Context and the 9/11 Conspiracies - Part 2
` Picking up from where I left off last time, I believe I was going on about how to make a conspiracy theory, and I exposed some of the claims made by the 9/11 conspiracy theorists concerning the destroyed buildings and the planes that crashed into them. Other Silly Allegations ` Another conspiracy theorist 'puzzle piece' is that there was a lot of 'put' trading of airline stock, which is a huge gamble. They surmise that the 'insiders' knew what would happen, and so placed their bets. ` The conspiracy theorists also claim that FEMA arrived at the WTC on September 10, 2001 because they knew that the disaster was about to happen. The Ones They Refuse to Blame
` On this post, I will cover a few other topics (though I will probably add more in the future).
` The other hijacked plane had been headed for Washington - until the passengers overtook the hijackers and crashed it into an unoccupied area. How does anyone know this if there was no radio contact? Cell phone contact with passengers and the plane's black box made it all too clear.
` If you're a conspiracy theorist, you'll be actively looking for the scantiest evidence of a half-truth in order to support your view that the official story is wrong.
` It is no wonder that the creators of Loose Change attended the premiere of the movie, United 93, and to - as one forum member put it - "bite these bastards where it hurts, and have this Flight 93 movie backfire on them."[Quote.]
` There are two different ways you can go with this conspiracy theory, depending on what set of 'evidence' you want to go with.
` To the conspiracy theorists, there have been two outcomes of Flight 93, depending on who you ask. Some of them say that the plane landed safely, which stems from the initial AP reports saying that Flights 1989 and 93.
` Indeed, air traffic controllers at first believed 1989 had been hijacked. However, none of them claimed that 93 landed.
` It was the 'allegedly hijacked' Flight 1989 that landed in Cleveland Hopkins Airport and not 93; the AP did correct the error later on. [Kropko, M.R. 2002. " September 11 Tension Vivid to Controller ." Associated Press, August 15, 2002.]
` Though the plane (with its victims) was shredded - like many similar plane crashes - much of it has been recovered, and 1500 bits of human remains were found and identified as those who had been on board.
` The other conspiracy theory was that the plane had been shot down by the U.S. military. Since the flight data controller did not record any unusual functional readings (vibrations, air pressure changes, fuel intake, etc.) before the time of the crash, this does not seem likely.
` Some claim that the last few minutes of the flight controller recording was missing or being covered up - in fact, this is due to the plane simply having impacted shortly before they said it did.
` The conspiracy theorists also asserted that the main body of the engine and other large chunks were found scattered over several miles. Actually, we know that the engine was found 300 yards away, no doubt about it, and it was in a position that was consistent with the direction the plane had been moving. [" 9/11: Debunking the Myths ." Popular Mechanics. March, 2005.]
` The black box, also found, clearly records the struggle that had been going on before the crash.
` With errant planes on the loose, one might think that the other planes might have been shot down by the government - especially if they were capable of shooting down the one. However, NORAD did not have the capability of locating nor intercepting those planes.
` Taken into account all the planes that have needed to be shot down over the years, there have been only 67 other interceptions in history before September 11, 2001. Why?
` First off, the NORAD personnel have to radio contact the planes to rule out mundane problems, and then they must contact military personnel to scramble planes after them.
` The 9/11 case was actually much harder than usual because the terrorists had turned off or disabled the plane's radar transponders. Therefore, it would have looked like a moving blip among many others on NORAD's screens, making it impossible for them to even locate and intercept them in the short window of time available.
` According to the Popular Mechanics article:In the decade before 9/11, NORAD intercepted only one civilian plane over North America: golfer Payne Stewart's Learjet, in October 1999. With passengers and crew unconscious from cabin decompression, the plane lost radio contact but remained in transponder contact until it crashed. Even so, it took an F-16 1 hour and 22 minutes to reach the stricken jet. Rules in effect back then, and on 9/11, prohibited supersonic flight on intercepts. [" 9/11: Debunking the Myths." Popular Mechanics. March, 2005.]
