I haven't followed the previous discussions regarding "philosophy vs. science" but I think the "philosophy of science" is vitally important, especially as it pertains to "what is knowledge?" and "what is science?" and especially when things that are science are under attack.
I realised this last year when my alma mater, which had been a typical, somewhat competitive, liberal arts college before, was under attack by biblical inerrantists and young earth creationists who had taken over the denomination with which it had traditionally been associated. I just wish my eyes didn't glaze over and my mind go numb whenever I'm confronted with anything that smacks of philosophy. On 12 Jul 2011, at 18:57, Bruce Sherwood wrote: > I agree totally. Everything is incremental, including biological > evolution, invention, etc. > > You may be familiar with Rev. Paley's watchmaker argument in the early > 1800s, that if you find a gold watch it is dishonest to pretend it > didn't have a watchmaker, and belongs to no one. Paley argued that > since biological organisms are even more complex than a watch, surely > there must be a Designer. Richard Dawkins acknowledges that Paley's > argument had much force before Darwin showed how evolution could > produce complex organisms, and Dawkins' book "The Blind Watchmaker" > discusses the issues in interesting detail. > > My wife Ruth Chabay recently made an intriguing observation: the watch > does NOT have a Designer! The watch is the result of a very long > evolution through a very large number of very small innovations, > starting at least with mechanical clocks in the 1300s or earlier (see > for example the Salisbury Cathedral clock in Wikipedia). > > Bruce > > On Tue, Jul 12, 2011 at 9:04 AM, glen e. p. ropella > <[email protected]> wrote: >> >> Not surprisingly, I have an opinion about this too! ;-) I tend to think >> that all progress, everywhere, in all cases, consists of tiny >> transitions from prior state. Even the seemingly important or >> paradigmatic shifts like Newton's or the fall of the Berlin Wall are >> really the accumulation of many tiny tweaks. It's our thin corpus >> collosi that delude us into thinking a single person or event is _the_ >> cause of some singular effect ... the assumption that causality is a >> chain, rather than a mesh. >> >> Bruce Sherwood wrote at 07/11/2011 05:09 PM: >>> Without reading the paper, I can offer one way in which academic >>> physics is exactly like the description of academic philosophy offered >>> in earlier postings, namely that much research and scholarship are >>> tweaks on prior work. >>> >>> Some years ago at a workshop we gave for physics faculty about our >>> intro physics curriculum, we explained that we were trying to make our >>> course more authentic to the activities of actual living contemporary >>> physicists, namely that they take some fundamental principles as >>> given, model complex situations on the basis of these principles by >>> making approximations, simplifying assumptions, idealizations, etc., >>> and compare behavior of the models with observations. Seldom does any >>> physicist discover a new fundamental principle; most physicists apply >>> those principles that have proven durable. >>> >>> A young physicist said, "Oh, thank you! I had been very confused about >>> the nature of the discipline! When I read my first physics journal >>> article, I was very puzzled to get to the end of the paper without >>> seeing any brand new physics. I thought that what physicists did was >>> discover new principles, not apply existing ones to new situations." >> >> >> -- >> glen e. p. ropella, 971-222-9095, http://tempusdictum.com >> >> >> ============================================================ >> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv >> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College >> lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org >> > > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
