Hi John >> Nearly a century ago J.B.S. Haldane was confronted with a bonehead who said >> he thought Evolution was not a scientific theory because he was unable to >> provide a hypothetical way it could be disproved. In response Haldane >> thundered "RABBITS IN THE PRECAMBRIAN !".
It wasn't evolution that Popper thought was metaphysics, it was natural selection and the reason that he thought it untestable was. ... , actually, why bother? >>I believe sincerity is a hugely overrated virtue, I have more respect for >>somebody insincerely right than sincerely wrong. That you have a hard on for insincerity comes across loud and clear, John. You needn't point it out. But, here's a question for you, what about people who are insincere and wrong such as yourself ? Does your love of insincerity outweigh your contempt for error just enough to provide a morsel of self respect? Btw. Did you use to post as Major Higgs Boson, or something, on other boards? The perpetual grumpiness and tortuous attempts to be clever really ring a bell for some reason. Obviously there are many grumpy people in the world so I know its a long shot. Date: Sun, 8 Sep 2013 16:47:32 -0400 Subject: Re: What gives philosophers a bad name? From: johnkcl...@gmail.com To: everything-list@googlegroups.com On Sun, Sep 8, 2013 at 12:57 PM, <spudboy...@aol.com> wrote: > Mach was the big physicist and thermodynamicist, Mach's Principle. Ernst Mach was a big philosopher but he was more of a medium size physicist. He wrote his most important scientific paper in 1887, but the man lived till 1916 and is far far better remembered as a philosopher than a scientist. He spent nearly 30 years on philosophy and in opposing Quantum Mechanics, Einstein's Theory of Relativity both general and special, and even the atomic theory of matter. He opposed these superb scientific theories for purely philosophical reasons I might add. Yet another reason philosophy has a bad name. The great philosophical discoveries were made by Darwin and Mendel and Watson and Crick and Maxwell and Einstein and Bohr and Heisenberg and Feynman and Godel and Turing. None of these people called themselves philosophers and some even expressed contempt for the subject, but they made the great philosophical discoveries of the age nevertheless. Let me issue a challenge to all on this list: Tell me one thing, just one thing, that people who call themselves philosophers have discovered in the last 2 centuries that is deep, clear, precise, unexpected, and true that scientists had not discovered long before. John K Clark All I am saying that often in public discourses' I will see physicists, very hard case ones. delve into logical possitivism. They may also enjoy frosted flakes, as well, but the do the LP dance sometimes. But, what of it? It's simply my experience of these chats. I do really like it when philosophers do go deep into the sciences though. It clicks for me. -----Original Message----- From: meekerdb <meeke...@verizon.net> To: everything-list <everything-list@googlegroups.com> Sent: Sat, Sep 7, 2013 9:51 pm Subject: Re: What gives philosophers a bad name? Do they deny the existence of electrons? quarks? as Mach denied atoms. Brent On 9/7/2013 3:52 PM, spudboy...@aol.com wrote: Yet, there's lots of scientists in public forums like this, who embrace logical positivism. I am not saying this is a good thing, but something I have experienced. -----Original Message----- From: meekerdb <meeke...@verizon.net> To: everything-list <everything-list@googlegroups.com> Sent: Sat, Sep 7, 2013 4:16 pm Subject: Re: What gives philosophers a bad name? On 9/7/2013 12:40 AM, Alberto G. Corona wrote: That's right. I´m not joking if i say that the thing that discredited philosophers definitively was relativity, quantum mechanics and their realization: the atomic bomb. That is the event that raised physicalism, a branch of logical positivism and analytical philosophy, and discredited any other way of thinking. If by "physicalism" you mean the meta- of physics, then it's not positivism. Positivism hasn't been considered a good meta-physics since Mach. Too many unobservable things: atoms, photons, quarks, virtual particles,... turned out to make good empirical models. Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. 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