` Now consider that this is a common event and that the general volume of put trading had also reached the same levels just earlier in the year. Plus, general bad news about the airline industry directly prompted investment companies to tell their clients that put options would be the best course of action.
` There was in fact a large spike in American Airlines trade, though this is hardly surprising: the company had just released a major warning because they had expected possible stock losses. ["AMR Corp Issues 3Q' 2001 Profit Warning." Airline Industry Information, September 11, 2001, " Plummeting Profit." Zeal Speculation and Investment. June 22, 2001.]
` So, what's the point in finding another way to explain it? Is that not sufficient?
` This allegation was based on a statement by Tom Kenney of the Massachusetts task force to Dan Rather on Sept 13, 2001: "We're currently, uh, one of the first teams that was deployed to support the city of New York for this disaster. We arrived on, uh, late Monday night and went into action on Tuesday morning. And not until today did we get a full opportunity to work, uh, the entire site." [Schorow, Stephanie. 2002. " Independent Research." Boston Herald. 5 September (Arts & Life).]
` That seems a bit strange, considering that Monday was September 10. What seems to have happened there was that Kenney confused which day was which - something that commonly happens to people who are working for two long days in emergency response.
` What he apparently meant to say was that he arrived at Ground Zero on the eleventh, which he must have thought was Monday but was really Tuesday, and went into action on 9/12, and did not get a chance to work the whole site until 'today' or, 9/13. In addition, many different sources have documented the arrival of FEMA on 9/11, including Kenney's wife. [Schorow, Stephanie. 2002. " Independent Research." Boston Herald . 5 September (Arts & Life).]
` Do they know about the fall of the Ottoman empire? Do they know about the fragmentation that occurred after WWII? Or the reaction of Muslims to the state of Israel, plus all the frustration about America's support for it? Do they know what Islamic fundamentalism is, or what Soviet Russia has to do with anything?
` The reasons why there are Islamic terrorist groups stem from all of that, and such people have been targeting and attacking America for decades:
` For example, in 1983 Hezbollah truck-bombed a Marine barracks in Lebanon , killing 241 Americans. In 1985, the Palestinian Liberation Front hijacked the Achille Lauro. In 1993, the WTC was bombed via truck , killing six people and injuring a thousand others (ironically, the memorial was destroyed in the 9/11 attack ).
` In January, 1995, thanks to funding by terrorists such as the head of Al-Qaeda (Osama bin-Laden), there was a plan to blow up twelve planes between the U.S. and Asia, though it was stopped.
` In 1995, bin-Laden had the U.S. Embassy buildings in Kenya and Tanzania bombed , killing twelve Americans, and 200 natives. In 1996, terrorists truck-bombed the Khobar Towers , killing nineteen U.S. military personnel and injuring hundreds more. In 1999, Ahmed Ressam became famous for his attempted attack on Los Angeles international airport.
` On October 12, 2000, Al-Qaeda arranged a successful suicide boat bombing of the U.S.S. Cole, killing seventeen sailors and injuring 39 more. [Strasser, Steven (ed.). 2004. The 9/11 Investigations: Staff Reports of the 9/11 Commission . New York: Public Affairs Books. More about radical Islam at Rashid, Ahmed. 2001. Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil and Fundamentalism in Central Asia. New York: Yale University Press.]
` Clearly, Osama Bin Laden has been funding, organizing, and initiating such shenanigans against the U.S., and there is plenty of evidence to back that up. He has also issued two fatwas - one in 1996 declaring a jihad against the U.S. and one in 1998 "to kill the Americans and their allies — civilian and military is an individual duty for any Muslim who can do it in any country in which it is possible to do it." [Strasser, Steven (ed.). 2004. The 9/11 Investigations: Staff Reports of the 9/11 Commission . New York: Public Affairs Books, and other sources.]
` Not only is there every reason in the world to think that this was their work, bin-Laden and Al-Qaeda have actually admitted to the September 11 bombings! [Bamer, David. 2001. "Bin Laden: Yes, I Did It." The Telegraph. November 11.] What would be the point of saying that they were not responsible?
