Natural Science Forum / Physics / Fusion / March 2006

Maybe I didn't notice the kook site, as I don't click on every link people
post.  Or perhaps I'm too big a fan of the contribution of science to
philosophy.  After all, the diffusion of the 2nd law into popular
consciousness created (or assisted) Beat Generation poets in their, sadly
pessimistic, social commentary.  That was important for the advancement of
human thought.

My old plasma physics boss from UT Austin, Toshi Tajima, who had an endowed
appointment in two different departments, although he still wasn't a full
professor, formulated an idea he calls the electric universe. He apparently
thinks that electrostatics give a good correction to a gravitational
cosmology.

Of course, the magnetostatic contribution is already well observed,
although possibly not well understood theoretically.  There is a measurable
galactic magnetic field, which requires a galactic current density, and
that does suggest (although not require) a charge density, according to
continuity.  So there may be some good possibilities for projects here.

That's certainly true, although I applaud the religious people for at least
staying abreast of the advances in physics.  Perhaps I'm being too
charitable, but I believe that anything that inspires people to study
science can't be *all* bad.  Better to misinterpret science than deny it,
like the anti-evolutionists.

In their own strange way, religious kooks follow something that vaguely
resembles the scientific method.  They *do* constantly revise their
theories to accommodate new developments.  Their problem is that they start
with an assumption that is not allowed to be questioned.  Thus they can
never get to the "right" answer, because their thinking isn't plastic
enough.

So perhaps the scientific method is built in to the thinking of reasonable
people.  That would suggest that it confers an evolutionary advantage, and
natural selection has occurred to reinforce it, over long time scales.