Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2023 June 14

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June 14

the goal of science

how is controlled experiment different from field study — Preceding unsigned comment added by 102.88.63.125 (talk) 08:28, 14 June 2023 (UTC)

You might like to start by reading controlled experiment and field study. Shantavira|^{feed me} 10:47, 14 June 2023 (UTC)

An essential difference – next to the striking differences in methodology, like one can be conducted in a lab while the other cannot – is in the goal of the study. The purpose of a controlled experiment is always to test a hypothesis. As part of the experiment, data needs to be collected. This data collection is not by itself a goal, but a necessary means to reach a goal. In contrast, data collection is the primary purpose of a field study. Analyzing the collected data may give rise to hypotheses and help to build a theory. The researchers may hope that their findings support an existing theory, or perhaps overturn it, but there is no control that allows for a statistical test.  --Lambiam 13:42, 14 June 2023 (UTC)

July crisis and start of World War 1

Was it Germany's intention to start a world war? Some sources say yes, that they wanted to defeat Russia and France, while others say the war was started by a large amount of accidents, and that Germany was not solely to blame. ARandomName123 (talk) 17:48, 14 June 2023 (UTC)

I don't know that Germany can be solely to blame, but some of its actions certainly did nothing to make war less likely, such as giving Austria-Hungary an unlimited blank check with respect to German support for the Austro-Hungarian ultimatum against Serbia, or sticking rigidly to a pre-planned schedule of military mobilizations without sufficiently considering what the effects of this would be on diplomacy and international opinion. AnonMoos (talk) 18:17, 14 June 2023 (UTC)

Start by reading Causes of World War 1. MinorProphet (talk) 19:53, 14 June 2023 (UTC)

But more specifically, July Crisis#German thinking.

Hew Strachan says that at the 6 July Crown Council where the "blank cheque" policy was agreed, two assumptions were made:

1. That it was in Germany's interest that Austria-Hungary should dominate the Balkans by subjugating Serbia, and that Russia would be unlikely to go to war on the issue, given that their most recent war had brought about the Revolution of 1905.

2. That if Russia did go to war on behalf of Serbia, France and Britain would not intervene, thus breaking the Triple Entente which would be to Germany's advantage. A war with Russia would also be in Germany's interest, since they saw its rapid economic growth and industrialisation as a threat which needed to be nullified before it became a greater power than Germany. [1]

So his interpretation is that Germany thought that they were in a win-win situation; either no war with Russia and Austria-Hungary is strengthened, or war with Russia leading to long-term German dominance in Eastern Europe and an end to the encirclement by the Entente powers. There was no intention to provoke a war with France or Britain, but this was based on a flawed premise. Alansplodge (talk) 10:40, 15 June 2023 (UTC)

Didn't Germany feel threatened by France and Russia, and wanted a war with them to increase their strength? ARandomName123 (talk) 13:50, 15 June 2023 (UTC)

They planned to fight both, but there's no evidence that they wanted to. In 1909, Helmuth von Moltke, the chief of the German Army wrote that a full-scale European conflict would be "a war which will utterly exhaust our own people, even if we are victorious". However, France mobilised on 1 August, because they had been caught mid-mobilisation and defeated in the 1870 Franco-Prussian War, and this seemed to the Germans to be too great a threat to ignore, so they declared war on France on 3 September August. Alansplodge (talk) 15:40, 15 June 2023 (UTC)

So Germany went to war with France on 3 September in 1914 and 1939. I never knew that. 89.243.8.4 (talk) 15:49, 15 June 2023 (UTC)

No it was August. Apologies, a slip of the keyboard. Alansplodge (talk) 16:25, 15 June 2023 (UTC)

So Germany supported Austria-Hungary invading Serbia, which was why they issued their blank cheque, creating a localised war, but they didn't intend/want the war to escalate in to a large-scale war? ARandomName123 (talk) 16:53, 15 June 2023 (UTC)

