Re: True Gems of Scientific Epistemology

From: Bill Hobba (bhobba_at_rubbish.net.au)
Date: 07/20/04 

Date: Tue, 20 Jul 2004 23:40:36 GMT

"Jeff Lanfield" <jlanfield2003@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:235c483f.0407200656.5b984140@posting.google.com...
> I would like to get opinions on what were the most profound books and
> thinkers on scientific epistemology you have encountered. By this I
> mean a work that totally changed the way you look at the world and at
> science. Below is my list. I would be grateful for your additions. I
> am really looking for works that are novel and different, orthogonal
> to the ones I listed. For example, I included Bertalanffy's General
> System Theory so I do not want the many, many other books on General
> System Theory.
>
> My list (no particular order):
>
> Rene Thom: Structural Stability and Morphogenesis
> Ludwig von Bertalanffy: General System Theory
> David Bohm: Wholeness and Implicate order
>

IMHO much better than those is - Feynman - The Character of Physical Law.

Bohm was a very good scientist but IMHO his ideas on wholeness and the
implicate order missed the mark. Indeed his pilot wave theory, part of
which that book is based on, (yes I have read it) has been proven wrong see:
http://citebase.eprints.org/cgi-bin/citations?id=oai:arXiv.org:quant-ph/0103100
and http://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/0206196. OTOH Feynman was a great
scientist - in many peoples top ten of all time. The Character of Physical
Law has been mentioned by many physicists as having a strong influence on
them. His ideas, unlike Bohms, continue to influence and guide current
research and the way science is taught see
http://www.eftaylor.com/quantum.html.

Thanks
Bill

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