming money from your pockets. They know exactly what they are doing, and belief plays no part in it. #031 A trend was a trend only because people thought it so. And in thinking it so, they made it so. - Tom Clancy tEmP theories are popular because tEmP theorists think they are popular. tEmP theorists, in drinking tEmP theory cool aid, get wasted. And wasted people attract more people to tEmP theories. It's a perfect pyramid scheme, and you're missing out! #032 The superstition of science scoffs at the superstition of faith. - James Anthony Froude Mr. Froude could have said "Judge not, that ye be not judged" and saved some words, but the author of "The Nemesis Of Faith" pretty much had to bring out the faith hammer. Don't get me wrong, I believe faith is absolutely the way to go. Always and forever. And ever. Ah, on second thought, maybe this quote is just a good warning, or reminder. #033 Acceptance without proof is the fundamental characteristic of Western religion; rejection without proof is the fundamental characteristic of Western science. - Gary Zukav Both are dogmatic, and judgmental, in a "without proof" sort of way, but it can be taken one stage further: Western science rejects everything not put forward by one of their own, while accepting everything put forward by one of their own. Translation: Most if not all physics Nobels are unearned. Which is something for a future talk. #034 A central lesson of science is that to understand complex issues (or even simple ones), we must try to free our minds of dogma and to guarantee the freedom to publish, to contradict and to experiment. Arguments from authority are unacceptable. - Carl Sagan Mostly a good quote, but to clarify, We the People are not obligated to pay for such experiments. Those Large Halcyon Concocters should be expecting an invoice from Us the People, asking for our billions back. #035 There is one great difficulty with a good hypothesis. When it is completed and rounded, the corners smooth and the content cohesive and coherent, it is likely to become a thing in itself, a work of art. It is then like a finished sonnet or a painting completed. One hates to disturb it. Even if subsequent information should shoot a hole in it, one hates to tear it down because it once was beautiful and whole. One of our leading scientists, having reasoned a reef in the Pacific, was unable for a long time to reconcile the lack of a reef, indicated by soundings, with the reef his mind told him was there. - John Steinbeck tEmP theorists refuse to throw useless, obviously broken, pile of junk, close-to-a-lie theories into the garbage. Luckily they are well paid for this lack of service. Relativity is untouchable. Quantum mechanics a sure thing (uncertain but sure). Even miserable String theory is billed as "so beautiful it must be right"...if you can believe that. In fact, there is zero that is beautiful about string theory. It is beautifully useless, beautifully bogus, beautifully diseased and produces different results from the same inputs on a beautifully regular basis. B-e-a-utiful. #036 A religion old or new, that stressed the magnificence of the universe as revealed by modern science, might be able to draw forth reserves of reverence and awe hardly tapped by the conventional faiths. Sooner or later such a religion will emerge. - Carl Sagan It's already here. Sheldrake calls it "The Dogma Of Science". #037 All possible truth is practical. To ask whether our conception of chair or table corresponds to the real chair or table apart from the uses to which they may be put, is as utterly meaningless and vain as to inquire whether a musical tone is red or yellow. - G. Stanley Hall A key method of control is to get us to contemplate what doesn't matter or can't possibly occur. "What is your favorite super hero?" or "If you could have a super power, what would it be?" are questions only suited to children. Even teenagers should let this go. tEmP theorists claiming the Standard Model is beautiful must be on crack meth. The "Standard" "Model" is neither of these things. Saying it is not practical establishes a new understatement World Record. Guinness has been notified. #038 There is something like a Puritan's restraint in the scientist who seeks truth: he keeps away from everything voluntaristic or emotional. - Albert Einstein There used to be restraint, Albert. Such times are long gone. Although you did qualify that as "the scientist who seeks truth". Most "scientists" today seek only a paycheck. #039 Scientific truth must transcend the individual. - Edwin G. Boring "Must's" are like "Thou shalt's". Commandments do science a disservice. And while you're at it, scientific truth should transcend the "must be beautiful" notion, since that is an individual notion and quite unquantifiable. Simple is good. Consistent is good. But beautiful? Who knows (and who cares)? #040 Science is being daily more and more personified and anthromorphized into a god. By and by they will say that science took our nature upon him, and sent down his only begotten son, Charles Darwin, or Huxley, into the world so that those who believe in him, etc.; and they will burn people for saying that science, after all, is only an expression for our ignorance of our own ignorance. - Samuel Butler They're doing this already with supposed global warming. The British press is forbidden from speaking out against global warming. The Press in America, land of the free, freely choose to not speak out against it. Conspiracy? Members of the press are not allowed to use this word. Q Anon? Forget about the mainstream media covering it. Safe subjects, and lots of product advertising, is ok. Feed them safe baby food, over and over and over again. They will learn to love it. And even if they don't, keep ramming it down their throats until something bursts. #041 Science commits suicide when it adopts a creed. - Thomas Henry Huxley (1825-1895) What if the creed is "I believe in the scientific method"? Scientific method is an empirical method of knowledge acquisition, which has characterized the development of natural science since at least the 17th century, involving careful observation, which includes rigorous skepticism about what one observes, given that cognitive assumptions about how the world works influence how one interprets a percept; formulating hypotheses, via induction, based on such observations; experimental testing and measurement of deductions drawn from the hypotheses; and refinement of the hypotheses based on the experimental findings. These are principles of the scientific method, as opposed to a definitive series of steps applicable to all scientific enterprises. The quote is wrong, if not ridiculous. Still, we must be careful what we creed. And be willing to revisit it in the future. #042 Almost always the men who achieve these fundamental inventions of a new paradigm have been either very young or very new to the field whose paradigm they change. - Thomas S. Kuhn, "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions" Some fields are new enough, or messed up enough (like physics), that whoever gets there first (and has time and energy to spare...a young person's strength) can stake a few claims. Usually minor. But Spring-And-Loop Theory's author was neither. The reality -- for truly fundamental inventions and new paradigms -- is the inverse of Kuhn's quote. The people behind fundamental inventions look at things differently from the mass of dogma-loving zombies. People new to a field won't do this. The very young will never do this. #043 Another source of fallacy is the vicious circle of illusions which consists on the one hand of believing what we see, and on the other in seeing what we believe. - Thomas Clifford Allbutt Religion, faith, dogma -- based on one or more fallacies. #044 Any dogma, based primarily on faith and emotionalism, is a dangerous weapon to use on others, since it is almost impossible to guarantee that the weapon will never be turned on the user. - Isaac Asimov (1920-1992) Every day I thank my lucky stars for Wikipedia's list of Unsolved Problems in Physics, where the dogma-sustained flaws of tEmP theories are on display for all to see. As to this quote, the six words after "Any dogma" can and should be deleted. Secondly, dogma is not dangerous because it can be used against the dogma-spewer. That is actually a good thing. Dogma is dangerous because many will blindly believe it, for a variety of reasons. Exposed dogma? Good. Unexposed dogma? Terrible. #045 The great obstacle to discovering the shape of the earth, the continents and the oceans was not ignorance, but the illusion of knowledge. - Daniel J. Boorstin Nothing has changed today. All physics vacuums have been filled with garbage. Dumpsters and hazmat suits are needed to rebuild physics. #046 Science alone of all the subjects contains within itself the lesson of the danger of belief in the infallibility of the greatest teachers of the preceding generation. - Richard Feynman (1918-1988) This point is most applicable to Feynman himself. A fountain of misdirection. World class vandal. #047 Preconceived, fixed notions can be more damaging than cannon. - Barbara Tuchman No one sees it coming. The enemy is misidentified, or not even recognized. Thinking is done "for us", and so any one with even a Planck mass of laziness will be tempted to tap the table and say "check". #048 Postulates are based on assumptions and adhered to by faith. Nothing in the Universe can shake them. - Isaac Asimov (1920-1992) Bad postulates -- i.e. the most important of tEmP theory ones -- are of this type. They are the deep scar tissue of the science world. Good postulates are supported by facts. And common sense. And obvious elegance. And consistency. And simplicity. And good people. tEmP theorists are sell outs. In time the physics swamp will be drained of such toxins. #049 Any one who is practically acquainted with scientific work is aware that those who refuse to go beyond fact, rarely get as far as fact. - Thomas Henry Huxley The point is that "fact" is not set in stone, even if it appears to be. When you commit to solving a problem, suspension of beliefs, dogmas and truisms is necessary side effect. It was only by this level of commitment that Planck conquered the black body problem. This -- the last truly great accomplishment in physics -- occurred in 1900. 118 years. Almost five generations ago. The war against the ether is already a one hundred year one. A lot is at stake, and few are fighting on the 8 chan side. #050 Art is more godlike than science. Science discovers; art creates. - John Opie Science creates as well. Just ask Michio Kaku or Brian Greene. The key difference is that art is unconstrained, while science is supposed to be. Bring on the chains, chain Spring-And-Loop Theory to a pillar and the temple of science dogma will soon crumble. #051 As a single footstep will not make a path on the earth, so a single thought will not make a pathway in the mind. To make a deep physical path, we walk again and again. To make a deep mental path, we must think over and over the kind of thoughts we wish to dominate our lives. - Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862) And this is how seemingly unsolvable problems are solved. This is great if the thoughts are fundamental, basic and true. It is also a perfect way to brainwash. Our so-called education system is terrific at the latter. No wonder physics, like all of life, is fully brainwashed and fully locked in. Good luck steering the herd of lemmings away from the cliff edge. Besides, that cliff edge is coming toward us. Toward our homes. Via forced vaccinations, fluoridation, fluoride-drugs, and pervasive microwave radiation. TheGreatCulling.com is their idea of a final solution. Sound appealing? #052 Of course, Behaviorism "works". So does torture. Give me a no-nonsense, down-to-earth behaviorist, a few drugs, and simple electrical appliances, and in six months I will have him reciting the Athanasian Creed in public. - Wystan Hugh Auden Today the pressure comes not from torture but from simple economic necessity. People need to earn a living, and in physics that means they must eat tEmP baby food. I don't think it is vegetarian. #053 As advertising always convinces the sponsor even more than the public, the scientists have become sold, and remain sold, on the idea that they have the key to the Absolute, and that nothing will do for Mr. Average Citizen but to stuff himself full of electrons. - Anthony Standen (1906-1993), "Science Is A Sacred Cow", 1950 Or large hadrons. Letting others do your thinking for you triggers an endless string of consequences. None of them good. #054 As to Science, she has never sought to ally herself to civil power. She has never attempted to throw odium or inflict social ruin on any human being. She has never subjected anyone to mental torment, physical torture, least of all to death, for the purpose of upholding or promoting her ideas. She presents herself unstained by cruelties and crimes. - John William Draper, "History Of The Conflict Between Religion And Science", 1874 Idealistic and honorable in its time, this is totally ridiculous to contemplate some 144 Earth orbits later. Today Science is a blunt instrument -- promoting a priesthood of "great" scientists while dishing out endless hammer blows via the public education dungeon masters to convince the 99% of their ignorance while offering a savior -- the elite priests of science. Dogma is alive and well, and treating us all like cattle. #055 Assumption is one dreadful and incurable disease, that sticks to the soul and wiggles across the skin. - Aniruddha Sastikar Now you know why there is an endless bombardment of dogmatic nonsense. Lies don't work by being told just once. Slip an idiotic assumption like the Big Bang into every young scientists teachings, set Repetition Level to 1,000 and you generate perfect NPCs. #056 Authorities agree that Earth holds firm her place at the center of the Universe, and they regard the contrary as unthinkable, nay as absurd. Yet if we examine more closely it will be seen that this question is not so settled, and needs wider consideration. - Nicolaus Copernicus, "De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium" This is how a better theory appears in its day. A small voice of reason. Surrounded by thunderous footsteps and taunting voices. #057 Belief begins where science leaves off and ends where science