Doctor dude leave Galileo alone
Published by admin July 11th, 2007 in UncategorizedDoctor of Philosophy Sean Carroll of Cosmic Variance ends his imitation “Crackpot Index”1 with this Doctoral wisdom:
Don’t compare yourself to Galileo. You are not Galileo. Honestly, you’re not. Dude, seriously.
This says so much about Doctor Sean himself and Doctors of Philosophy in general who call themselves physicists.
What does this really mean? Doctor Sean is giving the advice that no one should not compare himself to Galileo.
First why would anyone compare himself to Galileo? We study Galileo’s work. We read his books. Enjoy his wit. We laugh how he ridiculed scholastic Doctor Seans of his time. And as scientists we apply scientific skepticism to Galileo’s work. This is the scientific method. This is what every scientist should do.
But look at how Doctor Sean and other physicists view Galileo. For physicists Galileo is a Newtonian saint. According to Newtonist whig history, as an early Newtonian Galileo sacrificed himself to Newtonism (never mind that Galileo never heard of Newton) and prepared the way for Newton and his great achievements which brought about the perfect state physics is in today.
Doctor Sean and his ilk read Galileo as part of physics canon. For them Galileo’s work is sacred and cannot be wrong. For physicists Galileo cannot be questioned since it is part of the physics canon. They read Galileo’s time squared rule for free fall and memorize it and they think they know Galileo. As usual they confuse physics mythology with history. They think Newtonian mythology they are indoctrinated with is true history.
That’s why Doctor Sean is so offended when an amateur dares to look at Galileo with independent and scientific eyes. Doctor Sean is a Newtonian priest blindly obeying Newtonian doctrines. His view of Galileo is the Galileo of the Newtonian propaganda. Doctor Sean never read or understood Galileo’s work but he finds in himself the right to pontificate about Galileo’s work. We know that authority corrupts and absolute authority corrupts absolutely. Doctors of physics have absolute authority on human reason and they have corrupted science into scholasticism.
What do we see when we look at Galileo’s work as a scientist? We see that Galileo is human. Yes, he is one of the greatest scientists ever lived, but he is human. Galileo is not God. Galileo is not perfect and he is not a Newtonian saint. As scientists we are free. We enjoy freedom of science. We are not bound by the Newtonist doctrine like doctor Sean.
Therefore, we spend time actually reading Galileo’s book, we study his beautiful theorems, we read as much as we can about Galileo’s scientific investigations and we go beyond the Newtonian mythology memorized by Doctor Sean. But we never accept the Newtonian mythology in which Galileo is reduced to a Newtonian saint sacrificing himself for Newtonism!
When we study Galileo’s science as scientists, not as scholastic doctors of philosophy serving Newtonism, we realize that Galileo’s times squared rule is not correct. Doctor Sean who debases Galileo’s scientific legacy by making Galileo into a Newtonian saint can never see this fact. Free fall is described by Kepler’s rule. Falling stone is in orbit around the earth. Orbits are given by Kepler’s rule not by times squared rule as thought by Galileo. This is science. This is scientific progress. This basic science is beyond the grasp of Newtonist priests such as Doctor Sean.
All Doctor Sean knows about Galileo is what he read in Newtonian physics textbooks. That’s why he sees Galileo as a saint whose work is beyond scientific skepticism and analysis. He then advises everyone to stop questioning Galileo’s work and become Newtonian drones as he is. Can there be a stronger proof that Scholastic Doctor Sean is a priest of Newtonist religion preaching Newtonian dogma?
And I love the “proof by vernacular,” which is so common among doctors who want to assert their doctoral authority by falling into the vernacular:
Honestly, you’re not Galileo. Dude, seriously,
writes Doctor Sean.
Yo, Doctor Dude, you are a scholastic doctor of philosophy using your blog to perpetuate Newtonian religion and by corrupting human science. Leave Galileo alone. You know nothing about Galileo.
8 Responses to “Doctor dude leave Galileo alone”
- 1 Pingback on Jul 16th, 2007 at 7:38 pm
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It is actually possible to get the physicists to pay attention to your work despite being an amateur with no PhD, no academic job, no published papers and refusing to believe the special theory of relativity. I know this because I now have 5 physics journal citations to my work and I fit this description. (Oh, and I’m also an old guy who knows way too much about forklifts and the like.)
