From: fulk@cs.rochester.edu (Mark Fulk)
Subject: Re: Science and methodology (was: Homeopathy ... tradition?)
Organization: University of Rochester
Lines: 53

In article <C5L9ws.Jn2@unx.sas.com> sasghm@theseus.unx.sas.com (Gary Merrill) writes:
>
>In article <1993Apr16.155919.28040@cs.rochester.edu>, fulk@cs.rochester.edu (Mark Fulk) writes:
>|> genes.  This fantasy led him to sequence samples of the band and carry out
>|> binding assays.  The result was a well-conserved, 400 or so bp, sequence
>
>But why do you characterize this as a "flight of fancy" or a "fantasy"?

The fantasy was that he had found something of fundamental importance to
one of the hot questions of the day ('77).  He really had very little
reason to believe it, other than raw hope.  By fantasy, I certainly don't
mean Velikovskian manias.

>some other theory or domain).  I would offer some rather well known examples
>such as Toricelli's Puy de Dome experiment done for the sake of his
>"sea of air" hypothesis.

I'm not familiar with the history of this experiment, although, arguably,
I should be.

>"surprising"?
>Well, given the *prior* explanations of the phenomena involved it certainly
>be counted as so.  Was the theory constructed (and the experiment designed)
>out of "perfectly rational grounds"?  Well, there was a pretty successful and
>well know theory of fluids.  The analogy to fluids by Toricelli is explicit.
>The novelty was in thinking of air as a fluid (but this was *quite* a novelty
>at the time).  Was the theory interesting?  Yes.  Was it "new"?  Well, one
>could argue that it was merely the extension of an existing theory to a new
>domain, but I think this begs certain questions.  We can debate that if you
>like.

I think that it is enough if his contemporaries found the result surprising.
That's not what I'd quibble about.  What I'd like to know are Toricelli's
reasons for doing his experiment; not the post hoc _constructed_ reasons,
but the thoughts in his head as he considered the problem.  It may be
impossible to know much about Toricelli's thoughts; that's too bad if
it is so.  One of Root-Bernstein's services to science is that he has gone
rooting about in Pasteur's and Fleming's (and other people's) notes, and has
discovered some surprising clues about their motivations.  Pasteur never
publicly admitted his plan to create mirror-image life, but the dreams are
right there in his notebooks (finally public after many years), ready for
anyone to read.  And I and my friends often have the most ridiculous
reasons for pursuing results; one of my best came because I was mad at
a colleague for a poorly-written claim (I disproved the claim).

Of course, Toricelli's case may be an example of a rarety: where the
fantasy not only motivates the experiment, but turns out to be right
in the end.

Mark
-- 
Mark A. Fulk			University of Rochester
Computer Science Department	fulk@cs.rochester.edu
