Re: Epistemology 201: The Science of Science

From: Neil W Rickert (rickert+nn_at_cs.niu.edu)
Date: 02/11/05 

Date: Fri, 11 Feb 2005 21:36:11 +0000 (UTC)

Tony Orlow (aeo6) <aeo6@cornell.edu> writes:
>Neil W Rickert said:

>> >If I misunderstood Bob, maybe he wasn't clear. But, "There are no laws
>> >other than what we prescribe to make sense out of what we perceive and
>> >experience." seemms pretty clearly wrong to me.

>> It seems pretty clearly right to me. The world managed to get along
>> quite well before any of these "natural laws" had been written down.
>> It seems pretty clear that nature is not consulting these laws to
>> decide how to behave. It is not up to nature to obey our laws.
>> Rather, it is up to us to design our laws so that that do a good (if
>> sometimes imperfect) job of describing nature.

>As I said to Bob, you confuse natural law with theory concerning natural
>law.

I don't think I am the one who is confused.

> Theory is a product of our minds, and nature couldn't give a damn
>about our theories for its operation.

Good. I'm glad we agree on that.

> Natural law, on the other hand, is the cocnsistent system
>that determines the behavior of the universe, and has existed at least
>as long as the universe itself.

You contradict yourself. In message <MPG.1c76a036129f2a2a9896fc@newsstand.cit.cornell.edu>
Tony Orlow (aeo6) <aeo6@cornell.edu> writes:

>I agree, Albert. What we consider natural laws are simply those
>theorized formulas that have withstood enough experimentation that we
>give them an extermely high probability of being correct. I still
>believe that the actual natural laws are there independent of our
>theories and formulas.

That agrees with what I have said are natural laws. It disagrees
with what you wrote several paragraphs up.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Curing Einsteins Disease (is Copyrighted)
    ... Laws of Nature by many ... that physicists take the lazy way out... ... from gravity a greater force than a slower object of the same mass. ...
    (sci.physics)
  • Re: Roger Ebert comes out of the closet!!
    ... The closer to uniqueness it gets, and theme it correlates with non-natural concepts like naming conventions, the more the very concept of a law governed nature gets into danger, Simply adding new laws might not work in this case. ... to argue from a generic perspective on evidence that there's no evidence ... we tend not to speak of "toothache delusion" even though we could. ...
    (talk.origins)
  • Re: Curing Einsteins Disease (is Copyrighted)
    ... But true Laws of Nature have ... They *discover* the laws by which nature works. ... that physicists take the lazy way out... ... from gravity a greater force than a slower object of the same mass. ...
    (sci.physics)
  • Re: Poisson Distribution
    ... something so advanced our laws can't understand it. ... if our current understanding of nature is adequate to describe how ... it's a consequence of natural processes. ... SETI scientists are looking for. ...
    (talk.origins)
  • Re: if naturalism is the base assumption of evolution...
    ... Calling "strawman" at ever example you don't know how to ... if you want to let "faith" in the door as a valid method of reasoning, ... something outside nature is outside of existence. ... calculus obeys any physical laws, they heve no porperties that can be ...
    (talk.origins)