Amongst the more prominent critics, Tesla and Mohorovičić spring to mind for having criticised special relativity precisely on the grounds of subject-relative time being "against common sense". Also, the anti-Semitic regime in Germany which derided theoretical physicists for solving "non-existent problems".
An extrapolation from lifetime experience of perception of 1.5eV range, meters sized objects and g accelerations (a.k.a. common sense) can not be valid argument against phenomena on TeV scale radiation, femtometer setting and extreme space-time curvations. No matter how great authorities were the two of my countrymen you mention.
As for Nazi Germany, there was "aryan" science, namely focus was on engineering and chemistry which stand in contrast with judenwissenschaft that thought of abstract, "useless" sciences. I find it ironic that exactly E=mc^2 in the most horrific way took part of Axis defeat.
Yes, they were led in the right direction, that isn't disputed. But instinct and a gut feeling didn't lead to the finished work, education, innovation and lots of hard work did. An irrational source of motivation alone can't replace that.
Who claimed it does? I though that point of dispute is whether sense of profound feelings that are experienced by a consensus of workers in the field about certain principles should be considered as valid guide in science, not to compare importances of initial break-through and hard work follow-up.
Two things are in contest here: Einstein's principle of ultimate speed and years of dedicated work by good folks at Opera and CERN. They did experimentation and found what they found. They recheck much of their experiment, exorcised a lot of systematic errors and the anomaly still stands. On the other hand, there is a law proposed by a dead guy. No one is personally attached to the axiom, but scientific community will probably spend millions of dollars to recheck rather than simply discard the
c as ultimate speed. Why do you think that is?*
I recall my example with charge/baryon conservation. Particle physics is a multibillion research today. Experimental limits are much looser on charge non-conservation than on baryon non-conservation . Testing one or the other is about same expensive. Baryon non-conservation is active field of research. Discoverer of electric charge non-conservation would earn immortality in physics. BUT - no one, and I mean
none, in physics is spending their time and money on charge non-conversation research today. Why do you think that is?*
I don't dispute the fact that many great discoveries were made by incredibly smart people who unfortunately failed to apply rationality to other parts of their lives. And, since you obviously care about that, I should inform you that this revelation hasn't affected me on an emotional level.
It was meant as harmless poking fun. Nothing personal, sorry you I offended you.
The capability to perform "dry logic" on the level we do is what separates us from other animals. You've used it right here to put forward an unconvincing and insufficient argument as to why we shouldn't.
Where exactly did I claim we should not use logic? As a professional physicist, I am paid for my knowledge and use of logic, thank you for asking. What I claimed and still stand by it is that there a number of principles in physics that posses a transcendent quality that are hard to reproduce in spoken language. The same qualities attracted their discoverers to recognize their immense value, a task that could not be done by Spock of Vulcan. And sense for such things provide us with guidance in our great adventure of science.
(*) (Axiom of STR)/(Principle of local gauge invariance) is elegant and deep principle.
