09-06-2006, 01:53 PM
Hi Bach.
Thanks for your answer.
I am very much aware that "to successfully build and operate steam engines, you need to know all these things, but you can know them without understanding Brownian motion, electrolysis, or molecular science". "Molecular science" started to be understood at the end of the 19 century and "molecules" where finally accepted to be real only after Einstein's explanation of brownian motion in 1905. Indeed it still true that almost all engineers can get on with their jobs knowing only classical thermodynamics, without knowing any statistical physics, and simply saying that they read somewhere that atoms exist. I teach physics to engineers and the issue of what is sufficient for them comes up every year in faculty meetings.
Bitterness aside your reference to sophisticated concepts such as expansion/contraction rates, compressibility and temperature is adding to the confusion. They were not at all obvious to invent and are difficult to use. I think you are underestimating the distorting effect of looking back at history of technology and science with what we know now.
But appart from these points I feel you are making it seem "easier" than what is was, making it seem that the invention of the steam engine was due to an accumulation of experience and facts. I claim that the worst way one can hope to dream up a science, concieve a new concept or just build a useful invention is to accumulate facts. It just doesn't work that way. And even to have a clear goal and resources does not garentee success. The goal might simply be impossible (see perpetual motion machines) and you might drown in an ocean of facts.
Thanks for your answer.
I am very much aware that "to successfully build and operate steam engines, you need to know all these things, but you can know them without understanding Brownian motion, electrolysis, or molecular science". "Molecular science" started to be understood at the end of the 19 century and "molecules" where finally accepted to be real only after Einstein's explanation of brownian motion in 1905. Indeed it still true that almost all engineers can get on with their jobs knowing only classical thermodynamics, without knowing any statistical physics, and simply saying that they read somewhere that atoms exist. I teach physics to engineers and the issue of what is sufficient for them comes up every year in faculty meetings.
Bitterness aside your reference to sophisticated concepts such as expansion/contraction rates, compressibility and temperature is adding to the confusion. They were not at all obvious to invent and are difficult to use. I think you are underestimating the distorting effect of looking back at history of technology and science with what we know now.
But appart from these points I feel you are making it seem "easier" than what is was, making it seem that the invention of the steam engine was due to an accumulation of experience and facts. I claim that the worst way one can hope to dream up a science, concieve a new concept or just build a useful invention is to accumulate facts. It just doesn't work that way. And even to have a clear goal and resources does not garentee success. The goal might simply be impossible (see perpetual motion machines) and you might drown in an ocean of facts.
Jeffery Wyss
"Si vos es non secui of solutio tunc vos es secui of preciptate."
"Si vos es non secui of solutio tunc vos es secui of preciptate."
