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Yes, like Einstein or Newton. Einstein's work on relativity (01905) was inspired by the Michelson-Morley experiment (01887), less than 20 years before, and its many improved replications. His work on the photoelectric effect was inspired by Hertz's experimental discovery of it (also 01887), followed by numerous further experiments which clarified the nature of the effect. Although Brownian motion had been observed, in some sense, since Lucretius (00060 BCE), Brown's 01827 observations under a microscope less than a century before were crucial to Einstein's theorizing about it. Newton's work on orbital mechanics, which gave rise to understanding of universal gravitation (published 01687 but finished years earlier), derived from Kepler's laws of planetary motion (01621, say) and his published tables of planetary observations (01627), the Tabulae Rudolphinae. Not coincidentally, Kepler is also known for his dramatic improvements in the tele-scope, but much of the improvement in the Tabulae was actually due to the meticulous work done at the pre-telescope observatory of his predecessor Brahe, a huge stone structure. Certainly the traffic between theoretical physics and experimental physics is not entirely a one-way flow from experiment to theory; that would lead only to the sort of overfitting we find in Ptolemy. But neither is it, as you paint it, entirely a one-way flow from theory to experiment. It's probably true that we aren't going to resolve the problem of quantum gravity, dark matter, or consciousness with experiments, because our theories aren't good enough to design the experiments yet. But turbulence, magnetohydrodynamics, and especially quantum computers are eminently subject to experiment. (Although I disagree with your comment, it certainly seems to be made in good faith, so I deplore the knuckle-draggers who are downvoting it.) |