On Saturday 03 May 2008 18:10, Ben Crowell wrote:
> Niels wrote:
>>>> Actually, I think the term "known science" may be an indication of
>>>> a common misconception about the nature of science, which is that
>>>> new scientific theories replace old ones wholesale. A story that
>>>> violates Newton's laws, within their realm of applicability, is
>>>> simply scientifically incorrect.
>>> Imagined science is part and parcel of writing fiction about science,
>>> i.e. science fiction. SF is fiction about the myriad conceivable and
>>> inconceivable possibilities of science. If the book's attitude is
>>> properly scientific, then it can be defined as hard SF, whether or not
>>> it features currently known science (a great example being Haldeman's
>>> "Mindbridge"). But of course I agree that it shouldn't *violate*
>>> currently known science unless it can find a really convincing way of
>>> doing it.
>>>
>>
>> I disagree here, it should be "Imagined _technology_ is part and parcel
>> of writing fiction about science". The science, ie the methods, is
always
>> the same, and that's why the technology is so fascinating. We have the
>> methods of science here, right now, and look what they can bring us!
>
> I think there are at least four categories to distinguish:
>
> 1. imagined technology
> example: the FTL in Contact
>
> 2. imagined progress in scientific knowledge:
> example: bacteria are discovered on Mars
>
> 3. imagined scientific theories
> example: a working theory of quantum gravity
>
> 4. scientific mistakes
> example: the FTL in Star Wars
>
> What distinguishes category 4 from the others is that it violates the
> correspondence principle, which states that a new scientific theory has
> to be consistent with older ones, within the realm of applicability of
> the older ones, because otherwise the new theory would be contradicted
> by the experiments that the older ones were based on.
What's the difference between the two FTL technologies you mention?
It's often impossible to determine whether a certain technology is
possible
or plausible, because we most ofter don't get any details at all.
Technobabble doesn't count in my book! As I remember it, in Contact they
use a wormhole and only send information through -- right? That doesn't
directly contradict our current knowledge as far as I know, but the
devil's
in the details, which we don't get.
//Niels
|
