Re: PRESUMPTIONS IN SCIENCE


REVISED STATEMENTS (with comments relating to some of them)


Trial Statement # 1. Science concerns are those concerns which can be
addressed directly or indirectly by man's five senses.

Trial Statement # 2. Indirect sensing (as alluded to in Statement # l)
includes what can be sensed by analogs as, for example, when
electromagnetic
waves outside the spectral band of man's vision system are converted to
waves which are within it, by means of tools such as an oscilloscope.

Trial Statement # 3. Indirect sensing (as alluded to in Statement # 1)
includes effects of phenomena which are translated from one form to another
as, for example, when radio active particles are detected by way of
striking
a surface in Geiger counter, and the impacts are translated into aural
signals detectible by the human ear.

Trial Statement # 4. Indirect sensing (as alluded to in Statement # 1)
includes results of phenomena which are the results of phenomena, but are
not the phenomena themselves. For example, tracks that have been left in
mud which subsequently hardened into rock, or 'petrified wood' which is not
the original wood at all, but elements which are interpretable as having
replaced wood's cells and subsequently ossified.

Trial Statement # 5. Science is the highest and best approach humans have
for gaining understanding of, and dealing with, empirical issues beyond the
levels of the casual and the commonplace in daily human empirical
experience.

(Note: Taken into consideration in the designing of this trial statement is
a
desire to distinguish between the ordinary mundane copings of humans with
the way things occur in our daily lives and "science." To exemplify the
distinction, suppose that a person chooses not to leap off a cliff, because
he perceives that this act might lead to unhappy consequences for himself.
That choice indeed involves some scientific issues which can be carried to
the limits of our current scientific understanding and beyond. By "beyond"
is meant, for example, that current scientific knowledge does not include
what gravity is, but only how things behave in accordance with whatever it
is. Let us mutually agree to reserve to what we would call "science" some
level of intensity of discipline in observing, measuring, analyzing,
comparing ..., and considerable rigor in logic.)

Trial Statement # 6. The expression "known scientific facts" is misleading.

(For example, we may say that it is a fact that the sun rises each morning.
At the northern rotational axis of Earth there are 24 hour periods during
which the sun is not above the horizon and 24 hour periods when the sun is
above the horizon. Even from an observation point on Earth's equator the
sun does not move into view of the observer but, rather, the Earth's
rotation causes it to appear so. Hence, it can be seen that the truth or
falsity of a so-called statement of "fact" can depend upon such variables as
what precise definitions are intended by the statement maker for each word
used, what point or points of observation is/are implied, how the subject
the statement is about relates to other things, events or
circumstances, and the like. Also, in communications between individuals,
any inference by the receiver of a statement that differs from the intended
implications of the maker of that statement can turn a valid statement-out
to a false statement-in.)

Trial Statement # 7. What is a "fact" in one location or one scenario can
be false in another.

(For example, if a person in one time zone says, "It is daytime," that can
be true in that time zone, whereas in another time zone it is "nighttime."

Trial Statement # 8. Even a perceived "fact" that one witnesses by "seeing
it with his own eyes" can be misleading.

(The human visual system, in conjunction with the human brain's
interpretation of the signals received by the eyes and from the eyes,
involve mechanisms that can "see" things that are not actually happening.
Much study has identified the mechanisms whereby the mind can be "tricked"
into belief that it is seeing something which is not actually occurring. A
magicians "tricks" utilize some of these imperfections in entertaining by
deliberate creation of optical illusions.)

Trial Statement # 9. What is a "fact" by virtue of being directly and
accurately witnessed by one individual, cannot be a "fact" for another
individual who has not witnessed it directly and accurately.

(For example, suppose Jack chops down a tree -- actually, and not
hallucinatorily -- which act no one else has witnessed (neither directly nor
indirectly). And suppose then that Bill comes along, shortly after the
cutting, and sees Jack standing by the chopped down tree, and Jack tells
Bill it was he who chopped down the tree. For Jack it is a "known fact"
that he chopped down the tree. But for Bill it is NOT a "known fact." If
Bill TRUSTS Jack on this issue and hence "takes it on faith" that Jack
chopped down the tree, that is an "assumption of fact" on Bill's behalf, not
a "known fact." Bill cannot know for a certainty that it was Jack who cut
down the tree, and not someone or something else. And, likewise, many
observations, measurements, and outcomes of experiments in science may be
"known facts" to researchers who have witnessed the actual setting up of the
experiments and their outcomes, these outcomes are NOT "known facts" to any
other person. And, furthermore, what a researcher feels is a "known fact"
to him CAN have been an optical illusion or a miscalculation -- in which
case the researcher cannot always be certain he knows even what he is
convinced he knows.)

(to be continued)

g



.

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