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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Sure. And physics departments shouldn't discuss any theories developed after Newton's Opticks!

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They shouldn’t discuss Newton.  He’s just another dead white guy, after all.[/quote]

And this is where you fail.  Of course they should discuss Newton.  [b]But not be afraid of relooking at his contributions in light of Einstein.  [/b]And understanding him differently than on would in the 1800’s.  That  is both fine and necessary for us to keep moving.  [/quote]

Do tell!  I can just feel that whatever you say is going to be non-sensical and yet highly entertaining.[/quote]

I thought this was well known. Newton’s theory of gravity assumed an intertial frame.  Which means his laws of motion are accurate at low velocities (which is most of stuff on earth).  But relativity introduces a cosmic speed limit and Newtonian mechanics go out of whack close to the speed of light since the relativistic frames matter.  So did Einstein reject Newton?   No of course not.  But his theories reshaped how we under Newtonian mechanics.  And Einstein never took to quantum mechanics because he was never happy with its statistical nature.  Theorists who are trying to reconcile quantum mechanics and gravity are looking at - wait for it - different frames to study the problem.  It’s what scholarship is all about.  [/quote]

This is not “relooking at” Newton’s contributions.  His contributions remain his contributions, Einstein and others who followed built upon his contributions.  I think you clearly understand that, but your attempt to paint this as analogous to what is being discussed in this thread (basically rejecting classical literature because modern society declares the contributors to be racist or sexist or transphobic, etc.) is where YOU fail.

[b]In other words, no one is trying to teach Newtonian mechanics as the end-all be-all of physics, but on the other hand no one is pretending that his contributions to science weren’t brilliant and significant and hugely influential [/b]because he… was a product of his time and did the best with what he had, so to speak.[/quote]

This is the whole point.  Our understanding of newton’s contribution today is different than it was in the late 1800’s. We have also dropped some of his stuff - we no longer teach alchemy. [b] Now admittedly in the sciences, the arbiter of what works survive and what works do not is Mother Nature herself.  Which is less subjective. [/b]

But to get to Einstein and quantum physics, you could not teach Newton as invariant.  You had to allow the community to continually re-examine the axioms.  And from there, we developed a deeper appreciation and context for Newton.  [b]It is really no different in literature.[/b]  You re-read and re-examine according to what is going on around you today.  Most times, the frames you use to re-look are flawed and dropped by future scholars.  Every once in a while, the re-examination leads to dropping a classic and identifying a new set of classics.  Not sure why this bothers you so much.

Actually in science today we are seeing a lot of papers but fewer radical ideas.  This “accepting of the masters” is really bad for innovation.  [/quote]

It is different, and the bolded is why.

Additionally, it is ridiculous to look at past work and re-analyze through modern lenses without allowing for the possibility that our modern lenses are wrong and maybe we should actually allow these classic works to influence us.  There should be a give and take, that is.[/quote]

Heck, allow the possibility that the authors' lenses were wrong sometimes. Mark Twain wrote some great sh*t even while being on the wrong side of history. What is the problem with reading Mark Twain and discussing it thoroughly???[/quote]

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