Joe wrote:Total Science wrote:Ptolemy successfully predicted eclipses with his false model.
If success is not the guarantor of the truth, then what is the guarantor of the truth, Total Science?
That is a good question. I don't know how one determines truth (perhaps observation and experience?).
"That all our knowledge begins with experience there can be no doubt." -- Immanuel Kant, physical scientist/philosopher, 1781
All I know is that success does not equal truth because if it did, Bill Gates and Warren Buffett would have a duopoly on truth. People are not infallible by virtue of their success.
A model is not necessarily false. But, it is necessarily temporary.
No it's not. If a model is true it is not temporary and transcends time.
If you mean living in harmony with nature, you're partly right.
That's not what I mean. I mean the ancients knew more about the universe, the Milky Way, our solar system, tectonics, atoms, electricity, magnetism, gravity, and exobiology than we do.
"He [Democritus] said that the ordered worlds are boundless and differ in size, and that in some there is neither sun nor moon, but that in others, both are greater than with us, and yet with others more in number. And that the intervals between the ordered worlds are unequal, here more and there less, and that some increase, others flourish and others decay, and here they come into being and there they are eclipsed. But that they are destroyed by colliding with one another. And that some ordered worlds are bare of animals and plants and all water." -- Hippolytus, priest, 2nd century
"This question of measurement is only one example of Newton's faith in the
prisca sapientia of Ancient Egypt. He was also convinced that atomic theory, heliocentricity and gravitation had been known there [See McGuire and Rattansi (
1966, p. 110)]." -- Martin Bernal, historian,
1987
But, would you have BELIEVED that, yesterday, without the information that we have today?
If 'yes', where would you have gotten that knowledge?
If 'no', why do you argue?
The answer is no and the reason I argue is that I wouldn't have said the solar system was geocentric if I had the information that Ptolemy had in his time.
At least, you admit that science can be progressive sometimes.
It's possible but mostly science regresses to truths that were already known in the past.
It MUST have been, when compared to whatever preceded it.
Heliocentrism preceeded geocentrism so geocentrism was a step in the wrong direction. Whenever modern or contemporary science contradicts ancient truth it is wrong.
And, if it was not, then somebody made an error in judgement. Humans are not perfect.
You can say that again. Some of the ancients approached perfection as some were demigods (half of their DNA was extraterrestrial in origin).
"And it came to pass, when men began to multiply on the face of the earth, and daughters were born unto them, That the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair; and they took them wives of all which they chose." -- Genesis 6:1-2
"...and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown." -- Genesis 6:4
"After the fallen angels went into the daughters of men, the sons of men taught the mixture of animals of one species with the other, in order to provoke the Lord." -- Jasher 4:18
If Heliocentrism lost out to Geocentrism, it is only because the advocates of the latter made stronger arguments, probably involving successful predictions.
Exactly why successful predictions don't mean a model is true.
Even mainstream science rejects successful prediction as the criteria for truth.
Democritus and Velikovsky made successful predictions and mainstream scientists like Carl Sagan said they were lucky guesses and they are wrong anyway, in spite of the fact of successful predictions.
If you believe that YOUR theory about gravity is right, then make a successful prediction where others have failed.
Already been done.
"Venus experienced in quick succession its birth and expulsion under violent conditions; an existence as a comet on an ellipse which approached the sun closely; two encounters with the earth accompanied by discharges of [electric] potentials between these two bodies and with a thermal effect caused by conversion of momentum into heat; a number of contacts with Mars, and probably also with Jupiter. Since all this happened between the third and first millennia before the present era, the core of the planet Venus must still be hot." -- Immanuel Velikovsky, cosmologist, 1950
"But then if there were events of this character, discharges between planets and so on, I put one of the most outrageous claims before the scientific readers, that in the solar system and in the universe generally, not just gravitation and inertia are the two forces of action but that also electricity and magnetism are participating in the mechanism. So the Lord was not just a watchmaker. The universe is not free of those forces with which the man makes his life easy already more than 100 years. They were unknown practically or little known in the time of Newton in the second half of the 17th century. But today we know that electricity and magnetism, these are not just small phenomena that we can repeat as a kind of a little trick in the lab, that they permeate every field from neurology into botony and chemistry and astronomy should not be free...and it was admitted by authorities that this was the most outrageous point in my claims. But the vengeance came early and swiftly. In 1960, already in 1955, radio noises from Jupiter were detected and this was one of the crucial tests that I offered for the truth of my theory. In 1958, the magnetosphere was discovered around the Earth, another claim. In 1960, the interplanetary magnetic field was discovered and solar plasma, so-called solar wind, moving rapidly along the magnetic lines and then it was discovered that the electromagnetic field of the Earth reaches the moon ." -- Immanuel Velikovsky, cosmologist, 1966
"And Venus must be hot if the history of the solar system is not the history of no change for billions of years. And Venus was found hot, not room temperature as was thought until 1959. In 1961 it was detected with radio means that it is like something like 600 Farenheit and Mariner 2 was sent out to find out true or not true? It was found that even more it is full 800 [degrees Farenheit]." -- Immanuel Velikovsky, cosmologist, 1966
"To be sure Velikovsky made some predictions that seemed to be close to what astronomers eventually discovered to be so ... For instance, Velikovsky stated that since Venus was formed from Jupiter's interior which must be very hot, Venus itself would be very hot. He said this in 1950, when astronomers believed that Venus' temperature, while warmer that Earth's might not be very much warmer." -- Isaac Asimov, writer, 1981
"In Worlds In Collision, MacMillan, 1950, Immanuel Velikovsky popularized the idea that Venus is a new planet, a fission product of Jupiter. And from about 1450 to 550 BCE, it participated in a series of close-encounters-of-the-worst-kind with Earth. His thesis was largely (and emphatically) rejected by the astronomical community. That rejection is still generally in effect. This, in spite of the fact, that his predictions about the Earth-Venus problem have been verified." -- Robert S. Fritzius, astronomer, December 2007
How does a person guarantee the truth, other than through success?
A person does not guarantee truth through success. Why do you think that? Is Bill Gates infallible?
In other words, how can I know that your theory is better than the conventional theory?
Observation.
"The ancients possessed a plasma cosmology and physics themselves, and from laboratory experiments, were well familiar with the patterns exhibited by Peratt's petroglyphs." -- Joseph P. Farrell, author, 2007
