Re: johnreed take 1


"Bill Hobba" <bhobba@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:YpC5e.4323$5F3.1670@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>
> 'When I was an undergraduate at Cornell I heard a lecture by a professor of
> philosophy (probably Max Black) who explained that whenever anyone asked him
> whether something was real, he always gave the same answer. The answer was
> "Yes." The tooth fairy is real, the laws of physics are real, the rules of
> baseball are real, and the rocks in the fields are real. But they are real
> in different ways. What I mean when I say that the laws of physics are real
> is that they are real in pretty much the same sense (whatever that is) as
> the rocks in the fields, and not in the same sense (as implied by Fish19) as
> the rules of baseball -- we did not create the laws of physics...

Yes we did. The laws of physics are human creations.

>To put it another way, if we ever discover intelligent creatures on
> some distant planet and translate their scientific works, we will find that
> we and they have discovered the same laws.'

We may wish, hope or even expect that this will be the case
but we have no justification for assuming that this must be so.


martin Hogbin


.

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