'the laws of physics are being disproved on a daily basis'

[Jon]

^This is a reaction I often get when discussing scientific phenomenon and theory with others and I often ask myself if there's actually any truth in it. I can accept that our knowledge and understanding on scientific theory and 'law' can be improved upon and that of course elements of thoeries will change as that happens, but I can't actually think of any credible, tested scientific theory that has actually ever been 'disproved' or shown to be entirely wrong. I'm not a physicist or scientist by any measure, of course I have something of an interest in the subject but when it comes to this matter, is it right for me to say to them 'Show me one 'law of physics' or scientific theory that has been disproved' and expect them to come up empty handed?

[darthbob88]

^This is a reaction I often get when discussing scientific phenomenon and theory with others and I often ask myself if there's actually any truth in it. I can accept that our knowledge and understanding on scientific theory and 'law' can be improved upon and that of course elements of thoeries will change as that happens, but I can't actually think of any credible, tested scientific theory that has actually ever been 'disproved' or shown to be entirely wrong. I'm not a physicist or scientist by any measure, of course I have something of an interest in the subject but when it comes to this matter, is it right for me to say to them 'Show me one 'law of physics' or scientific theory that has been disproved' and expect them to come up empty handed?

Easiest one is the Aristotelian notions that heavy objects fall faster than light ones, and that the Earth is the center of the Solar System. After that is the notion of "spontaneous generation", which says that animals can appear from inorganic waste. After that, there might be Linus Pauling's misguided notion of triple-stranded DNA. And who could forget Lamarckism and "inheritance of acquired characteristics"

Bear in mind that most of these ideas were not tested quite thoroughly, and by and large they were accepted due to the authority of the person suggesting them, combined with the fact that they were quite logical hypotheses.

[Jon]

Yeah that's usually what I say when they come back at me with 'People used to think the Earth was flat' arguments, i.e. the difference in study, understanding and exclusivity of knowledge in times past. Generally people put forward the statement (or similar variations) in the title of this thread when arguing about the likes of Relativity and theories which prohibit exotic results such as FTL etc. i.e. 'They were wrong about the flat earth in the past so they could be wrong about relativity!!11' 'we thought the earth was the centre of the universe once!!1' and so on.

[darthbob88]

Ghetto Edit: As for the idea that the laws of physics are being proven wrong; "When they thought the Earth was flat, they were wrong. When they thought the Earth was spherical, they were wrong. But if you think that saying the Earth is round is as wrong as saying it is flat, you're more wrong than both of them put together."-Isaac Asimov, roughly quoted.

The laws of science are not proven wrong, they are proven inaccurate. Saying that 2+2=15 is wrong, but saying 2+2=3.999 is inaccurate. Newton's Laws of Motion, if these twits are to be believed, were proven wrong by Einstein and Relativity. However, in all fact, Newton's laws are still "good enough" at low speeds and high masses, and when the Voyager missions were sent out, their trajectories matched with those predicted by Newton to a few minutes. Over distances less than a few miles, the Earth may safely be considered flat, with no appreciable loss in accuracy.

Basically, find Asimov's essay "The Relativity of Wrong", and throw it at them.

[The Grim Squeaker]

Basically, find Asimov's essay "The Relativity of Wrong", and throw it at them.

Isaac Asimov - The Skeptical Inquirer, Vol. 14 No. 1, Fall 1989
The Relativity of Wrong
pg.. 35-44

I RECEIVED a letter the other day. It was handwritten in crabbed penmanship so that it was very difficult to read. Nevertheless, I tried to make it out just in case it might prove to be important. In the first sentence, the writer told me he was majoring in English literature, but felt he needed to teach me science. (I sighed a bit, for I knew very few English Lit majors who are equipped to teach me science, but I am very aware of the vast state of my ignorance and I am prepared to learn as much as I can from anyone, so I read on.)

It seemed that in one of my innumerable essays, I had expressed a certain gladness at living in a century in which we finally got the basis of the universe straight.

I didn't go into detail in the matter, but what I meant was that we now know the basic rules governing the universe, together with the gravitational interrelationships of its gross components, as shown in the theory of relativity worked out between 1905 and 1916. We also know the basic rules governing the subatomic particles and their interrelationships, since these are very neatly described by the quantum theory worked out between 1900 and 1930. What's more, we have found that the galaxies and clusters of galaxies are the basic units of the physical universe, as discovered between 1920 and 1930.

