The dictionary is wrong – science can be a religion too

[longship]

47. Thanks!

Well, Stonehenge will probably never reveal all its secrets about the society which built it. It's fun to speculate about these things, but science doesn't work by speculation. It is likely that there was some cultural aspect to it, but how in the Sam Hell are ya gonna figure it out?

Some things about the past may never be known, or only via the fog of inferential evidence.

So I find it disengenuous that this Nobel laureate to cite Stonehenge as an analog to the LHC. We do know some things about the culture of the times of Stonehenge. Anybody in the future discovering the remnants of the LHC would similarly be familiar with some of our culture, as well. I think that they would properly infer that the LHC is different in purpose and different in kind, if only from the inferential cultural evidence. You cannot rip these things out of their cultural contexts.

If you don't know the culture of the Stonehenge builders, than that's all one can say about it. One certainly cannot say that because one doesn't know, that one can use it as an analog for future LHC archeologists. If one doesn't know, one doesn't know. That's yet another principle of science. You don't get to make shit up (commonly termed the argument from ignorance).

Regardless, I find this stuff absolutely fascinating. Many of your posts here fall into that category, cbayer.