I kinda get that, but my point is, science is a tool, and faith is more of a behavior. These things can't be mutually exclusive because they aren't the same category, the same thing, really. It's not an either/or. You don't (or shouldn't) use them for the same thing, you can't use faith to validate a hypothesis. You can't use science to prove a person's faith is invalid. This doesn't make them mutually exclusive, they just serve two wholely different purposes.
That's more or less the approach the late, great paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould advocated; he called it "Non-Overlapping Magisteria" ("NOMA" for short), and claimed that science handles physical questions, and religion handles spiritual questions, and never the twain shall meet.
The only problem is when they do meet. People make claims all the time that prayer-healing is effective; that's a claim about the physical world, and it can be tested using the scientific method (it fails, by the way). Likewise, the claim that the Earth is < 10,000 years old is a physical claim, subject to testing (again, multiple methods all come up with closely-agreeing ages that are much older). The claim that God created all creatures more or less in their current form is partly testable (the "current form" part) by examination of the fossil record, the DNA evidence, the geographic distribution of species, and so on and so on.
Even in terms of morality, scientific study (finding it in other primates, and implying evolutionary origins) suggests that the claim "morality comes from God" is (or will be) ultimately testable.
Even though I was disappointed with NOMA, I wanted to show some SJG love.
Punctuated equilibrium, baby! Evolution is Marxist!
The only problem is when they do meet. People make claims all the time that prayer-healing is effective; that's a claim about the physical world, and it can be tested using the scientific method (it fails, by the way). Likewise, the claim that the Earth is < 10,000 years old is a physical claim, subject to testing (again, multiple methods all come up with closely-agreeing ages that are much older). The claim that God created all creatures more or less in their current form is partly testable (the "current form" part) by examination of the fossil record, the DNA evidence, the geographic distribution of species, and so on and so on.
Yeah, but I think the problems with those claims is they come from people who tried to use science/math with a thousands year old text to justify their faith. This was a bad idea, for numerous reasons...
Methodologically they are mutually exclusive. One must stop with the faith to do science and start with it to do religion. Which isn't to say that people don't do just that, only that they're switching between X and not-X rather than consistently doing X.I'm puzzled by this. While there is certainly a scientific method to verify a hypothesis, there isn't really a faith-method with clear rules to follow to validate your choice of faith. If there was, then I suppose we could compare them and decide.
That having been said, followers of a like faith do, question, discuss and validate each other's experiences on a fairly regular basis. It's why people go to church. Is this what you mean?
No, that's close to the opposite of what I mean. Mutual validation clubs the last things one wants in doing science. Personal subjective experience has no place either. Your experiment is nothing more than an interesting anecdote until it's been replicated and the same results observed.
People have religious experiences all over the globe, yet there is no agreement upon what they mean or what they are supposed to reveal. Some have many gods. Some one. Some only cosmic forces without personality. (But which for whatever reason remain shy whenever we start doing science.) Instead one usually gets spit back the same cultural junk that the person claiming the experience grew up with. This is not a reliable method that deserves our trust, but rather one we should be doing our best to remove from our thinking.
Yeah, but I think the problems with those claims is they come from people who tried to use science/math with a thousands year old text to justify their faith. This was a bad idea, for numerous reasons...
To an extent I disagree; one of the problems is that people are taking their text literally, instead of as a collection of parables. The problem is where you draw the line: I read the entire Bible as a collection of parables, so God doesn't really exist, but He was a handy way of telling people to behave together in a tribal society. Others see the story of Genesis as literal truth, but maybe interpret Jonah as a parable, or whatever. But in any case, as soon as you accept that some parts are literally true, then you have to decide which parts, and that isn't easy. Doing it diligently means that, at some point, your NOMA will get breached.
This is not a reliable method that deserves our trust, but rather one we should be doing our best to remove from our thinking.
I'm fine with calling it quaint instead. I definitely don't believe in prescribed "correct" ways of thinking.
@ Samnell
So it's not that science and religion are mutually exclusive, you just feel that it's best if religion/faith, organized or no, were never a factor in anything. Is this a correct summation of your thoughts?
This is not a reliable method that deserves our trust, but rather one we should be doing our best to remove from our thinking.I'm fine with calling it quaint instead. I definitely don't believe in prescribed "correct" ways of thinking.
I used to think that. It's a nice, tolerant kind of thing to say. But the truth of it is that these methods of thinking preserve falsehoods rather than purge them and obscure truth rather than illuminate it. I suspect we don't disagree on that point.