` To all scrutiny, this is but the latest, and worst, attack on us by radical Islamic terrorists because they don't want our 'evil' U.S. foreign policy, along with everything else. Unfortunately, we didn't take them seriously, and so it was American civilians who paid the price.
` ...But how many people actually know about this stuff? The truth is, so many do not that it seems a bit odd when someone does know their history. Therefore, such conspiracy theories are perhaps believable to more people than they could be.
` A more emotional reason why some people like conspiracy theories - in general - is because they are able to keep their eye on what they believe to be dangerous, and so they know who to expect danger from! (Curiously, such people who supposedly believe that the U.S. is a 'police state', are interviewed on national television and radio and hold Truth Conventions in public without fear of being arrested!)
` Realistically, the real truth is what is most important to implement in the future, because only the truth can be used to prevent future terrorist attacks - and no, I don't think the 'War on Terror' has done anything of the sort.
14 comments:
S. E. E. Quine:
Had it occurred to you that such conspiracy theories would fall into the category of mythology--legitimate mythology. The function may well be to preserve the memory of an event--always open ended. Much like the distant assassination of President Kennedy or "Jack the Ripper" or aliens landing with the aid of huge glyphs of creatures on the surface of the Nazca Desert. Sound science and reasoning are abandoned as with the "9/11" finger pointing. It's just human nature to see what really isn't there.
To add to my previous comment:
9/11: The Power of Memory
"An ever-changing world changed forever" by, John Patrick Boland
"If you asked the first 10 people you met tomorrow what they were doing when they heard about the attacks on New York's Twin Towers six years ago, they might just remember -- it was the Internet generation's JFK moment. (For the record, I was working as a bank cashier with one of the U.K.'s major High Street banks). Most will never forget the haunting and almost unbelievable images that were seared into our memories that day. A Hollywood director would have struggled to produce the footage that seemed almost too spectacularly horrific to be true. Fast forward a few years and ask the same 10 people what they were doing on Sept. 11 in any of the subsequent years since and their memories might not be in such sharp focus.
Huge events, by their nature, trigger a broad and intense range of reactions. They shatter the norms of our often-mundane everyday existence, throwing us outside our comfort zone if you like. In addition, in our increasingly high-profile media-oriented world, there is no longer an escape. Decades ago news bulletins were once or twice a day at most; now we have a proliferation of 24-hours-a-day, 7-days-a-week media channels. And that was the stage upon which the events of Sept. 11 were ultimately to play out for a large majority of us who were not in New York that day but bore witness to a bombardment of images and footage bringing the chaos and devastation to our TV screens.
As pictures of passenger jets hitting the World Trade Center reverberated around the world, the traumatic content of these images echoed hard for the majority of the Western world. Why? Naturally, there was shock and sorrow at the thought of what might be happening to the poor souls involved and directly affected but, even on the day itself, things arguably ran deeper than that. Any tourist who had paid a visit to the World Trade Center had personal memories of being in those towers -- anyone who had ascended those elevators on the way to taking in spectacular views of Manhattan could barely comprehend now seeing the towers coming down. Likewise, anyone who had ever taken a flight must have recoiled in horror seeing passenger jets used as tools of destruction -- fleeting thoughts of "how would I have dealt with what happened on those flights" must surely have crossed a million minds.
It can often seem like a very lonely world until we are faced with the most challenging of circumstances -- then we see the caring solidarity that deep down we know we all possess. The bigger the challenge, the more people seem to come together. That may be a cliche but cliches only exist because they readily ring true. The catastrophe of Sept. 11 brought New Yorkers out of their shell as the evil of the perpetrators' acts contrasted decisively with the generosity of spirit displayed by those who rushed to help each other in their hour of need. Tributes abound to heroic deeds and noble sacrifice -- none more so than the tale of Rick Rescorla, the Vietnam War veteran who had always been fearful of an attack on the Twin Towers and a man whose vigilance and dedication to his job as World Trade Center security chief for Morgan Stanley ensured many lives were saved while his own was lost.
