Re: Epistemology 201: The Science of Science

From: aeo6 (aeo6_at_cornell.edu)
Date: 02/11/05 

Date: Fri, 11 Feb 2005 09:42:54 -0500

robert j. kolker said:
>
>
> Tony Orlow (aeo6) wrote:
>
> >
> > So, there are no rules that govern the universe, except in our minds?
>
> Reality does not give one good god damn about our theories nor does it
> care even if we theorize at all. Facts are. What is, is. We live in and
> with the facts and because we have only three pound brains we have to
> use Jedi Mind Tricks to make what we experience coherent to us. Hence we
> hypothesize physical laws. Before humans there were no physical laws on
> this planet. After the sun burns this planet clean of all life, there
> will be no physical laws on this planet.
> > Before people, the universe wasn't consistently behaving according to
> > rules that govern the interactions between entities in it? Reality just
> > "was" until we started applying math to it? Pretty magical....and
> > ridiculous. Why do mathematicians want to own math? It's like saying
> > Columbus invented America.
>
> No. The land mass we call the Americas was there. Columbus landed on it.
> He didn't even discover it. The folks who had lived there for 20,000
> years and whose ancestors came from Asia discovered it.
>
> Bob Kolker
>
Bob -

You are confusing natural law with our pursuit of it through theory.
There is no doubt that theories considering natural law are the product
of our minds, and never existed before minds came along that could
concoct them. Natural law, on the other hand, operates independently of
our understanding of it. At the very foundation of science is the
assumption that there is a structured, consistent set of rules about the
universe that we can discover. This goes back to Lester's original
proposition, and I guess what was my opposite opinion on the matter. It
seems to me that consistency is the universal truth that can be derived
as a contradiction of the existence of contradiction. That cosnsistent
system that determines the behavior of the universe is natural law, and
has existed at least as long as the universe, if not longer. The
systematic investigation into that system is science, which indeed is a
product of mind. 

-- 
Smiles,
Tony

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Epistemology 201: The Science of Science
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  • Re: Epistemology 201: The Science of Science
    ... > So, there are no rules that govern the universe, except in our minds? ... Reality does not give one good god damn about our theories nor does it ...
    (sci.physics)
  • Re: Epistemology 201: The Science of Science
    ... >> So, there are no rules that govern the universe, except in our minds? ... > Reality does not give one good god damn about our theories nor does it ... You are confusing natural law with our pursuit of it through theory. ...
    (sci.physics)
  • Re: Epistemology 201: The Science of Science
    ... >> So, there are no rules that govern the universe, except in our minds? ... > Reality does not give one good god damn about our theories nor does it ... You are confusing natural law with our pursuit of it through theory. ...
    (sci.cognitive)
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