[EpicEng]

>I know about aerodynamics and fluid dynamics and how things move through the air, about the certain size of rocket nozzles, and thrust. But that's not science, that's just a formula

Wow, I don't even know what to say. Does he think these formulas magically appeared in text books one day?

[ellius]

Don’t try to reason with a man who is trying to use the scientific method (hypothesis and experiment) to disprove science. “You cannot reason a man out of a position he was not reasoned into.”

[Hypx]

Actually that's pretty cool. Any serious attempt to utilize the scientific method will inevitable lead to something that resembles current scientific knowledge.

[SketchySeaBeast]

I guess the fun here is if he's intellectually honest about his observations meeting his theory, or whether the cognitive dissonance will keep his beliefs on the rails he expects. Ideally he'll find himself being drawn back towards the evidence based solution.

Also, I believe it's hard for smoking craters to rationalize about their observations.

[whatshisface]

You could argue that those things could just be emprical curve fits, done without any theory behind them. Not that they don't have theory behind them, just that you might be able to arrive at them without any. Thermodynamics in chemistry is a great example where you can find tables full of polynomials curve fit coefficients.

Actually, the fact that the universe yeilds to theory at all is kind of remarkable. Antimatter was "discovered" in the negative-energy solutions of the relativistic version of the Schrodinger equation long before it was found in nature. I can imagine that someone who hadn't seen all of those examples from physics for themselves could imagine that theory, in general, is epistemologically unsound - and demand that everything be directly empirical.

Aside, I think that everyone who is interested in science should spend at least a little time thinking about the philosophy that underlies it - and, you know, it can be very rewarding to reproduce early experiments just so you can see them for yourself.

Next time you're on a trip, try meauring the shadows at different times of day and calculating the radius of the Earth like Eratosthenes. We now have nearly perfect maps and globally synchronized clocks so you should have a much easier time of it than he did.

[AstralStorm]

The superficially good part is that the guy stands a good change of blowing himself up as spacecraft require very hard material science and excellent engineering to not blow up on launch, much less when exiting or re-entering atmosphere.

The price of ignoring evidence and experience.