[mikeh]

Fluffy, on 2014-March-17, 15:05, said:

It had been a long time since I didn't understand a word from a scientific text, but it happened again .

But this is another moment where I remind how amazing it is that our species is concious of this things, after all we are just little beings who have never left our tiny solar system (well, Voyager 1 just recently left the solar system), and we are just made of molecules because of a lot of luck.

It saddens me that sometime a meteor or whatever will end our existence, and these achievements will be lost forever.

I think Carl Sagan would be so happy were he alive today, and that it is great that this discovery is made at the same time as his 'Cosmos' has been remade (altho I have no idea if or when non North Americans will have the chance to see the new version)

As for the achievements being lost forever, my take on this is that these discoveries and much more have almost certainly inspired some equivalent to awe in a lot of species on other planets and will do so for billions of years into the future...that notion is, to me, even more awe-inspiring than the fact that we seem to have done something remarkable by using the critical faculties that our brains have evolved. It is wonderful to think not just how remarkable it is that self-replicating molecules could evolve into entities capable of this much understanding, but also to realize that the odds are that such a development has happened and will continue to happen many, many times. When one thinks of it in that way, how small many of our beliefs seem to be and how wonderful it is to be both human and alive right now:D

[32519]

mikeh, on 2014-March-17, 20:31, said:

When one thinks of it in that way, how small many of our beliefs seem to be and how wonderful it is to be both human and alive right now:D

My friend, you are closer to the truth than even you could imagine. Those who are currently under the age of 50 are going to witness the return of Yehoshua. Those who are currently over the age of 50 might not live long enough to see it happen, though you will be seeing the beginning of the unfolding events leading up to his return. The Jews are about to get their long awaited Messiah, but not in the way any of them foresaw.

[ArtK78]

32519, on 2014-March-17, 21:19, said:

My friend, you are closer to the truth than even you could imagine. Those who are currently under the age of 50 are going to witness the return of Yehoshua. Those who are currently over the age of 50 might not live long enough to see it happen, though you will be seeing the beginning of the unfolding events leading up to his return. The Jews are about to get their long awaited Messiah, but not in the way any of them foresaw.

Well, thanks. I guess.

[mike777]

I am not Jewish but did pledge AEP a Jewish frat if that counts at 16.

"The Jews are about to get their long awaited Messiah, but not in the way any of them foresaw"


If a messiah is coming in a way no Jew ever foresaw that sounds pretty scary.

"A messiah is a saviour or liberator of a group of people, most commonly in the Abrahamic religions. In the Hebrew Bible, a messiah (or mashiach) is a king or High Priest traditionally anointed with holy anointing oil.[1] However, messiahs were not exclusively Jewish, as the Hebrew Bible refers to Cyrus the Great, king of Persia, as a messiah[2] for his decree to rebuild the Jerusalem Temple. The Jewish messiah is a leader anointed by God, physically descended from the Davidic line, who will rule the united tribes of Israel[3] and herald the Messianic Age[4] of global peace also known as the World to Come."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Messiah

To be honest I did not know that a Jewish messiah need not be Jewish wow...indeed can come out of Persia as a Nonjew.

[mike777]

I am at a bit of a loss how so many can claim so much science or war events that clearly lead back to the debate between Plato and Aristotle and their writings. We see event after event after event that clearly lead back to this debate

fwiw I suppose "competition", any or all events that encourage competition are events that had a profound effect on history.

Events that retard competition had a profound negative effect on history.

Granted competition leads to destruction.

[Zelandakh]

PassedOut, on 2014-March-17, 11:13, said:

the scientific method, first outlined by Gilbert, is at work to provide answers that we can have confidence in.

The idea of testing a hypothessis dates back to at least 400BC from the "three-pronged method" of China. There is also an Egyptian medical text from c1600BC. The modern scientific method is often traced back to Descartes. I always thought Gilbert (Gilberd) was best known for his work in the field of electricity.

[PassedOut]

Zelandakh, on 2014-March-18, 05:06, said:

The modern scientific method is often traced back to Descartes. I always thought Gilbert (Gilberd) was best known for his work in the field of electricity.

Of course the development of science is a continuum, so assigning any kind of a beginning is bound to be awkward.

Indeed Gilbert did work with electricity and magnetism, and published both his conclusions and, in great detail, the experiments he conducted to establish those conclusions. He did so explicitly to make it possible for others to duplicate his experiments. He published his work when Descartes was four years old. Galileo was influenced by Gilbert's work and considered Gilbert to be the first scientist.

[Winstonm]

PassedOut, on 2014-March-18, 08:08, said:

Of course the development of science is a continuum, so assigning any kind of a beginning is bound to be awkward.

Indeed Gilbert did work with electricity and magnetism, and published both his conclusions and, in great detail, the experiments he conducted to establish those conclusions. He did so explicitly to make it possible for others to duplicate his experiments. He published his work when Descartes was four years old. Galileo was influenced by Gilbert's work and considered Gilbert to be the first scientist.

that's going to piss off Bill Nye

[el mister]

I think the Manhattan project is up there in terms of the 20th century - not just for shepherding in the nuclear age and the subsequent geo-political impact, but for showing what scientists and engineers can do when you get them to stop dicking around for 5 minutes. It has to be the most significant (and terrible) example of on-demand scientific problem solving of the last century - maybe ever. Roughly a 4 year period of uniting disciplines, under extenuating circumstances, to exponentially accelerate discovery. Inspirational, if it wasn't for the directly ensuing death of 100s of thousands of people.

Makes you wonder what it would take to do something similar in a current global concern - energy, say, and how best to fund and motivate scientists. The process of scientific discovery is a slippery beast - it defies planned, top-down approaches that attempt to manage it; yet free market, incentive-driven processes are not necessarily the answer, either. Interesting that the Manhattan project was more of the former, than the latter.

[akwoo]

el mister, on 2014-March-18, 10:20, said:

I think the Manhattan project is up there in terms of the 20th century - not just for shepherding in the nuclear age and the subsequent geo-political impact, but for showing what scientists and engineers can do when you get them to stop dicking around for 5 minutes. It has to be the most significant (and terrible) example of on-demand scientific problem solving of the last century - maybe ever. Roughly a 4 year period of uniting disciplines, under extenuating circumstances, to exponentially accelerate discovery. Inspirational, if it wasn't for the directly ensuing death of 100s of thousands of people.

Makes you wonder what it would take to do something similar in a current global concern - energy, say, and how best to fund and motivate scientists. The process of scientific discovery is a slippery beast - it defies planned, top-down approaches that attempt to manage it; yet free market, incentive-driven processes are not necessarily the answer, either. Interesting that the Manhattan project was more of the former, than the latter.

The Manhattan Project was really a massive engineering project, not a science one. The scientific principles for how an atomic bomb could be made were already well-established; the problem that was left were the myriad small details needed to actually carry out making such a bomb.

I don't think anyone seriously thinks that science is nearly as easy to organize as engineering, even fairly advanced and novel engineering.

[Zelandakh]

If you want a moment in scintific history to choose from this event then it should probably be the Copenhagen conference. But as has ben pointed out earlier this was really just the logical next step from the scientific developments of the period. Therefore any moments chosen must, for me, be in the distant past. If forced to pick a moment from the 20th century then there is an argument for the loan of America to the UK being the most important event, since the conditions of that loan (tying trading to dollars instead of pounds) led to the conditions that allowed the USA to become the superpower of the century. In time the most influential moment of the century is likely to be some event in China though; I just do not know enough about the history of the Far East to pick anything. Within China itself I imagine The Long March is regarded as the most influential event of the century.