Quote Originally Posted by Greyblades View Post
Indeed and what do we get from that? That the gasolene in the video combusted, I think that proves that gasolene or at least the gasolene in the video is flamable. It would seem that you just dont want to acknowledge any point that disagrees with your viewpoint. Hardly worth arguing when your so dead set.
Well this post is just silly. I don't know where exactly I have shown myself to be unwilling to acknowledge a viewpoint different from my own. And I don't see how I have been so "dead set" in what I am saying. I started my first post of with "technically: this but practically: this". Is this not a reasonable view of distinguishing the two?

Your conclusion from the video is just flawed, I'm sorry to say that but it is. First of all you seem to think that "prove" and "provide evidence for" are the same. They are not. This video provided strong evidence that gasoline is flammable, but unless we examine what is happening on a more molecular level, we really cannot say anything for sure about the flammability of gasoline solely from this one video. Anyone can tell you can pointing to one piece of evidence and saying, "Here is the proof." is not only bad science but it is bad arguing period.

Now for the most part, most things up through quantum mechanics, subatomic structures etc...have been more or less proven. Period. From the early 20th Century on, there have been more and more models which are very accurate at predicting phenomena that we cannot see for ourselves with the naked eye or even a powerful optical microscrope. These however, are models.

We have "proven" that gasoline is flammable because a couple hundred years ago, a bunch of scientific pioneers started meticulously measuring the mass of compounds before and after burning/heating and measuring the amount of air that was removed in the process. Then the particular element in the air that was being removed was isolated from the rest from even more meticulous experiments, and etc...

As I said before, technically the things we have "proven" are not without a doubt absolutely correct and not flawed in any way. We just have established years, decades, centuries of supporting evidence explaining our reasoning for it.

Practically what all this evidence means is that we have pretty much proved it. But I feel that it is a bad mindset to take anything you learn in science as "granted" as you would in sunday school. Always be skeptical, but trust the evidence.