Footnote Physicist

          “You have to learn the rules before you can break them.”           – Anonymous           “To boldly go where no man has gone before!”           – Captain James T. Kirk (played by William Shatner) I           In philosophy of science, no answer is ever perfectly certain such that it can be etched in stone for eternity: we are fallible minds who may always be wrong, or else we wouldn't need any epistemology, for we would naturally be in possession of our knowledge of the world at birth (or otherwise trivially learn it all as we went along).  This epistemological humility sets science apart from most other dogmatic philosophies.  Make no mistake, though—the uncertainty of scientific knowledge is a strength: it keeps its body of knowledge from emulsifying assumptions into dogma, and ultimately makes the state of...

          “In general, we look for the new law by the following process: first, we guess it... Don't laugh,           that's really true.  Then we compute the consequences of the guess... to see what it would imply,           and then we compare those computation results to nature.  Or, we say compare to experiment, or           experience... Compare it directly with observations to see if it works.  If it disagrees with           experiment: it's wrong.  In that simple statement is the key to science.  It doesn't make a difference           how beautiful your guess is, it doesn't make a difference how smart you are, who made the guess,           or what his name is: if it disagrees with experiment, it's wrong, that's all there is to it.”    ...