Science wasn't always science.

Back in the day, when we still called it natural philosophy, it was all pretty loose.

People would look closely at stuff, read a few alchemical manuscripts, and then just

kind of make things up.

Lots of natural philosophers were self-taught, and back then you could be kind of a dabbler

of folk scientists, someone just putting out science singles and seeing what hit.

This of course meant that lots of natural philosophers and alchemists made their careers promoting

things that were utterly incorrect.

This still happens a bit today, too, for sure, but over time, we got a little bit better

at error correction, and using systems like replication, being open about how the experiments

work, and peer review.

It all helped make science about what we could test and prove rather than just a stab in

the dark.

But it also got harder to be a kind of scientific ripper, just a person with some neat ideas

about what was up with reality.

But that doesn't mean the rippers went away entirely.

Larry Spring was that kind of guy.

He didn't have any formal training, but he definitely did have ideas about what might

be going on with physics.

He also thought the whole field was being made way too complicated with all sorts of unnecessary

crazy math.

No thanks.

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