Oct 26, 2016 Think of the scientific method as the methodical application of human cognitive abilities. Everyone uses cognition to some extent; scientists use it methodically. It works through the interplay of three activities: observing or experiencing or paying close attention to some particularly interesting thing or event; thinking…
Aug 17, 2016 Don’t stop looking. The Finder’s Fallacy is the downside of the “Eureka!” of discovery. Searching for a needle of explanation in the haystack of data is exhausting, frustrating, often disappointing. Finally to have found a needle, a theory that “works”, is cause for celebration. But the…
Feb 9, 2016 Modern astronomy is like a blind man, panicked, without his cane, running. There are collisions. It’s not because astronomy has lost its sight; it’s because it has gained a second sight, another sense beyond the five that evolved. It has gained a sixth extrasensory perception conferred by…
Jan 19, 2016 “I’ll believe it when I see it” could be the motto of the empiricist. His not unreasonable belief is that reasonable belief in an idea should be governed by tests that give results which can be sensed. His concern is that beliefs not anchored to what…
Dec 24, 2015 Kuhn’s 1962 essay (The Structure of Scientific Revolutions) exploring the nature of changes in scientific theories, and a plethora of commentaries since, have made it out to be a Big Deal and to be also somewhat mysterious: “revolution”, “incommensurability of paradigms”, “new world”, etc. It seems to…
December 8, 2015 Ignorance is not bliss. In discussing the question of progress in scientific revolutions, Kuhn noted: “There are losses as well as gains [in a paradigm shift]…, and scientists tend to be peculiarly blind to the former.” In a footnote, he elaborates: “Because science students ‘know the…
Dec 3, 2015 The house of cards which is modern astronomy contains two jokers. Both lie in the foundation; both are being played; and the house is doomed to collapse. The first joker is the assumption that redshift is entirely a doppler effect. Upon this card is founded the idea…
Sep 22, 2015 Recent images of the star CH Cygni reveal the electrical circuitry that drives it. Radiation in radio (blue), optical (green), and X-ray (red) highlight the several inner components of the plasma discharge. The outer red circle (large optical image) is composed of radial filaments. This is a…
Sep 17, 2015 Imagine a rock. Now, imagine breaking it into pieces. Break the pieces into smaller pieces. Continue breaking until your eyes can no longer resolve the pieces. Get a microscope. Now you can distinguish the pieces. Break them until the microscope can no longer resolve the parts. Get…
Aug 31, 2015 Decisions, Decisions: A Choice Not an Echo Editor’s note: This is the last installment of Mel Acheson’s epistemological treatise, originally meant to be a presentation at a Thunderbolts conference in 2009. Leon Rosenfeld, a coworker of Neils Bohr, commented that a model is not “sufficiently defined…
