The Courage of Your Convictions

It is really easier to say nothing. You are under no obligation to say anything. If you must voice an opinion against some nonsense, it is enough to say that you disagree and leave it at that. Moreover, a postmodernist or someone similar will tell you that right and wrong are only cultural constructs. Of course that assertion itself is a cultural construct. And even a scientist will remind you that our ideas about truth have changed as new facts have been discovered and new theories developed to explain them. It was not always so. There was a time when a scientist would truly go to the ends of the Earth to prove a theory. 

Today, scientists are not alone in accepting a false theory of induction which asserts that we can only approach but never know the truth. 

From Susan M. Lea and John Robert Burke, Physics: the Nature of Things (Thomson Brooks/Cole; 1997). 

“Physics is an experimental science that prides itself in getting close to reality through laboratory testing of theory. … How can we be certain that the experimental process of dissecting nature into component part is ultimately correct? We can’t! Belief in experimental science depends on one’s worldview.” -- page 12.

 

“Consistency with experiment and usefulness in understanding nature are the properties of a good physical theory. The word truth is conspicuously absent. Aristotle… Kepler and Galileo… Newtonian physics, [were] thought absolutely true for 250 years. In the twentieth century, we have learned that Newtonian physics is not exact but stands as an excellent approximation. Absolute truth is elusive. We continue to seek greater depth in our understanding, greater elegance in our theories, and greater precision in our experiments. Whether truth can be achieved in some approximate sense by this process is unanswerable. We believe in physics because we know we can organize our knowledge and employ it to describe the behavior of nature with greater accuracy using only a small number of fundamental ideas.” -- page 14

Not all scientists are timid.

“As a scientist, Sagan speculated freely, sometimes wildly, and outraged his more cautious colleagues. ... He anticipated some interesting scientific discoveries, although sometimes (and oddly) for the wrong reasons. ... The price of fame is a big head, and Sagan’s grew mighty big; eyewitness testimony to this effect abounds.... Most scientists, by contrast, are rarely so self-assured. To them, Truth is a like a blob of mercury—it’s hard to pin down. Sagan’s air of omniscience made him seem sometimes slightly inhuman, more like Mr. Spock than Mr. Wizard.” ) Carl Sagan: A Life by Keay Davison, John Wiley & Sons, 1999, pages xiii- xiv passim.

 

When the American Astronomical Society sought to present Margaret Burbidge with the Annie Jump Cannon Award in May 1971, she rejected their offer.  

[quote] In a letter to AAS secretary Laurence Frederick, Burbidge wrote, “I believe that it is high time that discrimination in favor of, as well as against women in professional life be removed, and a prize restricted to women is in this category.” Underlying that official statement was the suspicion that the Cannon Award had kept women from receiving other recognition. In conclusion, Burbidge wrote, “It would be interesting to know, however, how often our names have been excluded from consideration for professorships, directorships . . . because we are women.” 

At that time, AAS offered two other awards—the Henry Norris Russell Lectureship, which honored an astronomer’s long and distinguished career, and the Helen B. Warner Prize, for astronomers no more than 35 years old. No woman had received the Russell. Burbidge was the only woman to have won the Warner Prize, in 1959, and she had shared it with her husband Geoffrey for their work on stellar nucleosynthesis.

From Physics Today 27 Feb 2018 in People & History: The award rejection that shook astronomy by Roberta Humphreys at https://physicstoday.scitation.org/do/10.1063/pt.6.4.20180227a/full/

Interviewed by Joe Rogan (YouTube here) Neil deGrasse Tyson said that while the dictionary definition of “atheist” applies to him, the functional definition does not. Functionally, he said, an atheist is someone who feels compelled to argue with religious people. He also said that he often uses the word “God” in the vernacular sense, as when he wished an astronaut friend, Godspeed, echoing “Godspeed, John Glenn.” 

 

On the other hand, Richard Dawkins advocates for militant atheism. Granting that religious people can be good, he refuses to relinquish the epistemological high ground. Not only does God not exist, as good as many people seem to be, only religion specifically allows and encourages them to be bad. Arguing against that proposition some people point to the atheists of communist governments—the USSR, Cambodia, and China--who carried out atrocities against people holding religious beliefs. However, despite claims to “scientific socialism” political Marxism-Leninism is really another religion: it has books of sole truth, a priesthood, and intense internal battles over dogma, none of which can be empirically verified. Whatever failings that scientists have as individuals—to err is human—they do not bomb each other’s classrooms and cafes. 

It is not a lack of standards or a want of values. Right and wrong exist and we can know them. Only physical force is forbidden. As the US Supreme Court ruled on the legality of polygamy in Utah (Reynolds vs. the United States 18 US 145; 1879):You are free to believe whatever you want; you are not free to do whatever you want. Personally, I believe that SCOTUS was in error on the wider issue. As long as no one was coerced, they were all free to do whatever they wanted. The fundamental truth remains, however: The strength and resiliency of an open society is a consequence of the interactions—even acrimonious debate—among people advancing their own ideas.

