MARCO,
>
>
> ELEPHANT:
>> But do all roads lead to the truth?
>
> MARCO:
>> All roads are true.
>
> ELEPHANT:
>> Hm. Long pause before I replied to that one. Can't think of
>> anything very much to say to that. Except maybe "really?".
>
> MARCO:
> Maybe I had to write "All roads are real". I don't know if it's very different
> to your English ears. In Italian, I think we'd translate both "true" and
> "real" with the term "vero".
ELEPHANT:
Like I would treat "really?" and "trully?" as interchangeable, I suppose.
No I don't think it was really a verbal problem on that Level Marco. I
don't think that every road can be a "real" road to the truth either. You
say later that the only thing we can know in a journey without maps is
whether the road is comfortable or not. That's true. But what we don't
know is whether a road that is comfortably high-quality at this point is
really going to be *ultimately* satisfactory. It may still be a nice road,
and lead off in the wrong direction, hence: not all roads are real roads to
the good and the true.
Metaphysics is the only area where we demand this *ultimate*
satisfactoryness, I know. But because of this *ultimate* requirement on the
goal, there will, necessarily, be some ultimate requirements on the roads.
Not all roads will be true roads, not all roads will be real roads, some
will just petter out in swamps.
MARCO:
> Anyway, let's take for example the interesting exchange you had with Dan Dunn
> about gravitation.
>
> DAN:
>> The force of gravity does not and has not existed for
>> nearly a century, but apples continue to fall. Just as
>> it is possible to bring these things (like the force of
>> gravity) into existence, it is possible to obliterate them.
>> According the The General Theory of Relativity,
>> gravitation occurs because time is
>> slower in the vicinity of any massive body.
>
> ELEPHANT:
>> .... have we maybe to take this idea as definitional of
>> the relative "speed of time" and of "massive bodies" in
>> just the same way that Newton's laws
>> are definitional of force and mass?
>
> DAN:
>> Exactly. If you can determine why time is slower within
>> a gravitational field, you will either be hailed as the greatest
>> genius since Einstein himself, or condemned
>> as a crackpot (and hailed as a genius in the future).
>
> MARCO:
> From these words I realize that:
>
> 1) The "General Theory of Relativity" has been invented about 100 years ago.
> Just like "Newton's Law of Gravity", it's an intellectual pattern created to
> explain a Natural Phenomenon.
ELEPHANT:
Stop right there. No. Neither Newton nor Einstein are 'explaining'
"Natural Phenomena". This is evident (1) in that it is their theories which
define what natural phenomenon are in any case (mass, force, acceleration
etc), and (2) in that no *explanation* of gravitation is acheived by either
Newton or Einstein: what is acheived is *mathematisation* of gravitation (or
in Einsteins case of *gravitations* plural): quite a different acheivement.
This mathematisation is like stating the problem(s) in clear language. This
stating of the problem(s) is incredibly useful for getting rockets off the
ground, but it is still the case that stating a problem and solving it are
not the same thing.
I often have to repeat this:
We're still waiting for our long promised scientific *theory of everything*
- it has *not* arrived, repeat *not* arrived. Not yet, boys, not yet. Mark
this. We do *not* know why masses attract. They just do.
(Similarly, we do not understand why over certain intergalactic distances
masses actually repel - they just do).
Sorry to cut this short Marco,
Elephant.
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