Letters to the Editor
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@MacK - fair enough.
It sounds like you're trying to moderate hysterical fears about radioactivity with some information, a good thing to do IMO.
My science history books must be different then yours; the trouble with Ptololomy's system was described as long standing, whereas I know that telescopes weren't developed until the early Renaissance. I've never read that the heliocentric model was developed because of new data from telescopes, and I have read a good deal about the matter.
No matter, it's a triviality.
I just read the Wiki on Dyson's career, and he has done real physics, although mostly in his earlier years.
I agree that anti-tech posters are dumping on him unfairly. That said, I still think he's a bit puddin-headed, but not so bad.
Let's see if I do any better at his age.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freeman_Dyson
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Xanthro, i was (really) wrong about the half life of plutonium
it's only 88 years. radium is 1600 years and uranium-235 is 704 million years(0.72% of all uranium) and uranium-238 is 4.5 billion years, (99.28% of all uranium). i did know that radioactivity is inversely proportional to half-life and that half life determines how much is naturally occurring (but it's not a linear relationship)
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Silenced, you have a really fine mind
are you the same "Silenced" who's always talking about weed? (is it good for IQ as well as PTSD - is it as dylan said (in a different context) "everybody must get stoned"?)
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Of course he's respected for his actual accomplishments
Grubert, you ask how respected Dyson is --- well Dyson was elected FRS by his peers, and on that basis it does seem that his fellow Physicists, not to mention a large number of scientists in other disciplines think he is an important figure and pretty first rate.
This is out of respect for the work that he's done within his specialty.
You don't become NAS or FRS because your peers agree with you on everything or even because they LIKE you.
Just because he almost brought particle physics to a screeching halt and a lot of physicists still hate him for that doesn't mean the physicists who still hate him for that are going to discount the importance of the Schwinger-Dyson equation.
The Schwinger-Dyson equation was an important piece of work and that remains true no matter what wrong and stupid-headed thing Freeman pulls out of his behind that has nothing at all to do with his mathematical speciality.
It was wrong and stupid-headed to argue that the future of particle physics did not lie in accelerator physics, just two years after the discovery of deep inelastic scattering, when we were just seeing signs of the existence of quarks inside the proton.
The Schwinger-Dyson equation still qualifies him for all his professional honors. But while they're honoring him, the people honoring him have a very vivid memory of just how wrong and destructive he can be.
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Suds for El Norte
I view life through a beer, darkly. Core fanaticisms are vital for security in this superpower qua superpower we all must serve in some capacity, though we may not know in what way. America is a Byzantine totalitarian state fronting libertine excess as a substitute for our promised freedoms. You take it *on trust* this religious nutjob reconciled a TRINITY of competing views of quantum dynamics. Credulous dupes like you keep the fascists in place because you are reflex trained to bow down and drool at the sound of churchbells. ON PRINCIPLE, I REJECT THIS MAN IN EVERY PARTICLE AND ATOM OF HIS BEING.
Jenna Bush's book was ghost-writ, hint hint. It's falsity and crap contrived to throw her missionary teaching position in contrast with the OTHER.
Let's see if Freeman Dyson is half the man Pauly Shore is: And the bored spake and said: LET THERE BE BIODOME (the sequel)
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It's kinda sad when you think about it
When he says " For me, science has nothing much to do with deep thoughts," he's dismissing the deep significnace of his own work.
The people who honor him regard his work so highly because to them, the mathematical reconciliation between the two prevailing formalisms of relativistic quantum theory does constitute deep thought. The successful integration of special relativity with quantum mechanics does constitute deep thought and it provokes and guides and solves even deeper thoughts.
It's sad to me that he can't feel the depth of his own work.
This dismissal of the deep signifiance of his own work is consistent with his dismissal of the significance of the scientists who are telling us we're facing a world of disaster from global warming.
He doesn't take his own work seriously, so he projects that on everyone else, like they're just playing with toys and don't take any of it seriously either.
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Grubert
Grubert, you say:
"My science history books must be different then yours; the trouble with Ptololomy's system was described as long standing, whereas I know that telescopes weren't developed until the early Renaissance. I've never read that the heliocentric model was developed because of new data from telescopes, and I have read a good deal about the matter."
You are of course absolutely right, Ptolomy's system started to have problems as soon as consistent observations using the same measurement system showed up, especially of major planetary motion (Venus, etc.) The problem was that, with the benefit of some (a lot of) observer bias, quite a lot of observations were consistent with Ptolomy -- and for that matter the math of the Copernican system was well, tough for observers of the day, especially as applied to objects for which the difference between behaviour in either system is so small that it absent very accurate measurement, who could tell. I mean, who would rather not choose a system that they can easily make sense of, than one that is pretty hard to understand.
Observer bias is of course a serious issue . . . the global warming debate is fraught with it, from both sides. I think the warming side of the argument is right, but is engaging in observer bias on all sorts of issues -- which leads to exaggeration and a tendancy to see the impact of global warming in what are fro example straightforward ecological disasters driven by say deforestation. Similarly, the anti-global warming crowd grasp at straws to try to argue that the suggestion that the globe is warming is false, or explainable by all sorts of things that have nothing to do with human activity. Dyson pretty fairly points out the problem -- my issue with him is that he then engages in the same mistake . .
But those on this forum attacking him demonstrate observer bias in spades, and neo-luddism, and the acute intellectual jealousy of science of those who were to lazy to study it (and if my national syllabus had quantum mechanics on the Physics and Chemistry syllabus for most college bound 16-18 year old high-school kids (doing physics and chemistry, which most do because of college entry requirements, along with three languages), not understanding some basic quantum mechanics math is down to laziness.