Nicholas wrote about Ray:
"You don't seem to understand the scientific method. ..What does your theory predict? What will observations reveal in the future if your theory is true?"

Maybe Nicholas has hung up by now. Ruquist, Harv and bruce can hang up now too.
Or honestly admit their errors, apologize sincerely, and move on to a decent dialogue.

TO HONEST READERS:
Check this out -- I'm not consulting any book,
but I am THINKING.
Science seeks to explain, control and predict.
Nicholas Of Princeton demands that Ray predict! --which is only one role of science and cannot be accomplished in some phases of a sequence of discoveries.

1) If you control a phenomenon,
predicting its outcome is specious. You can
only measure the effectiveness of your control.

2) Attempts to EXPLAIN phenomena come BEFORE each of SEVERAL CYCLES of measurement. It is certainly a rookie error to pretend you can devise equations or even gather data without having an explanation for what data may be sought.
Nicholas, though he might not exist, is a ROOKIE ROOKIE ROOKIE ROOKIE ROOKIE ROOKIE ROOKIE
and he made a ROOKIE ERROR, lecturing Ray abouT this...IN FACT, LOTS OF THEM! WHAT A ROOKIE!
(Hey, they do it in baseball :)

3) Gregor Mendel's science was only crudely mathematical. GENERATIONS of data are studied
for a pattern which is quite simple. Its arithmetic is simple ratios. Don't need the calculus yet. Yt it is highly significant in what it reveals. I bet you will find the universe
does this A LOT. And no snotty Ivy League
snots can change that. (Smile)

• That is a Brilliant point. Are you Mike Pearson? - plausible - November 7, 2002 - 18:09 UTC