begins. - Rudolf Virchow It SHOULD begin and end there, but it doesn't because belief is such an important part of controlling things. Luckily belief can also be used as a lie detector. You want me to believe that vaccines are good? Ok, you are a liar and I am now convinced the opposite is true. Your web site censors anti-microwave radiation posts while allowing droves of pro-microwave posts to be made? Ok, Ars Technica, you are on my excrement list. Forever. Both sides can play the censorship game. #058 Belief is the death of intelligence. As soon as one believes a doctrine of any sort, or assumes certitude, one stops thinking about that aspect of existence. The more certitude one assumes, the less there is left to think about, and a person sure of everything would never have any need to think about anything and might be considered clinically dead under current medical standards, where absence of brain activity is taken to mean that life has ended. - Robert Anton Wilson Another underrated intelligence. #059 Belief is the wound that knowledge heals. - Ursula Le Guin Belief is how wars are started. And not just religious wars. Whip your army up to frenzy of hate and violence, and the world is your oyster. #060 Dogmatic reason ties a huge rock to a man's foot and stops him forever from advancing. - Mehmet Murat Ildan tEmP theories aren't advancing. Check. Dogma is to blame. Check. But everyone is making money from the system, so let's just watch the pretty supernovas. Deal! #061 Doubtless many can recall certain books which have greatly influenced their lives, and in my own case one stands out especially -- a translation of Hofmeister's epoch-making treatise on the comparative morphology of plants. This book, studied while an undergraduate at the University of Michigan, was undoubtedly the most important factor in determining the trend of my botanical investigation for many years. - Douglas Houghton Campbell "The Way Of Zen", "Zen in the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" or "Zen in the Art of Archery" -- one or more of these should be considered essential for opening up the thinking to non-Western (i.e. non-dogmatic) thought patterns. #062 Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught. - Oscar Wilde But oh the joy of realizing something. Especially something worthwhile. Priceless. And free. #063 Education is the process of driving a set of prejudices down your throat. - Martin H. Fischer Yummy, yummy prejudices. #064 Effect, n: The second of two phenomena which always occur together in the same order. The first, called a Cause, is said to generate the other -- which is no more sensible than it would be for one who has never seen a dog except in pursuit of a rabbit to declare the rabbit the cause of the dog. - Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary" We couldn't find the ether (in the two places we checked) so it doesn't exist. #065 Enormous numbers of people are taken in, or at least beguiled and fascinated, by what seems to be unbelievable hocum, and relatively few are concerned with or thrilled by the astounding -- yet true -- facts of science, as put forth in the pages of, say, Scientific American. - Douglas Hofstadter, in 1985 Thirty years later, things are even worse. Dark things control all matter and energy, smashing things against other things passes for science, and Scientific American is a physics-free zone. Except for that 2015 special edition marking the 100th anniversary of Einstein's General Relativity. That was half the price of 2015 special edition put out by Newsweek that marked the 40th anniversary of Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon. I did learn something from the latter -- Syd Barrett was actually Roger Barrett, but they already had someone with that first name. Interesting that the two biggest screw-ups were those same two Rogers. Heh, what's in a name? #066 Even if the received opinion be not only true, but the whole truth; unless it is vigorously and earnestly contested, it will, by most of those who receive it, be held in the manner of a prejudice, with little comprehension or feeling of its rational grounds. - John Stuart Mill (1806-1873), "On Liberty" Yes, people hate hearing the truth. Weird, isn't it? By the way, "contested" should be "promoted". #067 Even the most logical religion starts out with patently false assumptions. - H.L. Mencken Except things are the other way around. One person figures some stuff out. Others notice. And then follow. The original guy dies. The others are, generally, lost. But have grown used to being the big fish in a small pond. A religion soon forms. THEN the false assumptions appear. Saying things differently, nothing starts as a religion. Except maybe Scientology. Religion is the disease that appears when the life has gone out of something. #068 Even those who appear to be free-thinkers are creatures of public opinion as much as they are conformists -- actors of nonconformism in the theater of the conformists who admire and applaud nonconformity of certain kinds, the kinds that radicalize the already dominant opinions. - Allan Bloom (1930-1992), "The Closing of the American Mind" The above paragraph scored a 25.8 on the Gunning Fog scale, earning a rating of "EXTREMELY difficult to read". [A rating of 12 requires the reading level of a high school senior.] With that first word in caps even. Ouch! Is Professor Bloom closing American minds all by himself? I mean, who am I to use for COASALT references about the declines in intelligence these days? Bloom has worked himself out of a job by being too smart. A rare achievement. Ed Witten was previously the only such person. #069 Our duty is to believe that for which we have sufficient evidence, and to suspend our judgment when we have not. - John Lubbock, "The Use Of Life", 1895 Pretty clear in 1895 what our duty was. 123 years later and we think the Earth is flat. I'm betting on the beetles. #070 Every great scientific truth goes through three states: first, people say it conflicts with the Bible; next, they say it has been discovered before; lastly, they say they always believed it. - Louis Agassiz Plenty of great scientific fraud goes through the same progression. The "Big Bang" began as a derogatory term. We found out the Universe was expanding while in the process of confirming it was contracting. The problem with gravity that prompted the term "Dark matter" is not solved by matter. Any type of matter. Any amount. Any density. Any properties. Dark, light or half and half. Why? Because the curve is not just "out by one" -- not wrong by any systematic amount. Rather the curve is broken when it comes to stars orbiting black holes. Curve one can not become curve two with any consistent addition of dark matter. So a problem that prompted a "we don't know" quickly became the "Eureka, we've found dark matter!" label. [Eureka, we're stupid!] Used every time a new anomaly in tEmP theories is found. tEmP ignorance is a growth industry, and the snowball is almost too big to roll any further. It's a jungle out there Eve. #071 Every variety of philosophical and theological opinion was represented in The Metaphysical Society, and expressed itself with entire openness; most of my colleages were -ists of one sort or another; and, however kind and friendly they might be, I, the man without a rag of a label to cover himself with, could not fail to have some of the uneasy feelings which must have beset the historical fox when, after leaving the trap in which his tail remained, he presented himself to his normally elongated companions. So I took thought, and invented what I conceived to be the appropriate title of 'agnostic'. - Thomas Henry Huxley I don't believe him. #072 Experience hobbles progress and leads to abandonment of difficult problems. Youth without experience attacks the unsolved problems, and from the labors of youth comes progress. Youth has dreams and visions, and will not be denied. - William James Mayo A spectacularly ridiculous generalization. And yes this guy is one of the founders of the Mayo clinic. All hail conventional cut-and-poison medicine. Sieg heil! Sieg heil means "hail victory" by the way. Even that phrase has been corrupted. By Leftists. Who coined the term. For their war to benefit their banks and their 1% selves. #073 Experience is never at fault; it is only your judgment that is in error. - Leonardo da Vinci Experience is indeed a good thing, and our judgments do all the damage, generally. So yes, Leonardo da Vinci is smart. For anyone that was wondering. #074 Faith is a fine invention When Gentlemen can see But Microscopes are prudent In an Emergency. - Emily Elizabeth Dickinson Poetry is almost unbearable, at the best of times. Here one can reasonably wonder why the second sentence is even there. It is content-free, and possibly sexist. "Microscopes are prudent in an emergency" is a phrase that no one has ever used ever. Here is my reworking of Ms. Dickinson's poem: Faith isn't fine. Use the scientific method. Unlimited rights to use and reuse the above are granted to all until the end of time. #075 Faith means lies at any price. - Friedrich Nietzsche True enough. #076 Fear explains not only conformity to the behavior of others but also the adoption of the valuations of others. First, people behave as if these valuations were their own too, because they are afraid not to conform; then they get used to this pretense and "it becomes second nature". - Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1742-1799) Sadly, I think Mr. Lichtenberg is serious. I mean, he is German so he must be. I kid, I kid. You know, that thing we were allowed to do before political correctness made us all Boxer-the-horse idiots. Ok now I'm afraid I've gone too far. That fear, she's a meanie. #077 First causes are outside the realm of science. - Claude Bernard (1813-1878), physiologist Ah, why are they outside the realm of science? Oh mighty phsiologist speaking for all scientists. Look, if you don't have the answers, you can't speak about whether they are gettable or not. Sheesh. "I can't find them so they must not be there. Them ether ninjas are the slipperiest." #078 For a while, I thought of myself as an atheist, until I realized it was a belief, too. - George Denis Patrick Carlin (1937-2008) tEmP theorists are atheistic about the ether. With that assumption, what chance do they have? We are all just one or two assumptions away. From being happy, healthy and free. #079 For one person who is blessed with the power of invention, many will always be found who have the capacity of applying principles. - Charles Babbage True enough. And those few who invent are relentlessly criticized (Nikola Tesla), ignored (Gregor Mendel) or stolen from (Robert Kearns). Still, both groups are needed. Sometimes we are the hammers and sometimes we hold the nails. So that we can get our thumbs hit with the hammers. #080 For people to refuse a hearing to an opinion, because they are sure that it is false, is to assume that their certainty is the same thing as absolute certainty. All silencing of discussion is an assumption of infallibility. - John Stuart Mill, "On Liberty" Supposed scientists silence doubters with "You're not scientific!" They never elaborate, and rarely even have a point. Still, doubters have been seen crying in the style of Basil Fawlty -- doubled over Mike-from-Monsters-Inc shells of their former self. Every time I see one like that I get into a laughing fit that is damaging my internal organs. Seriously. #081 Formula for breakthroughs in research: Take young researchers, put them together in virtual seclusion, give them an unprecedented degree of freedom and turn up the pressure by fostering competitiveness. - James Watson, the finger tattooed half of the Blue Brothers This is how we ended up with the monstrosity of quantum mechanics. Relativity came from one man, working by himself for years, and capable of intuitively putting things together. As did the ether, with Newton. And the best model of the ether before Spring-And-Loop Theory by James Clerk Maxwell. Is it too late to take James Watson for a long walk on a short picket fence? #082 Free will is the sensation of making a choice. The sensation is real, but the choice is illusory. Laws of physics determine the future. - Brian Greene (1963-) There is plenty of choice, you toilet brush. See, I could have said toilet seat. But I chose not to. #083 God is a philosophical black hole; the point where reason breaks down. - Kedar Joshi Yuppers. #084 God was always invented to explain mystery; to explain those things that you do not understand. Now when you finally discover how something works, you get some laws which you're taking away from God; you don't need him anymore. But you need him for the other mysteries. So therefore you leave him to create the universe because we haven't figured that out yet. You need him for understanding those things which you don't believe the laws will explain, like consciousness, or why you only live to a certain length of time -- life and death -- stuff like that. God is always associated with those things that you do not understand. Therefore, I don't think that the laws can be considered to be like God because they have been figured out. - Richard Feynman (1918-1988) One seriously overrated physicist. If I can convince a single person that Richard Feynman was the physics antichrist, I'll consider it a life well lived. As to that quote... tEmP theorists create new gods all the time. The God of Higgs is old news now. Today we have the God of Higgs-like. Not quite the same ring to it. I'll give you that. #085 He was guided by what he saw rather than by what he wanted to believe. - Vernor Vinge (1944-) This never happens to tEmP theorists. #086 He who does anything because it is the custom, makes no choice. - John Stuart Mill, "On Liberty" tEmP theorists, like cows being marched to the slaughterhouse, make no choices. Left, right, left, right. Slice. #087 History does not record anywhere at any time a religion that has any rational basis. Religion is a crutch for people not strong enough to stand up to the unknown without help. But, like dandruff, most people do have a religion and spend time and money on it and seem to derive considerable pleasure from fiddling with it. - Lazarus Long Religion is a lighter with a working flint, but no butane. In the hands of a desperate smoker. Who has a massive callous on his thumb from striking the