Tedd:
>I suppose you're characterizing this quote as intolerant.
>Could you explain how and where it displays that?
Bertvan:
The two quotations were meant to show a contrast in attitude. The physicist
is not only tolerant of dissent, he regards it essential for healthy
development of ideas. The biologist is quick to ridicule any interest or
attitude he doesn't share.
> > Steve Jones: I have a problem with scientists who spend most of the time
>> looking at their own navels, trying to define what it is they're
>> supposed to be studying.
>
>> There's a disease of middle-aged literary men called Hearty Degeneration
>>of the Fat; when you get old, you boom about Big Issues. G.K. Chesterton
>>was a classic example. Scientists, I guess, have a related problem -
>>Anguished Uncertainty of the Elderly is probably a better term.
>> The consciousness field, the
>> meaning-of-life field - it's always left me cold.
Tedd:
>According to Jones, the kinds of approaches he doesn't like
> * don't or can't define the problem
> * don't do experimental work
> * speculate about things that can't, even in theory, be proven
one way or the other
> Which great physicists of the last century ignored Jone's advice
> and adopted all three of these characteristics in their
>aproaches to science?
Bertvan:
I would guess all scientists who add anything important to knowledge struggle
to define the problem. All of them who changed the status quo in any way
speculated about things that couldn't at the moment be proved. All
speculation about evolution is something that can't be proved, one way or the
other - and maybe never will be. The belief that evolution can be explained
naturalistically is a speculation that can't be proved one way or the other.
I would have thought all scientists speculated about things that can't, even
in theory, be proved, but apparently some do not.
Bertvan
http://member.aol.com/bertvan
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