NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
From: Robert VanderPol II
Date: 2016 Jul 9, 10:07 -0700
Re: Ten years managing NavList
From: Geoffrey Kolbe
Date: 2016 Jul 9, 07:01 +0100On 8 July 2016 at 04:43, Robert VanderPol II <NoReply_RobertVanderPolII@fer3.com> wrote:
Laws are what people make up
....Hmm.... Should you choose to spend a few minutes in gentle study of the Scientific Method, I hope you will be disabused of this notion.Geoffrey Kolbe
I spent several years in not so gentle study. Is there something I missed by not studying it gently?
Newton's "Law" of Universal Gravitation indicates that all particles in the universe attract each other in proportion to their mass and in inverse proportion to their separation. Turns out this is only an exceptionally good mathematical approximation but has been supplanted by General Relativity which covers a number of very important cases. GR is humble enough to label itself a theory rather than a law.
If you want to argue the general premise that all particles attract and ignore the math(s) behind the phenomenon then I will mention photons, gluons and the theoretical graviton all of which have no mass. While mass does attract photons (black holes being an extreme example), being massless photons do not reciprically attract any mass. I don't know the other 2 react to mass.
The Law of Gravity maintains that moniker for historical reasons rather than because it has maintained its universal application without exception. I have not problem with folk using the phrase and on occasion I use it myself.
In this case I disputed the use of the word 'Law' as a matter of humor in keeping with the fact that this thread has devolved into a vaguely amusing arguement about the semantics of "list". Apparently my humor was too dry. Perhaps I should have put a smiley face at the end of my post. ;)
Bob II
:)
