"Ed Huntress" wrote in message
...
On Fri, 3 Oct 2014 10:38:52 -0400, "Jim Wilkins"
wrote:


You're talking about engineering more than science. No amount of
deductive theorizing or undirected observation would produce Special
Relativity. It depended, first, on a great insight; and then was
proven by highly-directed observation based on that insight.


You have it backwards.
This is the sequence that produced Special Relativity:
http://www.everythingimportant.org/r...1964_scrib.pdf
"The first stage in the evolution of the Special Theory of Relativity
is generally recognized as beginning with the failure to detect
experimentally the motion of the earth through the ether."

Michelson - Poincare' / Fitzgerald / Lorentz - Einstein

Theory is "correct" only when it can explain all observations.

-jsw