Freedom of Science

In an earlier time humans explained any new observation by defining a new anthropomorphic deity. Any subsequent similar observations were attributed to that deity. This is a primitive and inefficient filing system. Lacking a concept of a folder humans filed the new discoveries under the name of these deities. In a culture where the majority of citizens were illiterate this made sense.

Eventually, instead of assigning new discoveries to existing standard deities it was found to be more believable if a human was deified. So for a long time any astronomical discoveries were attributed to Thales. All discoveries relating to geometry were made by Pythagoras by definition. It was irrelevant if he indeed discovered them or not. Pythagoras theorem was first discovered by Indian mathematicians long before Pythagoras. Later Euclid became the tag used for mathematical discoveries.

We would like to think that this is a pre-scientific process that humans eventually grew out of. We are now living in a scientific era and attributing discoveries to deified humans seems silly. In reality nothing much changed in two millennia. Today we call our scientific deity Newton. There is even a unit named after Newton although the quantity that the unit refers to is an occult virtue that was never observed.

I thought of this situation while browsing this simple and nice book called Mathematics: A very short introduction by Timothy Gowers. In a chapter called “How to throw a stone” the author explains that how far the stone will go depends on the “angle at which the stone leaves your hand.” How can we find this angle? This angle can be found, the author says, “by using a combination of Newtonian physics and some elementary calculus.”

The motion of projectiles near the surface of the Earth were formulated by Galileo. Galileo did not use Newtonian physics and he did not use calculus. There is no need to invoke Newtonian physics or Newtonian mechanics to describe the motion of stones.

Newtonian mechanics is a label associated with the modern scientific deity Newton. Therefore, any observation about motion must be attributed to Newton whether or not Newton discovered it.vs mp3 accwar 2pac free mp3 secretz ofof war 2pac free secretz mp3mp3 secretz free 2pac of warof free secretz mp3 2pac war2pac of mp3 secretz war freemp3 ac dccupid 112 mp3 Map

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