Re: Topics Moderator note

["Tesla list" <tesla@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Original poster: William Beaty <billb@xxxxxxxxxx>

On Mon, 18 Jul 2005, Tesla list wrote:

> Original poster: Terry Fritz <teslalist@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>

> The vote turned out that "wireless energy transmission" should be off
> topic for this list.  It is the only topic ever to be voted on...

Ah, that it explains it.

I can see how it could trigger flamewars.  The group who is *certain* that
Tesla knew everything, they disagree with the group who is *certain* that
Tesla was primitive and incompetent.  And then they attack each other.
Such certainty is part of a belief system, same as with any religion, and
when beliefs are questioned, the blasphemers must be punished!  :)

Alternatively, here is the scientist view from my quotes collection:

  "Advances are made by answering questions. Discoveries are made by
   questioning answers."   - Bernhard Haisch, astrophysicist

  "The most erroneous stories are those we think we know best -- and
   therefore never scrutinize or question."  -Stephen Jay Gould

  "It is a good morning exercise for a research scientist to discard a pet
   hypothesis every day before breakfast. It keeps him young."
         - Konrad Lorenz

  "Inquiry is fatal to certainty."  - William J. Durant

 "If we will only allow that, as we progress, we remain unsure, we will
  leave opportunities for alternatives.  We will not become enthusiastic
  for the fact, the knowledge, the absolute truth of the day, but remain
  always uncertain...  In order to make progress, one must leave the door
  to the unknown ajar."    - Richard Feynman

 "There is a principle which is a bar against all information, which
  cannot fail to keep a man in everlasting ignorance--that principle is
  contempt prior to investigation." - Herbert Spencer, British philosopher

  "In any field, find the strangest thing and then explore it."
        - John A. Wheeler

  "The only solid piece of scientific truth about which I feel totally
   confident is that we are profoundly ignorant about nature... It is this
   sudden confrontation with the depth and scope of ignorance that
   represents the most significant contribution of twentieth-century
   science to the human intellect."  - Lewis Thomas

  "Sit down before facts like a child, and be prepared to give up every
   preconceived notion, follow humbly wherever and to whatever abysses
   Nature leads, or you shall learn nothing."  - T.H. Huxley

 "Let the mind be enlarged... to the grandeur of the mysteries, and not
  the mysteries contracted to the narrowness of the mind" - Francis Bacon

 "The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two
  opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to
  function."   - F. Scott Fitzgerald

 "I can live with doubt and uncertainty and not knowing. I think it is
  much more interesting to live not knowing than to have answers that
  might be wrong."  - Richard Feynman



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William J. Beaty                            SCIENCE HOBBYIST website
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