A devastating event on the scale of Sept. 11 registers more on collective memory for numerous reasons. When faced with news of difficult events we are often sad but can disassociate ourselves somewhat and derive comfort from the belief that "it couldn't happen here, or to us." That was one of the problems with the attacks on the Twin Towers (accompanied as they were by an attack on the Pentagon and the loss of a fourth passenger jet in Pennsylvania) -- if buildings and locations guarded by constant and sustained security were vulnerable then surely anything and everything could be under threat?
Furthermore, the consequences of Sept. 11 transcended so many boundaries (and arguably continues to do so, given the impetus it gave to subsequent conflicts). The tragedy in the short-term was that nearly 3,000 people were lost amid the wreckage of the Twin Towers. The range of nationalities stretched from the United States to Australia and included citizens of countries such as China, Ireland, Israel, Japan, Sweden and the United Kingdom, according to CNN's Sept. 11 Memorial archive. Numerous nations joined the United States in their grief. Added to this was the realization that terrorism also takes no account of social status -- corporate and business leaders were lost alongside members of the New York Fire Department that tried desperately to save them. Neither was age a barrier with one of the youngest documented victims aged just 2 years old; at the opposite end of the scale at least 3 victims were in their 80s.
Memories, like anything, evolve and it is at this next junction as we approach the sixth anniversary of a most pivotal moment in recent human history that we should reflect on how we now feel. For those who lost someone, the anguish and pain will be unlikely ever to diminish -- their memories are probably as clear and distinct as the day their lives changed forever. But maybe we have all ultimately lost something in the long run. Post-Sept. 11 there were those who, in viewing the attacks as a willful assault on democracy, entrusted the United States with the United Kingdom to embark on a path to protect democracy from the tyranny of evil. Regrettably, the desire to save democracy and make the world a safer place does not sit too comfortably with subsequent attacks on Madrid (March 2004) and London (July 2005) in tandem with continuing and arguably worsening chaos in Afghanistan and Iraq.
This is a difficult commentary, as its conclusion will pose thought-provoking questions rather than provide suggested answers. Are the societies we now live in safer or more extreme? Are we more divided than ever before? Have our politicians' reactions to the tragedy of Sept. 11 made things better or worse? As the momentum generates to rebuild the World Trade Center site, we have to retain the hope that the politicians that play such a key role in our lives can mirror that momentum in making the correct decisions to rebuild our fractured world."
September 3rd, 2007
Ohmynews
` Are you saying then, Mercury, that it doesn't matter how people remember it, it's that they have to remember it in some way that makes sense to them, and that's human nature?
` So, if you come up with a mythological framework, you can fit parts of actual events inside in a coherent fashion?
` Thus, people readily spin myths to preserve history in their own way - or did you mean something else?
` By the way, this article reminded me of an anecdote from my psychology teacher;
` He remembers the day the Challenger blew up - he was getting ready for work, his neighbor came over, frantic, and told him to turn on the TV.
` They watched the disaster replay a few times and then he had to go to work.
` His neighbor remembers that he came over to her house in the afternoon (when he would have been at work) and they watched it in her living room with someone else.
` I think his story must be closer to the truth, however, and yet you can't be sure just how much your memory has been distorted.
` That's why eyewitness accounts - even if they are from shortly after an event - are not reliable.
` Neither are eyewitness accounts of what type of planes (or other objects) crashed on 9/11 - though most people did describe a large jet, passenger or otherwise.
S. E. E. Quine:
Significant events can burn a spot in one's memory as both Kennedy's assassinations, both shuttles, September 11th --it appears like yesterday while I was washing the chariot and noticed a scratch that the Hittites began their southern invasion. Myths, urban legends, genuine science--clear distinctions between them and yet they all have a function for humanity. Many myths start with a kernel of fact/truth and over time becomes embellished and polished to encompass current conditions or a peculiar tribe of people. [Religious rituals are repeat with examples such as the Eucharist or baptism.] Original empirical evidence becomes distorted and even obscured. Myths are valuable and should not necessarily be confused with conspiracy theories for the latter does not engage the whole body of societies. They express a different agenda unlike myths. Perhaps you should consult the writing of the late Joseph Campbell [who often reflected the writings of Carl Jung as an explanation of psychological phenomena].
