Wisdom and Human Mistakes
28
Sep
Wisdom is not what makes man never err, but what makes it possible to
correct the route, change course and continue the process of true and human asceticism as a result of errors.
The great scientific theory of our time, both for Karl Popper and for Thomas Kuhn, two great philosophers of science, is the possibility that there will always be a course correction in scientific methods and theories so that man knows more about himself and nature that surrounds it.
Quantum physics, for example, has its beginnings in the enunciation of Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, which stated that it was not possible to know exactly what the position of the particles of an atom was with exactitude, Planck who did not agree, it is his statement “I do not agree may God play dice”, went to the laboratory to prove this principle.
NASA (in the photo the crash of the spacecraft colliding with Dimorphos) has just made a scientific feat which is to hit a satellite of a small meteor, which does not pose any danger of collision with Earth, just to prove that it is possible to change course some celestial body, and with that, in case of danger to Earth, change its route.
The DART project is a test for a possible future mission to deflect an asteroid from colliding with Earth, for cosmic dimensions Dimorphos is small (160 m) and orbits another larger asteroid (780 m) called Didymos and form a binary system, the spacecraft that hit it was traveling at 22.015 km/h and the image seen from a telescope in Hawaii on Monday night (26/09, see below) shows that the impact produced many fragments, the deviation from the route, however, is small.
Changing route is wise, when you admit the mistake, but it requires two steps: admitting the mistake and then having the humility to change route.
Image of telescope in Havaii of Project Atlas:
ATLAS observations of the DART spacecraft impact at Didymos! pic.twitter.com/26IKwB9VSo
— ATLAS Project (@fallingstarIfA) September 27, 2022
