________________________________ From: "cblitid@xxxxxxxx" <cblitid@xxxxxxxx> >On 29-Nov-12, at 7:34 PM, Omar Kusturica wrote: >> What would happen if someone suddenly invented perpetuum mobile, any >> theories ? >A long time would be spent 'proving' that it wasn't 'really' a 'perpetuum >mobile.' Perhaps even an infinity of time. The "perpetuity" is, in and of itself, no more testable than "immortality". There was a previous discussion explaining why, though false, 'All men are immortal' is scientific because testable; whereas 'All men are mortal' is not per se testable or scientific, for its potential falsifier - an immortal person - is not observable. The 'per se' is important here: that is, it is impossible that we can observe "immortality" in and of itself, and equally we cannot observe the quality of "perpetuity" in and of itself. So a problem arises as to how we would render the existence of a 'perpetuum mobile' testable or seen to have been corroborated by the passing of certain tests - a problem in some ways analogous to the problem of how the existence of an immortal person could be rendered testable or seen as corroborated by the passing of certain tests. This problem would have to be solved adequately before we might ever expect science to ever accept such a thing as a perpetuum mobile. It might be that science could throw out most of what we understand as concomitant with the 'impossibility of a perpetual motion machine' without thereby accepting that there exists - or physically could exist - a perpetual motion machine. And this may indicate how far the demonstration of a perpetual motion machine would remain beyond any physics we can conceive. Donal Ldn