 

It is infamously known in astronomy that Cecilia Payne changed her doctoral dissertation to agree with the (widely accepted) theory of her advisor Harlow Shapley and astronomers generally that the elements are distributed in the stars very much as they are on and within the Earth. Payne found that hydrogen is a million times more abundant in the stars. Similarly, 80 years later, confronted with doubts from the highest authorities, Bruce Campbell and Gordon Walker retracted their claim to have found the first evidence of an exoplanet. Nonetheless, it remains foundational to the scientific method that you have to know when you were wrong. How you know is as much a matter of introspection as it is of epistemology. 

 

PREVIOUSLY ON NECESSARY FACTS

 

Karl Popper and His Enemies 

Karl Marx and the Dustbin of History 

The Scientific Method 

The Scientific Method (Revisited)

 

Merry Newtonmas 2022

The first recorded Newtonmas is credited to the Newton Kai at Tokyo University, circa 1891. Physics students had been celebrating with a party of their own in their undergraduate years. As they became graduate students, they brought some of their professors into the circle. The report is in Nature, Volume 46 Number 1193 Page 459, published 8 September 1892. So that party had been convened the Christmas before. 

 

I do not remember my flash of inspiration back in 1982. However, I was enrolled in physics at Lansing Community College and was the physics lab aide. Our professor for that class was Dr. Alan Saaf who more than once called a McDonald’s Quarter Pounder a “Newtonburger.”[1] So, Newtonmas could have been a logical leap. I sent out Newtonmas cards several times in the 1980s and recorded a Newtonmas greeting as a “Community Commentary” for WKAR-FM, the public broadcaster of Michigan State University in 1983 or 84.

 

For that, I built up the imagery of a little boy born in a small village across the sea who would grow up to bring light to the world. When I quoted the poet's eulogy – Nature and nature's laws lay hid in night; God said "Let Newton be" and all was light.—I emphasized the word Pope and then announced that Sir Isaac Newton was born on December 25, 1642, the same year that Galileo died.

 

Michael Shermer and the Skeptic Society have been celebrating Newtonmas for at least 25 years by now. Richard Dawkins touted it in 2007. And it was an element in an opening scene of Big Bang Theory Season 3 Episode 11, “Maternal Congruence.” 

 

Why do we not have Galileomas or Keplermas? Sir Isaac Newton stands as perhaps the most accomplished scientist in the modern world. At his level would be only Aristotle or only Archimedes. As much as we owe to everyone who invented something new, not every savant earns the same honors as Newton. 

 

He invented the calculus to prove his physics. He did that with geometry. When Richard P. Feynman attempted to recreate that work from scratch, he found that he could not. We  rely on algebra and calculus and have forgotten much. Newton’s physics demonstrated that the laws on Earth are the same as they are in Heaven. Heaven is not perfect; Earth is not flawed. Force equals mass multiplied by the second change in distances over times and the path of an object acting under central force motion always fits to a curve sliced from a cone. 

 

That would be enough. But Newton did more. 

 

He served two terms in Parliament, representing Cambridge University (1689-1702). He was president of the Royal Society (1703-1727). He found another proof for the Binomial Theorem (also known as Pascal’s Triangle). He found a clever shortcut for rapidly approximating square roots. 

His work in optics was fundamental to understanding light and, in truth, the entire electromagnetic spectrum. That work also led to the development of spectroscopy. Newton’s work in optics led to his invention of the reflecting telescope, which (unlike a refractor) introduces no chromatic aberration. 

 

While he was Warden and Master of the British Royal Mint for 30 years, he had himself sworn as a justice of the peace. He went disguised into the pubs where criminals exchanged wares and gossip. With the information he gathered, he arrested, interrogated, and prosecuted counterfeiters. The execution of the notorious William Chaloner hallmarked Newton’s labors to protect England’s money. Chaloner was a master criminal who even testified before Parliament in his efforts to rob from the Royal Mint with impunity. Clever as he apparently was, Chaloner was no match for Newton. 

 

In fact, no one was. 

 

Newton’s Principial Mathematica was more than the birth of modern astronomy or physics or science or mathematics. The Constitution of the United States with its balances of powers is a translation of the principles of physical science to the social world. You can get an ought from an is.

 

General Biographies of Sir Isaac Newton

Berlinski, David. Newton's Gift: How Sir Isaac Newton Unlocked the System of the World. New York: Free Press, Simon and Schuster, 2000.

Calligas, Elini (editor), Coincraft's 1998 Standard Catalogue of English and UK Coins 1066 to Date.London: Coincraft, 1998.