About a year ago I realized the full implications of that. We live in a world where we have the tools to develop an increasingly accurate model of that world on which to base our decisions. Whether we use it or not, the world isn't going to change. I therefore view promoting less than maximally reliable methods of thought and maximally accurate models of the universe (in both cases necessarily imperfect as we're not omniscient, but as good as we can get) as an act of intellectual sabotage. The religious are not an inferior species that we can just watch dance for our amusement, but people just like us. They deserve better not just in antibiotics, vaccinations, and public sanitation but in their own skulls.
Do I think I've got a good shot at giving them better? Goodness, no. But it's worth the shot anyway.
Yeah, but I think the problems with those claims is they come from people who tried to use science/math with a thousands year old text to justify their faith. This was a bad idea, for numerous reasons...To an extent I disagree; one of the problems is that people are taking their text literally, instead of as a collection of parables. The problem is where you draw the line: I read the entire Bible as a collection of parables, so God doesn't really exist, but He was a handy way of telling people to behave together in a tribal society. Others see the story of Genesis as literal truth, but maybe interpret Jonah as a parable, or whatever. But in any case, as soon as you accept that some parts are literally true, then you have to decide which parts, and that isn't easy. Doing it diligently means that, at some point, your NOMA will get breached.
Hmm. I guess I see it as mostly allegory based on actual happenings with some key points that are core bits to take from it. It's not an all or nohting thing. Application of common sense and science can tell you what is allegorical or not.
Application of common sense and science can tell you what is allegorical or not.
I'm in the midst of arguing that there's no such thing as "common sense" in another thread, so I'll avoid that, but as far as the rest of it goes, I agree to some extent. The thing is, the use of science to determine which parts are allegory is breaking with NOMA.
Religion isn't this one big thing, though. It's a lot of little bits that sort of form-fit into different parts of our brain. Religion is cultural identity, religion is worldview, religion is comfort, religion is community and family, etc.
I'm fine with religion being comfort, and community, and a sense of morality (as long as it's compatible with the rest of society's sense of morality, i.e. no female genital mutilation or stoning of homosexuals). You're never going to eradicate religious thought because its intrinsic to all the things that make humans different than other apes: empathy, cooperation, curiosity, language, culture.
What you can and should do, ya know if you could wave a magic wand, is disconnect it from thought about the natural world. And that includes history. More and more scholars, for example, are beginning to believe the exodus was not in fact historically accurate.
@ Samnell
So it's not that science and religion are mutually exclusive, you just feel that it's best if religion/faith, organized or no, were never a factor in anything. Is this a correct summation of your thoughts?
I do think they're mutually exclusive, so not quite. I mean that pretty literally. So far as I can tell science is chiefly the process of killing religion, with other forms of irrationality as a bit of a sideshow.
But if religion were down to that level of taste in television programs, that would be a pretty epic improvement. I mean, I adore the crap out of Mad Men but I don't go around telling people it's a documentary. I don't insist that anybody live their life by it or glean any kind of deep insights from it. I don't demand that my enjoyment be treated with any kind of kid gloves. I don't expect any kind of solemn reverence for it. I don't insist there's a separate realm of reality where we have to use special, less reliable methods to ascertain truth. In fact, I think I'd be crazy if I did and I expect that most people would agree with me. It's just what I consider a well-written show that I find enjoyable to watch.
If religion were reduced to that, I think it would have lost all the distinguishing characteristics that make it religion to begin with. So it would be as good as it dying out. I don't know that one could even tell the difference between that scenario and religion being extinct, to be honest. People read Greek myths for fun but virtually no one thinks they're anything more than rather old fantasy fiction and we generally call Greek paganism extinct, barring some reconstructionists and the like.
Science is about the pursuit of truth (or should be). No more no less. Science used as part of an agenda lends itself to not-truth.
Like people trying to use science to prove that homosexuality isn't genetic.
What if it does? What if science told us that homosexuality was indeed a choice. Then what? How would that change your life? If you believed that it wasn't a choice, that you had no choice, but it turns out you just have some kind of mental disorder to subconsciously choose to live that way? How would you react to that?
You probably don't even entertain the thought, because you have faith that science has your back.
Does this faith qualify as "not a reliable method that deserves our trust, but rather one we should be doing our best to remove from our thinking"?
I'm really kind of baffled by what you're trying to say here Kryzbyn.
So you're saying that some people are trying to prove that homosexuality is non-genetic. And that research into that will lead to a "not truth"? Certainly this is a testable hypothesis, and if it's correct it will be validated, and if it's incorrect it will be invalidated, on its own terms. How can that lead to "not-truth"?
