BODY { font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:12px; }Yes as noted in the Wiki article [yes, I know, I know, how plebeian of me]..on Sheldrake, Brian Josephson [Nobel Laureate in Physics] - who does know of Peircean semiosis and indeed, supports it..wrote in criticism of Maddox's rejection of Sheldrake's hypotheses as 'not testable'. Josephson
criticised Maddox for "a failure to admit even the possibility that genuine physical facts may exist which lie outside the scope of current scientific descriptions" Again, testing for the reality of potentiality, which plays a huge role in the ability of an organism to Anticipate and Hypothesize, is very difficult, since our scientific method, powerful as it is, is focused on discrete individual actualities. Edwina On Mon 12/06/17 1:53 PM , Gary Richmond gary.richm...@gmail.com sent: John, Kirsti, list, John Sowa wrote: A useful term is 'prescientific'. That is not thesame as 'unscientific'. It just means that the methods ofscience are not applicable. Perhaps someday they might be. But nobody knows how. I agree. Peirce used the term 'prescientific' in places in reference to his early cosmological (what we'd call pre-Big Bang) musiings. On this list Jon Schmidt has argued that such early prescientific comsological 'hypotheses', for example, those occurring in certain of the 1898 lectures published as Reasoning and the Logic of Things, esp. in consideration of the famous Blackboard example, offer support for a belief in God as “Really creator of all three Universes of Experience” (CP 6.452) . (In addition, those prescientific musings can be seen to offer an origin of Peirce's three universal categories; but that's for another discussion.) Meanwhile, scientific method has caught up with some previously not (adequately) testable hypotheses about our own post-Big Bang cosmos, so that experiments on such 'spooky' phenomena as quantum action at a distance have recently (2015) been shown to be real to the satisfaction of at least some scientists working in quantum physics. See: https://www.nist.gov/news-events/news/2015/11/nist-team-proves-spooky-action-distance-really-real [1] As described in a paper posted online and published in Physical Review researchers from NIST and several other institutions created pairs of identical light particles, or photons, and sent them to two different locations to be measured. Researchers showed the measured results not only were correlated, but also—by eliminating all other known options—that these correlations cannot be caused by the locally controlled, "realistic" universe Einstein thought we lived in. This implies a different explanation such as entanglement. It seems to me very unlikely, to the point of impossibility, that science will ever (can ever?) develop methods to test pre-Big Bang hypotheses (so, again, the term 'prescientific' seems apt), or for the reality of God. But if quantum action at a distance can be supported experimentally, other 'spooky' phenomena (like telepathy) may prove testable in time as well. Best, Gary R Gary RichmondPhilosophy and Critical ThinkingCommunication StudiesLaGuardia College of the City University of New York C 745718 482-5690 [2] On Mon, Jun 12, 2017 at 8:08 AM, John F Sowa wrote: On 6/12/2017 7:33 AM, kirst...@saunalahti.fi [4] wrote: It may well be that it is LOGICALLY impossible to prove. That may be true. That may be like the existence of God. There are no proofs that God exists. There are no proofs that God does not exist. In fact, there are no two people -- believers or nonbelievers -- who will give you the same definition of God. Just ask them. But I do think they are worth some attention. I agree. A useful term is 'prescientific'. That is not the same as 'unscientific'. It just means that the methods of science are not applicable. Perhaps someday they might be. But nobody knows how. John ----------------------------- PEIRCE-L subscribers: Click on "Reply List" or "Reply All" to REPLY ON PEIRCE-L to this message. PEIRCE-L posts should go to peirce-L@list.iupui.edu [5] . To UNSUBSCRIBE, send a message not to PEIRCE-L but to l...@list.iupui.edu [6] with the line "UNSubscribe PEIRCE-L" in the BODY of the message. More at http://www.cspeirce.com/peirce [7]-l/peirce-l.htm . Links: ------ [1] https://www.nist.gov/news-events/news/2015/11/nist-team-proves-spooky-action-distance-really-real [2] http://webmail.primus.ca/tel:(718)%20482-5690 [3] http://webmail.primus.ca/javascript:top.opencompose(\'s...@bestweb.net\',\'\',\'\',\'\') [4] http://webmail.primus.ca/javascript:top.opencompose(\'kirst...@saunalahti.fi\',\'\',\'\',\'\') [5] http://webmail.primus.ca/javascript:top.opencompose(\'peirce-L@list.iupui.edu\',\'\',\'\',\'\') [6] http://webmail.primus.ca/javascript:top.opencompose(\'l...@list.iupui.edu\',\'\',\'\',\'\') [7] http://www.cspeirce.com/peirce-l/peirce-l.htm
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