Impossible? Perhaps not!

Lord Kelvin

Throughout the history of science there have been proofs that something is impossible. These proofs are usually true in mathematics, such as that it is impossible to generate the number π with a ruler and compass. Despite which, many amateurs continue to assert that they have made it. I myself have had to face one of these “proofs”.

Another similar case is the proof, this time related to physical science, that it is impossible to build machines with perpetual motion, because they oppose the first or the second principle of thermodynamics. Also, in this case many amateurs insist that they have made it. In these cases, one should not waste time looking for the error, which is known to exist.

The most surprising scientific failures

Lord Kelvin

The magazine Science News has published an article entitled Here are the 10 ten times scientific imagination failed, either because it fell short, or because it went too far, with respect to what it was logical to imagine. The study begins by quoting Albert Einstein:

Imagination is more important than knowledge... Imagination embraces the entire world, stimulating progress.

Tom Siegfried, author of the article, adds:

And yet while sometimes spectacularly successful, imagination has also frequently failed in ways that retard the revealing of nature’s secrets. Some minds, it seems, are simply incapable of imagining that there’s more to reality than what they already know.

Then he specifies one by one the 10 cases where, according to him, the imagination of scientists fell short or went too far. This is the list, from most to least important (according to Siegfried):

The end of mankind

Lord Kelvin

In an earlier post in this blog I spoke about the myth of the Enlightenment, which gave rise to the theory of indefinite progress and the forecast of enormous advances for humankind that would be within our reach in the not too distant future. Although the first half of the eighteenth century was a brake on almost all the cultural activities of our civilization, including science, they were delighted with themselves. Friedrich Melchior, Baron von Grimm (1723-1807), expressed it with unequaled candor, in these words [1]:

The eighteenth century has surpassed all the others in the praises it has lavished on itself.

One of the ideas in vogue by that time was the assumption that scientific advances would let man reach immortality, not too far in time. Although the idea, as a distant possibility, goes back to Roger Bacon, it seemed much closer in the late eighteenth century. Hence the anecdote told of the octogenarian wife of marshal Villeroi, who exclaimed, while looking at Professor Charles’s ascent in a hydrogen balloon:

Yes, it is true! They’ll discover the secret of not dying, after I’ll be dead!

The optimistic ideas of the eighteenth century suffered a sudden, impressive turn in the nineteenth, when came to dominate a pessimistic vision of the future of mankind, based mainly on two scientific discoveries: