Closing Thoughts

This discussion can perhaps best be seen in the picture of Georg Hegel’s dialectical logical progression thesis—antithesis—synthesis. Although Hegel’s arguments were originally applied to the study of history, it is sufficiently philosophical to apply elsewhere. We have argued that modern solar research has tended to fail to refute many different, competing hypotheses. While refutation is not by itself an accepted cornerstone of science, without adequate refutations we have been left with many theses, few antitheses, and it is our choice (and responsibility?) to provide a synthesis of the current state of affairs in regard to coronal heating. This short final chapter is our attempt to provide such a short synthesis.