"Woo Wars" - What is "Woo"?

[longship]

166. There is a difference.

Science adapts to new knowledge. Woo-woo doesn't. The reason why Pasteur was able to bring forth the germ theory of disease, when nobody before him thought such a thing, is that science is ultimately self-correcting.

Astrology is a perfect counter example. Ages old, astrologists have studied the heavens for centuries. (We Three Kings from Orient are...). But after the work of Nicolaus Copernicus, Leonardo da Vinci,
Tycho Brahe, Johannes Kepler, Isaac Newton, Joseph-Louis Lagrange, and Albert Einstein, and many more, the woo-woo of astrology fades into the distance as superstition and magical thinking giving rise to a very complex universe, but one whose properties can be studied, and even understood, when one takes the time and effort to do so. Using the work of those scientists, celestial mechanics calculations by Urban Le Verrier predicted Neptune's positions in the heavens precisely enough for it to be discovered, not astrology.

The sequence of people in above paragraphs above is instructive, both about nature, and the nature of science itself. The former attests to nature's complexities; the latter attests to both human imperfection but at the same time the strive to understand nature, or in this example, the universe itself. Science walks step-by-step, always reaching for the stars, but always humbly acknowledging what is yet unknown.

The woo-woo advocates fill the unknown with wild speculation and magic. Meanwhile science says, "We just don't know yet."

Isaac Newton said it best.

To explain all nature is too difficult a task for any one man or even for any one age. 'Tis much better to do a little with certainty, & leave the rest for others that come after you, than to explain all things by conjecture without making sure of any thing.

Meanwhile, the woo peddlers have all the answers. Just ask them. It's all magic. Or, (horrors!) quantum mechanics! Which to the woo-woo folks is a kind of wild card. To scientists, who have actually studied quantum field theory, they are playing a Joker.