MOTION MOUNTAIN

280 9 concepts, lies and patterns of nature
TA B L E 24 The ‘scientific method’.
Normaldescription
Curiosity
1.lookaroundalot
2.don’tbelieveanythingtold
3.choosesomethinginterestingandexploreit
yourself
4.make upyourownmindanddescribeprecisely
whatyousaw
5.checkifyoucanalsodescribesimilarsituationsin
thesameway
6.increasetheprecisionofobservationuntilthe
checkseitherfailorarecomplete
7.dependingonthecase,continuewithstep4or1
Lobbyistdescription
Scientificmethod
1.interactwiththeworld
2.forget unprovenstatements
3.observeandmeasure
4.usereason,buildhypothesis
5.analysehypothesis
6.performexperimentstocheck
hypothesis
7.askauthorityformoremoney
“WoderGlaubeanfängt, hörtdieWissenschaft
auf.*
ErnstHaeckel,Natürliche
1879.
Schöpfungsgeschichte,”
How do we find physical concepts, patterns and rules?
“Grau,theurer Freund,istalle Theorie,
UndgründesLebensgoldnerBaum.**
J.W.v. Goethe,Faust.” “Physicsisusuallypresented asanobjective
science,butInoticethat physicschangesand
theworldstaysthesame,sotheremustbe
something subjectiveabout physics.
Progressing through the study of motion reflects a young child’s attitude
RichardBandler”
towards life:
a child is driven by curiosity. The progress follows the simple programme on the left
of Table 24. Adult scientists do the same, except that they use more fashionable terms,
given on the right of the table. Adults also have specialized professions to make money
from their curiosity.The experts of step 7, who request more money, are variously called
lobbyists orfundraisers; instead of calling this programcuriosity, they call it thescientific
method.
Physics being the talk about motion,*** and motion being a vast topic, a lot can be
explored and told. The experts of step 6 are called experimental physicists or simply ex-
* ‘Wherebeliefstarts,scienceends.’
** ‘Grey,dear friend,isall theory, and green thegolden tree oflife.’ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe(b.1749
Frankfurt amMain,d.1832Weimar),theinfluential Germanpoet.
*** Several sciences have the term ‘talk’ as part of their name, namely all those whose name finishes in
‘-logy’, such as e.g. biology. The ending stems from ancient Greek and is deduced from λήγηιν meaning
‘to say, to talk’. Physics asthe scienceof motion could thus be called ‘kinesiology’ from κίνησις, meaning
‘motion’;butforhistoricalreasonsthistermhasadifferentmeaning,namelythestudyofhumanmuscular
Motion Mountain – The Adventure of Physics copyright © Christoph Schiller June 1990–November 2015 free pdf file available at www.motionmountain.net