Re: Date's First Great Blunder

Tony,

Agreed.

Perhaps more importantly, it accounted for the data available to Isaac Newton, correctly and elegantly. Both quantum mechanics and relativity were proposed to account for data unavailable in Newton's day.

"Tony" <andrewst_at_onetel.net.uk> wrote in message news:c0e3f26e.0404160522.6516963f_at_posting.google.com...
> "Anthony W. Youngman" <wol_at_thewolery.demon.co.uk> wrote in message
news:<eV3gOEFrCvfAFwxo_at_thewolery.demon.co.uk>...
> > Newtonian Mechanics is mathematics. It's consistent. Unfortunately, it
> > doesn't tally with reality :-(
>
> Ah yes, Newtonian Mechanics - what a failure that was! Any attempt to
> use that in the real world is doomed to failure. No wonder they don't
> teach that old rubbish in schools these days ;-)
>
> On the other hand, to quote Wikipedia:
>
> "Classical mechanics produces very accurate results within the domain
> of everyday experience. It is superseded by relativistic mechanics for
> systems moving at large velocities near the speed of light, quantum
> mechanics for systems at small distance scales, and relativistic
> quantum field theory for systems with both properties. Nevertheless,
> classical mechanics is still very useful, because (i) it is much
> simpler and easier to apply than these other theories, and (ii) it has
> a very large range of approximate validity. Classical mechanics can be
> used to describe the motion of human-sized objects (such as tops and
> baseballs), many astronomical objects (such as planets and galaxies),
> and even certain microscopic objects (such as organic molecules.)"
>
> In other words, it DOES tally with reality except in esoteric domains
> outside the realm of everyday life.
Received on Fri Apr 16 2004 - 15:35:37 CEST