DIY History | Transcribe | Hevelin Fanzines | Variant, v. 1, issue 3, September 1947

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Variant, v. 1, issue 3, September 1947

Page 25

I assure you that this is a lovely example of something which the semanticists talk about all the time: a sentence which has no meaning whatsoever. The clue lies in the term "gravitational energy." There's no such animal. In fact so meaningless is the term "inertia" itself that Whittaker's Analytical Dynamics which is the Bible of physical mechanics, doesn't even bother to define the term, since it doesn't enter into the mathematics at all. (Except in phrases such as Moment of Inertia where it really means something else.) Our boy Newton, with his head square on his shoulders, knew better than to worry about "forces " of inertia, because when he laid down his first law of motion, inertia to him was merely a word which describes the fact that a body at rest remains at rest and a body in motion remains in motion if no external forces acted upon it.
Well, boys and girls, pardon the digression. It wasn't necessary at all, but I'm at a period in which I am clearing up these elementary concepts in my own head, and I like to talk about them. As in most subjects, it is the elementary aspects which are the most difficult to get absolutely straight, and even after you have mastered the more advanced phases, it is necessary to go back and back to find out precisely what is meant by words like "force," "energy," "causality," etc.
To return to the Scientific Forum which we were discussing, this is not the first such publication that has come my way. Previously I have seen Rockets which purported to be a technical publication put out by the US Rocket Society and I had also seen the Star-Physical Scientific put out by Walter Graham of Los Angeles, with whom I had a knock-down and drag-out correspondence for a short but violent time.
I took this Scientific Forum to school one day, and the boys in the physics department had more fun than they did the time the atom smasher burned down. prof. Ridenous (author of one of the chapters in One World or None) put the finger on this publication and all publications of this nature. He said, "Another of the crackpots Los Angeles is full of."
While it's easy to dismiss the matter in this way, I remain vaguely unhappy that there are guys around who know enough science to write down the equation for the inverse square law, and even enough to set up an energy integral, but who have this knowledge in such a distorted fashion that their application of it is not merely wrong but is meaningless and unlogical.
It indicated, for one thing, that mere knowledge of scientific " facts " and " formulas "is not sufficient for the possession of scientific wisdom. Two more important things are required: (1) an appreciation of scientific method, and (2) an ability to distinguish between words and phrases which mean something and those which mean nothing.
The first can be learned. For scientific method is basically nothing more complicated than the idea that the only way in which knowledge of nature can be obtained is through observation of events which actually occur, compilation of these events in orderly arrangements, and a prediction by deduction from these orderly arrangements, which are called laws of nature.
The second can also be learned, although I suspect that one of the things which distinguishes between scientist and pseudo-scientist is that one was born with it and the other was not. I would hesitate in saying that such an ability as being able to distinguish between meaningful and unmeaningful statements can be inherited, except for the fact that mathematical ability is certainly congenital, and this ability which we may cal " semantic instinct " is not too far off.

(25)

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I assure you that this is a lovely example of something which the semanticists talk about all the time: a sentence which has no meaning whatsoever. The clue lies in the term "gravitational energy." There's no such animal. In fact so meaningless is the term "inertia" itself that Whittaker's Analytical Dynamics which is the Bible of physical mechanics, doesn't even bother to define the term, since it doesn't enter into the mathematics at all. (Except in phrases such as Moment of Inertia where it really means something else.) Our boy Newton, with his head square on his shoulders, knew better than to worry about "forces " of inertia, because when he laid down his first law of motion, inertia to him was merely a word which describes the fact that a body at rest remains at rest and a body in motion remains in motion if no external forces acted upon it. Well, boys and girls, pardon the digression. It wasn't necessary at all, but I'm at a period in which I am clearing up these elementary concepts in my own head, and I like to talk about them. As in most subjects, it is the elementary aspects which are the most difficult to get absolutely straight, and even after you have mastered the more advanced phases, it is necessary to go back and back to find out precisely what is meant by words like "force," "energy," "causality," etc. To return to the Scientific Forum which we were discussing, this is not the first such publication that has come my way. Previously I have seen Rockets which purported to be a technical publication put out by the US Rocket Society and I had also seen the Star-Physical Scientific put out by Walter Graham of Los Angeles, with whom I had a knock-down and drag-out correspondence for a short but violent time. I took this Scientific Forum to school one day, and the boys in the physics department had more fun than they did the time the atom smasher burned down. prof. Ridenous (author of one of the chapters in One World or None) put the finger on this publication and all publications of this nature. He said, "Another of the crackpots Los Angeles is full of." While it's easy to dismiss the matter in this way, I remain vaguely unhappy that there are guys around who know enough science to write down the equation for the inverse square law, and even enough to set up an energy integral, but who have this knowledge in such a distorted fashion that their application of it is not merely wrong but is meaningless and unlogical. It indicated, for one thing, that mere knowledge of scientific " facts " and " formulas "is not sufficient for the possession of scientific wisdom. Two more important things are required: (1) an appreciation of scientific method, and (2) an ability to distinguish between words and phrases which mean something and those which mean nothing. The first can be learned. For scientific method is basically nothing more complicated than the idea that the only way in which knowledge of nature can be obtained is through observation of events which actually occur, compilation of these events in orderly arrangements, and a prediction by deduction from these orderly arrangements, which are called laws of nature. The second can also be learned, although I suspect that one of the things which distinguishes between scientist and pseudo-scientist is that one was born with it and the other was not. I would hesitate in saying that such an ability as being able to distinguish between meaningful and unmeaningful statements can be inherited, except for the fact that mathematical ability is certainly congenital, and this ability which we may cal " semantic instinct " is not too far off. (25)