Forthcoming September 6, 2022, from Basic Books: SO PLEASE PREORDER IT!!!! Here are two early blurbs: Robert Waldmann: “I remember reading an earlier draft 30 years ago. You haven't wasted the 30 years. This book is vastly improved. It is, in my view, an amazing accomplishment..." Fred Block: “You have a distinct angle of vision, encyclopedic knowledge, and wonderful facility with the language. You are uniquely situated to synthesize…. Appreciate [the book’s] audacity and reach. …Let it go [to the publisher] with confidence and joy…”
It would be! But things can always be worse. What if, in the counterfactual, you had spent 30 years and billions of dollars on gravitational wave detector except that it turned out not to work ...
Most people reading Kuhn seem taken by his notion of scientists trapped like flies in amber by their "paradigms"; but I focus more on the thing he is trying to explain, the incredible perseverance in the face of risks that these scientists exhibit.
If depends one what you mean by "failed to work". A negative result would have been even more profound and fertile than the positive result we have. As it is, gravitational wave detectors are detecting all sorts of gravitational waves, just as had been predicted. There was already a lot of evidence for them, so the surprises are in the details, frequencies, resonances and so on. Not detecting anything would have required a serious rethinking of general relativity, especially in light of so much evidence in its favor.
P.S. I got the impression that the existing gravitational wave detectors were originally proposed in the late 1960s or early 1970s. I remember hearing at least one proposal in 1971. It was basically the Michelson-Morley experiment but with lasers and looking for transient waves rather than a persistent current.
Still, there is a conflict here: the ruthless status supremacy gained by priority in discovery is a marvelous human motivation device, but it does keep people from understanding how much it is the case that they also serve to stand and wait. It is productive for science. It is not terribly mentally healthy for scientists
Sold!
Thx...
Thx...
Done.
And congratulations! I'm pleased that you haven't wasted the last 30 years!
God! That would be a truly horrible prospect!
It would be! But things can always be worse. What if, in the counterfactual, you had spent 30 years and billions of dollars on gravitational wave detector except that it turned out not to work ...
Most people reading Kuhn seem taken by his notion of scientists trapped like flies in amber by their "paradigms"; but I focus more on the thing he is trying to explain, the incredible perseverance in the face of risks that these scientists exhibit.
But it is accepted that almost all of physics ideas will turn out to be badly wrong...
If depends one what you mean by "failed to work". A negative result would have been even more profound and fertile than the positive result we have. As it is, gravitational wave detectors are detecting all sorts of gravitational waves, just as had been predicted. There was already a lot of evidence for them, so the surprises are in the details, frequencies, resonances and so on. Not detecting anything would have required a serious rethinking of general relativity, especially in light of so much evidence in its favor.
P.S. I got the impression that the existing gravitational wave detectors were originally proposed in the late 1960s or early 1970s. I remember hearing at least one proposal in 1971. It was basically the Michelson-Morley experiment but with lasers and looking for transient waves rather than a persistent current.
Still, there is a conflict here: the ruthless status supremacy gained by priority in discovery is a marvelous human motivation device, but it does keep people from understanding how much it is the case that they also serve to stand and wait. It is productive for science. It is not terribly mentally healthy for scientists