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Re: foundations of relational theory?

From: byrmol <member27348_at_dbforums.com>
Date: 31 Oct 2003 04:11:26 GMT
Message-ID: <3544027.1067573862_at_dbforums.com> 







I have never used PICK, so this whole thread is interesting...





It does however remind me of a passage from Carl Sagan's "A Demon
haunted world.  Science as a candle in the dark."








The year is 1850 and the Queen of England gathers around all the
Engineers she can think of.  She has a special project for them.  "I
want my voice to be heard across my many domains".  At the time, radio
and television are still many years away and the world is still
enthralled by magnetism.





It is indeed a daunting task as none of the underlying science has been
done.  But they all try there best and propose different solutions.





The Queen settles on the "multi-phase-megaphone" solution which is just
a human chain shouting at each other.





Meanwhile, the first real nerd (Maxwell) is tinkering about with the
experimental results of electricity and magnetism.  He already knows
there is a relationship between the 2 but just cannot bridge the gap.
In a burst of brillance, he asks himself "What would happen if these
experiments occured in a vaccum?".   He plugs in the numbers, makes
another brillant assumption, and IMO, makes probably the most underated
scienctific advancement in history.  He discovers that electricity,
magnetism and the speed of light are related. The electromagnetic
radiation/spectrum has been found paving the way, for radar, TV and of
course relativity...





When Maxwell presents his finding to the Engineers Guild,  they scream.
"But it is just theory", "It will never work in the real world".  "We
already have a solution that works, why do we need this theory stuff."





Maxwell responds that the theory was formulated from known observations,
is reproducible, is subject to less data errors (chinese whispers) and
is much better than the other solution for wide ranging applications.





The best the Engineers Guild can respond with is "But megaphones are
cheap and keep me employed."



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Received on Fri Oct 31 2003 - 05:11:26 CET












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