Hi John >> Exactly, Newton and Darwin and Einstein didn't need Popper to tell them how >> to get knowledge out of nature, and absolutely no change in how science was >> done happened in 1934, the year Popper's book was published. None >> whatsoever.
Newton and Darwin would have had problems if they had of needed Popper given they worked before he was even born. Sometimes I read your posts and just think your belching wind. Popper was not trying to explain to people like Einstein how to 'get knowledge out of nature'. You're basing your entire argument on a straw man. In fact, he used Einstein as a paradigm example of how to conduct science properly. But what of Adler, Freud or Marx? All these people claimed their theories to be scientific too and earnt a whole lot of credit for that, but where they scientific? Their theories could be contrasted with Einstein's in so far as where Einstein derived 'bold and risky' observational predictions which could be falsified; neither Freud, Adler nor Marx did. You say that this demarcation principle has had no influence in science. Within Psychology however, for better or worse, Psychoanalysis is now perceived as a faintly absurd artifact of history. No one gets hot under the collar about penis envy anymore. Why? Because psychoanalysis doesn't make falsifiable predictions. There has been a cognitive and neuro-scientific 'revolution' which has striven hard to base psychology on more empirically falsifiable foundations. In physics there is a debate about whether string theory (or string "theory" if you must shake your rattle, John) deserves all the funding it receives. What is at the core of the debate?: Does it matter that it fails to make falsifiable predictions? Should other theories (quantum loop gravity) which potentially offer more scope for falsifiability receive a greater proportion of the available resources. Go back a hundred years or so and no-one gave a toss about any of that, so has Popper and the movement he spearheaded had an effect? Of course it has. Its pompous boneheaded bullshit to suggest otherwise. All the best. Date: Tue, 17 Sep 2013 13:39:10 -0400 Subject: Re: What gives philosophers a bad name? From: johnkcl...@gmail.com To: everything-list@googlegroups.com On Mon, Sep 16, 2013 Bruno Marchal <marc...@ulb.ac.be> wrote: >> So you are suggesting that a thing like broken glass is made of numbers > ???? I was just saying that things are not made up of things. A broken glass > is NOT made of number. That has no meaning at all. What happens is that > addition and multiplication of natural numbers emulate dreams, which might be > dream of a broken glass. OK. How is that any different from saying broken glass is made of numbers? >> don't tell me there is no such thing as a thing, that's just more gibberish. >> > It is a matter of tedious, and not so simple, exercise to see that the > computations exist in some definite sense when we postulate arithmetic. (This > is done in good textbook, and very well done in Epstein & Carnielli, but also > in Boolos & Jeffrey). Physical things then appears as stable percept And concerning broken glass I said in my September 11 post "It must have stable properties of some sort or I wouldn't be able to identify it as a thing". > by persons living those dreams. OK. Therefore the physical universe and the physical things in it exist. >> Make up your mind! First you say everything is the process of "natural >> numbers" in "relative computations" and then you say "digital machines, >> which are defined in term of number relations" are an exception to this >> because what they do "is not a process". The sum of number relations is not >> a process?? None of this makes any sense to me. > Some number relation defines some machines, or some programs, which are > static entities.*Other number relations, involving the preceding one, defines > computations, or processes, Name a number relation that does not involve a computation or some other process! > A machine, in that setting is basically one number, relative to some > universal number. Relative? A relation needs at least 2 things, and some sort of computation with them. 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. -- 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.
