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crunch
Social climber
CO
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Dec 30, 2012 - 04:58pm PT
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Visited the Hoover Dam a few weeks ago. Got talking to this guy; we both were astounded by the standard of workmanship and vision that had created not only a thoroughly practical and enormous dam but a thing of beauty, way back in the 1930s in just three years or so (far more impressive and more pleasing to the eye than that cursed Glen Canyon Dam, built in the 1960s).
We walked around for a minute or two, pointing out cool features and highlights. Both of us were struck at the ambition of this project, seemingly a million miles from anything that anyone could pull off, or even dream of, today.
Finally, as a summing up of his thoughts, he remarked, shaking his head a bit, "It's God-given....that's what it is... God-given" and wandered off.
I said nothing. A few seconds too late I realized I should have replied, "No, it is not God-given! This was built by architects, engineers, form-setters, carpenters, laborers, people like you and me."
Ignorance in the sense of merely not knowing is one thing. Because you can always learn, try to understand, grasp new ideas, new concepts.
But to give up, to not even try to comprehend, as in the case with refusing to believe that the Hoover Dam intervention by a higher power, that's sad. It's willful ignorance, a refusal to even look at the obvious evidence in front of one's eyes.
As a climber, I love examining the rocks and formations we climb on, the fossils, crystals, strata, desert varnish; all these things so clearly point to an Earth that is of vast age. Baffling how so many people can willfully choose to believe that this Earth is a mere 6,000 years old.
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WBraun
climber
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Dec 30, 2012 - 04:58pm PT
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Thousands of years ago science was very advanced.
Today in the so called modern age it's gone into the cave man cave.
Devolved, devolution.
Some day in 428,000 years they will wake up again from their slumber ......
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Dec 30, 2012 - 04:59pm PT
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HFCS - "too many to count"
name a few, I can, perhaps you can, but I think the response to your list might be underwhelming...
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
-A race of corn eaters
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Dec 30, 2012 - 05:00pm PT
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I edited my post with a final comment, perhaps you didn't see it.
I think the response to your list might be underwhelming
Underwhelming? Yeah, perhaps to my aunt and uncle. Perhaps even to a theoretical physicist?
Ouch!!
I'll start with the "effort" behind the whole of the American Museum of Natural History led by Barnum Brown and Henry Osborn. That would be Paleontology. Yeah, it is a science. Plus, it was an amazing AMERICAN effort.**
So, too we could also name the early work, obviously, of the Wright Brothers. That was straight up science at the time.
Rinse and repeat. 1,000 times over. Another amazing AMERICAN effort.
.....
** 20 years ago, I spent two weeks at this museum studying their late 19th, early 20th century efforts. Great hands-on science.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Dec 30, 2012 - 05:01pm PT
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Werner, you pull this sh#t out of the air all the time...
please be more explicit... what, exactly, do you mean? I'm at a total loss sometime with your expositions that don't really say anything... say something more.
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mechrist
Gym climber
South of Heaven
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Dec 30, 2012 - 05:03pm PT
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"No, it is not God-given! This was built by architects, engineers, form-setters, carpenters, laborers, people like you and me."
Many of whom died on the job and were hastily discarded because they were in the way of progress. Besides, no god would ever flood Glen Canyon to support the likes of Vegas and LA.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Dec 30, 2012 - 05:04pm PT
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I saw it, still, name a few US scientific accomplishments pre WWII
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
-A race of corn eaters
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Dec 30, 2012 - 05:08pm PT
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Already did. Take off your theoretical physics cap.
There is a great deal to science beyond subatomic particles.
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Tony Bird
climber
Northridge, CA
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Dec 30, 2012 - 05:10pm PT
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Thousands of years ago science was very advanced.
we still really can't figure out how the pyramids were built. ardently believing subjects straining to lift giant blocks without even wheels and pulleys so's their pharoah could live forever? haha--our industrial psychologists ought to be going to school on that kind of motivation.
they say we don't even have the technology now to lift some of the stones quarried then.
there is interesting speculation that the pyramids were built thousands of years before egypt's old kingdom, and contemporaneous with things like the nazca plain and tihuanaco.
interestingly as well, there are supposedly hundreds of pyramids around china, something we seem to be asleep about in the west.
