Re: Epistemology 201: The Science of Science

From: OsherD (mdoctorow_at_comcast.net)
Date: 02/02/05 

Date: 2 Feb 2005 13:18:17 -0800

>>From Osher Doctorow

Bob Kolker wrote:

"Physics and engineering have provided the computer on which ­you spew
your nonsense. Philosopohy never produced a flush toilet."

[Osher: ] Philosophy is not spelled "philosopohy".

This type of intolerance ("you spew your nonsense") is what
characterized pre-Nazi and Nazi Germany academia and industry and labor
and I hope that somebody is keeping a record of it during the current
Holocaust 2 which is being directed by Germany, France, Russia, China,
Belgium, Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Pakistan among others
against Israel and against Jews. If Kolker tells me that he can't be
an example of this because he is Jewish (not that I think he is, but
one never knows), then it is a little known fact that the most
assimilated Jews in German academia absorbed very much of the
intolerance of their non-Jewish "mentors".

A bigger issue, however, is the Nazi-type physics philosophy now in
vague whereby physics is supposed to be in an upward evolutionary
spiral in which theories that "fall by the evolutionary wayside" are
forever destroyed and only the "best theories survive." This is
actually funny! Does anybody think that the current fads in physics
will miraculously produce "the best of all possible theories" that will
lead to us the Superman-Supertheory which requires no competitors, no
alternative insights, no alternative interpretations, no questioning,
no philosophy, no logic, no mathematics beyond itself? This is an
extremist interpretation of the "Theory of Everything" or TOE, not even
what most theoretical physicists express in their papers. They are
searching for a TOE, but with much more humility than Bob Kolker
demonstrates, and very few claim even that they will be more than
partly successful or that other theories will not provide parts of the
answers or even answers not expected to be lead to confirmed
predictions in the next few thousand years.

The history of physics and mathematics teaches us that alternative
theories and nonconformity and alternative interpretations are
indispensable, not conformity and a "survival of the fittest"
super-theory. It teaches us to doubt any single theory because of the
prevalence of fads, and that just as often as not new evidence comes to
light eventually which indicates changes in old theories.

The internet physics insulters don't have an elementary understanding
of the difference between the Individual in every Plurality and the
Plurality to which every Individual belongs. Theories in physics and
engineering are both Individual Theories and parts of a Plurality of
Theories, and to fail to highly and equally value both and to
discriminate between them is to abandon science and mathematics and
philosophy-logic for dogma.

Osher Doctorow

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