/sci/ - Science & Math

>>10946775
>doesn't make the theory better for application with calculations, but it does make the theory better in principle because it is better descriptive of the actual mechanisms involved.

Look at Newton's book, The Principia, as an example. Newton did certainly make some calculation, and I did not, so this is not the best analogy. However, if you read Newton's book, it's mostly just him talking about his ideas. All of the stuff we call "Newtonian mechanics" today actually comes from Cauchy. Cauchy took Newton's arcitectural masterpiece and turned in to the
[math]F = dp / dt[/math]

and
[math]F = m a[/math]

module that we all know and love today. The reason it's called Newtonian mechanics instead of Cauchy mechanics is because everyone knows that laying down the broad strokes of a new idea is the hard part to getting advancement in science. The hard part is never, "How can I convert this idea into a testable mathematical statement?" The hard part is coming up with an idea that won't obviously fail the first test when it is cast as a mathematical statement. There are millions of people out there who can test ideas. The dearth in the number of people coming up with new ones to test. The big problem with the USA government is that they are saying to those testers, "You need to pretend like Tooker's idea doesn't exist and you can never test it or else we will cancel your NSF money, and probably take away your tenure too."

Here's another example: Lorentz had already invented the Lorentz transformation before Einstein used it to describe special relativity. Lorentz is not credited with inventing relativity because he just made some equations and never said anything about the physics of relativistic simultaneity. Einstein is credited as the great genius because he is the one who described the physical principles which underlie the calculations.