Phlogiston was an element that helped scientists explain why things burnt.. It worked for a while (the model could explain the observed phenomona) until the observation was made that when weighing the chemical products of burning found that things didn't add up. Its a good example of selection at a non biological level.
Chairs, tables, technical blueprints, whatever, all must survive the tests of time in some way shape form. What you are claiming is that political activties are more at play than ecological presures (yes like market forces). This reminds me of Feyerband's scientific relativism, you can say that galileo's ideas were adopted by their truth content (or that they provided a reasonable model in which to explain observation) or that he was good at selling telescopes to sea merchants in his day and/or he published his works in italian and not latin. If this is the position, then i'd have to disagree. No matter how many paradigm shifts scientific modeling undergoes, its truth content can be justified in terms of the things you can do with it (fly, build bridges, make software). I dont see the irrelevance of the principle that darwin decides.. The models you're vaguely half quoting survive or not, based their applications. Newtonian mechanics might be mistaken in a fundamental sense but its still useful. Merely saying its "fundamentally wrong" is just sloppy, vague and fails to say anything. Yes there are those that argue against certain interpretations of darwin, but very few agrue against natural selection. Software, approaches to software, dvd formats, chairs, scientific models, must all survive ecological pressures of some kind. This is like like stating "there will or wont be a ship battle tommorrow", or p == true || p == false. I think the thread had deviated from anything vaguely useful from a genuine struts question long before i started waffling. But i dont think its entirely irrelevant.. Mark On 3/18/06, Dakota Jack <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > You commit one of the largest howlers on the history of this list and you > just avoid it by saying this? You cannot even admit saying that committers > are not elected officials was a gaff of huge proportions? What we say > around here to people like this is "Man up!" > > <cough> > On 3/17/06, Steve Raeburn <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > > I think the flaw in my analogy is that nobody will starve if they choose > > not to eat at the Struts shelter :-) > > > > Steve > > > </cough> > > > > -- > "You can lead a horse to water but you cannot make it float on its back." > ~Dakota Jack~ > > --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
