Re: preposterous

From: Moorad Alexanian (alexanian@uncwil.edu)
Date: Thu Apr 05 2001 - 10:06:32 EDT

  • Next message: george murphy: "Re: preposterous"

    I have always said that physics is the prototype of science and I do not
    know of any reasonable argument against that. The proof of that is the
    historical order in which the different sciences achieved maturity. Imagine
    biology, historical biology, etc. without the experimental scientific method
    developed by the likes of Kepler, Newton, Galileo, etc. By knowing what
    science is, then we are in a position to know what it is not. For instance,
    it is self-evident to me that the fundamental question of origins is not a
    scientific question, the answer lies outside of science. It is foolish to
    attempt to find a theory for it. I never said that other sciences cannot
    teach physicists something new. But it is true that the people who did big
    things in biology were physicists, viz., Schrodinger, Delbruck, etc.
    Moorad

    -----Original Message-----
    From: george murphy <gmurphy@raex.com>
    To: Jonathan Clarke <jdac@alphalink.com.au>
    Cc: asa@calvin.edu <asa@calvin.edu>
    Date: Thursday, April 05, 2001 9:40 AM
    Subject: Re: preposterous

    >Jonathan Clarke wrote:
    >
    >> Was it Rutheford who said that "Science consists of physics and stamp
    >> collecting"? I think that attitude with its self righteous sense of
    >> superiority to lesser mortals has permeated conciously or otherwise much
    of
    >> the culture of physicists. Certainly when I was an undergraduate I
    >> encountered it and it was only partlyu tongue in cheek. This has been
    >> reinforced by much of the popular work of the philosophy of science (e.g.
    >> Popper and Kuhn) also being written from the perspective where physics
    >> provided the norm and the illustrations. At least, that is how I
    remember
    >> them. If we are going to talk about philosophy of science I think we
    need
    >> to conciously distance ourselves from such views because they are so
    >> ingrained.
    >
    >By way of throwing some petrol on the fire -
    > There is some truth in the statement attributed to Rutherford. (&
    if
    >Rutherford didn't say this there is a nice substitute in a statement of
    Bunsen:
    >_Der Chemiker der kein Physiker ist ist gar nichts - "The chemist who is
    not a
    >physicist is nothing at all." Rutherford of course thought it a great joke
    that
    >he had gotten the Nobel Prize for - Chemistry!) Physics achieves a higher
    >degree of precision and certainty in the areas in which its methods can be
    >applied, and other sciences gain considerably when it becomes possible to
    apply
    >physical theories to them. The application of thermodynamics and quantum
    >mechanics to chemistry is an obvious example.
    > However -
    > 1) The methods of physics _can't_ be adoped (at least with our
    present
    >or any forseeable state of understanding) as the _modus operandi_ of some
    >sciences - e.g., evolutionary biology.
    > 2) Physics has achieved so much success by working with
    differential
    >equations and "bottom-up causality" that we tend to forget that those
    equations
    >need boundary conditions (in space & in time), & such conditions bring in
    >something like "top-down causality". The nature of living systems may be
    related
    >to this in crucial ways. This doesn't mean that they can never be
    described in
    >terms of physics, but the ways in which the necessary physics will have to
    be
    >formulated may be rather different from that of the present day.
    > 3) The fact that physics does achieve a higher degree of precision
    and
    >certainty than other sciences doesn't mean that those other sciences can't
    tell
    >us anything at all or give us any confidence in their results. I think
    that is
    >the mistake Moorad has been making: Physics gives precise agreement
    between
    >theory and observation for many phenomena and historical geology and
    evolutionary
    >biology don't give as precise correlations for the phenomena they deal
    with, so
    >we can't place any reliance on the claims of the latter sciences. But that
    just
    >doesn't follow.
    >
    >Shalom,
    >
    >George
    >
    >George L. Murphy
    >http://web.raex.com/~gmurphy/
    >"The Science-Theology Interface"
    >
    >
    >



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