MIT enters the game? Overunity after all?

[dannyf]

you obviously have not read about any of the history surrounding any of those laws

I tend to think that if you ever read about any of the history surrounding any of those laws, you would have found out that before those laws were discovered, they were not discovered. The discovery of those laws broke other then-widely believed laws.

It would be hard for any rational person to think otherwise.

[Rick Law]

There should be no reluctance in admitting advanced science may be wrong.  There were known "facts" found to be wrong by even more advanced understanding.

One can argue Quantum Mechanics is a refinement of Newtonian physics, but it was not.  Newtonian physics never considered that sub nuclear scale things could be different.  Lacking such an exclusion, it implicitly implied the laws applies to scale large and small.  It does not.  Only present day modification and refinements "patched" Newtonian physics to be consistent with present understanding.

Perhaps a clearer case would be atoms.  Long considered the smallest indivisible and elementary particle.  That was plain wrong.

We are now wiser.  No one is making declarative statements that Quarks is indivisible.  Perhaps knowing someday is would be found to be merely a particular mode of a vibrating string, or whatever.

[helius]

I tend to think that if you ever read about any of the history surrounding any of those laws, you would have found out that before those laws were discovered, they were not discovered. The discovery of those laws broke other then-widely believed laws.

It would be hard for any rational person to think otherwise.

In science, a "law" is a relationship expressed as an equation. Any belief about the world that is not mathematical does not qualify as a law. So statements like the one quoted above hardly pass the smell test. Saying that Newton's thin lens equation was "broken" by the wave equation is just baffling.

[mtdoc]

There should be no reluctance in admitting advanced science may be wrong.

This is a case where using precise language is important. What do you mean by "science" ?

To use your example, the theory that atoms were the smallest particle was wrong as theories often are. It was science that proved this.

Yes, sometimes theories, become, after many, many unsuccessfull attempts to disprove them (aka science), established dogma. Occassionally dogma is overturned by new information (often because of advancements  in technology). But that is a relatively rare occurrence and certainly not as common as some here assert.

One can argue Quantum Mechanics is a refinement of Newtonian physics, but it was not. 

I agree. But that does not mean classical mechanics is wrong.

[nitro2k01]

Until someone somewhere someday somehow shows it to be untrue.

I think the word you're looking for is unless, or else you are presupposing that there's actually a violation to the laws of thermodynamics waiting to be discovered.

There's this saying that geniuses like Galileo and Einstein were laughed at, but not everyone that is laughed at is a genius. You could make an analogous saying that just because we can discover things that seemed impossible, doesn't mean that everything that seems impossible will work.

[Rick Law]

One can argue Quantum Mechanics is a refinement of Newtonian physics, but it was not. 

I agree. But that does not mean classical mechanics is wrong.

Yes it was plain wrong.  The lack of limiting factors implies there is none.
For example: r² = r*r,
Whatever r you choose, that is going to work.

On the other hand, Newton's Laws of Gravity: F=G(M₁*M₂) / r²
Say r=2h (where h of course is Planck length), you are sure to get rediculous answers.   Why would I not expect the right answer?  Did Newton specify it can't go down to Planck length?  (Difficult for Newton to do as Planck was born many years after Newton was dead.)

If I say I will pay you double time if you work holidays.  You did that for 10 consecutive holidays 8 hours each day and expected a big pay check... then I tell you, oh, you get double pay only for up to 20 hours, would you consider that $ for 20 hours the wrong amount or the right amount?  But I was telling you the right formula: double pay for every hours you work on holidays.  I just didn't tell you the limiting factor...

Newtonian Mechanics (prior to present day reinterpretation/patch) was wrong because it implicitly assumed that it applies in all known conditions.  That assumption was wrong.  Newtonian solutions were solutions that only works under some unknown conditions.  You don't know if you are under that certain condition that works, or not.  So your answer could be right, or not.

There should be no reluctance in admitting advanced science may be wrong.

This is a case where using precise language is important. What do you mean by "science" ?

To use your example, the theory that atoms were the smallest particle was wrong as theories often are. It was science that proved this.

Yes, sometimes theories, become, after many, many unsuccessfull attempts to disprove them (aka science), established dogma. Occassionally dogma is overturned by new information (often because of advancements  in technology). But that is a relatively rare occurrence and certainly not as common as some here assert.

It is true that precise language is important.  In this context, I use the word "science" as in studying of how nature works.

Precision can only apply to present day and present context.
(Present Context) What an astronomer called metal I would not.  What a dietary scientist called Calarie I would not.  Neither of them use that two terms the same way Physicist would.
(Present day) What is a second as defined today is rather different than how a second was defined when Newton was around.

All our laws, theory, and measurements are based on what we can perceive, what we can measure, and what we know at the time.  The same Science that shown atom being indivisible was wrong is the same Science that shown Newton was wrong.

Scientist themselves in general are not reluctant to admit science is wrong.  Often individual scientist may found it difficult for them to abandon certain views/theories that they invested so much of their live in.  I think the general public found it more difficult to accept certain long-lasting "trues" are actually not so true.

Soon enough, we may found General Theory of Relativity wrong - as we know more about dark matter, perhaps General Relativity applies only if dark matter is "fill in the blank" and when "fill in the blank" and when photon decade is "fill in the blank".

