No Discussions Allowed: 19th Century Flying Discovery

[russ_watters]

Come on. Now you're giving him too much credit.

"I would construct actual ships of the air - yachts, schooners, and brigantines - which would tack and sail and gybe before the wind."

He's not talking about the gliders people fly for amusement, but vessels for passengers and cargo moved and maneuvered by wind propulsion. I think it would have turned out like his precast cement homes: just barely viable, and several times more cumbersome than existing methods.

Gliders were used effectively as troop transports in WWII.

While not the best way to do things like transportation, gliders still work.

No, he wasn't completely right - but he wasn't completely wrong either.

Hmm. I think everyone has blind spots that sometimes prevent recognition of good ideas.

Certainly - but with so many moderators, I doubt our blind-spots exactly coincide.

 

[russ_watters]

David E. Cowlishaw
http://www.open.org/~davidc/

Huh - I hadn't heard about it before a guy came on here trying to promote his hovercraft. I guess its a pretty common misunderstanding.

 

[zoobyshoe]

Gliders were used effectively as troop transports in WWII.

Actually, I read a book about the WW11 gliders a few years back, and they often show footage of them in programs on TV about D-Day. These were towed across the channel by conventional airplanes with ICE's and released over the targeted landing area. They did not "tack and sail and gybe before the wind". Edison's "ships of the air" were not at all like the WW11 gliders, and did not inspire them. The WW11 gliders were essentially disposable conventional aircraft - a direct descendent of the technology pioneered by the Wrights, nothing to do with Edison's idea of propulsion through the sky by wind. Edison's ships weren't even to be kept aloft by aerodynamics like a glider. All his 'sails" were to be properly shaped bags of buoyant gas.

Certainly - but with so many moderators, I doubt our blind-spots exactly coincide.

Yes, it's unlikely they would coincide. However, as Ivan and Integral articulately expressed, the dearth and constant flow of obvious crackpots has lead to a downright "resource sink" and loss of patience which necessitated a deliberate and concerted focus on academic integrity to the exclusion of other considerations. In terms of potential innovative ideas, this rigid focus will serve the same function a coicidence of blind spots would:

"Our assumption is that there is nothing innovative being presented, therefore we stifle nothing."

I find that particular expression of this policy to sound somewhat scarily rigid, but I understand from the rest of what Integral and Ivan said, the reasoning behind this deliberate focus. The alternative - ideas running wild - would result in PF turning into something like sciforums, which was not pretty.

If something innovative were ever to be introduced here, badly expressed, then I think the probability of all the mentors dismissing it is very high.

Had PF existed in the 40's and had Feynman thrown out QED here, the policy you have expressed, to uphold conventional academic standards, would pretty much require that all the mentors dismiss it, for exactly the same reason Bohr did: it ignores the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle.

"I would like to put the uncertainty principle in it's historical place: When the revolutionary ideas of quantum physics were first coming out, people still tried to understand them in terms of old-fashioned ideas (such as, light goes in straight lines). But at a certain point the old-fashioned ideas would begin to fail, so a warning was developed that said, in effect, `your old-fashioned ideas are no damn good when...' If you get rid of all the old-fashioned ideas and instead use the ideas that I'm explaining in these lectures- adding arrows for all the ways an event can happen- there is no need for an uncertainty principle!"

-footnote on page 56, QED, The Strange Theory of Light and Matter

My point is that I don't think expressions of certainty about having an instinct for good ideas carry any weight. If your goal is to guard the integrity of current academic standards you're not really at liberty to open your ears to anyone who proposes getting rid of "all the old-fashioned ideas."

The fact is, though, there are just too many nut cases to sift through in the very remote hope that one of them is expressing a good idea badly and, curtailing this is obviously the best course under the circumstances. Any potential Feynman who accidently stumbles in here will be smart enough to figure out he has to channel his ideas into a better venue, and I don't think any great ideas are going to show up here to be slaughtered forever.

 

[Moonbear]

aviator, I recently had a discussion with someone else who was feeling rather frustrated here, in a similar situation as you seem to be experiencing. I've decided to make the advice I offered to that member more generally available to others here by posting it in my journal. https://www.physicsforums.com/journal.php?s=&journalid=6344&action=view

It won't address your specific question as it is more general advice, but perhaps it will help you out in understanding the purpose of PF, why this is not a suitable place to introduce new theories, and offer a blueprint of how scientists approach the development of a new theory. Keep in mind, this is the "short course," but I hope you'll find it to be a helpful guide on your path of learning and discovery.

I've chosen to offer that advice for the benefit of any and all who may come through here who fall into that category of having a good idea that has not been expressed or communicated well. Rather than decide we'll take the chance that we miss a good idea by rejecting all new theories, I've chosen to take the alternative approach of offering some general advice so that on the chance that someone comes in with a good idea, they can at least obtain some suggestions of what they will need to do to better communicate it to the scientific community when the time is right for its unveiling.