Reply to post: Re: The first hint you are reading an Orlowski article

'Impossible' EmDrive flying saucer thruster may herald new theory of inertia

Pompous Git Silver badge

Re: The first hint you are reading an Orlowski article

You didn't answer any of my points BTW

You asked "What particular usage of scientific are you using here ?" I gave the short answer as used in textbooks to teach science to students. Long answer:

Scientific comes from medieval Latin: scientificus. This was a translation of the Greek epistemonikos ("making knowledge" in Aristotle's Ethics). Knowledge to Aristotle was justified true belief. One might then expect those who adopt the appellation "scientist" to promulgate knowledge in this Aristotelian sense rather than horseshit.

I gave as an example astrophysicist George Smoot's disbelief of Galileo's own account of his falling weights experiment and his preference of the fictitious account by Vincenzo Vivianini written after Galileo's death. While Smoot's Wrinkles in Time is not a text book, it's a typical example of what scientists write for consumption by non-scientists. Another example is Reginald Lester (FR Met Soc) who wrote when I was a boy "It has been found that the cosmic rays about 14 miles up are 150 times stronger than at earth-level. When cosmic rays reach such a force they could crush to death both man and his machine." Stirring stuff that led me to ask why Gagarin wasn't crushed to death by cosmic rays.

Needless to say I was told not to ask such questions by my teachers. Happy now?

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