Ancient underwater structure discovered?

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Plato's dialogue -Criteus- is the one and only source of the Atlantis Myth. To put it briefly, it is a tale, a fiction. There is not a wit of empirical evidence to support it.

The seaward region of the Atlantic, west of the straits of Gibraltar has been well mapped. There is no sunken Kingdom west of the Pillars of Hercules.

ruveyn

Did you do all this mapping and exploring personally? How long did it take you?

Naval personal and oceanographers did the mapping. I read the results.

People like Robert Ballard who find the Titanic 2.5 miles down have used the latest technology to map the Atlantic. There is no Sunken Kingdom west of the Staights of Gibraltar. It just isn't there, where Plato said it was.

ruveyn

It is less about mapping: If there would be an earlier myth regarding Atlantis, we would know by certain, as we know the Greek myths quite well in different variations, beginning with the writings of Hesiod and Homer, and the adaptation of myths in literature and theatre. Not a single one points to such an island anywhere.

Further: If you read Criteus carefully, Plato uses this story to explain his idea about an ideal society. It is therefore very likely that he used a total fictional island to make his point better clear.

Fnord wrote:

I'm not dismissing the scientific method, but I do question the validity of the results if the "hypothesis" was formed by a preconceived notion. By that I mean, if the experimenter believes something to be true, then sets out to make a hypothesis about it, I think that is biased and the results are prone to his biased variables. Since this is not a factor in the scientific method, I'm not so easily swayed when some researcher claims to have proven something in a lab. As we all know, results vary from researcher to researcher. If one scientists decides he wants to disprove something, he usually can find a way to do it.

Furthermore, before number 1, the hypothesis, something inspires the researcher to set forth with an experiment. This is speculation. He/she imagines something that could be true and then sets out to prove it. Later researchers may set out to disprove it and oftentimes they do.

I'm not anti science. I just want to get to the truth of the matter. Atlantis is just something I believe in intuitively. There is some evidence it may have been a real place. Depending on what research you read, evidence is provided for it and against it.

But there is no "one" researcher, there is a whole scientific community.



If something is disproved that it not correct - that simple. In physics any experiment must be able to reproduce. There exact descriptions are made how the result has been obtained. Any result comes only into the scope of science if it is published in scientific magazines, which are peer-reviewed. A further safeguard.



There is not a lot to read about Atlantis - a few line with Plato.

If you want to keep it honest, the researcher and his paid assistants should be forthcoming with what he/she really believes. The more one believes in a given outcome, the more biased the experiment is. I know they all claim to not have a preconceived notion about the hypothesis, but C'mon.

C'mon...that is BS. If they were robots coming up with hypotheses, I'd be more given to have an open mind to their results. As it is, humans are subject to change as well as their experiments are subject to differentiate from person to person.

Who really has an open mind. I admit that my intuitive beliefs are fallible. Scientists, for the most part won't even admit that they have an opinion prior to the on start of their experiment.
This in itself cries of BS. They should have to declare their honest opinion of the hypothesis as I believe, their beliefs are a variable that will alter the prediction.

Yes - and other researchers are keen to prove that "my dear colleague" was wrong. This strange mixture of cooperation and concurrence keeps the system clean. To get the merits of any result you need to publish it, how and why you came to a conclusion. Other researchers will read and are only to keen to show you that you are wrong.

Hypothesises which survive this process of brutal honesty become than theories and finally established theories.



Therefore we learned to measure. Saying that a certain substance has quite high electrical resistance if it is hot is different to say that this substance has at a temperature of 2320 K an electrical resistance of ρ = 1.34 10^24 Ωm measured with a standard derivation of 1.01 10^21 Ωm and give the exact method of measurement.

By providing such data we can exclude the "human" factor.

While there are measurements (math comes into play) many theories are subjective and are coincidentally proven or disproven depending upon how the observer perceives the object at play.
Math is the only thing I can't argue with. Perception, is a subjective tool that alters results every time. The more a scientist has at stake (reputation) the more the results will vary. Therefore, since almost all scientists are egotistical bastards, their proofs are nearly null and void.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=47LCLoidJh4[/youtube]

"Therefore, since almost all scientists are egotistical bastards, their proofs are nearly null and void." I think that lays out your mindset rather clearly.

That is why scientific protocol demands that experiments be reproducible, repeaaible and carried out by parties interested in falsifying the theory or hypothesis. Physical science has a built in adversarial system.

There is a very big Nobel Prize for anyone who can show Einstein is wrong. Einstein became a world superstar by showing that Newton was wrong.

ruveyn

But even here - what Einstein provided in the first place was an idea why the Michelson was so much in discrepancy to Newton's physics and how to fit Maxwell's field theory better in overall framework of physics. Einstein became in the superstar when 1917 Eddington showed empirical that Einstein's prediction were correct, something which was (and is) considered as a main touchstone for Einstein's theory.

Again: an experiment, which results were outside the physics of this time, an idea how to solve this dilemma and empirical observations to confirm or refute the new theory.

If Atlantis really is just a myth, I'm not going to cry about it. It's an interesting idea. It's already spawned some cool SF stories and such.

Stargate Atlantis, anyone?

Indeed. That Atlantis myth is one of the better science fiction themes. Plato came up with it to illustrate is ideas on how to formulate an ideal political entity, and it turned out to be science fiction inadvertently. But who cares? A good story is a good story. And the fact that it has persisted for nearly 2500 years proves how good it is.

ruveyn

Is it SF or Fantasy?

Evidence please? Did you do a survey encompassing almost all scientists, rating egotism and likelyhood of being conceived by unmarried parents before stating this?

I thought not.

Furthermore, even if this is true, why does it make their proofs nearly null and void? Egotism in science (and yes it exists, but no more as far as I can see than in other professions) only serves to make one wish to be more respected. Publishing data full of inaccuracy and false conclusions is NOT the way to do this....