Whether it's completely genetic, completely cultural, or some combination thereof, I'd rather know the truth about it than base opinions on presuppositions.
As it happens such a discovery would not change my belief that it really doesn't matter what other people do with their genitalia.
No! That's not what I'm saying at all. I don't care if homosexuality is genetic or not. It is what it is. There's no good reason to persecute other people needlessly.
It's a completely hypothetical situation tha sets up the final question. No more, no less.
Methodologically they are mutually exclusive. One must stop with the faith to do science and start with it to do religion. Which isn't to say that people don't do just that, only that they're switching between X and not-X rather than consistently doing X.I'm puzzled by this. While there is certainly a scientific method to verify a hypothesis, there isn't really a faith-method with clear rules to follow to validate your choice of faith. If there was, then I suppose we could compare them and decide.
That having been said, followers of a like faith do, question, discuss and validate each other's experiences on a fairly regular basis. It's why people go to church. Is this what you mean?No, that's close to the opposite of what I mean. Mutual validation clubs the last things one wants in doing science. Personal subjective experience has no place either. Your experiment is nothing more than an interesting anecdote until it's been replicated and the same results observed.
People have religious experiences all over the globe, yet there is no agreement upon what they mean or what they are supposed to reveal. Some have many gods. Some one. Some only cosmic forces without personality. (But which for whatever reason remain shy whenever we start doing science.) Instead one usually gets spit back the same cultural junk that the person claiming the experience grew up with. This is not a reliable method that deserves our trust, but rather one we should be doing our best to remove from our thinking.
People have psychotic episodes all over the world too, but not all of them are connsidered religious experiences.
No! That's not what I'm saying at all. I don't care if homosexuality is genetic or not. It is what it is. There's no good reason to persecute other people needlessly.
It's a completely hypothetical situation tha sets up the final question. No more, no less.
What I'm saying is I don't understand your question.
You say we "probably don't entertain the thought". What thought? Whether homosexuality is genetic or not? A sit happens I have no such "faith that science has my back" since it's a question to which I don't know the answer. And my opinion on homosexuality won't change regardless of the results.
So in that hypothetical, assuming I understand it correctly, yes that sort of faith is also bad and should be removed from our thinking.
Of course I could be continuing to misunderstand you?
That's the question. Is all faith bad or just faith in what he considers bad.
That's the question. Is all faith bad or just faith in what he considers bad.
I gotcha.
Well I can't answer the question for him, but I think all faith is bad. I say that with the caveat that from this point on it becomes a semantic argument about the definition of faith.To me the word believe means to think something is true based on a preponderance of evidence, even if that evidence is anecdotal. However, the things I believe based on anecdotal evidence can be changed by presenting me with evidence that refutes it. Like if I said something like there's no such thing as a naturally blue food. I may believe that's true, since someone said it once and, searching my memory, I couldn't think of a single blue food. But then someone says, like, "what about blue corn" and I'm like "oh, yeah, nevermind." It's easy to alter beliefs.
Faith is strong belief in something that is either empirically false or intrinsically untestable. Like god. When you say you have faith in something it's like saying you KNOW it to be true, which is something most scientists won't claim about the body of scientific knowledge as a whole. The problem with a strong belief is that, rather than altering it to fit the rest of the data, one is far more inclined to fit the rest of the data around the belief.
Say someone has faith in god, and that the bible is literally true. Then someone else comes along and says "well this evidence shows that the world is about 4.6 billion years old, and dinosaurs walked the earth, etc." It leads some people, like Jehovah's Witnesses, to say stuff like "god created the earth with age" in order to come to terms with the reality of the fossil record.
Now, I said before I think faith is bad, using these distinctions between strong belief (faith) and weak belief. But that's for me. If faith helps you get through the day, I'm not about to tell you to stop doing what works for you. But I think we can all agree that science is a better way of observing and learning about the natural world, and as long as faith doesn't get mixed up in it I don't really care. Problem is, they keep getting chocolate in our peanut butter, as it were.
Though I still think people of faith would be helped by having more granularity in their belief system. I just don't think most humans are wired to be able to make that sort of distinction between tentative belief, belief, and faith.
If undeniable evidence came out that absolutely refuted God's existence, that would be tough. It would be really hard to come to grips with, but as a rational being I would have no choice but to accept it, and move on.
Does that mean in the mean time, that I have nothing to contribute to anything because of my faith?