These are all twentieth-century discoveries, you see.

The young specialist in English Lit, having quoted me, went on to lecture me severely on the fact that in every century people have thought they understood the universe at last, and in every century they were proved to be wrong. It follows that the one thing we can say about our modern "knowledge" is that it is wrong. The young man then quoted with approval what Socrates had said on learning that the Delphic oracle had proclaimed him the wisest man in Greece. "If I am the wisest man," said Socrates, "it is because I alone know that I know nothing." the implication was that I was very foolish because I was under the impression I knew a great deal.

My answer to him was, "John, when people thought the earth was flat, they were wrong. When people thought the earth was spherical, they were wrong. But if you think that thinking the earth is spherical is just as wrong as thinking the earth is flat, then your view is wronger than both of them put together."

The basic trouble, you see, is that people think that "right" and "wrong" are absolute; that everything that isn't perfectly and completely right is totally and equally wrong.

However, I don't think that's so. It seems to me that right and wrong are fuzzy concepts, and I will devote this essay to an explanation of why I think so.

...When my friend the English literature expert tells me that in every century scientists think they have worked out the universe and are always wrong, what I want to know is how wrong are they? Are they always wrong to the same degree? Let's take an example.

In the early days of civilization, the general feeling was that the earth was flat. This was not because people were stupid, or because they were intent on believing silly things. They felt it was flat on the basis of sound evidence. It was not just a matter of "That's how it looks," because the earth does not look flat. It looks chaotically bumpy, with hills, valleys, ravines, cliffs, and so on.

Of course there are plains where, over limited areas, the earth's surface does look fairly flat. One of those plains is in the Tigris-Euphrates area, where the first historical civilization (one with writing) developed, that of the Sumerians.

Perhaps it was the appearance of the plain that persuaded the clever Sumerians to accept the generalization that the earth was flat; that if you somehow evened out all the elevations and depressions, you would be left with flatness. Contributing to the notion may have been the fact that stretches of water (ponds and lakes) looked pretty flat on quiet days.

Another way of looking at it is to ask what is the "curvature" of the earth's surface Over a considerable length, how much does the surface deviate (on the average) from perfect flatness. The flat-earth theory would make it seem that the surface doesn't deviate from flatness at all, that its curvature is 0 to the mile.

Nowadays, of course, we are taught that the flat-earth theory is wrong; that it is all wrong, terribly wrong, absolutely. But it isn't. The curvature of the earth is nearly 0 per mile, so that although the flat-earth theory is wrong, it happens to be nearly right. That's why the theory lasted so long.

There were reasons, to be sure, to find the flat-earth theory unsatisfactory and, about 350 B.C., the Greek philosopher Aristotle summarized them. First, certain stars disappeared beyond the Southern Hemisphere as one traveled north, and beyond the Northern Hemisphere as one traveled south. Second, the earth's shadow on the moon during a lunar eclipse was always the arc of a circle. Third, here on the earth itself, ships disappeared beyond the horizon hull-first in whatever direction they were traveling.

All three observations could not be reasonably explained if the earth's surface were flat, but could be explained by assuming the earth to be a sphere.

What's more, Aristotle believed that all solid matter tended to move toward a common center, and if solid matter did this, it would end up as a sphere. A given volume of matter is, on the average, closer to a common center if it is a sphere than if it is any other shape whatever.

About a century after Aristotle, the Greek philosopher Eratosthenes noted that the sun cast a shadow of different lengths at different latitudes (all the shadows would be the same length if the earth's surface were flat). From the difference in shadow length, he calculated the size of the earthly sphere and it turned out to be 25,000 miles in circumference.

The curvature of such a sphere is about 0.000126 per mile, a quantity very close to 0 per mile, as you can see, and one not easily measured by the techniques at the disposal of the ancients. The tiny difference between 0 and 0.000126 accounts for the fact that it took so long to pass from the flat earth to the spherical earth.

Mind you, even a tiny difference, such as that between 0 and 0.000126, can be extremely important. That difference mounts up. The earth cannot be mapped over large areas with any accuracy at all if the difference isn't taken into account and if the earth isn't considered a sphere rather than a flat surface. Long ocean voyages can't be undertaken with any reasonable way of locating one's own position in the ocean unless the earth is considered spherical rather than flat.