Keynes, Milo. “The Personality of Isaac Newton,” Notes and Records of the Royal Society (49), London: The Royal Society, 1995.

Marotta, Michael. “Sir Isaac Newton: Warden and Master of the Mint,” The Numismatist, Vol. 114, no. 11 (November 2001), p. 1302-1308, 1363 : ill., port. (George Heath Literary Award, Second Place, 2002)

Newman, E. G. V. “The Gold Metallurgy of Isaac Newton.” The Gold Bulletin Vol 8. No. 3, London: The World Gold Council, 1975.

Trowbridge, Richard J. Queen Anne, 1702-1714 Mystery Farthings. Long Beach: Coins of the British World, 1970.

Westfall, Richard S. Never at Rest: a Biography of Isaac Newton. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980.

White, Michael. Isaac Newton: The Last Sorceror. Reading, Mass.: Helix Books, Perseus Books, 1997.

www.newtonproject.sussex.ac.uk/, The Newton Project, Professor Rob Iliffe Director, University of Sussex, East Sussex - BN1 9SH

 

Newton at the Mint

(Sir John Craig was Deputy Master and Comptroller of the British Royal Mint.)

Craig, Sir John. Newton at the Mint. Cambridge: University Press, 1946.

Craig, Sit John. “Isaac Newton - Crime Investigator,” Nature 182, (19 July 1958), pages 149-152. 

Craig, Sir John. “Isaac Newton and the Counterfeiters.”  Notes and Records of the Royal Society (18;2), London: 1963, pages 136-145. 

www.royalmint.com/museum/newton Web site pages of the British Royal Mint. 

Shaw, W. A., F. B. A., Select Tracts and Documents illustrative of English Monetary History 1626-1730.  London: Clement Wilson, 1896; reprinted, London: George Harding, 1935.

 

Newton versus the Counterfeiters

Levenson, Thomas. 2009. Newton and the Counterfeiter: The Unknown Detective Career of the World's Greatest Scientist. Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin, Harcourt.

Sources cited by Sir John Craig, Notes and Records of the Royal Society. (18;2), London: 1963, pages 136-145. 

Chaloner, William: Proposals.. ... to prevent clipping and counterfeiting, II.2.I694/5: Against raising £1,000,000 for the great recoinage, c. 3.1695: The defects.. ... of the Mint, 1697: Appeal after arrestc . I8.2.I698. (Four pamphlets.)

Middlesex Sessions Roll for 1699, containing original indictments at the Old Bailey, in the County of Middlesex Record Office, London. now in the London Metropolitan Archives.

Newton MSS. in the library of the Royal Mint; 5 large volumes of those papers from Newton's residence which were sorted by Conduitt as 'Mint'. 

Depositions about and letters from criminals, 1697-1704; one volume in the Royal Mint Library. 

Anon. GuzmanR edivivus, a short view of the life of William Chaloner, the notorious Coyner, who was executed at Tyburn on Wednesday the 22nd of March 1698/9; with a brief acount of his trial, behaviour and last speech. London: J. Hayns, 1699. 

Reasons Humbly Offered Against Pass an Act for Raising Ten Hundred Thousand Pounds by William Chaloner, 1694.

Proposals Humbly Offered, for Passing an Act to Prevent Clipping and Counterfeiting of Money, by William Chaloner, London, 1694.

 

[1] Just to note, 1 N = 0.2248 lbf and 0.25 lbf = 1.112 N. Dr. Saaf came to physics at LCC via astronomy at the University of Chicago. So, he probably would have accepted an order of magnitude approximation if the theory were useful.

 

PREVIOUSLY ON NECESSARY FACTS

Newton versus the Counterfeiter 

Merry Newtonmas 2021 

Of Watches and Beaches and Atheists 

 

LIKE SOMETHING OUT OF ATLAS SHRUGGED

Ayn Rand kept a "Horror File" of current news reports validating the worst aspects of her fictional universe in Atlas Shrugged. She said that she did that because often, in casual discussions at social occasions, someone would assert, "No one really believes those things!" or "No really says that." Well, yes, someone does and not just a random person but someone with social capital and personal status. 

Personally, I believe that from both an engineering standpoint and a market perspective, newer energy sources will eclipse oil and coal just as they outshone hardwood and charcoal. At the same time, I also believe in spontaneous order very well enucniated in Leonard E. Reed's essay, "I, Pencil" (Foundation for Economic Education here). 

Furthermore shutting off the oil that supplies you with heat and light and transportation will not deliver to me a solar-powered car, or a plasma power plant for my home.

More to the point, I believe that the people who oppose the production and delivery of oil today do not care if you have heat, light, and transportation (or food). They have them. So, they are satisified. And they have the leisure time to engage in an anti-industrial revolution. 

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