Eventually I want to write a blog post on how one does this. It’s not easy. The keys are: (1) write in the usual language of physics. (2) Don’t criticize the usual ways of doing things. (3) Learn the LaTex typesetting language (which is free) so your papers look pretty. (4) Send your paper to people who are directly interested in exactly what you are doing because they have written papers that your results extend or support (or as a last resort, disprove). (5) If it takes more than 15 seconds to hook the reader, the physicist will throw it away so front load the payoff. (In fact, physicists ignore 99.99% of physics done by other professionals so don’t feel bad.) (6) If it is longer than one page, the physicist probably won’t even give it 15 seconds. (7) Your work has to be very very useful and clearly new, otherwise the pros won’t bother to cite it even if they study your work carefully. This is because citing an amateur makes their own work look amateurish and makes it more difficult to publish.
If you can follow these rules, then yes, you can get the attention of physicists and be cited in the peer reviewed literature even as an amateur. Einstein did it. And a new Galileo or Einstein could probably do it too.
But getting cited is difficult even for the professionals. Most papers probably are never cited at all except in later papers by the same author or his immediate buddies. But most papers are quite useless and don’t deserve citations.
When Sean tells you that you are “not Galileo”, he’s being a prick, but that does not mean that (a) you are not comparable to Galileo, or (b) every physicist will react the same was as Sean. You just need to follow the above rules. The hardest part is figuring out a hook that can be understood in 15 seconds. You need to have something that fits into the current physics scheme because that is all they are really interested in. If God ever gives you a quick peek at the equations He used to create the Universe, you should keep this in mind when deciding which ones to plagiarize. Concentrate on the ones that fit into the current scheme, not necessarily the ones that are the most elegant, beautiful, and powerful.
Carl,
Thanks for your comments. I agree with most of what you write but I also have some comments:
I never had a paper I needed to be reviewed by a physicist. But when I have a specific question that I think a physicist as a specialist would know I ask them and usually physicists are very nice people and they reply with an answer.
You are exactly right given the extreme specialization in physics a physicist can only give you relevant information if it is within his specialization. I think that outside their narrow specialty all physicists are as amateurs as any amateur.
By the way I don’t think that Doctor Sean has me in mind when he says that you are not Galileo. I see Galileo as a human being. It is healthy scientific skepticism to read Galileo’s work critically. For physicists Galileo is part of the canon and there is no professional points gained by studying Galileo’s work or publishing about it so they ignore it. As I think about it I see that physics promotes personality cults. Newton, Galileo, Einstein, Lorentz and anyone named an equation after them are saints whose work can be amended but not removed from the physics code.
Interesting about personality cults and physics. I agree that the cults exist, but I don’t think it’s physics per se that creates them.
I think that years of living in small tribal bands has left the human species very inclined towards hero worship.
This may not be entirely true. I just finished reading a book called Genghis Khan and the Making of Modern World by John Weatherford. This is 13th century Asia. Mongol tribes share the steppes with other tribes. Theirs is a purely tribal culture. What I found interesting while I was reading the book was that there is no hero worship in their culture. Mongols did not worship anthropomorphic deities. Their only god was Eternal Blue Sky. That’s all. They are illiterate. There is no literate professional class. There is a shaman but he is a human being not employed by a corporation or a hierarchy as today’s shamans are. His main purpose is to lend theoretical support to Genghis Khan’s actions.
Mongols have no technology except war (which is organized motion) and herding.
When their empire expands to the European border Mongols defeat European armies led by nobles. They notice and are surprised that European society is ruled by religion and by professionals who enforce this state religion. People are not free to believe what they want as in Mongol ruled lands. My point is that the European society even then was ruled by a ruling class and their professional collaborators called the scribes (the usual suspects: lawyers, politicians and theological and philosophical doctors). In this society, which is not tribal and not nomadic, hero worship exists and it is fundamental to the existence of the society because professionals make their living by defining and marketing anthropomorphic deities to the population that they keep ignorant and encourage to believe in the occult.
The difference between these two societies is the existence of a parasitic professional class who do no manual work. Illiterate and nomadic Mongol tribes on the other hand live in a society ruled by law which applies to everyone equally. Even Genghis Khan is not above the law and must make his decisions in a Kurultai.
This is a pragmatic society. When they meet new technology in a new land Mongols take it, use it and add to it and pass it along to the next land they invade. They have not hoard technology or knowledge in closed guilds the way Europeans still do. They distribute whatever they get. Even gifts are circulated. Nothing gets stale by hiding and hoarding. European society is based on stealing, hoarding and hiding.
Mongols get needed professionals such as medical doctors and astronomers from China or Arabia.
At some point the empire gets too big. Their war machine fine tuned to the steppes does not work well on sea or in desert or in forest land. They stop expanding. They build cities and settle. Professional classes take over and corruption begins and the empire falls apart.
So it seems that tribal culture is not the source of unquestioning hero worship. Hero worship is the invention of the professional class whose livelihood depends on the exploitation of non-professionals. This European system of society ruled by professionals is still with us today and defines the hierarchical corporation who employs physicists. Founding Fathers were all amateurs.