Wow, I don't even know what to say. Does he think these formulas magically appeared in text books one day?
Actually, the fact that the universe yeilds to theory at all is kind of remarkable. Antimatter was "discovered" in the negative-energy solutions of the relativistic version of the Schrodinger equation long before it was found in nature. I can imagine that someone who hadn't seen all of those examples from physics for themselves could imagine that theory, in general, is epistemologically unsound - and demand that everything be directly empirical.
Aside, I think that everyone who is interested in science should spend at least a little time thinking about the philosophy that underlies it - and, you know, it can be very rewarding to reproduce early experiments just so you can see them for yourself.
Next time you're on a trip, try meauring the shadows at different times of day and calculating the radius of the Earth like Eratosthenes. We now have nearly perfect maps and globally synchronized clocks so you should have a much easier time of it than he did.
The price of ignoring evidence and experience.
One of the reason I am disappointed every time I hear the climate change debacle it's because one side is deemed stupid about not believing what the other side believes. It doesn't matter what you believe, go to a polluted city and breathe the air. Drink from a polluted river.
You can believe the earth is flat. But when you are launching a satellite, make sure you follow the theories that cater to your model so you don't crash it.
Call the earth flat all you want, just make sure my GPS works just fine.