You're probably thinking about the benzene molecule. Establish the irrationality and you're home-free; but I don't see how a chemist working on a problem having a dream that helped him think of the solution is irrational. It's not like he just told people (at least not scientific peers) his dream and expected them to take it seriously without more evidence. If he hadn't found the evidence, his dream wouldn't have made it into the history books. A key difference between a scientist's dream and a believer's religious experiences.

(January 2, 2013 at 5:30 pm)Mister Agenda Wrote: You're probably thinking about the benzene molecule. Establish the irrationality and you're home-free; but I don't see how a chemist working on a problem having a dream that helped him think of the solution is irrational. It's not like he just told people (at least not scientific peers) his dream and expected them to take it seriously without more evidence. If he hadn't found the evidence, his dream wouldn't have made it into the history books. A key difference between a scientist's dream and a believer's religious experiences.

well how far would maths theory have got without the irrational or even the imaginary? and how far would science have got without the maths ?

(January 2, 2013 at 5:45 pm)Mark 13:13 Wrote:

(January 2, 2013 at 5:30 pm)Mister Agenda Wrote: You're probably thinking about the benzene molecule. Establish the irrationality and you're home-free; but I don't see how a chemist working on a problem having a dream that helped him think of the solution is irrational. It's not like he just told people (at least not scientific peers) his dream and expected them to take it seriously without more evidence. If he hadn't found the evidence, his dream wouldn't have made it into the history books. A key difference between a scientist's dream and a believer's religious experiences.

well how far would maths theory have got without the irrational or even the imaginary? and how far would science have got without the maths ?

What would be the point of imagination without hard facts to measure it against?

(January 2, 2013 at 5:56 pm)jonb Wrote:

(January 2, 2013 at 5:45 pm)Mark 13:13 Wrote: well how far would maths theory have got without the irrational or even the imaginary? and how far would science have got without the maths ?

What would be the point of imagination without hard facts to measure it against?

The point is to claim bullshit, like Christianity, is not bullshit.

You can be fairly sure that when a Christian express interest in state of the art hard science, what he is really after is not self-improvement through expanded understanding of the real world. Instead he is just fishing for what might seem to his flaccid and addled mind to be an opening for him to justify his ridiculous religion.

(January 2, 2013 at 5:56 pm)jonb Wrote:

(January 2, 2013 at 5:45 pm)Mark 13:13 Wrote: well how far would maths theory have got without the irrational or even the imaginary? and how far would science have got without the maths ?

What would be the point of imagination without hard facts to measure it against?

isn't there a place for both? and could we even have got to where we are without both. I wonder which scientists would progress the world further those with no facts or those with no imagination. I think it would be a draw.
as I pointed out above mathematics would have ground to a halt by now if it wasn't for imaginary numbers.

(January 2, 2013 at 6:05 pm)Chuck Wrote: The point is to claim bullshit, like Christianity, is not bullshit.

You can be fairly sure that when a Christian express interest in state of the art hard science, what he is really after is not self-improvement through expanded understanding of the real world. Instead he is just fishing for what might seem to his flaccid and addled mind to be an opening for him to justify his ridiculous religion.

No, surly not, this one says it has something exciting to say, I am so looking forward to it!

(January 2, 2013 at 6:09 pm)Mark 13:13 Wrote:

(January 2, 2013 at 5:56 pm)jonb Wrote: What would be the point of imagination without hard facts to measure it against?

isn't there a place for both? and could we even have got to where we are without both. I wonder which scientists would progress the world further those with no facts or those with no imagination. I think it would be a draw.
as I pointed out above mathematics would have ground to a halt by now if it wasn't for imaginary numbers.

You fucking idiot, the "imaginary" in imaginary number has nothing to do with dreaming up bullshit and pretend its real. Nor does "irrational" in irrational number have anything to do with ignoring the rules of rigorous logic.

That you would make such elementary mistakes tells you just how much your bible has made you resemble your religion - spectacularly ignorant and comically overreaching.

(January 2, 2013 at 6:19 pm)Chuck Wrote:

(January 2, 2013 at 6:09 pm)Mark 13:13 Wrote: isn't there a place for both? and could we even have got to where we are without both. I wonder which scientists would progress the world further those with no facts or those with no imagination. I think it would be a draw.
as I pointed out above mathematics would have ground to a halt by now if it wasn't for imaginary numbers.

You fucking idiot, the "imaginary" in imaginary number has nothing to do with dreaming up bullshit and pretend its real. Nor does "irrational" in irrational number have anything to do with ignoring the rules of rigorous logic.

That you would make such elementary mistakes tells you just how much your bible has made you resemble your religion - spectacularly ignorant and comically overreaching.

An unusual turn of events there the christian was not eaten by the lion as expected, but instead has been badly mauled by an Anomalcaris.

(January 2, 2013 at 6:35 pm)jonb Wrote:

(January 2, 2013 at 6:19 pm)Chuck Wrote: You fucking idiot, the "imaginary" in imaginary number has nothing to do with dreaming up bullshit and pretend its real. Nor does "irrational" in irrational number have anything to do with ignoring the rules of rigorous logic.

That you would make such elementary mistakes tells you just how much your bible has made you resemble your religion - spectacularly ignorant and comically overreaching.

An unusual turn of events there the christian was not eaten by the lion as expected, but instead has been badly mauled by an Anomalcaris.

so lets assume then that the square root of minus 1 is not imaginary then by definition must be real then is the square root of minus 1 positive or negative.

"It was not until some weeks later that I realized there is no need to restrict oneself to 2 by 2 matrices. One could go on to 4 by 4 matrices, and the problem is then easily soluable. In retrospect, it seems strange that one can be so much held up over such an elementary point. The resulting wave equation for the electron turned out to be very successful. It led to correct values for the spin and the magnetic moment. This was quite unexpected. The work all followed from a study of pretty mathematics, without any thought being given to these physical properties of the electron."
P.A.M. Dirac

Ideas generated purely in dreams or imagination that didn't pan out tend to outnumber those that did by about infinity to one. Without something constraining the search, blind searching based on dreams or imagination is pointless.


In a spot during a recent rebroadcast of an episode of the science fiction series Fringe, it was claimed that there was an individual who, after receiving a blow to the head, became able to play and compose music, unlike before the injury. I don't know whether the claim itself is valid or just a viral promo, but they described the individual as experiencing the music synesthetically, that he "saw" a visual representation of the music in front of him (literally), and he simply followed along. Even if true, however, as in the case of the discovery of the benzene molecule, it was prior real world experience which gave rise to the fruitful imaginings. If these things weren't coming from prior real world experience, you might have a parallel, but the 'imaginings' of people without some prior real world experience tend to be universally sterile. (As are imaginings from drug induced experiences. Oddly enough, Dirac tended to eschew practical experiment in favor of his mathematical explorations; however to expect someone with only mathematical knowledge to generate systems relevant to physics by their intuition alone is far fetched. If someone with no prior experience of music suddenly could compose symphonies after a blow to the head, then you would have some interesting questions; however, I suspect that even then, the answer would lie in the person's prior experiences [and evolved traits] rather than sheer imagination.)