If undeniable evidence came out that absolutely refuted God's existence, that would be tough. It would be really hard to come to grips with, but as a rational being I would have no choice but to accept it, and move on.
Does that mean in the mean time, that I have nothing to contribute to anything because of my faith?
To the first point: something like this?
I don't think such evidence can exist because of the nature of the concept of god. As more scientific evidence is presented the claims about the tangibility and nature of god has changed, to the point that people are now saying that god IS the universe itself. I don't think you CAN refute that.But believing in things because they can't be refuted seems really odd to me, and I can't wrap my head around it. As has been said before, you equally can't disprove that Odin or Krishna or Hercules exist. What makes you choose the god you have?
As for your question: Hardly. Just don't go around making faith-based arguments about natural phenomena, or arguments that begin with the conclusion that god exists, and I'll give you a pass ;)
Also you can't prove that anything doesn't exist. You can only prove that something does exist.
If legitimate proof that any supernatural entity existed I would re-evaluate my athiesm.
Also you can't prove that anything doesn't exist. You can only prove that something does exist.
If legitimate proof that any supernatural entity existed I would re-evaluate my athiesm.
But given that said proof would have to rely on observable evidence (faith in empiricism and causality) and would therefore be itself a natural phenomena...wouldn't it just make you want to kill said "supernatural" being and dissect it?
Otis Moss is clearly an agent of the devil.
But given that said proof would have to rely on observable evidence (faith in empiricism and causality) and would therefore be itself a natural phenomena...wouldn't it just make you want to kill said "supernatural" being and dissect it?Also you can't prove that anything doesn't exist. You can only prove that something does exist.
If legitimate proof that any supernatural entity existed I would re-evaluate my athiesm.
If I can disdect it then it's probably not really supernatural. Lets try this:
Pick a movie where something supernatural happens to a non-believer. Just as a random stupid example lets say I can suddenly see ghosts like the "I see dead people" kid (I forget the name of the movie).
At first I would assume I'd had a psychotic break. However if the ghosts were able to consistently tell me things that ended up being true that I had no way to otherwise know, I'd have to re-evaluate my assertion that Ghosts aren't real.
Lets say God tangibly spoke to me as in Bruce Almighty. Again, at first I'd have to assume I was having a psychotic episode. However, as evidence mounted that this grotesquely improbable thing was true (aka god was talking to me) I'd have to re-evaluate my athiesm.
If vampires "came out of the coffin" as with trueblood and I consistently witnessed them being supernatural I'd have to seriously re-evauate my previous assertion that vampires were fiction.
None of that is going to happen because none of those things are real. However, if the monumentally improbably happens I'll be sure to post it on the boards and let everyone know.
Meatrace has largely answered as I would, so I'll skip right to the question. But on the specifics:
Say we had good science that homosexuality was not just a minority persuasion within the human population but some sort of bona fide disorder like depression or Down's syndrome. What that change how I think about it?
Sure it would. I would cease thinking of it as I do now and start thinking of it that way. That doesn't necessarily change my moral opinion of it since neither depression nor Down's are immoral. Being sick is not the same as being evil. Now if we found out that the problem in the brain, genes, or whatever that caused homosexuality also caused something like 95% of homosexuals to go on killing sprees that would be a different story.
NB: There are some serious issues with the concept of mental illness and its limits, which are not just the province of quacks and cranks. It's not a clean, bright line between sick and well so much as it appears to be a continuum running through normal, normal but less common, normal but causes some problems for people, less normal and doesn't cause problems, less normal and does, normal and causes lots of problems, less normal and causes lots of problems... I could go on. Take depression: Most people will at some point suffer a major depressive episode, though for many it will be relatively brief. That's pretty normal, but can cause problems. Fewer people will suffer lengthy, more intense, or otherwise less normal depression that may arise from a normal cause or might just be there.
That's the question. Is all faith bad or just faith in what he considers bad.
All of it. If it's faith it's no good and we should be done with it. Which, like meatrace said, leave us with semantic wrangling about what constitutes faith. It's a word that can do a lot of work. But, having just skimmed the post again, I'm largely in agreement with the various definitions of faith given here.
The sense in which I most often encounter faith is very close to the definition the sometimes-unhinged Sam Harris provides: "Faith is the license religious people give themselves to keep believing when reasons fail."
Now that doesn't mean that everything that comes out of a believer's skull is just crap any more than it means that everything that comes out of an unbeliever's skull is diamonds. But when what comes out comes with or from faith? Then I think we can be quite confident it's just not any good, except maybe once in a while by pure blind accident in the broken clock sense of being a good timepiece for two minutes out of every day.
