Anyone who knows much about Einstein, the man, will readily agree he was kind of a dick.
But yes, scientists build on each other's work. That's literally the entire point of science. Someone proposes an idea, it gets torn to shreds, and if it's still standing, it's considered a strong enough idea to use as a foundation for new ones.
And you are correct that physics is an attempt to DESCRIBE reality, not DEFINE reality. Defining reality is sort of the idealistic goal that lends us the motivation to describe it using math.
And as anathema as it is to say around here, this extends to ALL science, not just the "harmless" ones. This includes, say, the appropriate medical response to a virus that we haven't encountered before. This includes, say, mathematical models predicting climate change.
Science is an attempt to describe and predict. When people assume it's an attempt to define reality, they hold it to a standard that every scientist will inevitably fail. That doesn't mean science is failing. It just means the people who are making the judgments are expecting certainty the scientific process never was designed to prove. It's a definitional straw-man argument.
I actually agree completely.
Anyone who knows much about Einstein, the man, will readily agree he was kind of a dick.
But yes, scientists build on each other's work. That's literally the entire point of science. Someone proposes an idea, it gets torn to shreds, and if it's still standing, it's considered a strong enough idea to use as a foundation for new ones.
And you are correct that physics is an attempt to DESCRIBE reality, not DEFINE reality. Defining reality is sort of the idealistic goal that lends us the motivation to describe it using math.
And as anathema as it is to say around here, this extends to ALL science, not just the "harmless" ones. This includes, say, the appropriate medical response to a virus that we haven't encountered before. This includes, say, mathematical models predicting climate change.
Science is an attempt to describe and predict. When people assume it's an attempt to define reality, they hold it to a standard that every scientist will inevitably fail. That doesn't mean science is failing. It just means the people who are making the judgments are expecting certainty the scientific process never was designed to prove. It's a definitional straw-man argument.