nano 2007-09-24 05:48
In the middle 1800s Louis Agassiz stated: "Every great scientific truth goes through three stages. First, people say it conflicts with the Bible. Next they say it had been discovered before. Lastly they say they have always believed it."
Max Planck { } said: "An important scientific innovation rarely makes its way by gradually winning over and converting its opponents: it rarely happens that Saul becomes Paul. What does happen is that its opponents gradually die out, and that the growing generation is familiarized with the ideas from the beginning."
"The Important Skeptical Community Provides Our Watchdogs
Fortunately our scientific community has also spawned a professional watchdog Skeptical Community, which acts repeatedly and nobly to viciously attack all such crackpots and perpetual motion nuts and all such silly ideas. Our professional Skeptics thus guard the true scientific faith and the proven status quo, particularly by condemning all the wild schemes purporting to (a) offer bizarre “solutions” to the escalating “energy from oil” crisis, (b) offer the impossible production of negative entropy, (c) advance the silly notion of negative energy, etc.
Never mind that the original concept of “production of entropy by a system” merely referred to that system’s dissipation and loss—without replacement—of its initial usable, ordered excess potential energy. And yes, that would seem to mean that simple potentialization of a system is—with respect to that system—production of negative entropy by (in) it. But today no self-respecting thermodynamicists define it that way, even though the negative of “production of positive entropy” (depotentialization) is “production of negative entropy” (potentialization). Only “rogue” or very confused thermodynamicists even think such thoughts! Not to worry!"
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