Furthermore, the flat earth presupposes the possibility of an infinite earth, or of the existence of an "end" to the surface. The spherical earth, however, postulates an earth that is both endless and yet finite, and it is the latter postulate that is consistent with all later findings.

So, although the flat-earth theory is only slightly wrong and is a credit to its inventors, all things considered, it is wrong enough to be discarded in favor of the spherical-earth theory.

And yet is the earth a sphere?

No, it is not a sphere; not in the strict mathematical sense. A sphere has certain mathematical properties&emdash;for instance, all diameters (that is, all straight lines that pass from one point on its surface, through the center, to another point on its surface) have the same length.

That, however, is not true of the earth. Various diameters of the earth differ in length.

What gave people the notion the earth wasn't a true sphere? To begin with, the sun and the moon have outlines that are perfect circles within the limits of measurement in the early days of the telescope. This is consistent with the supposition that the sun and the moon are perfectly spherical in shape.

However, when Jupiter and Saturn were observed by the first telescopic observers, it became quickly apparent that the outlines of those planets were not circles, but distinct eclipses. That meant that Jupiter and Saturn were not true spheres.

Isaac Newton, toward the end of the seventeenth century, showed that a massive body would form a sphere under the pull of gravitational forces (exactly as Aristotle had argued), but only if it were not rotating. If it were rotating, a centrifugal effect would be set up that would lift the body's substance against gravity, and this effect would be greater the closer to the equator you progressed. The effect would also be greater the more rapidly a spherical object rotated, and Jupiter and Saturn rotated very rapidly indeed.

The earth rotated much more slowly than Jupiter or Saturn so the effect should be smaller, but it should still be there. Actual measurements of the curvature of the earth were carried out in the eighteenth century and Newton was proved correct.

The earth has an equatorial bulge, in other words. It is flattened at the poles. It is an "oblate spheroid" rather than a sphere. This means that the various diameters of the earth differ in length. The longest diameters are any of those that stretch from one point on the equator to an opposite point on the equator. This "equatorial diameter" is 12,755 kilometers (7,927 miles). The shortest diameter is from the North Pole to the South Pole and this "polar diameter" is 12,711 kilometers (7,900 miles).

The difference between the longest and shortest diameters is 44 kilometers (27 miles), and that means that the "oblateness" of the earth (its departure from true sphericity) is 44/12755, or 0.0034. This amounts to l/3 of 1 percent.

To put it another way, on a flat surface, curvature is 0 per mile everywhere. On the earth's spherical surface, curvature is 0.000126 per mile everywhere (or 8 inches per mile). On the earth's oblate spheroidal surface, the curvature varies from 7.973 inches to the mile to 8.027 inches to the mile.

The correction in going from spherical to oblate spheroidal is much smaller than going from flat to spherical. Therefore, although the notion of the earth as a sphere is wrong, strictly speaking, it is not as wrong as the notion of the earth as flat.

Even the oblate-spheroidal notion of the earth is wrong, strictly speaking. In 1958, when the satellite Vanguard I was put into orbit about the earth, it was able to measure the local gravitational pull of the earth--and therefore its shape--with unprecedented precision. It turned out that the equatorial bulge south of the equator was slightly bulgier than the bulge north of the equator, and that the South Pole sea level was slightly nearer the center of the earth than the North Pole sea level was.

There seemed no other way of describing this than by saying the earth was pear-shaped, and at once many people decided that the earth was nothing like a sphere but was shaped like a Bartlett pear dangling in space. Actually, the pearlike deviation from oblate-spheroid perfect was a matter of yards rather than miles, and the adjustment of curvature was in the millionths of an inch per mile.

In short, my English Lit friend, living in a mental world of absolute rights and wrongs, may be imagining that because all theories are wrong, the earth may be thought spherical now, but cubical next century, and a hollow icosahedron the next, and a doughnut shape the one after.

What actually happens is that once scientists get hold of a good concept they gradually refine and extend it with greater and greater subtlety as their instruments of measurement improve. Theories are not so much wrong as incomplete.

This can be pointed out in many cases other than just the shape of the earth. Even when a new theory seems to represent a revolution, it usually arises out of small refinements. If something more than a small refinement were needed, then the old theory would never have endured.