New stuff pops up often enough that even best of scientist may not be able to keep on top of every new development.  I often wonder, had Einstein been better with quantum mechanics, would he had been more successful in developing his unified field theory.  He certainly did not know anything about dark energy.  So his theory could be found wrong some day and that would not take anything away from his achievements.

[mtdoc]

RL - I think we'll have to agree to disagree on what it means to state that classical mechanics is "wrong".  I certainly disagree with that statement and so do the physicist friends I have asked. Incomplete yes, limited in the conditions under which it holds true, yes. Wrong, no. It's akin to saying Ohm's law is wrong because it breaks down under certain conditions.

Your repetitive statement that "science is wrong"  in this or that instance indicates to me that you don't understand what science is. Perhaps my previous attempts to clarify were not clear enough or maybe ignored but I'll try again.

Science - at least the current meaning of the word and as that word is used among scientists refers to the process by which one tests the validity of a theory or hypothesis. It is not the theory itself or any particular set of scientific observations or " facts". Those things are the product of science not science itself.

I say this as someone who has been a practicing scientist for most of the past 30 years.

[Rick Law]

...
I say this as someone who has been a practicing scientist for most of the past 30 years.

You and I have very different views.  I have not work in science since I got my master degree in Physics over 30 years ago.  About 10 years ago, I terminated my last monthly "Physics Review".

Goes to show, there can be many differing views even within those who studied science.  That is what makes science interesting.

Rick

[miguelvp]

What is wrong with Newton as a disciple of Descartes, as in Cartisian, was the mechanical view of everything. That is no longer true but the general public is stuck with those models and that mechanical view limits our advancement to the real truth because we lack the metaphor of what that truth really is.

We do tend to envision everything as a mechanical object like a clock, but in reality there are more relations than the observed mechanism and that is what the problem is by sticking to just classic science.

Imagine you are a two dimensional being, no heigh at all just a plane and time. You could describe what you observe of the three dimensional space in your limited view, you can come up with formulas that follow the observations, but you'll never figure out there is another dimension because you are limited by your senses and perceived reality.

I'm not stating that science is limited to our three dimensional space or that mathematicians don't understand the math beyond our realm. But there are many things we might not truly understand yet.

A student fresh out of college thinks they know everything, but they only know what they were exposed to, in reality they don't know that much, and hopefully their education would have taught them how to learn more, but usually that takes them many years to realize that they actually only scraped the surface.

But then again, maybe it's true that in just under a millennium we figured it all out, but chances are that we only scraped the surface in such a short time.

One example I've heard is explaining what a tree does. But a tree by itself doesn't make a lot of sense it because it does waste a lot of resources providing way too much fruit just for it's needs, but if you look at it as part of the forest then it does make more sense.

The mechanical view of things and treating everything as an individual mechanism is just the wrong way to visualize systems. Yet we have been stuck in that perception since Newton.

We do understand more now but we can't visualize it so only a few can grasp a glance of what true reality is really about, and those few are the ones that will admit that what they thought it was absolute is just immaturity.

In 10,000 years from now, they will equate us to our current perception of alchemists, and that was science and truth at their time. But one can say that religion was an earlier science to explain what couldn't be explained, If I observed that the Gods acted in certain way just because I didn't know what is truly behind those events, like Atlas, or Helios and his chariot or whatever they thought to be the truth back then for the sun rising and setting, it was all plausible and explained so everyone was happy with those metaphors.

I'm not a sceptic of science and I do think previous work is valid and still relevant, but my perception is that they do limit us to pursue things further.

I'm not claiming overunity is achievable but we might be missing out in the way we do perceive reality. The same laws that prevent overunity indicate that energy can't be created or destroyed just transformed, because otherwise energy would spend itself instantly and there wouldn't be any left. So it's about the relations of things to get what you need, no reason you can't  achieve certain equilibrium, after all, the planet we are at does pretty good, of course using energy from the sun as well, but where is the decay? and what happens when everything collapses, does it cycle back?

For all we know in our timeframe there is such a thing as perpetual motion provided the right circumstances, are we so unique that we are the only ones consuming the universe's energy?

Sure all far fetched but just playing devils advocate that things are not all even close to be explained or discovered.

Reality is not as physical as we think it is, we are just fields interacting with other fields, potentials relations between those potentials and really not much more than a mathematical expression that observed by a different creatures might not even exist to them because they can't perceive or interact with it.

Back to the two dimensional beings just because they are two dimensional we can't perceive them nor they can perceive us. there might be some interaction between both realms and we will  explain them via religion/science or whatever.

But we are bound to our physical nature.

I guess I'll be more convinced with how far we are on science when we do understand truly how our brain works, and replicate such system.

Last I've heard someone talking about that, they claimed that we can reproduce 1% of our brain, but that's an unreasonable claim, for that to be true,we first have to understand how does it work for real, and we are not even close to understand that.

[dannyf]

Scientist themselves in general are not reluctant to admit science is wrong.

The really sad thing is that there are lot of nutjobs who worship science as  a religion. Those are the same nutjobs who suffocate science to death. Some of them even "work" for science,

[nitro2k01]

The really sad thing is that there are lot of nutjobs who worship science as  a religion.

By science, do you mean the findings of science, or the scientific method? If the latter, what do you suggest instead? Interim belief without evidence to keep your hopes up?