On the Frontiers of Science: Strange Machines You Can Build
 | |
| Author | Harry Stine |
|---|---|
| Published | 1985 |
| Publisher | Macmillan Publishing Co. |
| Pages | 111 |
| ISBN | 0689115628 |
On the Frontiers of Science: Strange Machines You Can Build is a 1985 book by the aerospace engineer and science writer Harry Stine. It is a short, practical collection of devices that appear to contradict accepted physics or mechanics, presented together with directions for building them.
Summary
The book is not a theoretical treatise but a construction manual. Stine describes a number of gadgets — among them a cardboard pyramid said to keep razor blades placed inside it sharp — whose reported behaviour is not accounted for by conventional physics or mechanics, and gives the reader enough detail to build each one and try it.
His stated purpose is replication rather than persuasion. Stine's position is that anomalies of this kind are worth putting into as many hands as possible, on the chance that widespread building and testing might isolate a real effect and eventually reveal the principle behind it. He is candid that the results are not reliable: in his own words the devices "work for some people" but "sometimes... don't work for everyone." That admission is central to the book's framing — the devices are offered as open experimental questions, not as settled discoveries.
The approach is consistent with Stine's longstanding interest in inertial and reactionless propulsion, in particular his investigation with William O Davis of Norman Dean's alleged reactionless drive, where he had likewise argued that the proper response to an unexplained laboratory result is careful measurement rather than dismissal.
Reception
The book was reviewed critically on precisely the point Stine himself had conceded. Writing in a library review of the first edition, Kenneth Quinn of the Geology Department at Oklahoma State University, Stillwater, objected that Stine "forgets that a scientific experiment, by definition, is one that can be duplicated by anyone — given the same equipment and complete directions — and give the same results", and concluded that "the title should use the term 'pseudoscience,' not science. Not recommended."
The disagreement is a real one about what the book is for. Quinn reads the devices as claims that fail the test of reproducibility; Stine presents them as unreproduced observations offered to readers so that the test can be attempted at all.