Collaborative Science

One may be inclined to be more harsh when suggesting that science has been replaced with “the agreement.”  So, in keeping with the theme of this posting, I declare that science became a profession when the Pythagoras opened his school sometime in the 6th century b.c.  Can we all agree?

Or this?  The speed of light is a universal constant (maybe).  The first guy to publish a light speed number used a moon of Jupiter in the year 1676.  Newton then published a correction a few years later.  Feel the competitive spirit of science yet?  Not to be “just another science guy” in 1857 Albert Michelson and his other science guy Edward Morley started an experiment that finally published the real speed of light in August 1924 by “using another different science guy’s work.”  His name was Fred Pearson.

For comparison, the speed of light measured by modern techniques is taken (defined, my word here) to be  299,792.458 Kilometers per second.  Thus Michelson’s “definitive measurements” were only off by 3.542 Kilometers per second, or 0.00118%.  That is phenomenal for measurements done almost 90 years ago!  (Source: is here)  Science starts to agree with a poke in the crude instruments side?

Many more dollars spent and of course the famous Einstein formula E=mc²  started to define science with math instead of observation and record.

Finally in 1983 all that competition was stopped at the 17th Conference Generale des Poidset Mesures .  We all agreed we needed a CONSTANT by definition (not using science).  There you have it.  Science by collaboration.

Climate change?  Travel to the stars?  Study of the ancient world?  Cancer using the scientific method?  What can be truly studied using science these days without the interference of “the definition?”