That seems to be the broad concensus, but see World War One: 10 interpretations of who started WW1, the question is not a black-and-white one and opinions differ. Alansplodge (talk) 17:05, 15 June 2023 (UTC)

ok, thanks for your help. One final question: do you know any good resources/books regarding this topic? ARandomName123 (talk) 17:27, 15 June 2023 (UTC)

Perhaps Catastrophe: Europe Goes to War 1914 by Max Hastings. You can read it online at archive.org (you need to open a free account). Alansplodge (talk) 21:06, 16 June 2023 (UTC)

@ARandomName123:, see also War guilt question for a discussion of this. Mathglot (talk) 22:50, 17 June 2023 (UTC)

This topic has been debates by historians for over a hundred years by now, whether WWI was product of unavoidable structural factors or whether WWI was product of conscious or unconscious decisions by policy-makers. The short answer is that historians disagree on this. https://www.youtube.com/@NationalWWIMuseum has several lectures in the video archive on this. See also this lecture https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6snYQFcyiyg --Soman (talk) 17:40, 20 June 2023 (UTC)

Apollo 13 - An accident and someone that caused it?

Was Apollo 13 an accident? And was a person responsible for that? 86.135.116.213 (talk) 19:33, 14 June 2023 (UTC)

See Apollo_13#Investigation_and_response. Like many accidents involving complex technology, there doesn't seem to have been a single 'cause'. Rather, a series of events, each of which on its own might not have been serious, but cumulatively leading to failure. Possibly poor design. Modifications made without proper analysis. Poor handling leading to damage which inspection procedures weren't designed to detect. Certainly, no single individual was responsible. Rather, a classic example of what the aviation industry refers to as the 'Swiss cheese model' of accidents. Things can go wrong and not matter, but if enough of the 'holes in the cheese' line up, it all goes bad very quickly. AndyTheGrump (talk) 19:54, 14 June 2023 (UTC)

In the 1997 Disney film RocketMan, Bud Nesbitt was responsible for the 13 accident (though Bud later reveals that it was Paul Wick that cause it). 86.135.116.213 (talk) 20:24, 15 June 2023 (UTC)

To back up what AndyTheGrump said, airline crash investigators are fond of saying that with modern airplanes most crashes don't necessarily have a single "cause", but are due to multiple things going wrong. AnonMoos (talk) 21:18, 14 June 2023 (UTC)

Perhaps a bit too fond. In this case I would argue that there was a single primary cause, which the failure to ensure that the switches were properly upgraded when the circuit's voltage was raised. (As Wikipedia has it, "Under the original 1962 specifications, the switches would be rated for 28 volts, but revised specifications issued in 1965 called for 65 volts to allow for quicker tank pressurization at KSC. Nonetheless, the switches Beech used were not rated for 65 volts.") Depending on how the project was managed, it, and anyway they might or might not be possible to identify a responsible person, but I don't think it's interesting to try to do it. --142.112.221.43 (talk) 01:53, 15 June 2023 (UTC)

Payroll always in the end will come to some sort of its limits somewhere. That's an obvious problem with sweet Swiss cheese, keeping maturation. --Askedonty (talk) 18:57, 15 June 2023 (UTC)

The American space program has had a number of mishaps and near misses, as well as some fatal accidents (as did the Soviet space program). Apollo 13 was by no means the only near-disaster. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 00:00, 15 June 2023 (UTC)

Given US corporate culture's attitude at the time (still ongoing), I'm fairly sure that various clued-up (ie super-geeky) people were completely aware of the problems, but they were probably far too down the org chart to have any clout, and anyway valued their jobs for life. MinorProphet (talk) 15:29, 15 June 2023 (UTC)

That looks awfully like attempting to debate by condemnation without evidence. It's also possible that they just had too much work assigned to complete it all. --142.112.221.43 (talk) 17:33, 15 June 2023 (UTC)

The Challenger disaster was directly attributable to pressure to get the bloody thing launched regardless of potential consequences. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 02:19, 16 June 2023 (UTC)

Right, and there's evidence of a specific conversation where that pressure was exerted. Unlike the case of Apollo 13. It could have happened there too, but we don't have evidence to say so. --142.112.221.43 (talk) 03:33, 17 June 2023 (UTC)