Life's work misunderstood

Sometimes it happens that a scientist's work is understood wrong, or otherwise gets twisted and turned upside down. Here some examples.

Edison's chair

Edison studied electricity, we all know that. At his time there was an active debate between direct and alternate current. Now Edison was in favor of direct current, because of its safety. He saw alternate current very dangerous to all living creatures, and therefore tried to lob political decision-makers for choosing direct current when building the power grid. In order to make a point, he invented the electric chair, wishing it would turn everybody's mind. It did not. Instead, the elecrtic chair was an immediate sales hit, and one was ordered to almost every prison in the US, and alternate current was still selected, for performance reasons.

Big Bang
During early discussionsof cosmology, the term "Big Bang" was invented by Fred Hoyle, who's purpose was to show how ridiculous the idea was. Instead the term became popular. Today the theory is widely accepted, and has a cool name.

Shrödinger's cat

Erwin Schrödinger, yes, he belongs in this list! He developed the basis of quantum physics as they are used today. He proposed that the state of a particle is not constant, but actually a probability function, which changes when the state is measured. Now when he wanted to discuss some paradoxes with his colleagues (for instance Einstein) he used an example, nowadays called the "Schrödinger's Cat". The paradox was of course then explained and the problem solved nicely, but the cat thingy was a little bit too catchy for an example. What do we remember from Shrödinger today? His equasion? His commitment to forming the basis of quantum physics? No, the damn cat...

Einstein failed tobe wrong
After a succesful publication of his relativity theory, Einstein studied cosmology. Now he did not believe in the "Big Bang" theory or the growing universe. Instead, using his relativity theory, he started to calculate how the universe, as we see it using our telescopes, can exist and stay static. Now Einstein found soon out that it could not. Had the galaxies just been statically in their places, they would start collapsing and soon crash into a black hole. Now einstein, having gone through his calculations over and over again, got tired and added an extra parameter into his equation, which made it stable. He called the cosmological constant. The constant was some kind of pressure, coming from inside the universe itself, that would hold the universe still and keep it from collapsing. After some time, when it had become quite clear that the cosmos does not stay still, but is in fact expanding, he realised the mistake called this shortcut his life's biggest mistake.

But this is not the end of the story. Long after Einstein had died, other people realised that when you look really carefully, the universe is not only expanding, but actually expanding at an increasing speed. Now what is causing the exponential expansion? A kind of pressure that comes from inside the universe itself. Amount of the pressure is called the cosmological constant. Einstein was right after all, although he never came to know it himself.

Terms and definitions

Every technical documentation has a chapter for terms, acronyms and definitions. This blog is no exception. Yes I know this is not a technical document, not a whitepaper nor a blueprint, but I am an engineer. That means I want to make things clear and organized. So here we go:

Philosophy:

You might have heard phrases like "art of thinking" or something like that. Forget about all that nonsense, as it does not really mean anything. In fact classic philosophy is nothing but a super-science that actually contains schools for mathematics, physics, logic, chemistry, politics, metaphysics, social studies, and the list goes on and on. As you can see all natural sciences are automatically covered here, so for instance quantum physics and cosmology are part of philosophy, by this definition.

Merchants and salesmen: not philosophists. it is true that it is no other than Arabic merchants that took the modern number zero in use, from pure business need. But zero was actually invented before that, and what merchants innovated was actually a symbol for it, which made it easy to write and communicate. Practical people those merchants indeed, but we are going to leave them out from the philosophists category.

Clergy: not counted in as philosophists. Some priests might of course practice philosophy, like monk Roger Bacon, when he wanted to find out what light and rainbow were actually made of. His colleagues did not approve his hobby, and improsoned him for practicing black magic. For this reason priests not considered as philosophists, and teology not considered as philosophy. However, the study of religions (through psychology, history, anthropology, sociology etc.) is philosophy.

Medicine: Doctors have isolated themselves in their own discussion forums for a long, long time ago. Even if medicine has tight links to chemistry, doctors have subcontracted that competence from scientists. Even today, you are going to a very different school to study chemistry whether you want to put the chemical into a human body, or somewhere else. Therefore doctors are not considered as philosophists and practicing medicine not philosophy.

Engineer:

An engineer is a person who has evolved from a locomotive operator. He has a passion for all moving mechanical gadgets that have flashing lights and preferably make some kind of noise. Like trains do. As a young person he used to break up every toy he had just to find out what kind of parts it is made of, how it works and to find out whether he could put it backtogether. When an engineer grows up, he will enjoy nothing more than creating new gadgets of the above described kind.

This person owes everything to the philosophists, because without them, he would not have the foundation for making new gadgets. This is often forgotten from the engineers, who think philosophists are not creating things, they are just discussing things and writing a book or two on occasion.

Philosophists owe much to the engineers. Engineers have given philosophists tools to push further and further to the limits of understanding the world. This is often forgotten by the scientists and philosophists, who think engineers work short-sighted and focus on profit rather than common good. A computer is a good example. It was innovated by a philosophist, and productized by an engineer. Few philosophist would refuse to work without one nowadays.