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Fritz
Trad climber
Choss Creek, ID
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Dec 30, 2012 - 05:12pm PT
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Long ago and far away: I was married to a rather liberal young-woman from Tennessee. Her family was Baptist. Both her parents had college degrees and my father in law was a MD.
When they visited us one time, my wife proudly showed her parents our collection of crystals and fossils. As she explained how many hundred- million years old a Trilobite fossil was, her father interjected that it simply wasn't possible, since the Bible-timeline didn't allow the earth to be anywhere close to that old.
Then he said: "Don't you know? Fossils are just God's little joke to test our belief in him."
Sigh.
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go-B
climber
Hebrews 1:3
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Dec 30, 2012 - 05:15pm PT
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Crusher, Hoover Dam is a man made marvel!
We could of had a job together as high scalers...
Note, the Bachar ladder!
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Mimi
climber
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Dec 30, 2012 - 05:22pm PT
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Ed, your essay just grilled my cheese sandwich. I'll be back later. LOL!
Who cares what it 'gives' us? How about enjoying the knowledge for its own sake?
Everyone should check out NASA and get their newsletters on a regular basis. What we're learning about the universe at such an amazing rate is mind blowing. There could be a major breakthrough on the whole evolution/divine intervention debate anytime, including on this planet. I hope I get to read about it in my lifetime.
http://www.nasa.gov/home/index.html
ROTFL edit: Ed, don't you have the Werner Translator algorithm installed? I'll help you out, he should have said that your essay cooked him, but he tried to communicate his thoughts. Be nice.
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rick sumner
Trad climber
reno, nevada/ wasilla alaska
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Dec 30, 2012 - 05:24pm PT
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"Can anyone of you name a prominent U.S. scientist who worked before world war II".
How about Alexander Graham Bell, Thomas Edison, The Wright Brothers,Edwin Hubble..... And all of them evolved from theory to observation to confirmation and onto practical application within the capitalist system.
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eeyonkee
Trad climber
Golden, CO
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Dec 30, 2012 - 05:26pm PT
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I think I've found something to believe in more profoundly than evolution...Peyton Manning.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Dec 30, 2012 - 05:27pm PT
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HFCS, you have a peculiarly practical bent to your scientific aesthetic, completely in line with your cultural heritage.
I wasn't demeaning these practical applied science efforts at all. But applied science rests on the foundation of pure science. (By the way, I'm not a theorist, I actually built stuff in my career as an experimentalist).
Perhaps the best in my opinion would be Willard Gibbs, who wrote only one book as a prof at Yale, Robert Millikan, Albert Michelson (an emigrant who grew up in Murphy's Camp, CA and Virgina City NV), Arthur Compton, Henry Rowland, ...
I'll come up with more, it wouldn't surprise me if no one knew who these were, let alone what their contributions were
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Mimi
climber
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Dec 30, 2012 - 05:30pm PT
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I think we can all agree that alien intervention got the whole ball rolling. And that includes multidimensional travel.
You know, those weird beings that the Zulu medicine men get all fired up about.
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Mighty Hiker
climber
Vancouver, B.C.
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Dec 30, 2012 - 05:37pm PT
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Nobel Science Prize Winners from USA, 1901 - 45
Physics: Michelson (1907), Millikan (1923), Compton (1926), Anderson (1936), Lawrence (1939), Stern (1943), Rabi (1944).
Chemistry: Richards (1914), Langmuir (1932).
Medicine & Physiology: Morgan (1933), Whipple, Minot & Murphy (1934), Doisy (1943), Erlanger & Gasser (1944).
(I'll omit economics, as it's not a science.)
Germany and the United Kingdom won many pre-war awards.
Information easily found on the Nobel Prize website - http://www.nobelprize.org/
Alexander Graham Bell was Scottish/Canadian/American, but much more of an inventor and engineer.
Werner Translator algorithm: Where can I get it?
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mechrist
Gym climber
South of Heaven
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Dec 30, 2012 - 05:46pm PT
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Michelson
Isotropic speed of light guy, right?
None I've seen on the lists compare to Einstein, Schrodinger, Bohr, etc... as far as I know... none of whom were US scientists.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Dec 30, 2012 - 05:56pm PT
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invented the Michelson interferometer which was used in the isotropic speed of light measurement, but had a wider application
The Nobel prize is recent, Gibbs' contributions were on par with European physics at that time.
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