The Joseph Campbell Foundation
http://www.jcf.org/index2.php
Also, Bill Moyers [PBS] and Joseph Campbell collaborated on a good series called "The Power of Myth". Library should have the series on video cassette.
Indeed, Daveed, perhaps our perspective blinds yet again. First off, in regards to the cause of conspiracy theories related to 911. There is the urge for people to not want to believe something happened. With JFK, no body wants to believe that some crazy loser walked up the stairs and blew the president away on his lunch break, so naturally, the search for an alternate answer is a way to relieve one's self of accepting that truth. However, particularly with 911, there is a lot of room for a real conspiracy. In this way our perspective blinds us. Though I subscribe to no answer as to what really happened on 911, I firmly believe that the explanation given to us by the media is not entirely true. This is not science, this is politics and propaganda. We do not have the facts. Our enemies may believe with their heart of hearts that we are the evil doers, and that little incident was but a needle in the foot of an evil giant, but their defiance was heard (Lucky it benefited the right wing political agenda). If we are to be truly skeptical, we must leave room for the possibility that "they" are right and "we" are wrong, in other words, we are the evil giant; Our woe is but a mockery of grief to our enemies because our tyranny is overbearing, and our strength insurmountable. I also believe that our attackers do not care about how our government is structured, whether it be democracy or monarchy; they attack us because of what we do to them. Again, unlike science, we are not dealing with facts. We actually do not know what is happening. There is plenty of room for a few of these conspiracy theories to be right. Any analysis requires acceptance of a political point of view.
Also, I challenge the comparison of 911 events to a myth. I would ask you "What is the truth in the myth?" The question is particularly apropos to religious myths. I am confident that as an atheist I garner more wisdom from the words of Christ than most. Indeed, the words of Christ are all to similar to the words of Lau Tsu or Dogan, or Buddha, or Muhammed. Looking at these myths as though they are a religion may blind us as to the truths they hold. Or how about this, looking at them as though they are not true may blind us to how true they are. A good myth carries with it a huge cultural significance, much larger than political theories of the day, which, in the end, are all the discussions about JFK and 911 are. Christ and Buddha tried to teach people how to live well and be happy, and that message and the instructions of how to do it are there in the text for those who read it right. I believe that is the function of myth, to carry great wisdom through the years. The conspiracy theories mentioned are a function of politics, people like you and me will never know the truth. I personally believe that our own president was an accomplice, I won't go into the evidence here, but believe me, I am a very rational thinker.
So to summarize, I believe it is our religious (or anti religious) and our political perspectives that cloud everything about all the topics mentioned. I believe that the people on this planet who actually apply science and reason to these issues AND have all the facts, very well may be evil, but we will never know what they know, so science is out the window for us on these issues. We are all rendered impotent conspiracy theorists, and we are deluded to think other wise.
Lou Ryan:
There is concurrence on the validity of mythology but I draw the lines on conspiracy theories. That is a totally different set of values and I am not sure if the razor of critical science even has a chance displacing the roots and needs of conspiracy theories. The scientific methodology and logic take a holiday of infinite length. The perpetuators wish the reality of their ideas be promulgated without regard to science or even common sense and wish to find an evil person under every rock and froth with glee for the large quantity of limelight they receive. Bucks are to be made too in the perpetuation of conspiracy theories. Perhaps the truth in a myth is an insurance policy of guaranteeing collective community conscience and stability. Conspiracy theories generate edginess and instability. Furthermore, conspiracy theories do not develop a strong cadre of followers; they do not offer community wholeness.