Copernicus switched from an earth-centered planetary system to a sun-centered one. In doing so, he switched from something that was obvious to something that was apparently ridiculous. However, it was a matter of finding better ways of calculating the motion of the planets in the sky, and eventually the geocentric theory was just left behind. It was precisely because the old theory gave results that were fairly good by the measurement standards of the time that kept it in being so long.

Again, it is because the geological formations of the earth change so slowly and the living things upon it evolve so slowly that it seemed reasonable at first to suppose that there was no change and that the earth and life always existed as they do today. If that were so, it would make no difference whether the earth and life were billions of years old or thousands. Thousands were easier to grasp.

But when careful observation showed that the earth and life were changing at a rate that was very tiny but not zero, then it became clear that the earth and life had to be very old. Modern geology came into being, and so did the notion of biological evolution.

If the rate of change were more rapid, geology and evolution would have reached their modern state in ancient times. It is only because the difference between the rate of change in a static universe and the rate of change in an evolutionary one is that between zero and very nearly zero that the creationists can continue propagating their folly.

Since the refinements in theory grow smaller and smaller, even quite ancient theories must have been sufficiently right to allow advances to be made; advances that were not wiped out by subsequent refinements.

The Greeks introduced the notion of latitude and longitude, for instance, and made reasonable maps of the Mediterranean basin even without taking sphericity into account, and we still use latitude and longitude today.

The Sumerians were probably the first to establish the principle that planetary movements in the sky exhibit regularity and can be predicted, and they proceeded to work out ways of doing so even though they assumed the earth to be the center of the universe. Their measurements have been enormously refined but the principle remains.

Naturally, the theories we now have might be considered wrong in the simplistic sense of my English Lit correspondent, but in a much truer and subtler sense, they need only be considered incomplete.

In short however there is an important difference between wrong and inaccurate. We don't take mass or time dilation into account on anything less than near C fractional speeds, but it is in effect even when we walk (For example)

[darthbob88]

That's the one I meant. Thank you for finding it, sir. *curses absence of bowing/saluting smiley*

[Darth Wong]

Let's put it this way: if Newton's laws of motion were actually proven completely wrong, you'd be able to shrug off a sledgehammer blow to the head. Instead, they've only been improved upon by a better theory, which generally makes most of the same predictions as Newtonian physics except in certain exotic situations.

People who think that science can suddenly do a 180 degree turn instead of making (at most) minor course corrections are just plain ignorant. A 180 degree turn would necessarily falsify virtually all of our observations up to this point, which is impossible unless the universe itself is totally irrational.

[brianeyci]

Usually the argument goes like this. Scientists were wrong before, for example with black people's too narrow blood vessels, so they might be wrong again. Therefore science is somehow subjective, and scientists should be less dogmatic and realize they might be wrong especially with hypothesis with social repercussions. Today it is evolution, and who knows science might be wrong with that, so don't take it seriously, or it's at the same level as creationism.

Of course they never realize that it was bad science that concluded black people were inferior, because they don't know anything about science. And you didn't hear this from me, but the way to see if you're talking to an English major with any intelligence if you don't want to offend them is to somehow mention math. If you're a math major that's easy. If they act as if they're ashamed they didn't do better in math in high school, they you know you're dealing with somebody who doesn't take himself so seriously he thinks English is on the same level as science or math or engineering. And therefore someone who isn't full of himself.

[Patrick Degan]

One of the really big theories of the universe to be thoroughly disproven was the notion of the luminiferous aether. Michaelson/Morely gutted it by measuring the speed of light, and Einstein put it in the grave with relativity. You're hard-put to name too many of the others which simply didn't fall (or were merely modified) from better and more accurate observation.

[RedImperator]

Phlogiston theory was another one that was totally killed. But there's a caveat: phlogiston and the aether were both stopgap hypotheses created out of whole cloth not based on any evidence, but because we couldn't figure out how the phenomena they described (combustion and the movement of electromagnetic energy in a vacuum, respectively) worked at all without better tools. They're two theories actually much close to the Creationist idea of a scientific theory than actual scientific theories.

And of course, while debating Creationists, the elephant in the room is always: "Even if generations of scientists with sophisticated equipment and rigorous standards got it completely wrong, the default fallback assumption isn't that pig-ignorant bronze age desert nomads got it right."

