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Originally Posted by Zaps
The justification of hopeful people is generally based upon discrete historical examples of stalled thinking, such as Plate Tectonics, etc. Those were isolated issues of specifics, not the required complete rewriting of a scientific discipline - indeed, much of science itself.
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I'm not talking about specifics of stalled thinking and I am very much aware of the background of Plate Tectonics as I am a geologist. But I'm also an astrophysicist as well. I have degrees in both fields. And if you think that Plate Tectonics didn't rewrite much of the textbooks about geology, then you're seriously mistaken. It was as big for geology as relativity was for physics. I could equally say that Newton or Einstein are discreet examples of stalled thinking. Each theory has its limits, no matter what it is.
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Originally Posted by Zaps
We have a good approximation of the distance to our stellar neighbors. Thanks to Einstein, we understand how much energy is involved in traversing such distances in sensible spans of time. And Einstein also helped us to understand the effect of applying such energies and the associated velocities. Experiment after experiment validates Einstein and the concepts involved.
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All agreed, I have no qualms about any of that. And the same was said of Newton and many other scientist's theories. But that doesn't mean that something new or a modification of the present theory won't turn up to change the equation. It's also equally possible that it won't. However, it's the height of intellectual hubris and arrogance to stand there and say that it never will.
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Originally Posted by Zaps
Some people long to wear a Starfleet uniform and boldly go where no fan has gone before, but they're up against cold hard reality. Alas.
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What's wrong with dreams. More often than not, that cold and hard reality crystallises from those dreams. Even relativity.