flint 76,000 times. In one day. #088 Q. How old is too old to be brilliant? When are brilliant scientists the most brilliant? What age are you likely to be when the Nobel committee comes calling? Pick one of the following answers: You need a lot of expertise and wisdom to make a big breakthrough. You need professional connections, lots of research money, and big laboratories. Scientific breakthroughs come from people in middle age, or maybe even at the end of their careers. It's the young upstarts who have lots of energy and fresh ideas. After all, the old scientists are stuck in ideas from the past. They're already past their prime. They're tired and don't have much energy any more. Am I talking about myself at the ripe old age of 56? I didn't get much sleep last night, and my knees are kind of sore :) A new study gives us the answer: None of the above. There's no relationship between age and creative scientific contribution. The authors of the study analyzed 2,856 physicists, working from 1893 to the present. They found that the best predictor of exceptional creativity is productivity. It's lots of hard work. The scientists who do the most experiments, and test the most hypotheses, are the ones with the big contributions. The researchers found that once they'd controlled for productivity, age doesn't add any additional predictive power. But what are we to do with all this dogma food? We brought 47 pounds of it to feed to everyone, and now they have gone and debunked our idiotic theory. Even the food bank won't take dogma food. Maybe we can get a government bailout? #089 How fortunate for civilization that Beethoven, Michelangelo, Galileo and Faraday were not required by law to attend schools where their total personalities would have been operated upon to make them learn acceptable ways of participating as members of 'the group'. - Joel H. Hildebrand James Clerk Maxwell was also home schooled and given a chance to live a truly individual life on his father's countryside estate for the first dozen years of his life. Widely considered one of the greatest physicists ever, he would be mince meat in today's world of tEmP theories. But at least we have safe spaces. #090 However unwillingly a person who has a strong opinion may admit the possibility that his opinion may be false, he ought to be moved by the consideration that, however true it may be, if it is not fully, frequently, and fearlessly discussed, it will be held as a dead dogma, not a living truth. - John Stuart Mill tEmP theorists are as dead as their dogma. I'd pity them but first they need to apologize. Or at least pass the joint. #091 I am a firm believer that without speculation there is no good and original observation. - Charles Darwin I'd speculate that he might be right. But I don't do cautious. Turns out Darwin the ground-breaker was more like Darwin the ashram mouse. As to the quote... Good and original observation has nothing whatever to do with one's speculations. Other than those few thoughts, great quote! #092 I am against religion because it teaches us to be satisfied with not understanding the world. - Marilyn Manson I am against tEmP theories for the same reason. #093 I am putting together a secular bible. My Genesis is when the apple falls on Newton's head. - Anthony Clifford Grayling (1949-) It is difficult to take something fundamentally negative and make a positive out of it. "I have found the cigarettes I gave up smoking make good poker chips." Does that get us anywhere? Ditch the bible, ditch Genesis, don't mention the apple falling for the billionth time. Come up with a better theory, present it and let the chips fall where they may. #094 I feel more confident and more satisfied when I reflect that I have two professions and not one. Medicine is my lawful wife and literature is my mistress. When I get tired of one I spend the night with the other. Though it's disorderly, it's not so dull. - Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (01/29/1860-1904) Note that no one held this against him, unlike the treatment given to people who come to scientific work as a second, or third, career. It is noteworthy that, despite being a doctor, he only lived 44 years. Back to that quote... We should have multiple big things in our lives. That way, when one of them stumbles and falters, we have the others to cheer us up and take our mental attention in a constructive direction. I'll bet the chess games played in concentration camps were taken very seriously. #095 I have said that science is impossible without faith. Science is a way of life which can only flourish when men are free to have faith. - Norbert Wiener Wiki: "Wiener [was] an early researcher in stochastic and mathematical noise processes" This might be a good time to leak part of the title of a future COASALT talk: M___ S____. #096 I never said a word against eminent men of science. What I complain of is a vague popular philosophy which supposes itself to be scientific when it is really nothing but a sort of new religion and an uncommonly nasty one. When people talked about the fall of man, they knew they were talking about a mystery, a thing they didn't understand. Now they talk about the survival of the fittest: they think they do understand it, whereas they have not merely no notion but an elaborately false notion of what the words mean. - G. K. Chesterton Cheer up, things are considerably worse with Dark Matter, Dark Energy, Inflation, the Inflaton and particle smashing. tEmP theories would improve if they brought in 3 year old children, gave them finger paints and published the results. Tea leaf reading is also an option. #097 I prefer the man who calls his nonsense a mystery than one who pretends it is a weighed, measured and analyzed fact. - George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) "Mystery matter." "Mystery energy." I like it. #098 I think that physics is the most important -- indeed the only -- means we have of finding out the origins and fundamentals of our universe, and this is what interests me most about it. I believe that as science advances, religion necessarily recedes, and this is a process I wish to encourage, because I consider that, on the whole, the influence of religion is malign. - William B. Bonnor (9/9/1920-2015), gravitation physicist I'm not sure he used the word 'malign' correctly. TheFreeDictionary.com/malign: Synonyms: defame, traduce, vilify, slander, calumniate, libel ...to make evil, harmful, often untrue statements about another. Malign stresses malicious intent. Back to the quote... There is a lot to like about this quote. Physics is indeed the fundamental or ultimate science. I look at religion as water in the basement. Always there. Dank, cold, unsuitable to good living. Gets worse when there is more of it. Gets better when there is less of it. Finally, change "malign" to "malignant" and the quote is perfect. #099 I would rather have a mind opened by wonder than one closed by belief. - Gerry Spence This is one of the most fundamental choices in life. A bird in the hand, or two in a prickle bush. Free food for life, but it is macaroni & cheese, topped off with a multi vitamin. A "solid" career, but you are a cut-and-poison doctor. You are able to work at any company, but you are an accountant. #100 I would rather live in a world where my life is surrounded by mystery than live in a world so small that my mind could comprehend it. - Harry Emerson Fosdick Explaining why religion looks so good to so many. Dude was a pastor. After being a Baptist. I think far religions looked green to him. Apparently Presbyterianism is more mysterious than Baptistism. I have learned so much from this man's quote. For some reason the image of an Ostrich is now flashing before my mind's eye. #101 Ideas have power, as long as they are not frozen in doctrine. - Bill Moyers tEmP theories simmer in liquid helium. #102 If a man is offered a fact which goes against his instincts, he will scrutinize it closely, and unless the evidence is overwhelming, he will refuse to believe it. If, on the other hand, he is offered something which affords a reason for acting in accordance to his instincts, he will accept it even on the slightest evidence. The origin of myths is explained in this way. - Bertrand Arthur William Russell (1872-1970) #103 If I were not an atheist, I would believe in a deity who would choose to save people on the basis of the totality of their lives and not the pattern of their words. - Isaac Asimov Fair enough. On that basis, tEmP theories would be burned at the stake. #104 If knowledge is my God, doubt would be my religion. - Kedar Joshi (12/31/1979-) If knowledge is my philosophy, doubt is a cornerstone. You can't build based solely on doubt. You can examine, and re-examine, based on doubt. You can backtrack, or halt, based on doubt. But building takes blocks. Blocks that one has confidence in. #105 If physics leads us today to a world view that is essentially mystical, it returns to its beginnings, 2,500 years ago. This time, however, it is not only based on intuition, but also on experiments of great precision and sophistication, and on a rigorous and consistent mathematical formalism. - Fritjof Capra, "The Tao Of Physics" Nah, tEmP theories are based on following the most profitable path, based on thousands of years of learning how to bamboozle your fellow man. Back to the quote... There are two important thing lacking from Capra's "This time, however," sentence -- (1) a working model, based on (2) sound assumptions. Without those two things, the rest falls apart at the first strong wind. #106 If the question were "What ought to be the next objective in science?" my answer would be the teaching of science to the young, so that when the whole population grew up there would be a far more general background of common sense, based on a knowledge of the real meaning of the scientific method of discovering truth. - Elihu Thomson (1853-1937) When theories are wrong, teaching them to greater numbers of people is the worst form of brainwashing. #107 If there is an underlying oneness of all things, it does not matter where we begin, whether with stars, or laws of supply and demand, or frogs, or Napoleon Bonaparte. One measures a circle, beginning anywhere. - Charles Fort True enough. So, the age myth doesn't matter. Academia has no value because it is just a large pile of garbage. Carefully fermented garbage. The fact millions believe screwed up theories also does not matter. Truth and its pursuit is all that matters. Once you find it, try to live it. Begin. #108 In a lot of scientists, the ratio of wonder to skepticism declines in time. That may be connected with the fact that in some fields -- mathematics, physics, some others -- the great discoveries are almost entirely made by youngsters. - Carl Sagan No. It just takes years to realize that we are being messed with. Systematically, constantly, without end. Why? Because there.is.no.money.in.the.truth. So, once we realize we are being constantly messed with, we become skeptical. Often highly skeptical. #109 In every age 'the good old days' were a myth. No one ever thought they were good at the time. For every age has consisted of crises that seemed intolerable to the people who lived through them. - Brooks Atkinson (1894-1984) This dogmatic phrase -- 'the good old days' -- has controlled more people for more time than all other phrases put together. #110 In every science certain things must be accepted as first principles if the subject matter is to be understood; and these first postulates rest upon faith. - Cardinal Nicholas de Cusa As stupidly religious as this quote is, it points out the vital importance of one's ASSumptions. A theory based on bad assumptions -- like pretty much every "advanced" physics theory -- take a great deal of faith to embrace. A theory based on good assumptions -- like Spring-And-Loop Theory -- takes no faith to embrace, and in fact can support at least a metric ton of scrutiny and nasty glances. #111 In men of genius, sterile years precede productive years, these again to be followed by sterility, the barren periods being marked by psychological self-depreciation, by the feeling that they are less than other men; times in which the remembrance of the creative periods is a torment, and when they envy those who go about undisturbed by such penalties. Just as his moments of ecstasy are more poignant, so are the periods of depression of a man of genius more intense than those of other men. - Otto Weininger, 1906 Who says a genius suffers more? Yes there are "lean" years, but this is mainly because either the wrong problems are worked on, or the right combination of circumstances has not manifested itself to lead to their solution. Pain and suffering? Nothing to do with it. All in your head. Deal with it. You realize a billion people go to bed hungry every day, right? [After my usual 5 seconds of research on Wikipedia, I learned that he killed himself. Ok, for him the pain was real. Age 23 though? Dude had issues.] Nonetheless, the lesson here is: Whining doesn't pay. #112 In order to understand early modern natural philosophy, it is necessary to break free of several common modern assumptions and prejudices. First, virtually everyone in Europe, certainly every scientific thinker mentioned in this book, was a believing and practising Christian. The notion that scientific study, modern or otherwise, requires an atheistic or 'sceptical' viewpoint is a 20th-century myth proposed by those who wish science itself to be a religion (usually with themselves as its priestly hierarchy). - Lawrence M. Principe (1962-), "The Scientific Revolution: A Very Short Introduction" A long winded, and thus weak, thought but is there a smidgen of truth in it? Back to the quote... If every 'scientific thinker' in an age was a practising Christian, the science would be worse than if they are philosophical. So that part is bogus. And speaking of philosophy, this quote starts off with the promise of helping us understand 'early modern natural philosophy', and then never mentions the word 'philosophy' again. Strike two. Finally, we are told that promoting an atheistic or sceptical approach to science will usher in a science-as-religion age. Ah, why? Strike three. The quote, and the man himself (if his half screen of wiki is any indication), are so pathetic...he is probably up for the next peace prize. #113 It has often been said that to make discoveries one