Re: In an RDBMS, what does "Data" mean?

If we are going to bring Newton into this forum, again, let's go back to the data. And let's see if we can get it right, this time.

Tycho Brahe made years worth of very careful meticulous observations as to the positions of the planets, at observed points in time. That's data.

Johannes Kepler studied Brahe's observations for years, and discovered that the orbits of the planets were elliptical, with one focus at the sun. He also discovered the "equal areas in equal times" rule for how fast they are moving. That's analysis.

What Newton added were the laws of motion, and the law of gravitation. That's physics.

All this talk about how "Newton got it wrong, and Einstein got it right" is a bunch of claptrap. The people in this forum, for the most part, don't know what they are talking about.

There are internal problems, at the cosmological level, with Newton's view of the universe. But that's not what led Einstein to push the envelope further. Physics was in crisis in the 19th century, due to results like the Michelson-Morley experiment. That's more data.

It's data that Einstein had and Newton did not. Received on Fri May 14 2004 - 15:26:57 CDT