Re: Epistemology 201: The Science of Science

stephen_at_nomail.com
Date: 03/04/05 

Date: 4 Mar 2005 01:35:53 GMT

In sci.math Wolf Kirchmeir <wwolfkir@sympatico.ca> wrote:
: Allan C Cybulskie wrote:
:> "Wolf Kirchmeir" <wwolfkir@sympatico.ca> wrote in message
:> news:rRrUd.4997$Vf6.187986@news20.bellglobal.com...
:>
:>>Allan C Cybulskie wrote:
:>>
:>>>"Wolf Kirchmeir" <wwolfkir@sympatico.ca> wrote in message
:>>>news:Hx7Ud.37207$uO.1008161@news20.bellglobal.com...
:>>>
:>>
:>>It doesn't, but Kant said that space is Euclidean, ie not curved (a not
:>>unreasonable assumption, given the data available to him.)
:>
:>
:> Just as an aside, are we sure that Kant is talking about the same sort of
:> space that you are when you talk about space being curved? The reason I ask
:> is that in studying Kant it seems that the notion of "flat" or "curved" is
:> not something that he would associate with the concepts of space (he
:> basically talks about ordering things in space and providing diffentiation
:> in place to synthesize over). I suspect that the curved space-time is what
:> Kant would consider an appearance of a thing-in-itself (but not space as the
:> "concept"). Thus, as the appearance of a thing-in-itself, we can interact
:> with it, and find out things about it through science. And so we discover
:> that it is a thing, and a thing out there that we can only have the
:> appearance of.
:>
:> In short, in order to claim that space-time is curved you'd have to consider
:> it a substance. But if it's a substance, it isn't the space that Kant talks
:> about, and so we might not have the refutation of space and Euclidean
:> geometry.

: I've never understood why space should be a substance, so I don't really
: understand what you (and Kant, presumably) intend. the space I imagine
: intuit is "waht I can move through", it's a relationship between things.
: Thus it's not a thing-in-itself. Etc. Of course the problem here is the
: vagueness, the ambiguity, the slipperiness of "thing" (which is just as
: bad in Germn, "Ding" can be just about anything - see, there it goes
: again. Catch it quick!)

No, Allan is making the common error in thinking that in order
for space to be "curved" it must be a substance of some sort
that can be physically bent. However that is not what space
being "curved" means.

Stephen

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