must be ignorant. This opinion, mistaken in itself, nevertheless conceals a truth. It means that it is better to know nothing than to keep in mind fixed ideas based on theories whose confirmation we constantly seek, neglecting meanwhile everything that fails to agree with them. - Claude Bernard Fair enough. Ignorance is better than wrong-headedness. #114 If you live in the dark a long time and the sun comes out, you do not cross into it whistling. There's an initial uprush of relief at first, then -- for me, anyway -- a profound dislocation. My old assumptions about how the world works are buried, yet my new ones are not yet operational. There's been a death of sorts, but without a few days in hell, no resurrection is possible. - Mary Karr Mary, you're weird. Spring-And-Loop Theory is a shock to tEmP theorists, zero of whom have chosen to cross into the light. Whistling is not happening. Nor humming. #115 Gods are fragile things -- they may be killed by a whiff of science or a dose of common sense. - Chapman Cohen Let me see if I've got this straight. Gods, that aren't real, are fragile. And things can be killed with common sense? Staphylococcus? Back to the quote... Gods, religion, dogma -- all vulnerable to thinking. Asking questions is their kryptonite. So yes, good quote. #116 A scientist's accomplishments are equal to the integral of his ability integrated over the hours of his effort. - Henry Eyring Not only are you asking me to do math, but you want me to do integrals? Pass. Your formula would work if we were talking about the amount of grain collected by a combine harvester. Science is a teeny touch different than that. Worst of all, you present your equation as the fact of all facts. No "might be", "maybe" or "possibly" for you. No sir. Bottom line? You are peddling dogma. #117 It is the inefficiency and sham of our schools that save us from being dashed on the rocks of false doctrine instead of drifting down the midstream of mere ignorance. - George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) Here's to inefficient dogma dispensers! Long may they backfire. #118 It might shock some of us profoundly if we were brought suddenly face to face with our beliefs and forced to test them in the fires of practical living. - A.W. Tozer, "The Root of the Righteous" I'd pay someone else's good money to see a few million people staring their beliefs in the face. I wonder if Mr. Tozer has a GoFundMe. #119 It would be a shock to come across a university where it was the practice of the students to recite adherence to Newton's laws of motion, to Maxwell's equations and to the electromagnetic theory of light. We should not deplore it the less if our own pet theory happened to be included, nor if the list were brought up to date every few years. It is not always easy, particularly in popular science, to maintain our stand against creed and dogma. - Arthur Stanley Eddington (1882-1944) Good point. Maybe this is why Gandhi didn't want Gandhism: There is no such thing as "Gandhism", and I do not want to leave any sect after me. I do not claim to have originated any new principle or doctrine. I have simply tried in my own way to apply the eternal truths to our daily life and problems...The opinions I have formed and the conclusions I have arrived at are not final. I may change them tomorrow. I have nothing new to teach the world. Truth and nonviolence are as old as the hills. Power corrupts and -isms corrupt absolutely. #120 It's a good thing to turn your mind upside down now and then, like an hour-glass, to let the particles run the other way. - Christopher Morley Human nature being what it is, none of us do this "now and then". A few of us may, at times, under duress and desperate to resolve something, tip our head to the side for a few seconds. If we are taking part in a group bonding experience that also involves falling backward into hands incapable of supporting us. #121 John Dalton was a man of regular habits. For fifty-seven years he walked out of Manchester every day; he measured the rainfall, the temperature -- a singularly monotonous enterprise in this climate. Of all that mass of data, nothing whatever came. But of the one searching, almost childlike question about the weights that enter the construction of these simple molecules -- out of that came modern atomic theory. That is the essence of science: ask an impertinent question, and you are on the way to the pertinent answer. - Jacob Bronowski, "The Ascent of Man" Impertinent: "not showing proper respect". But what exactly is "proper" respect? Is that like "constructive criticism", that really means "You're not allowed to say anything that might actually be useful"? Or is it like getting a partial score in a cricket match: "Today, in Bathington vs. Rumbleshire, we have a scoring update for you -- 16." Are we to show unwavering respect to something we think is wrong or deficient? Back to that quote... Mr. Dalton's regular habits, labors and realizations have nothing whatever to do with Mr. Bronowski's 'lesson'. One guy works hard for a long time and happens to realize something along the way. Another guy says "ask impertinent questions". The first is the lone scientist doing good work. The second is a kid in church asking "So if God is all powerful, why is there a devil then?" Unrelated. #122 It's rare that you see an artist in their 30s or 40s able to really contribute something amazing. - Steve Jobs (1955-2011) Says the man who never contributed anything beyond slave driving (while lying to) his workforce. #123 Just as science can live without certainty, religion can live without dogma, and the two can live together without conflict. - Freeman Dyson Replace "religion" with "philosophy" and you've got yourself a deal. #124 Knowledge is like a knife. In the hands of a well-balanced adult it is an instrument for good of inestimable value; but in the hands of a child, an idiot, a criminal, a drunkard or an insane man, it may cause havoc, misery, suffering and crime. Science and religion have this in common, that their noble aims, their power for good, have often, with wrong men, deteriorated into a boomerang to the human race. - Leo Hendrik Baekeland The notion that religion has ever been a power for good is quite hilarious. A partial improvement on this quote would involve changing 'religion' to 'philosophy'. The fact that the word 'philosophy' is almost never used, and worse is too often substituted out in favor of 'religion', is an ultimate sad commentary on life in the modern western world. #125 Life is a good book. The further you get into it, the more it begins to come together and make sense. - Harold Kushner Wait, you mean it takes time to understand things? So much for physics being a young person's game. That dogma is designed to flatter young people so they will even more blindly follow tEmP theorists into the ditch. #126 Like all things of the mind, science is a brittle thing. It becomes absurd when you look at it too closely. It is designed for few at a time, not as a mass profession. But now we have megascience: an immense apparatus discharging in a minute more bursts of knowledge than humanity is able to assimilate in a lifetime. Each of us has two eyes, two ears and one brain. We cannot even listen to two symphonies at the same time. How do we get out of the horrible cacophony that assails our minds day and night? We have to learn, as others did, that if science is a machine to make more science, a machine to grind out so-called facts of nature, not all facts are equally worth knowing. Students will have to learn to forget most of what they have learned. This process of forgetting must begin after each exam, but never before. The Ph.D. is essentially a license to start unlearning. - Erwin Chargaff (1905-2002) Bit of a rant, but it's a good point that the firehose of science can wash us all away before we can swallow the first mouthful. It is also true that we have to learn to digest and sort things, but the notion that a Ph.D is "a license to start unlearning" is spectacularly off base. No human is more locked down than a Ph.D. No one is focused more on repaying their student loans. A Ph.D. is closer to a death sentence than the start of unlearning. #127 Man is programmed to find the programmer. - Kedar Joshi But there is none. So this quote makes no sense. Plus, most people want money. First, foremost and always. Finding the programmer? Most could care less. Good dogma there, though. Subtle. "Man is programmed to be a zombie." Jerk. #128 Many persons nowadays seem to think that any conclusion must be very scientific if the arguments in favor of it are derived from twitching of frogs' legs -- especially if the frogs are decapitated -- and that, on the other hand, any doctrine chiefly vouched for by the feelings of human beings -- with heads on their shoulders -- must be benighted and superstitious. - William James, "Pragmatism: A New Name For Old Ways Of Thinking" Good point. We must not be overly gullible, nor overly skeptical. Judge stuff on its merits. Or lack thereof...tEmP theories. #129 Metaphysics: being sure of something that is not so. Logic: the art of going wrong with confidence. - Joseph Wood Krutch Dogma: not caring whether it is right or wrong. #130 Modernist discourse incorporates semantic devices -- such as the labeling of theism as 'religion' and naturalism as 'science' -- that work to prevent a dangerous debate over fundamental assumptions from breaking out in the open. - Phillip E. Johnson, "Reason In The Balance: The Case Against Naturalism In Science, Law And Education" I'm all for debating fundamental assumptions in the open. That's about all I got from this guy, his quote, and the horrifically long title of his book. Dude is an AIDS denialist as well (sayeth wikipedia). Next. #131 Most people prefer to believe their leaders are just and fair, even in the face of evidence to the contrary, because once a citizen acknowledges that the government under which they live is lying and corrupt, the citizen has to choose what they will do about it. To take action in the face of a corrupt government entails risks of harm to life and loved ones. To choose to do nothing is to surrender one's self-image of standing for principles. Most people do not have the courage to face that choice. Hence, most propaganda is not designed to fool the critical thinker but only to give moral cowards an excuse not to think at all. - Michael Rivero, host of What Really Happened Well said. #132 Natural science is founded on minute critical views of the general order of events taking place upon our globe, corrected, enlarged or exalted by experiments in which the agents concerned are placed under new circumstances, and their diversified properties separately examined. - Humphry Davy On Humphry's wiki we read: He joked that his assistant Michael Faraday was his greatest discovery. There is abundant evidence of the truth of this "joke". This guy was a chemist, isolated elements for the first time, was a 'Baronet', President of the Royal Society, Member of the Royal Irish Academy and a Fellow of the Geological Society. But when I look back at the quote...I am thankful for Michael Faraday. The paragraph scores a 26.9 on the Gunning Fog scale, earning a rating of "EXTREMELY difficult to read". [A rating of 12 requires the reading level of a high school senior.] If this guy ever turned his hand to dogma, he'd have a world class following within a week. #133 Nature is remarkably obstinate against purely logical operations; she likes not schoolmasters nor scholastic procedures. As though she took a particular satisfaction in mocking at our intelligence, she very often shows us the phantom of an apparently general law, represented by scattered fragments, which are entirely inconsistent. Logic asks for the union of these fragments; the resolute dogmatist, therefore, does not hesitate to go straight on to supply, by logical conclusions, the fragments he wants, and to flatter himself that he has mastered nature by his victorious intelligence. - Wilhelm His Sr. (1831-1904) The paragraph scores a 22.2 on the Gunning Fog scale, earning a rating of "EXTREMELY difficult to read". We're on a roll here. Back to the quote... There are answers, of course. Nature is no dungeon master but humbleness, persistence and the ability to push aside existing dogma are essential. Where this quote stumbles badly, aside from its pompous verbiage, is when it claims Nature is "remarkably obstinate against purely logical operations". There is simply no evidence this is true. The most screwed up science is physics, but when you get to the core of the screw up you find it was the field walking away from the ether. For profit. That has nothing to do with Nature, nor logic. #134 Nearly every understanding is gained by a painful struggle in which belief and unbelief are dramatically interwoven. - Leopold Infeld The most painful struggle, as always, is against the 1%. Who do not want the 99% to figure out anything. Ever. Back to that quote... Part of the beauty of dogma is that it allows lies to be spread far and wide. Lack of understanding these days is deliberate, and encouraged. Get good at filtering out dogma, or succumb to this treasonous attack on our good sense. #135 No one believes a hypothesis except its originator but everyone believes an experiment except the experimenter. Most people are ready to believe something based on experiment but the experimenter knows the many little things that could have gone wrong in the experiment. For this reason the discoverer of a new fact seldom feels quite so confident of it as others do. On the other hand, other people are usually critical of a hypothesis, whereas the originator identifies himself with it and is liable to become devoted to it. - W.I.B. Beveridge, "The Art Of Scientific Investigation" Probably some truth to this. 16.5 score, by the way. #136 Books must follow sciences, and not sciences books. - Francis Bacon (1561-1626) Too late. tEmP theorists are serial plagiarists. Even worse, one of the favorite books they copy is the bibble. #137 By the time we awaken faintly to the awareness that we have been socially conditioned, we find ourselves so indoctrinated that it's difficult, if not impossible, to break the old patterns. Survival pressures demanding that we evolve, grow and change, however, continue to proliferate. We don't want to change, but the floodgates open abruptly and we are overwhelmed. Crisis! - Frank Herbert (1920-1986), "Science Fiction And A World In Crisis" Be warned. Dogma is an effective brainwashing method. But never adopt this writer's perspective where you want to change oh so badly but can't because...floodgates opened. Fatalistic garbage. #138 Not only is the universe stranger than we imagine, it is stranger than we can imagine. - J.B.S. Haldane Big big money is behind this bit of dogma. The very last thing the 1% want are answers. So it is critical they get the "quit while you're behind" message out there. Fight their power. The most important things are simple, and thus easy to understand. Only lies and dogma are complicated, and thus doubly impossible to understand. #139 Nothing enrages me more than when people criticize my criticism of school by telling me that schools are not just places to learn math and spelling, they are places where children learn a vaguely defined thing called socialization. I know this. I think schools generally do an effective and terribly damaging job of teaching children to be infantile, dependent, intellectually dishonest, passive and disrespectful to their own developmental capacities. - Seymour Papert, 1981 Preach it brother. tEmP theorists display one or more of these adjectives on a regular basis. #140 On a perfect planet such as might be acceptable to a physicist, one might predict that from its origin the diversity of life would grow exponentially until the carrying capacity, however defined, was reached. The fossil record on Earth, however, tells a very different story. - Simon Conway Morris In case you haven't guess, Conway Morris is religious. And yes he is referred to that way in wikipedia. No hyphen, just a double name. Like Rin Tin Tin. Back to the quote... Dogmatists are so pathetic at making a point. Like here, what on Earth is he on about? Physicists would have designed a world where life grows without limit? First off, that would be biologists. Second, those same physicists would be the first to say "One asteroid might ruin everybody's day, so be careful out there." Then there is the old diminishing returns thing. The first clump of grass is easy to find, and eat. Whereas that last clump is probably 150 feet up a tree where the branches start at the 25 foot mark. I could go on, but honestly I just feel sorry for him. #141 Our mind is so fortunately equipped that it brings us the most important bases for our thoughts without our having the least knowledge of this work of elaboration. Only the results of it become unconscious. - Wilhelm Wundt If true, this would be a MASSIVE drawback of our minds. But would explain why so many of us are religious. Our thinking can be, and usually is, built on lousy assumptions that we rarely or never bother to change. Making it pathetically easy to control us. So, fundamentally, this quote is dead wrong. Our minds never brings us "the most important bases for our thoughts". We never know why we feel what we feel (unless we analyse it). This guy -- "one of the founding figures of modern psychology" (wiki) -- is implying that when we get a fear thought we also get a little side note: "Heh, by the way, this fear of spiders is due to three million years of people dying from spider bites". One trip to YouTube and this guy could have seen how wrong he was. They had YouTube one hundred years ago, right? #142 Profundity of thought belongs to youth, clarity of thought to old age. - Friedrich Nietzsche Over-optimism and imagined profundity of thought belongs to youth. Unnecessarily humble thoughts stay sadly silent in most of the 'old aged'. How could anyone get that first part so wrong? Oh, it's Nietzsche. Never mind. #143 Religion comes from the period of human prehistory where nobody -- not even the mighty Democritus who concluded that all matter was made from atoms -- had the smallest idea of what was going on. It comes from the bawling and fearful infancy of our species, and is a babyish attempt to meet our inescapable demand for knowledge. Today the least educated of my children knows much more about the natural order than any of the founders of religion. - Christopher Hitchens (1949-2011) Religion comes from the age-old desire of small groups of pathetic losers to control everyone else. It has been happening for thousands of years and is going strong today, based on the virulence of Islam and Scientology today. #144 Science erects the hundred-aisled temple. - Julius Hare Did your nose wrinkle up while you read that? Mine too. Found out why...Dude was a theologian. Julius Hare belonged to what has been called the "Broad Church party", though some of his opinions approach those of the Evangelical Arminian school, while others seem vague and undecided." Ok, that last part made me laugh. #145 Science even more than religion teaches us humility. She cannot look down on anything, she does not know what superiority means, she despises nothing, never lies for the sake of a pose, and conceals nothing out of coquetry. She stops before the facts as an investigator, sometimes as a physician, never as an executioner, and still less with hostility and irony. - Alexander Herzen She also walks on tiptoe and farts like the Queen of England. You are an optimistic fellow, Mr. Herzen... That's spelled n-a-i-v-e. Known as "the 'father of Russian socialism'" Hopefully this is enough of an apology, gentle reader. #146 Science is a differential equation. Religion is a boundary condition." - Alan Turing Mathematics is a differential equation (and generally useless). Religion is imaginary conditions (that act as fly paper). Science tries to rationally explain conditions. Religion is a complete abscence of conditions. Applied science tries to build in the most scientifically sound way. And is the only one actually try to do something. Science attempts to apply equations to everything, including extending equations to domains where they produce nonsense. Then it tries to justify the nonsense, and even turn it into new research grants. Usually with great success. Religion is like quantum mechanics. Both tell you to shut up. Philosophy is the complete study of the whole system, including the studier. Few want to do this because the 1% -- working through the media, school system and all religions -- have convinced us all that it is too hard, and pointless and besides American Gladiators is on the tellie. #147 Science is complex and chilling. The mathematical language of science is understood by very few. The vistas it presents are scary -- an enormous universe ruled by chance and impersonal rules, empty and uncaring, ungraspable and vertiginous. How comfortable to turn instead to a small world, only a few thousand years old, and under God's personal and immediate care; a world in which you are His peculiar concern. - Isaac Asimov (1920-1992) Science is just the modern name we give to philosophy. So that we could never use the word philosophy again. So that no one would understand anything. So we could become the priests, and ultimately sail on yachts in Boca Raton. Math, on the other hand? Well, M___ S____. #148 Scientific research is based on the idea that everything that takes place is determined by laws of nature, and therefore this holds for the actions of people. For this reason, a research scientist will hardly be inclined to believe that events could be influenced by a prayer, i.e. by a wish addressed to a supernatural being. However, it must be admitted that our actual knowledge of these laws is only imperfect and fragmentary, so that, actually, the belief in the existence of basic all-embracing laws in nature also rests on a sort of faith. All the same this faith has been largely justified so far by the success of scientific research. - Albert Einstein Rather than faith, a working set of hypotheses is just that. What works, currently. No need to dogmatically follow it. One can examine the assumptions involved at any time. Unless it is the Standard Model, that is allergic to assumptions. #149 Scientific wealth tends to accumulate according to the law of compound interest. Every addition to knowledge of the properties of matter supplies the physical scientist with new instrumental means for discovering and interpreting phenomena of nature, which in their turn afford foundations of fresh generalisations, bringing gains of permanent value into the great storehouse of natural philosophy. - William Thomson, Lord Kelvin True in theory but not in reality. In reality, mis-information is more valuable than the truth. The truth is the period at the end of the sentence at the end of the chapter at the end of the book. Falsehood is "to be continued..." 23.1 on the Gunning Fog scale btw... #150 Science corrects the old creeds, sweeps away with every new perception our infantile catechisms, and necessitates a faith commensurate with the grander orbits and universal laws which it discloses. Yet it does not surprise the moral sentiment that was older and awaited expectant these larger insights. - Ralph Waldo Emerson What does science have to do with creeds? What on Saturn is "infantile catechisms"? Could you say that in a more obscure way? "...and necessitates a faith commensurate with the grander orbits and universal laws..." What is wrong with this guy? "Yet it does not surprise the moral sentiment..." And what is he doing in the science tree? #151 Should a young scientist working with me come to me after two years of such work and ask me what to do next, I would advise him to get out of science. After two years of work, if a man does not know what to do next, he will never make a real scientist. - Ernest Rutherford Tyrants into controlling what their workers say aren't big on being role models. Don’t let me catch anyone talking about the Universe in my department. - Ernest Rutherford Colossal jerk is what comes to mind. Dear Ruthie, We can't stand you but we need jobs. Your zipper-mouthed staff #152 Some beliefs may be subject to instant, brutal and unambiguous rejection. For example: no left-coiling periwinkle has ever been found among millions of snails examined. But if I happen to find one during my walk on Nobska beach tomorrow morning, a century of well-nurtured negative evidence will collapse in an instant. - Stephen Jay Gould Sadly, finding anomalies in tEmP theories has nothing to do with the continued life of tEmP theories. tEmP theories are wrong, obviously wrong, on day one. Yet day one thousand comes around and they are still be taught and talked about. "tEmP theorists are wearing no clothes!" Did that work? No? Told ya. On they go marching. #153 The better educated we are and the more acquired information we have, the better prepared shall we find our minds for making great and fruitful discoveries. - Claude Bernard But we are too old, dontcha know? There is no ether, dontcha know? Problems with 120 zeroes after them are nothing, dontcha know? #154 The Book of Genesis has no voice in scientific questions. It is a poem, not a scientific treatise. As a treatise it has been, and will continue to be, purely obstructive and hurtful. - John Tyndall Yes and no. The first sentence is absolutely true, sure. Most on both sides would agree to that. The worst thing about the bibble is that it started with truth. Not that Jesus was anybody special, but those intent on world domination started with truth. How so? They went to all major religions and asked them for their wisdom. Said they were putting together the religion book to end all religion books. Or words to that effect. Buttered people up like popcorn. And almost every major religion responded.* Then they put out that anthology. On the inside flap there should be a disclaimer "Based on a true story." But even that wouldn't be true. I'd go for "Loosely based on some true stories, without troubling you with anything that might actually be useful." So, no, not exactly a scientific tomb. To say the least. * - It is said that when they asked the gurus of the East, the response was "Do you want to see, or do you want to know?" Probably the most cryptic response in history. In essence, the gurus knew what was really going to happen. The sheep were going to be given a book of manipulation. They would be made to "see" (think blinding explosions on space shows). But they would not learn how to know. tEmP theories are the bibble parable, all scienced up. #155 The brighter you are, the more you have to learn. - Don Herold True (unless you are greedy and just want to make lots and lots of money...but then that would make you stupid). The bright (and non-greedy) know they have to learn a lot. They also know it will pay big dividends later. And besides, learning is fun. This quote directly contradicts the baseless notion that the best physics comes out of young people. What young people have, in spades, is gullibility. Lots of it. And thank goodness, say tEmP theorists every night, while kneeling at the edge of their beds, for all those gullible empty vessels they can vomit their nonsense into. #156 The confidence in the unlimited power of science is only too often based on a false belief that the scientific method consists in the application of a ready-made technique, or in imitating the form rather than the substance of scientific procedure, as if one needed only to follow some cooking recipes to solve all social problems. - Friedrich August von Hayek (1899-1992) True enough. We should have zero confidence in science. Or anything else. We should TEST what we hear, see or feel. Even when it rings true. Test, challenge, doubt...but continue to build our concepts, our opinions and our thoughts. With working models. #157 The demand for certainty is one which is natural to man, but is nevertheless an intellectual vice. If you take your children for a picnic on a doubtful day, they will demand a dogmatic answer as to whether it will be fine or wet, and be disappointed in you when you cannot be sure. - Bertrand Russell Those most dogmatic scientists -- i.e. tEmP theorists -- are those hungering the most for certainty. Newton never knew why there was action at a distance. Einstein didn't know either. This is part of what made them great. They kept thinking, kept puzzling. People like Feynman, telling us we can ignore gravity in the nucleus, are much worse than useless. I was in that state of doubt and uncertainty which Descartes considers essential to the search for truth. - Rousseau #158 The effort to reconcile science and religion is almost always made, not by