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Physics and chemistry are pretty robust, everything else is far squishier. It's pretty easy to get identical atoms or molecules or subatomic particles. It's much harder to grow a field of identical plants or raise hundreds of identical mice.
Agreed, from a Physicist's perspective, Darwin's Theory is extremely "squishy".
http://chem.tufts.edu/answersinscience/relativityofwrong.htm
Physics and chemistry are pretty robust, everything else is far squishier. It's pretty easy to get identical atoms or molecules or subatomic particles. It's much harder to grow a field of identical plants or raise hundreds of identical mice.
Of course the redeeming quality of astrophysics is that many of the uncertanties are easy to quantify, so at least we can say how well we know what we know.
People have no idea what science is
Okay, what is science?
> It is, so far, entirely a human invention, evolved by natural selection in the cerebral cortex for one simple reason: it works. It is not perfect. It can be misused. It is only a tool. But it is by far the best tool we have, self-correcting, ongoing, applicable to everything. It has two rules. First: there are no sacred truths; all assumptions must be critically examined; arguments from authority are worthless. Second: whatever is inconsistent with the facts must be discarded or revised.
People have no idea what science is
They all have different incentives which influences how the science is conducted.
Science is a tool/process. Not an agenda. Everyone in their own heads will choose whether or not to believe something regardless of how much SCIENCE they shout. The same people who yell SCIENCE on the internet could be the same people who turn around and claim that weight and calories are independent of each other, no matter how much that doesn't make sense.
Physics and chemistry are pretty robust, everything else is far squishier. It's pretty easy to get identical atoms or molecules or subatomic particles. It's much harder to grow a field of identical plants or raise hundreds of identical mice.
It's also harder to do things to plants and mice, much less humans, without knocking them so far out of balance that it ceases to be a meaningful experiment.
Things in physics can sometimes be knocked so far out of balance during an experiment it boggles the mind, while still rendering perfectly sensible observations.
E.g., I once heard the LHC described as "trying to determine how a grand piano works by throwing lots of them one after one down a very long set of well-defined stairs equipped with lots of very sensitive microphones and force sensors".
In other cases, nothing could be farther from the truth. Say you are measuring heat transfer coefficients in high-Re laminar flow through a tube. A single 100-micron step imperfection in the tube wall will render your results pretty much useless.
The distinguishing feature of physics is perhaps that one can know to a very high degree of precision before constructing the experiment which parameters/uncertainties it is very sensitive to.
Physics and chemistry are pretty robust, everything else is far squishier. It's pretty easy to get identical atoms or molecules or subatomic particles. It's much harder to grow a field of identical plants or raise hundreds of identical mice.
Agreed, from a Physicist's perspective, Darwin's Theory is extremely "squishy".