"I believe that the people on this planet who actually apply science and reason to these issues AND have all the facts, very well may be evil, but we will never know what they know, so science is out the window for us on these issues. We are all rendered impotent conspiracy theorists, and we are deluded to think other wise."
That makes no sense. There is an hierarchy of knowledge of the universe and it is science, bound by empirical evidence, that provides a sound epistemology for most of what we experience while there are things, beyond science quantification, that are mysterious and require a matter of faith and establish metaphysics as an additional source of knowledge.
[In the future, address me as Mercury.]
` First, I want to mention that this sentence in the article,
Fast forward a few years and ask the same 10 people what they were doing on Sept. 11 in any of the subsequent years since and their memories might not be in such sharp focus.
` ...tricked me into thinking the Challenger explosion anecdote was in some way relevant, though I see now what the sentence really says - which is good because the article makes more sense to me.
` Second, I think I get what you're saying;
` The same human instinct that fuels myths can also be used as fuel in the spurious world of conspiracy theories.
` But other than that, I don't see much similarity. If the 9/11 event was to be made into a myth it would probably be much more accurate than a conspiracy theory.
` One thing I have noticed is that conspiracy theories tend to turn the 'official story' into something that is half 'official story' and half fantasy that comes from the theorists. (Half truths abound, in other words.)
` It is then an easy-to-attack dummy 'official theory' (straw men arguments also abound).
` And just which way are the 9/11 events bent? As I said in the last part of this post, I think it is partly a coping mechanism for people who are paranoid about the U.S. government.
` So, it is quite unlike a myth in that it is about distorting events rather than preserving them in some form.
S. E. E. Quine:
Despite overwhelming evidence, people will believe what they want to believe--whatever makes them comfortable.
` Makes me wonder how guilty I or you are of that type of general thing.
Myths, legends, tall tales, conspiracy theories; religion, science--all are cores of belief.
Physicsworld
February 4th, 2003
The legend of the leaning tower.
"Historians are not sure if Galileo ever carried out experiments at the Leaning Tower of Pisa. So why, asks Robert P Crease, has the story become part of physics folklore?
Commander David R Scott (2 August 1971, lunar surface): "Well, in my left hand I have a feather; in my right hand, a hammer. And I guess one of the reasons we got here today was because of a gentleman named Galileo, a long time ago, who made a rather significant discovery about falling objects in gravity fields. And we thought: 'Where would be a better place to confirm his findings than on the Moon?'."
[Camera zooms in on Scott's hands. One is holding a feather, the other a hammer. The camera pulls back to show the Falcon the Apollo 15 landing craft and the lunar horizon.]
Scott: "And so we thought we'd try it here for you. The feather happens to be, appropriately, a falcon feather for our Falcon. And I'll drop the two of them here and, hopefully, they'll hit the ground at the same time." [Scott releases hammer and feather. They hit the ground at about the same time.]
Scott: "How about that! Mr Galileo was correct in his findings."
How the legend started.
The finding mentioned by Commander Scott, namely that objects of different mass fall at the same rate in a vacuum, is associated with a single person (Galileo) and a single place the Leaning Tower of Pisa. The culprit is Vincenzio Viviani, Galileo's secretary in the final years of his life.
We owe many of the Galilean legends to Viviani's warm biography of the Italian scholar. One is the story of how Galileo climbed the Leaning Tower of Pisa and "in the presence of other teachers and philosophers and all the students" showed through repeated experiments that "the velocity of moving bodies of the same composition, but of different weights, moving through the same medium, do not attain the proportion of their weight as Aristotle decreed, but move with the same velocity".
In his own books, Galileo uses thought experiments to argue that objects of unequal mass fall together in a vacuum. Without mentioning the Leaning Tower, he reports having "made the test" with a cannonball and a musket ball. What is perhaps surprising, however, is that Galileo found that the two balls did not quite fall together. This finding coupled with the fact that Viviani's biography is the only source to mention that the experiments were done at the Leaning Tower causes most historians of science to doubt Viviani's version of what Galileo did. They believe that the elderly and then-blind Galileo may have misremembered when speaking to his youthful assistant.
