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December 13th, 2012, 10:22 am
(quote not shown) I don't think correlation can ever establish cause, although it can sometimes help. Statistics are sometimes used as an initial indicator of cause-effect relationships, but they are not sufficient in themselves. For example, when the thalidomide drug began to be used to treat morni...
December 10th, 2012, 6:25 am
(quote not shown) I think you have to distinguish between the axiomatic part of a theory and the empirical part. Whereas the axiomatic part is never falsifiable and (particularly in physics) we have several competing models, the empirical part is the tesable bit. I agree that falsification is never ...
December 8th, 2012, 4:51 pm
Just to clarify something.... just because all physical laws are putatively computable doesn't mean that the whole physical world is computable. I would have thought that is amply demostrated by chaos theory. Even measurement itself is fundamentally indeterminate, e.g. there is no absolute measure o...
December 7th, 2012, 11:33 am
(quote not shown) Teh, correct me if I'm wrong, but Deutsch's theory tells us that the physical environment (including computers) is computable. As far as I can gather, he defines 'physical' as 'not abstract', by which he means 'limited'. He therefore appears to assume a Platonic conception of numbe...
December 7th, 2012, 7:26 am
Teh wrote:To a realist, knowledge is objective (i.e. physical) and is not even confined to humanity, or even mental processes. It could be argued that evolutionary processes depend for their success on the creation and survival of objective knowledge.
(Nested quote removed.)
It is not necessary or productive to ascribe truth to any of our theories as verificationists do. What we really want is progress, and that comes by subjecting our theories to criticism. We can be confident that truths can be reached due to the Turing principle.
Isn't it a logical fallacy to invoke evolution and Turing, theories that manifestly part of science, to explain why science gets at the truth?
December 7th, 2012, 7:12 am
(quote not shown) Steve - I've elaborated a bit on my post from the other thread ... I don't think it is a clear-cut case: induction or no induction. As you say, it seems to be (logically) disproved by black swans or turkeys at Xmas (can we not find some better examples?), but as intuitive pattern r...
December 7th, 2012, 5:02 am
(quote not shown) Logicus. This seems like a matter of faith rather than reasoned argument. You are clearly stating the realist position that the earth and the universe exist independently of anything anyone happens to say or think about it, and you believe that science makes true statements about t...
December 6th, 2012, 9:52 am
(quote not shown) I wasn't sure if induction was really within the terms of the OP - or should we just forget about that seeing as it's author has not made any recent comments? I don't think it is a clear-cut case: induction or no induction. As a logical method, it seems to be disproved by black swa...
December 6th, 2012, 5:34 am
Yes, it is an ordinary choice in that sense. Science began when an solitary soul focussed their pure attention on the external world.
In the sense that it is a leap of the imagination, it is not ordinary - and as you acknowledged, Newton was a genius.
In the sense that it is a leap of the imagination, it is not ordinary - and as you acknowledged, Newton was a genius.
December 6th, 2012, 5:01 am
(quote not shown) What indeed. It is scientific orthodoxy that an atom is more than 99% empty space. Repulsive forces lead to a large space between nucleus and electrons, and the charge and high velocity of electrons provides solidity. The electrons in the outer shell of the rock repel the electrons...
December 5th, 2012, 8:52 am
(quote not shown) Well observed. Whereas metaphysics has had a profound influence on science down the ages, it is not clear that the reverse is true, and scientists like Krauss should know better than to mix them up. Aristotle told us that matter is more durable than the properties it possesses. Mat...
December 4th, 2012, 3:37 pm
Thanks for that clarification Steve - you plainly understand this a lot better than I do. So we need to explain these extra inertial forces in a geocentric universe, but that can perhaps be done (albeit with extreme difficulty)? More simply, we can also treat this as a multi-body problem, in which t...
December 4th, 2012, 7:19 am
(quote not shown) Yes - I'm probably going to show my ignorance again here, but I thought angular momentum requires a force e.g. the spokes of a bicycle wheel direct a force into the center. Kinetic (e.g. Kepler) theories are explained by dynamic (e.g. Newton) ones are they not? This I guess is rela...
December 4th, 2012, 4:52 am
(quote not shown) My theoretical physics is not not so strong as it used to be and I wondered how Foucault's pendulum is relevant to geocentricism? Is it not primarily a demonstration of Earth's rotation? Couldn't you have a rotating earth that is at the focus of the Solar System? Sorry about my poo...
December 3rd, 2012, 11:23 am
(quote not shown) I don't think this is a question of evidence at all. Euclid, Galileo, Newton and Einstein were all talking about ideal bodies, e.g. those with no external forces, frictionless motion or absolute time-space. If science were common sense, we would all be able to do it, since our brai...
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