theologians, but by scientists unable to shake off altogether the piety absorbed with their mother's milk. - H. L. Mencken Yes, it is an idiotic exercise. As to why some try to do this, it is because the powers that be forcibly discourage scientists (or anyone else) from talking about philosophical things. Dogmatic religion, and tEmP theories, are far more profitable than philosophy, and Spring-And-Loop Theory. #159 The empiricist thinks he believes only what he sees, but he is much better at believing than at seeing. - George Santayana, 1923 We must be careful to not substitute one belief for another. What we see and observe is approximately meaningless. Ask any magician. What we are taught and fed? Equally meaningless. Ask any media critic. We should develop concepts, models and explanations for things. That are forever subject to scrutiny and further analysis. We should keep in mind basics like good things are simple; true wisdom is timeless. And always we should challenge the motives of those pushing their "answers" on us. What is in it for them? If we had followed any of that, the LHC wouldn't exist. #160 The essence of science is simply the refusal to believe on the basis of hope. - Barrington Moore Jr. (1913-2005) tEmP theories are saturated with hope. Back to this quote... It is a long way from being helpful. "The essence of science" is a lot more than any one thing. So fundamentally this quote is wrong, and thus trying to slip one over on us. Because what it implies is that scientists can and should believe on the basis of sciencey stuff... ...when the word "belief" has no place in science. BM Sr was smart enough to be anti-Communist but apparently the apple fell an extended distance from the tree. #161 The greatest marvel is not in the individual. It is in the succession, in the renewal and in the duration of the species that Nature would seem quite inconceivable. This power of producing its likeness that resides in animals and plants, this form of unity, always subsisting and appearing eternal, this procreative virtue which is perpetually expressed without ever being destroyed, is for us a mystery which, it seems, we will never be able to fathom. - Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon 22 Just saying... Back to the quote... So the "greatest marvel" is...mystery? This is like saying "The fact you don't understand what makes this art proves this is world class art." If we don't understand how something works, we can't call it a marvel. Simple as that. The greatest single achievement of nature to date was surely the invention of the molecule DNA. - Lewis Thomas So it turns out Nature uses DNA. Mystery solved. But kinda cool, I'll admit. Physics needs its DNA moment. By the way, DNA -- the most complicated thing in the Universe -- is built with only 4 types of building blocks. Spring-And-Loop Theory uses just 2. Does that make it twice as cool as DNA? #162 The highest form of ignorance is when you reject something you don't know anything about. - Wayne Walter Dyer (1940-2015) tEmP theorists do this more than any other group on Earth. Spring-And-Loop Theory has been out since 2013 -- almost six years as of this writing -- and not a single physicist has supported it. No one has ever shown a single flaw with it. But none have supported it. Weird, right? #163 The man of science has learned to believe in justification. Not faith, but verification. - Thomas Henry Huxley Another pathetic use of "believe" by a scientist, or at least a biologist. tEmP theorists believe that Dogma, repeatedly said to sufficient Numbers of physicists, and a sufficient elapse of  Time, is indistinguishable from Science. D*N*T=S Don'ts follow in their footsteps. They are DoNuTS eaters. Or is that DoNuT S____ers? #164 The method of science is tried and true. It is not perfect, it's just the best we have. And to abandon it, with its skeptical protocols, is the pathway to a dark age. - Carl Sagan Love Sagan's prescient use of "dark". #165 The next great task of science is to create a religion for humanity. - John Morley (1838-1923) tEmP theories are the most dogmatic of all sciences. Religions thrive on dogma. Therefore tEmP theorists could make a "great" religion. Can you say the God particle? #166 The only universal attribute of scientific statements resides in their potential fallibility. If a claim cannot be disproven, it does not belong to the enterprise of science. - Stephen Jay Gould This has become one the cornerstones of modern science. The problem? It can easily be applied to tEmP theories. Take, for example, the Higgs particle (or field or interaction). We can't disprove it -- i.e. say it doesn't exist -- because we are not given all of the information to do so. No one has all the interactions observed at the LHC in a single searchable database. No one has published the algorithm(s) used to decide if a given interaction is significant. We are given a bump on a line and the command to strike up the band. Not science. "Ether doesn't exist" -- an even worse problem. Just because a couple of guys, 130 years ago, couldn't find it, doesn't mean there is no ether. It is absurd to even suggest this. Yet EVERY major physicist does so today. Not science. #167 The people have no definite disbelief in the temples of theology. The people have a very fiery and practical disbelief in the temples of physical science. - G.K. Chesterton (1874-1936) But a century of repeated lies and propaganda has won the day for tEmP theories. Lies live and breath and walk among us. The truth is in jail. #168 The remark which I read somewhere, that science is all right as long as it doesn't attack religion, was the clue I needed to understand the problem. As long as it doesn't attack religion it need not be paid attention to and nobody has to learn anything. So it can be cut off from society except for its applications, and thus be isolated. - Richard Feynman (1918-1988) Similarly, as long as we genuflect today to Feynman and his ilk, our jobs are safe. Dump on Feynman and you kiss your research grant goodbye. The head priests are different, the dogma is the same. #169 The Royal Society is quite simply the voice of science in Britain. It is intellectually rigorous, not afraid to be outspoken on controversial issues such as climate change, but it is not aggressively secular either, insisting on a single view of the world. In fact, there are plenty of eminent scientists -- Robert Winston, for instance -- who are also men of faith. - Bill Bryson "Eminent" + "men of faith" = weapons of mass destruction. #170 The rules of scientific procedure must be designed in such a way that they do not protect any statement in science against falsification. - Karl Raimund Popper, 1959 When every credible scientific publication states that there might be an ether, "rules of scientific procedure" will be in action. #171 The saying, often quoted from Lord Kelvin, that 'where you cannot measure your knowledge is meagre and unsatisfactory', as applied in mental and social science, is misleading and pernicious. This is another way of saying that these sciences are not science in the sense of physical science and cannot attempt to be such without forfeiting their proper nature and function. Insistence on a concretely quantitative economics means the use of statistics of physical magnitudes, whose economic meaning and significance is uncertain and dubious. Even wheat is approximately homogeneous only if measured in economic terms. And a similar statement would even apply more to other social sciences. In economics, the Kelvin dictum very largely means in practice, 'if you cannot measure, measure anyhow!' - Frank Hyneman Knight, "What Is Truth' In Economics?", 1956 This guy is an economist, not a scientist. Anyway, both are right. Mental and social science are not very scientific because they have yet to get to cause. i.e. the name qualities. Also true is that no matter how bad our theories and practices are, we should still measure and record. #172 The scientific doctrine of progress is destined to replace not only the myth of progress, but all other myths of human earthly destiny. It will inevitably become one of the cornerstones of man's theology, or whatever may be the future substitute for theology. - Julian Huxley A quote wrong on so many levels. Huxley was a prominent member of the British Eugenics Society and was its president from 1959–1962. Cute. #173 The scientist has to take 95 per cent of his subject on trust. He has to because he can't possibly do all the experiments, therefore he has to take on trust the experiments all his colleagues and predecessors have done. Whereas a mathematician doesn't have to take anything on trust. Any theorem that's proved, he doesn't believe it, really, until he goes through the proof himself, and therefore he knows his whole subject from scratch; he's absolutely 100 per cent certain of it. And that gives him an extraordinary conviction of certainty, and an arrogance that scientists don't have. - Erik Christopher Zeeman Scientists, and particularly tEmP theorists, are joiners. Whatever the current fad or fashion, count on tEmP theorists to be wearing the T-shirt. Global warming, vaccines, fluoridation -- most of tEmP joiners will be carrying the banners and rocking the tats. As to the certainty of mathematicians, that is the ultimate drawback of that field. Instead of trying to solve problems, they are focused on taking one dead-certain footstep after the other. Back to that quote... Of course math guys go through proofs themselves. They have nothing else in their field but proofs. Mathematics -- science's ostrich-attractant. #174 The soundest theory is one that has been verified by the greatest number of facts. - Claude Bernard That might be one measure of a theory. "The Sun is the main source of energy in the Solar System" has been verified a million ways. But what have you got in the end? A "sound theory" and little else. The drawback of the "many facts" test is that some theories lend themselves to testing. Theories about what goes on inside a black hole will suffer from a lack of factual verifications. They can still be ranked on a "soundness" scale. A better measure is predictiveness. A third is Einstein's metric: explaining the most phenomenon with the least assumptions. Spring-And-Loop Theory is predictive and no theory can explain more phenomenon with fewer assumptions (and fewer inconsistencies). As to "verification = soundness"... By this metric the Standard Model would earn its Guinness plaque for "the most inconsistent hodge podge of fact and fiction touted as a standard, and/or a model". #175 The work of an intellectual is not to form the political will of others. It is, through the analyses in one's own domains, to bring assumptions and things taken for granted again into question. To shake habits, ways of acting and thinking. To dispel the familiarity of the accepted, to take the measure of rules and institutions, and take part in the formation of one's own will. - Michel Foucault If tEmP theorists don't do this, they aren't intellectual. If they aren't intellectual, can they be intelligent? If they aren't intelligent, why should we listen to them? #176 The worst of all superstitions may be that astrology is a superstition. - Kedar Joshi Wikiquote says he "is a philosopher and writer. His writings are named as 'Superultramodern Science and Philosophy'." Who in their right mind would allow such a description of themselves? Other than Bill Nye I mean. #177 Theorists tend to peak at an early age; the creative juices tend to gush very early and start drying up past the age of fifteen -- or so it seems. They need to know just enough; when they're young they haven't accumulated the intellectual baggage. - Leon M. Lederman Author of "The God Particle". What more can one say? #178 There are many aspects of the universe that still cannot be explained satisfactorily by science; but ignorance only implies ignorance that may someday be conquered. To surrender to ignorance and call it God has always been premature, and it remains premature today. - Isaac Asimov Totally agree. This author (with a degree in chemistry, by the way) is the gold standard of scientific thought. His book on the neutrino -- "The Neutrino: Ghost Particle Of The Atom" -- is still highly readable some fifty years after he wrote it. Amazing. Can't think of anyone else who's physics thoughts have better lasted 50 years of time testing. #179 There are no peoples however primitive without religion and magic. - Bronislaw Malinowski, "Magic, Science And Religion", 1954 And? I'm pretty sure there are none without food, water, air, etc. Is this a knock on, or praise of, religion? No idea. That quote left such a bad taste in my mouth, I went to his wiki page to learn more about the man. One way or the other. Found this, where he trys to explain something or other: Besides the firm outline of tribal constitution and crystallized cultural items which form the skeleton, besides the data of daily life and ordinary behavior, which are, so to speak, its flesh and blood, there is still to be recorded the spirit—the natives' views and opinions and utterances. 