Dropping the ball.
Science historians find Galileo's early experiments with falling bodies fascinating, for several reasons. One is that Galileo was not the first. As far back as the sixth century, other scholars who doubted Aristotle's account of motion had also experimented with falling bodies and concluded that Aristotle was wrong. They included several 16th-century Italians and one of Galileo's predecessors as professor at Pisa.
Also intriguing is Galileo's report, based on experiment, that balls of unequal weight do not only fall at different rates, but that the lighter one initially pulls ahead of the heavier one until the heavier catches up. In the early 1980s the science historian Thomas Settle tried to repeat Galileo's falling-body experiments and, astonishingly, noted the same thing. He suggested that fatigue induced in the hand holding the heavier object tends to cause this hand to let go more slowly, even when the dropper believes the objects are released simultaneously.
Yet another fascinating side to Galileo's experiments is the way that they slowly transformed from genuine scientific inquiries into public displays. After Galileo's death, scientists including Robert Boyle and Willem 'sGravesande built air pumps and special chambers to explore vertical fall in evacuated environments. King George III, for instance, once witnessed a demonstration involving a feather and a one-guinea coin falling together inside an evacuated tube. The popularity of such demonstrations continues to this day, featuring in many hands-on science exhibits. Indeed, the "drop stop" at the Boston Museum of Science is currently broken from overuse.
Teachers, no doubt, would call the Apollo "feather-drop" a sloppy experiment. Nobody bothered to measure the height from which the objects were released (probably 110-160 cm). Nobody cared that Scott was leaning over with his arms not parallel to the ground. Nobody measured the time of the fall (on the video it is just above 1 s). But as a demonstration it is unforgettable. The TV coverage plus the fact that it has a webpage with video clip (see related links) makes it possibly the most watched science demonstration ever.
The critical point.
So why do falling-body experiments continue to be so popular? They were, for example, voted into the top 10 "most beautiful experiments" of all time in my recent poll of Physics World readers (September 2002 pp1920). I think the answer is related to the fact that, as everyday experience suggests, heavier bodies do fall faster than light ones. Hammers and golf balls, for example, fall faster than feathers and ping-pong balls. Aristotle had codified this observation into an entire framework that was oriented by the everyday observations he was seeking to explain, involving an agent that exerted a force against resistance. Although this framework fails to incorporate acceleration, it is still the one that we mainly live in and that mainly works for us.
Thus we can still find it enlightening, or even surprising, to see with our very own eyes the expectations of that framework being violated. Galileo played a seminal role in transforming that framework, in developing the abstract thinking involved in the new one, and in illustrating its importance. So what if there was no original experiment? Galileo inspired an entire genre of experiments and demonstrations that allow us to change how we think and see. We might as well refer to these as the offspring of Galileo's experiment at the Leaning Tower of Pisa."
Author Robert P. Crease is in the Department of Philosophy, State University of New York at Stony Brook, historian at the Brookhaven National Laboratory, and in 2003 senior fellow at the Dibner Institute for the History of Science and Technology.
` They don't call him a physics legend for nothing!
` And yet... further experimentation has since confirmed his idea as correct, so at least that part presumably is not illusory.
Lou Ryan:
"For example you mentioned defending democracy. We actually have no direct evidence that that is what is going on. Really, that is a propaganda line."
Where did I mention "defending democracy"?
"P.S. oh yeah, so I'm saying myths are not like conspiracy theories."
That's what I have been saying, but why do you believe this...what leads you to this conclusion?
` Methinks you're talking about two different things, here.
` By the way, this is what he was referring to:
...there were those who, in viewing the attacks as a willful assault on democracy, entrusted the United States with the United Kingdom to embark on a path to protect democracy from the tyranny of evil. Regrettably, the desire to save democracy and make the world a safer place does not sit too comfortably with subsequent attacks...
` Apparently, though, you are referring to other people's views, not your own.
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