On Tue, Sep 10, 2013 at 8:22 PM, chris peck <chris_peck...@hotmail.com>wrote:
> Given the way John has framed the task any contribution made by xyz will > end up not being a contribution in philosophy. Take Charles Pierce who > pretty much founded semiotics and made contributions in fields as diverse > as psychology and chemistry; or Frege who invented predicate logic; or > Descartes work in mathematics, or Leibniz's invention of calculus; > As I said on Jan 6, 2012: "I love philosophy but hate philosophers because very little philosophy comes from professional philosophers, it comes from scientists and mathematicians. Every time I think I'm being too hard on philosophers somebody mentions a person like Feyerabend and I remember why I dislike them so much." I have also said that Godel and Turing made some of the most important philosophical discoveries of the 20'th century, and Charles Peirce (I don't know who Charles Pierce is) was a mathematical logician too, and so was Gottlob Frege. Descartes and Leibniz made huge contributions to human knowledge but that was before 2 centuries ago. I specified the cutoff because in their day people who did what they did were called "Natural Philosophers". > > Firstly, there hasn't ever been a method scientists have always > employed. Secondly, there is always an argument between scientists over how > to proceed correctly. > Exactly! If Popper had found an algorithm to do good science I would call him the greatest human being who ever lived, but he did no such thing. > Students are preached to about Popper and falsificationism in one > lecture and in the next > Philosophy majors sure, they write PHD dissertations about falsification, but once science students get out of the 5th grade their teachers don't preach about it much and for the same reason they don't preach about the multiplication table much. The idea that scientists have radically altered the way they work after 1963 because of a book Karl Popper wrote is absolutely nuts; most working scientists probably couldn't even tell you who the hell Popper was, they have more important things to occupy their mind. > Even in physics, the 'hardest' of hard sciences, there is trouble afoot > with string theory, and a debate rages as to whether it is falsifiable > There is no debate about that whatsoever, string theory as it exists right now is NOT falsifiable. Some think that someday it may be falsifiable and others think it probably never will be, but nobody really knows if it just needs more work or if it's on the wrong track entirely. Time will tell, but right now it's misnamed, "String Theory" is not a theory at all, it's just a hope for a theory. > Even John, right now, is doing the very same thing. He is engaging in > philosophy. He is expending all this effort on what he has argued is > worthless. > Philosophy is NOT worthless, it's philosophers that are worthless because, despite the similar sounding words, philosophers haven't done any philosophy in 200 years. John K Clark -- 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.