I wasn't implying homosexuality, in any case of cause, is evil, just that in that scenario what you believed about it would change.
I wasn't implying homosexuality, in any case of cause, is evil, just that in that scenario what you believed about it would change.
I understand. I just wanted to be clear about the part changing.
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Hope =/= faith.
Skepticism =/= defeatism.
Nice try, though.
Hope =/= faith.Faith is firm belief in something for which there is no evidence. Hope is desire.
I hope for peace. When I take _action_ which I intend will create peace, despite all rational evidence that such peace is impossible and, perhaps most clearly, when my actions are dangerous to me, that's faith.
Incorrect. That's just trying something.
Tonight I tried a new sandwich without any sort of religious faith that it would be delicious. I just tried it.
Consequently, it is the origin of all inventiveness.
At this point you're either trolling or high. Seriously.
You use the term "random choice". Which is nonsensical as choice is DEFINITIONALLY not random. The wright brothers decision to build and fly an airplane wasn't random, an the very suggestion is a huge nonsequitur. They decided to build a big plane because they knew smaller scale ones were possible. Flying machines had been built on varying scales since ancient China.
They built a machine they thought could fly. Because smaller versions already had. Because people tried to build them because they were curious. When it didn't work quite right, they examined their invention and analyzed it, tweaked it, repeat, until finally it flew (a bit). More people built on their invention. Every step was not built on FAITH but DEMONSTRABLE ACTION. This is the essence of the scientific method.
People do not invent things because they KNOW it will work, they do so to SEE if it WILL work. And, as often as not (probably much moreso) they do not work. What of all the people who had faith in things that failed miserably?
Consequently, it is the origin of all inventiveness.At this point you're either trolling or high. Seriously.
You use the term "random choice". Which is nonsensical as choice is DEFINITIONALLY not random. The wright brothers decision to build and fly an airplane wasn't random, an the very suggestion is a huge nonsequitur. They decided to build a big plane because they knew smaller scale ones were possible. Flying machines had been built on varying scales since ancient China.
They built a machine they thought could fly. Because smaller versions already had. Because people tried to build them because they were curious. When it didn't work quite right, they examined their invention and analyzed it, tweaked it, repeat, until finally it flew (a bit). More people built on their invention. Every step was not built on FAITH but DEMONSTRABLE ACTION. This is the essence of the scientific method.
People do not invent things because they KNOW it will work, they do so to SEE if it WILL work. And, as often as not (probably much moreso) they do not work. What of all the people who had faith in things that failed miserably?
The Wright brothers had no evidence that a flying machine could take off and land under its own power.
Argue against that all you want, its still the truth.
Gliders and hot air balloons are not airplanes.
The Wright brothers, despite having no evidence that a flying machine could take off and land under its own power, had faith that they could build such a machine. That's how faith works. Once you've gone as far as you can go with what's available, faith takes you further.
Lilith,
As politely as I can think to say it; Nothing you've said has been in any way accurate. As with most conversations of yours I have read, I would ask you to consult a dictionary then return when you learn the actual meaning of the words/concepts you're using/discussing.
When multiple unrelated people constantly disagree with you across multiple unrelated topics that doesn't make you a lone genius that no one understands. Genereally speaking, that makes you wrong.
I deeply hope you take this to heart and re-evaluate your reasoning as opposed to taking it as some sort of attack. I suspect you'll still do the latter, but we'll know soon enough if you respond to this.
Best Regards,
TCG
Well I thought the Reverend had some pretty decent things to say personally, he won't get any argument from me.
Haha...
Words.
I'll bet there's at least one language where "hope" and "faith" are the same word. Sapir and Whorf strike again!
And there's likely another that has a third word confusing the issue even more. Oh wait, that's probably English.
Arguing semantics in English is as futile as participating in a religious debate on the interne— ...aw crap.
Consequently, it is the origin of all inventiveness.At this point you're either trolling or high. Seriously.
You use the term "random choice". Which is nonsensical as choice is DEFINITIONALLY not random. The wright brothers decision to build and fly an airplane wasn't random, an the very suggestion is a huge nonsequitur. They decided to build a big plane because they knew smaller scale ones were possible. Flying machines had been built on varying scales since ancient China.
They built a machine they thought could fly. Because smaller versions already had. Because people tried to build them because they were curious. When it didn't work quite right, they examined their invention and analyzed it, tweaked it, repeat, until finally it flew (a bit). More people built on their invention. Every step was not built on FAITH but DEMONSTRABLE ACTION. This is the essence of the scientific method.