26.5 A new record. #180 There are science teachers who actually claim that they teach "a healthy skepticism". They do not. They teach a profound gullibility, and their dupes, trained not to think for themselves, will swallow any egregious rot, provided it is dressed up with long words and an affectation of objectivity to make it sound scientific. - Anthony Standen (1906-1993), "Science Is A Sacred Cow", 1950 A man this clear headed... ...gets the shortest wikipedia page I have ever seen. 75 words. I am ashamed of Wikipedia. Tells you all you need to know about the importance of science to the 1%. Common sense is not math, not science. It is within. Lies come from without. Today science is the main lie carrier. Take global warming. Please. #181 There can be no ultimate statements in science. No statements in science that can not be tested, and therefore none which cannot in principle be refuted, by falsifying some of the conclusions which can be deduced from them. - Karl Raimund Popper, "The Logic Of Scientific Discovery", 1959 2 + 2 = 4 Mic drop. Back to the quote... It appears Mr. Popper (a psychologist, not a scientist) has confused falsifiability with "ultimate statements". How awkward. He makes an ultimate statement. Saying there are no ultimate statements. When there obviously are. I need a vacation. #182 There is a philosophy that says that if something is unobservable -- unobservable in principle -- it is not part of science. If there is no way to falsify or confirm a hypothesis, it belongs to the realm of metaphysical speculation, together with astrology and spiritualism. By that standard, most of the universe has no scientific reality -- it's just a figment of our imaginations. - Leonard Susskind Observability is clearly a ridiculous metric. Before you start applauding the man, however, try to watch a few minutes of his Demystifying the Higgs Boson. Hide your knives and pens first. #183 There seems no limit to research, for the more the sphere of knowledge grows, the larger becomes the surface of contact with the unknown. - William Cecil Dampier This is a fundamentally flawed idea. That has come out in many forms from many pens. It is true in the simplest case where all we do is record what we find. The surface of "new knowledge" increases as the square of the distant we travel from some origin. On the other hand, if we build a model, we can encompass all or most of a given subject with as little as a few paragraphs. Spring-And-Loop Theory models everything in the Universe -- the whole kit and kaboodle -- with a model built with just four assumptions. If it continues to test out (and it already tests out better than every other physics theory), then it will continue to shrink the size of the 'unknown' pie. #184 These are the sensations and feelings that are gradually blunted by education, staled by custom, rejected in favor of social conformity. - Herbert Read, in "The Cult of Sincerity", referring to the curiosity and sense of wonder of the child Very true. The beauty of our child within is stamp flat by the hammer mill of "education". Little wonder that most end up being dogmatic. It is, from their scared stiff perspective, the only safe way to be. #185 They are deceived that acquiesce to things which they've heard, and believe not what they have seen. - Thomas Bartholin, "The Anatomical History", 1653 Ya think? Dude was "a Danish physician, mathematician and theologian" so I'll cut him some slack. Won't be sending him any Christmas cards though. #186 Throughout the last four hundred years, during which the growth of science had gradually shown men how to acquire knowledge of the ways of nature and mastery over natural forces, the clergy have fought a losing battle against science, in astronomy and geology, in anatomy and physiology, in biology and psychology and sociology. Ousted from one position, they have taken up another. After being worsted in astronomy, they did their best to prevent the rise of geology; they fought against Darwin in biology, and at the present time they fight against scientific theories of psychology and education. At each stage, they try to make the public forget their earlier obscurantism, in order that their present obscurantism may not be recognized for what it is. - Bertrand Russell Yet the idiotic "Big Bang" is alive and well today. More than that, it is the ONLY model tEmP theorists have. It makes zero sense. It is impossible. It requires them to invent particles. It doesn't fit the data. It was intended as a criticism. Yet every tEmP theorists trots it out the first chance they get. Great, now I'll be seeing "Shaun of the Dead" when I'm trying to sleep. Last time that lasted for a week. #187 To succeed in science, one must doubt; to succeed in life, one must be sure. - Leo Errera People want certainty but the only thing that gets us anywhere useful is doubt. To succeed in science get the right answers in science, one must fully and thoroughly doubt. Until one has a model that gets better and better with time -- solving an almost unbelievable number of problems in a field putrefying in the toxic waste known as the Standard Model -- doubt is the only thing worth having. To succeed in life -- in the real sense of that word -- one must doubt the media, doubt all doctors and doubt the government. Natural methods are the only things that work, but there is no money in promoting them. #188 True science and true religion are twin sisters, and the separation of either from the other is sure to prove the death of both. Science prospers exactly in proportion as it is religious; and religion flourishes in exact proportion to the scientific depth and firmness of its basis. - Thomas Henry Huxley #189 Unanimity of opinion may be fitting for a church, for the frightened or greedy victims of some ancient, or modern myth, or for the weak and willing followers of some tyrant. Variety of opinion is necessary for objective knowledge. A method that encourages variety is also the only method that is comparable with a humanitarian outlook. - Paul K. Feyerabend Sounds good. #190 Unless you believe, you will not understand. - Aurelius Augustinus (354-430) Mind boggling. Guy was a theologian. Still mind boggling. #191 Using any reasonable definition of a scientist, we can say that 80 to 90 percent of all the scientists that have ever lived are alive now. Alternatively, any young scientist, starting now and looking back at the end of his career upon a normal life span, will find that 80 to 90 percent of all scientific work achieved by the end of the period will have taken place before his very eyes, and that only 10 to 20 percent will antedate his experience. - Derek J. de Solla Price, "Little Science, Big Science", 1963 Rule-of-thumb quotes about how everything is being discovered now are invariably wrong. Physics is getting worse, steadily, because that is the most profitable route. Period. You want a rule-of-thumb? That is the real rule-of-thumb. But you'll never hear it because it would reveal too much. Pointing out the other rule-of-thumb -- the media has zero incentive to be truthful about anything of importance. #192 What has been learned in physics stays learned. - National Academy of Sciences And after 115 years of regurgitating nonsense, physics is not in a good way. #193 When Benjamin Franklin invented the lightning-rod, the clergy, both in England and America, with the enthusiastic support of George III, condemned it as an impious attempt to defeat the will of God. For, as all right-thinking people were aware, lightning is sent by God to punish impiety or some other grave sin -- the virtuous are never struck by lightning. Therefore if God wants to strike any one, Benjamin Franklin and his lightning-rod ought not to defeat His design. Indeed, to do so is helping criminals to escape. But God was equal to the occasion, if we are to believe the eminent Dr. Price, one of the leading divines of Boston. Lightning having been rendered ineffectual by the "iron points invented by the sagacious Dr. Franklin", Massachusetts was shaken by earthquakes, which Dr. Price perceived to be due to God's wrath at the "iron points." In a sermon on the subject he said,"In Boston are more [lightning rods] erected than elsewhere in New England, and Boston seems to be more dreadfully shaken. Oh, there is no getting out of the mighty hand of God!" Apparently, however, Providence gave up all hope of curing Boston of its wickedness, for, though lightning-rods became more and more common, earthquakes in Massachusetts have remained rare. - Bertrand Russell Typical behavior by the church. tEmP theorists do the same thing, of course. #194 When dogmas enter the brain, all intellectual activity ceases. - Robert Anton Wilson True enough. #195 When it was first proposed to establish laboratories at Cambridge, Todhunter, the mathematician, objected that it was unnecessary for students to see experiments performed, since the results could be vouched for by their teachers, all of them of the highest character, and many of them clergymen of the Church of England. - Bertrand Russell Physicists at the LHC are saying the same thing today. "Trust us." "And keep sending us those five billion dollar checks at Christmas time." #196 When we say 'science' we can either mean any manipulation of the inventive and organizing power of the human intellect: or we can mean such an extremely different thing as the religion of science, the vulgarized derivative from this pure activity manipulated by a sort of priestcraft into a great religious and political weapon. - [Percy] Wyndham Lewis Wiki: "an English writer, painter and critic" Still, pretty good quote. #197 Where faith commences, science ends. Faith has its origin in the poetic imagination; knowledge originates in the reasoning intelligence. Science has to pluck the blessed fruits from the tree of knowledge, unconcerned whether these conquests trench upon the poetical imaginings of faith or not. - Ernst Haeckel I ran this past seven different readability engines. The results: - "fairly difficult to read" - "hard to read" - "ninth grade" - "college" - "tenth grade" - "twelfth grade" - "ninth grade" I'm going to take each engine to dinner on a different night this coming week. Whichever one gives my thoughts the highest score gets to hear my marriage proposal. #198 You can't reason someone out of something that they didn't reason themself into. I read this one to a table of salesmen on their lunch break. Their laughter was so loud we were all thrown out. The salmon was delicious. #199 Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma -- which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary. - Steve Jobs (1955-2011) A. The greatest American slave driver of the computer age deprived more people of more of their own time and paid the ultimate karmic prize. Q. What are 24 words more than the man deserved? #200 When scholars study a thing, they strive to kill it first. - Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe (1749-1832) If she drowns, she is innocent. Wasn't that the way they judged witches? Lindbergh the dangerous person -- because he was the most famous and loved person alive AND because he was isolationist -- became a stolen baby (that can't tell any tales). Kill it, poison it, lie about it. Whatever you do, don't allow it a chance to express itself. - motto of the 1% [the 99% are the "it", by the way] #201 Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it. Do not believe in anything simply because it is the opinion of many. Do not believe in anything because it is found written in your [physics] books. Do not believe in anything merely on the authority of your teachers and elders. Do not believe in traditions the Standard Model because they have been handed down for many generations. But after observation and analysis, when you find anything that agrees with reason and is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all -- like Spring-And-Loop Theory -- then accept it and live up to it. - Gautama Buddha (568-488 BC) #202 The clergy know that I know that they know that they do not know. - Robert Ingersoll, "Orthodoxy" Clearing standing up against the church. Good show. #203 Although science has many of religion's virtues, it has none of its vices. - Richard Dawkins Couldn't be more wrong. One of the great lies of our time. Very hard to respect any aspect of this guy. #204 Be nice to conspiracists - S.G. Collins A unique guy, hoeing his own row. For Jarrah - more from the inimitable S.G. Collins #205 Nothing scares the Left more than philosophy and so they use religion -- the label, the words, the taint of -- as the perfect umbrella to smother philosophical thought (and turn off half the audience, as only 50% of Americans are religious). - Floyd Maxwell (1957-) Is it working?     Are you turned off philosophy and are religious? + Are you turned off philosophy and not religious? = Pretty much everyone #206 Every dogma has its day, but ideals are eternal. - Israel Zangwill Ideals. A word worth looking up. Pondering. Writing down on a piece of paper. And sticking on the wall somewhere annoying. #207 Dogmatism is the greatest of mental obstacles to human happiness. - Bertrand Russell There is one thing more obstacle-creating. The removal of wisdom. Today wisdom is removed, even banned, from every major media platform. Flat Earthers are a modern phenomenon, caused by the dumbing down of everything. #208 I should wish to see a world in which education aimed at mental freedom rather than imprisoning the minds of the young in rigid armor of dogma calculated to protect them through life against the shafts of impartial evidence. - Bertrand Russell Spoken like a 99%er. Which is a good thing. #209 We should take care not to make intellect our god; it has powerful muscles but no personality. - Albert Einstein (1879-1955) Well, this is true. Nice to see a famous scientist saying it. Few will listen, however. Just ask any body builder. #210 Hell isn't other people. Hell is yourself. - Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951) Hell isn't a place. Hell is taking those pills your doctor suggested. Hell is copying the dietary habits of your meat-eating parents. Hell is belief-based physics. Hell is true avoided. #211 There is no reason to suppose that the world had a beginning at all. The idea that things must have a beginning is really due to the poverty of our thoughts. - Bertrand Russell (1872-1970) When you have a religious hammer, everything looks like a person you'd like to beat to death. With guilt. #212 Jesus was not the man he was as a result of making Jesus Christ his personal savior. - Alan Wilson Watts (1915-1973) True enough. Jesus got Maaco. #213 However unwillingly a person who has a strong opinion may admit the possibility that his opinion may be false, he ought to be moved by the consideration that, however true it may be, if it is not fully, frequently and fearlessly discussed, it will be held as a dead dogma, not a living truth. - John Stuart Mill Water your strong opinions daily. Prune them as well. Smidge of fertilizer. Oh, and sun! Lots of sun! Unless they are shade lovers.   #214 I think we ought always to entertain our opinions with some measure of doubt. I shouldn't wish people dogmatically to believe any philosophy, not even mine. - Bertrand Russell #215 Belief, any belief, is based on the sense of insecurity. Only when all belief is given up are you free to know yourself. In self-discovery, what you find is the truth -- that truth which is total, self-evident and which needs no outside support or justification. - Ramesh S. Balsekar (1917-2009) These guys are doing me out of a job. #216 You will notice that in all disputes between Christians since the birth of the Church, Rome has always favored the doctrine which most completely subjugated the human mind and annihilated reason. - Voltaire [Francois-Marie Arouet] (1694-1778) Is that bad? #217 Science is an integral part of culture. It's not this foreign thing, done by an arcane priesthood. It's one of the glories of the human intellectual tradition. - Stephen Jay Gould (1941-2002) Hallelujah! #218 Religion ends and philosophy begins, just as alchemy ends and chemistry begins, and astrology ends and astronomy begins. - Christopher Hitchens (1949-2011) True enough, and nice to see philosophy getting some favorable press. #219 A faith that cannot survive collision with the truth is not worth many regrets. - Arthur Charles Clarke (1917-2008) #220 Books are not made to be believed, but to be subjected to inquiry. - Umberto Eco (1932-2016) Things are made for the reasons of the makers. Most book makers are bad dudes. And dudettes. #221 The heresy of one age becomes the orthodoxy of the next. - Edith Hamilton (1867-1963) Things are of course never quite this straightforward. More like "The heresy of one age becomes the orthodoxy of the next, once steps have been taken to ensure it is not a threat to the powers that be." #222 Orthodoxy is my doxy; heterodoxy is another man's doxy. - William Warburton And thus Doxy War I began. #223 The world's various religions are just beginning their research into Clerical Acceleration, and it will be a number of years before they can even begin to consider reaching near-luminal velocities. This is a shame, since it means that a number of tantalizing theories must remain little more than speculation at this point, and a number of fundamental questions go unanswered. For instance, if a Catholic priet's speed were to come close to that of light, and it were Sunday in his frame of reference, would he in fact approach infinite Mass? - Dan Martinez, explaining relativistic morality It is hard to joke about religion, without getting a strong urge to shower after. #224 The dogmas of the quiet past, are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. - Abraham Lincoln I prefer: The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate. #225 The principle of dogmatic religion, dogmatic morality, dogmatic philosophy, is what requires to be rooted out; not any particular manifestation of that principle. - John Stuart Mill Nuke dogma from orbit. It's the only way to be sure. #226 Your Highness, I have no need of this hypothesis. - Pierre-Simon Laplace, to Napoleon, explaining why his works on celestial mechanics made no mention of God Crappy theories *need* dogma. Desperately. No joke. #227 Religion is the one area of our discourse in which it is considered noble to pretend to be certain about things no human being could possibly be certain about. - Sam Harris Nah, physics is as well. #228 In my country there is a belief, and rightly so, that the only thing that separates us from animals is mindless superstition and pointless ritual. - Latka Graves, "Taxi" #229 You know the people who have the bumper stickers that say "Windows 95 = Mac '89"? These are the faithful, and I respect their faith, but I would like to respectfully point out that faith is dangerous. Religion kills. - Jean-Louis Gassee Mac Fanatics have grown up. And become tEmP theorists. #230 Science is not a sacred cow. Science is a horse. Don't worship it. Feed it. - Aubrey Eben MooNeigh. #231 In comparing religious belief to science, I try to remember that science is belief also. - Robert Brault Dude is an operatic tenor. Listen up! #232 Man seeks to worship what is established beyond dispute, so that all men would agree at once to worship it. This craving for community of worship is the chief misery of every man individually and of all humanity from the beginning of time. - Fyodor Dostoyevsky Worship is a relatively modern act on planet Earth. The idea that it is worship of "what is established beyond dispute" is borderline comical. People sense they don't know everything, and that some of the things they don't understand -- like large rocks falling from the sky -- can hurt them. Placed in such a position of disadvantage, and potentially dire consequences, people turn to...posting selfies on Facebook. Sorry, lost my train of thought there... #233 We not only believe what we see, to some extent we see what we believe. The implications of our beliefs are frightening. - Richard Gregory I hear that beliefs are allergic to silver. Head on over to Efesos, and pick up a 1/6 stater made of electrum. You'll be all set. #234 If you do science properly, you're not precluding any one explanation. - NdT Yet the ether has been precluded due to NEGATIVE (i.e. non) results. Dang, my logic fuse just blew. #235 Democracy is grounded upon so childish a complex of fallacies that they must be protected by a rigid system of taboos, else even halfwits would argue it to pieces. Its first concern must thus be to penalize the free play of ideas. - Henry Louis [H.L.] Mencken (1880-1956) tEmP theories are grounded upon so childish a complex of fallacies that they must be protected by a rigid system of dogmas, else even halfwits would argue it to pieces. Their first concern must thus be to penalize the free play of ideas (through insults and rabid trolling). #236 When faith is supported by facts or logic it ceases to be faith. - Edith Hamilton (1867-1963) This might be true if the facts and logic were part of a simple verifiable model to build supports of the utmost integrity and strength. Basically it's never true. And why "facts OR logic"? Weird. #237 The brain is not an organ of thinking but an organ of survival, like claws and fangs. It is made in such a way as to make us accept as truth that which is only advantage. It is an exceptional, almost pathological constitution one has, if one follows thoughts logically through, regardless of consequences. Such people make martyrs, apostles or scientists, and mostly end on the stake, or in a chair, electric or academic. - Albert Szent-Gyorgi Great stuff. Yes, we are dog-eat-dog primates who very occassionally do something more significant than belch. #238 Breakthroughs come from people not accepting the current dogma. Dogma is like a growling guard dog...that turns out to be stuffed, with a well-worn cassette tape looping inside it. #239 Belief is not a voluntary thing. A man believes or disbelieves in spite of himself. They tell us that to believe is the safe way; but I say, the safe way is to be honest. - Robert Ingersoll, "Some Reasons Why I Am A Freethinker" There is no honesty among tEmP theorists. #240 Fear believes,   courage doubts. Fear falls upon the earth and prays,   courage stands erect and thinks. Fear is barbarism,   courage is civilization. Fear believes in witchcraft, devils and ghosts. Fear is religion,   courage is science. - Robert Green Ingersoll (1833-1899) Great except the last line. Fear is non-thinking,   courage is calm thinking. #241 Top 10 Climate Change Lies Exposed #8 "in fact, it's downright anti-science" #242 The followers of different religions quarrel about truth because they have never experienced it. Most of them don't even try to experience it; they are much happier quarreling, fighting and killing each other. - Ramayana The followers of different tEmP theories quarrel about truth because they have never experienced it. Most of them don't even try to experience it. #243 Education means to bring out wisdom. Indoctrination means to push in knowledge. - Dick Gregory Education is personal. Indoctrination takes a group. #244 History shows that a noble set of aims just isn't enough. We start with good intentions. We turn them into a set of informal laws. And then they become...DOGMA. - Trevor Phillips, here Well said. #245 After the coming of the Holy Inquisition, nobody discovered any new chemical elements in the Catholic nations of Europe; all the new chemical discoveries, i.e., the majority of the elements now known, came from Protestant nations. - Robert Anton Wilson (1932-) What's your point? I kid, I kid. "Off with his head!" #246 Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members. The virtue most requested is conformity. Who would be a man, must be a nonconformist. - Ralph Waldo Emerson Time to disband The Royal Society. Convert the LHC to a giant underground race track. No need to touch String Theory. At the present rate it'll run out of extra dimensions by the year 2020. #247 Epistemology is always and inevitably personal. - Gregory Bateson (1904-1980) Google: 'Epistemology is the investigation of what distinguishes justified belief from opinion.' Be kind with this guy, he was a semioticiast. Wiki: Semiotics (also called semiotic studies) is the study of sign process (semiosis). It is not to be confused with the Saussurean tradition called semiology, which is a subset of semiotics.[1][2] Semiotics includes the study of signs and sign processes, indication, designation, likeness, analogy, allegory, metonymy, metaphor, symbolism, signification, and communication. Just 17.6? I thought for sure it would crash the readability analyser. #248 You'll see it when you believe it. - Wayne Dyer What is the point of this sort of thing? From Wayne Dyer? Disappointing. #249 God is infinite, so His universe must be too. Thus is the excellence of God magnified and the greatness of His kingdom made manifest; He is glorified not in one, but in countless suns; not in a single earth, a single world, but in a thousand thousand, I say in an infinity of worlds. - Giordano Bruno, 1584 Despite this major kiss-up to the guys in robes, he was later executed by the Inquisition. No joke. Wiki: "He is known for his cosmological theories, which conceptually extended the then-novel Copernican model. He proposed that the stars were distant suns surrounded by their own exoplanets and raised the possibility that these planets could foster life of their own, a philosophical position known as cosmic pluralism. He also insisted that the universe is infinite and could have no celestial body at its 'center'." Oh well then...Sinner! #250 It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it. - Aristotle Great. Timeless wisdom. Thing of beauty and all that. #251 There lives more faith in honest doubt than in half the creeds. - Lord Alfred Tennyson The thinker is confident that good things, sound things, truthful things can withstand 300 watt bulb scrutiny. And that the rest doesn't matter. #252 Doubt is key to skepticism and science. The absence of doubt is gullibility. - Steven Novella #253 Our beliefs do not sit passively in our brains waiting to be confirmed or contradicted by incoming information. Instead, they play a key role in shaping how we see the world. - Richard Wiseman Dude's a shrink so better belief it. #254 The confidence people have in their beliefs is not a measure of the quality of evidence but of the coherence of the story the mind has managed to construct. - Daniel Kahneman Great stuff.   And finally, five in a row from Asimov...   #255 Suppose that we are wise enough to learn and know—and yet not wise enough to control our learning and knowledge, so that we use it to destroy ourselves? Even if that is so, knowledge remains better than ignorance. It is better to know—even if the knowledge endures only for the moment that comes before destruction—than to gain eternal life at the price of a dull and swinish lack of comprehension of a universe that swirls unseen before us in all its wonder. That was the choice of Achilles, and it is mine, too. - Isaac Asimov #256 Beliefs can't be shaken short of a major shock, in which case, a fairly complete mental discruption results. Mild cases: hysteria, morbid sense of insecurity. Advanced cases: madness and suicide. - Isaac Asimov #257 I have never, in all my life, not for one moment, been tempted toward religion of any kind. The fact is that I feel no spiritual void. I have my philosophy of life, which does not include any aspect of the supernatural and which I find totally satisfying. I am, in short, a rationalist and believe only that which reason tells me is so. Mind you, this isn't easy. We are so surrounded by tales of the supernatural, by the thunders of the powers that be who attempt with all their might to convince us of the existence of the supernatural, that the strongest among us may feel himself swaying. - Isaac Asimov, "I. Asimov" #258 Where is the world whose people don't prefer a comfortable, warm, and well-worn belief, however illogical, to the chilly winds of uncertainty? - Isaac Asimov #259 Old men tend to forget what thought was like in their youth; they forget the quickness of the mental jump, the daring of the youthful intuition, the agility of the fresh insight. They become accustomed to the more plodding varieties of reason, and because this is more than made up for by the accumulation of experience, old men think themselves wiser than the young. - Isaac Asimov Except that older people are wiser. Less foolish. More often "right". Not inclined to get fooled by nonsense like dark matter. Saying they forget the quickness of mental jumps is idiotically wrong. They have fewer jumps, with perhaps enough time in between to forget what they feel like, because they've already figured more stuff out. If anyone can claim to be a know-it-all, it's an old guy. The only reason they don't? They don't want to scare off the younger generation. #260 This epistemology-soaked orgy ought to come to an end. - Albert Einstein, in a 1935 letter to Erwin Schrodinger Einstein was referring to the madness known as quantum mechanics. Or was it the church ruling by divine right?     COASALT Introduction The Speed Of Light   Black Holes   Einstein's Equation   The Ether   Gravity 222 Answers   The Atom   Quantum World   Neutrino   Black Holes Revisited The Comedy Of Science   et=mc3   Comparing Physics Theories Diffuse Interstellar Bands   Einstein's Ether Talk   No Strong Force The Electron   Relativity   Unification   Assumptions   Modeling   The Greatest Story     My Theory   Physics Quotes & Thoughts Big Bang   Dark Matter/Dark Energy   Dogma   Forget The Fields   Math Sucks   Particle Physics   Peer Review   Standard Model   Star Gazing   String Theory   tEmP Theories/Theorists   The Control System   Trolls       Spring-And-Loop Theory by Floyd Maxwell is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License. Other subjects   Site Map   Contact   Quotes provided by: Click here to access the 40k Quote Archive)