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04/20/2011

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Valerie (Kyriosity)

You had me going there for a while.

Suitti

I kinda like Fred Hoyle's approach. If i understand it right, he backed a "steady state" concept for cosmology, even well after the evidence was very strong and clear that the Universe is expanding and therefore clearly not steady state. He attacked the expanding Universe concept which predicted that the Universe was hot and dense in the past by coining the derisive term "Big Bang" for it. And, being a well respected (and rightly so) scientist, along with being vocal, the very catchy name stuck. (I prefer something more like "The Extreme Expand", but i doubt it will catch on.) Anyway, Fred died without ever letting on that he was dead wrong. People don't generally attack Fred, scince being dead, he really can't defend himself, and it's hardly sporting. And besides, if one attacks Fred now, what does he care? But generally, science can move on. Yet, i don't use Fred's approach much. For one thing, i don't have any opinions that are strong enough to take such a stand. And, i'd like to think i'm too young, and the thought of defending an idea for the rest of my life is too large of a project. And, Planck already warned that science chiefly moves on by having old scientists die (despite being fairly old himself at the time). Ideas have a life of their own. Ideas seem to have telomeres that reduce their life span, but also combine like DNA during sex to give them new life. Once an idea forms, no matter how stupid and wrong, it's nearly impossible to control.

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