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

In message <dOGdnVbUAPjTtjjdRVn-uQ_at_comcast.com>, Laconic2 <laconic2_at_comcast.net> writes
>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.

Well, I would say Newton got it wrong, and I do know what I'm talking about, and I know I'm right :-)
>
>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.

Except Newton DID have data that told him he was wrong. And he spent pretty much the rest of his life trying to work out why his theory didn't work completely.

Fundamental to Newtonian Mechanics is the conservation of mass - it cannot be created or destroyed. To Newton, this seemed obvious. To us, well, we know he got it wrong - we know the rule is that mass-energy is conserved, and that mass CAN be created and destroyed.

Mercury's orbit is relativistic, not classical. Try as he might, Newton just could not get his calculations and Tycho's data to agree.

Einstein just had a couple of insights that Newton didn't, due quite likely as you say to Michelson-Morley amongst other things. More data always does make life easier :-) and the data he had led him to suspect that the law of conservation of mass might actually be wrong ... the rest as they say is history ... (there's a nice story of the same sort of thing happening to Dick Feynman :-)

Cheers,
Wol

-- 
Anthony W. Youngman - wol at thewolery dot demon dot co dot uk
HEX wondered how much he should tell the Wizards. He felt it would not be a
good idea to burden them with too much input. Hex always thought of his reports
as Lies-to-People.
The Science of Discworld : (c) Terry Pratchett 1999