People do not invent things because they KNOW it will work, they do so to SEE if it WILL work. And, as often as not (probably much moreso) they do not work. What of all the people who had faith in things that failed miserably?
The Wright brothers had no evidence that a flying machine could take off and land under its own power.
Argue against that all you want, its still the truth.
Gliders and hot air balloons are not airplanes.
The Wright brothers, despite having no evidence that a flying machine could take off and land under its own power, had faith that they could build such a machine. That's how faith works. Once you've gone as far as you can go with what's available, faith takes you further.
Gliders aren't airplanes, but they are extremely related. There were magazines and publications about flying, they didn't invent it in a vacuum. Your argument of faith is a stretch, unless you can conclusively prove that they had no scientific understanding of what it was they were doing, we're just gluing paper to their bicycles and accidentally flew one day.
Or you are using the broadest possible definition of faith... like I must have "faith" every morning when I walk out to my car hoping it will start... Even though it's never had a mechanical problem ever.
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Or you are using the broadest possible definition of faith... like I must have "faith" every morning when I walk out to my car hoping it will start... Even though it's never had a mechanical problem ever.
I suppose I have a lot of faith that the characters in the books I own aren't going to come to life and murder me in my sleep.
That settles it. Might as well be a Christian then, eh?
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The Wright brothers had no evidence that a flying machine could take off and land under its own power.
They had a fair bit of evidence from calculating lift and observing the behavior or different wing shapes in their Wind tunnel
Over a two month period we tested more than two hundred models of different types of wings. All of the models were three to nine inches long. Altogether we measured monoplane wing designs (airplanes with one wing), biplanes, triplanes and even an aircraft design with one wing behind the other like Professor Langley proposed. Professor Langley was the director of the Smithsonian Museum at the time and also trying to invent the first airplane. On each little aircraft wing design we tested we located the center of pressure and made measurements for lift and drift. We also measured the lift produced by wings of different "aspect ratios." An aspect ratio is the ratio or comparison of how long a wing is left to right (the wing span) compared to the length from the front to the back of the wing (the wing chord). Sometimes we got results that were just hard to believe, especially when compared to the earlier aerodynamic lift numbers supplied by the German Lillienthal. His numbers were being used by most of the early aviation inventors and they proved to be full of errors. Lillienthal didn't use a wind tunnel like Orville and I did to obtain and test our data. -Wilbur Wright
-Wilbur Wright
WOO! Fact attack! *virtual high five*
Gliders and hot air balloons are not airplanes.
; Nothing you've said has been in any way accurate...This is why I don't like to have these discussions on this board.
Some of you become so obstinate that you'll assert things like its wrong to say that hot air balloons are not airplanes.
Cuz that's clearly what they're saying.
*eyeroll*You presented AS AN ACT OF FAITH technological progress gained through the scientific method.
Admit you were wrong so we can move on?
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The Wright brothers had no evidence that a flying machine could take off and land under its own power.They had a fair bit of evidence from calculating lift and observing the behavior or different wing shapes in their Wind tunnel
Over a two month period we tested more than two hundred models of different types of wings. All of the models were three to nine inches long. Altogether we measured monoplane wing designs (airplanes with one wing), biplanes, triplanes and even an aircraft design with one wing behind the other like Professor Langley proposed. Professor Langley was the director of the Smithsonian Museum at the time and also trying to invent the first airplane. On each little aircraft wing design we tested we located the center of pressure and made measurements for lift and drift. We also measured the lift produced by wings of different "aspect ratios." An aspect ratio is the ratio or comparison of how long a wing is left to right (the wing span) compared to the length from the front to the back of the wing (the wing chord). Sometimes we got results that were just hard to believe, especially when compared to the earlier aerodynamic lift numbers supplied by the German Lillienthal. His numbers were being used by most of the early aviation inventors and they proved to be full of errors. Lillienthal didn't use a wind tunnel like Orville and I did to obtain and test our data. -Wilbur Wright
Oh SNAP. Game over, man...game over.
"test"
"measured"
"lift"
Yup, pure faith there. Or perhaps it was the wind tunnel of faith?
Admit you were wrong so we can move on?
Pfft. Good luck with that.
Admit you were wrong so we can move on?Pfft. Good luck with that.
I know. I know. What can I say, even where LT is concerned, I'm forever the optimist.
Hey, we got seeker to admit he was wrong once.
:O
Pics or it didn't happen.