[Darth Wong]

There are plenty of theories which never really had widespread acceptance in the first place because they were preliminary, as Redimperator points out, and which ended up being wrong. That really can't be compared to the idea that an accepted scientific theory with mountains of evidence behind it will suddenly turn out to be wrong.

[Surlethe]

The thing to keep in mind is that if established science is wrong, it's wrong at the edges. Newtonian mechanics are certainly wrong, but they're only appreciably wrong "at the edge" -- when things are really big, really fast, or really small. By the same token, quantum mechanics and relativity are also "wrong", but only at the edge: when things are really big and really small. Established science does change, but only marginally; there would be something dreadfully wrong if, at our current level of understanding, it didn't change marginally.

[Darth Wong]

I think what people often forget is that a theory which has proven itself to be a pretty accurate model can be "disproven" in the sense that it is supplanted by a better theory, and this other theory can be quite a bit different but its predictions must be fairly close in most circumstances otherwise it would be unable to account for all of the existing data that was used to support the earlier theory.

In other words, if some theory came along to supplant evolution, it would have to predict an outcome almost identical to that which is predicted by evolution. Thus making us question how much different this new theory could possibly be.

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

The trouble with explaining this stuff is that the idiots in question have probably zero knowledge of math and therefore have no appreciation of the limiting values and thus will probably be offended by the reminder of their inadequacies.

[Junghalli]

Generally people put forward the statement (or similar variations) in the title of this thread when arguing about the likes of Relativity and theories which prohibit exotic results such as FTL etc. i.e. 'They were wrong about the flat earth in the past so they could be wrong about relativity!!11' 'we thought the earth was the centre of the universe once!!1' and so on.

It's worth pointing out that most theoretical FTL schemes and for that matter most fictional FTL schemes consist of finding ways around relativity or at most assume it's, as Surlethe said, wrong at the edges. I can't think of any offhand that rely on physics making a 180 at some point in the future.

The trouble with explaining this stuff is that the idiots in question have probably zero knowledge of math and therefore have no appreciation of the limiting values and thus will probably be offended by the reminder of their inadequacies.

So use the "wrong at the edges" argument. Even the stupidest moron can grasp it with a little explanation. Unless of course you're dealing with somebody willfully stubborn and/or ignorant, but there's really no help for those types anyway.

[darthbob88]

Borderline Threadomancy, I know, but this might be worth including: Proofthat no scientific theory has stood longer than it takes for ink to dry on the paper. A list of theories and ideas that have stood the test of time; very useful for countering the argument above.

[Lord Zentei]

Borderline Threadomancy, I know, but this might be worth including: Proofthat no scientific theory has stood longer than it takes for ink to dry on the paper. A list of theories and ideas that have stood the test of time; very useful for countering the argument above.

Some of those are technologies, not scientific theories. Others are mathematical theories, which by their very nature are eternal in a way that no scientific theory could ever be.

A better answer would be Asimov's rebuttal: if you think that a flat Earth and a round Earth are equally wrong, you are more wrong than the proponents of either of those theories.

[General Zod]

A better answer would be Asimov's rebuttal: if you think that a flat Earth and a round Earth are equally wrong, you are more wrong than the proponents of either of those theories.

I prefer my rebuttal: If you think that physics are being disproven daily, then by all means go jump off a skyscraper and watch as you fall and land quite painfully. Just as Newtonian physics says you will.

[darthbob88]

Some of those are technologies, not scientific theories. Others are mathematical theories, which by their very nature are eternal in a way that no scientific theory could ever be.

A better answer would be Asimov's rebuttal: if you think that a flat Earth and a round Earth are equally wrong, you are more wrong than the proponents of either of those theories.

Meh. I thought it was worthy of noting here. 'Sides which, I was running on too little sleep, so I didn't notice the preponderance of technologies and mathematics there.

I agree with Asimov's rebuttal; in fact, I think I was the one who first mentioned it here.

[CaptainChewbacca]

Asimov is a very, very smart man. Its all about shifting your models. You accumulate data that appears to fit the generally accepted theory. You live by that theory until enough contradictory data comes up, and then you have to shift your paradigm.

For a long time the earth was static and unchanging, then for a while there were "temporary land bridges" to explain fossil migration, then continental drift, and finally plate tectonics became the G.U.T. of Geology that explained everything.

For a while it looked like Nemesis Theory was gonna explain even more, but that theory turned out to not be right. Such is science.