From: Glenn Morton (glennmorton@entouch.net)
Date: Sat Jul 12 2003 - 10:56:29 EDT
Hi David
>-----Original Message-----
>From: D. F. Siemens, Jr. [mailto:dfsiemensjr@juno.com]
>Sent: Friday, July 11, 2003 11:56 PM
>
>Glenn,
>I agree with much of what you say. Philosophy is generally a poor way to
>make a living. I'm thinking of a chap I met many years ago. Had his
>doctorate in philosophy and was working for a big defense firm analyzing
>future needs. He'd been hired for his minor, but said that he used the
>analytical skills he'd learned in philosophy more than anything else. My
>daughter was one of the first group admitted to training in counselling
>who did not have a degree in the human sciences. Turned out the
>philosophy majors consistently did better as Marriage, Family and Child
>Counsellors.
The one thing the grad work in philosophy did give me was an ability to
think critically and
to understand that all knowledge is unerlain by assumptions which may or may
not be true. I think I owe my current position as something of a company
futurist looking over all the various technologies which are coming down the
pike.
>
>There is, unfortunately, no ultimate test for philosophical systems
>except consistency, the /sine qua non/ of all rational systems. This is
>also true of mathematics, where one is free to produce sets of axioms.
>Geometry has three calculi produced by three incompatible parallel
>postulates. But they can also play with different numbers of dimensions,
>even though we experience only three spatial dimensions, though Einstein
>worked with four. String theory is another matter. I may also make note
>of logic, where different approaches have different requirements for the
>matters they can handle. "All dragons are fire-breathers" is true in
>modern logic but nonsense in Aristotelian. There are weaker logics than
>those usually used, modal logics of many types, multi-valued logics.
>Again the criterion is consistency. Beyond that, both math and logic need
>to be suited to the information that must be handled. "This won't work
>for that purpose" is not the same as "this is illegitimate."
>
>Science puts in an empirical test to exclude ranges of theories. This
>works pretty well in the hard sciences, and is becoming more successful
>in some areas of the life sciences. It does not work very well in
>sociology and psychology, where I have been told that there are often
>contradictory theories. There is, unfortunately, a problem that is very
>seldom mentioned. It's basis goes back a century, when a French chap
>named Koenigs showed that, for any movement desired, there are an
>infinite number of mechanical ways to produce it. Poincare extended this:
>for any set of data falling under the least action principle, there are
>an infinite number of theories. This means that any logico-mathematical
>scientific model is only one of an infinite number of equally good
>models.
I am, of course, on dangerous ground disagreeing with a philosopher about
logic, but I would suggest that there may not be an infinite number of
equally good theories for any given set of facts. I absolutely agree that
there are an infinite number of theories which can explain the data, most of
which are trivial semi-clones of each other. YECs logically are correct
that the world may very well have been created with an appearance of age
6006 years ago. That is theory 1. But then there are others who say it was
miraculously created 6007 years ago, etc etc etc. All of those fit the
facts. Are they equally as good as the modern scientific theory? No. If
they were, why would we fight them? They are on a purely LOGICAL basis
equally good. But on an empirical basis, they stink. You can't do
predictions in a universe designed by the YECs.
As an aside, the YECs clearly reject the equally LOGICALLY valid view that
the world was created miraculously 13 billion years ago with an appearance
of age. :-)
>Turning to theology, there are no foolproof tests. But this is not all
>that much different from the other human attempts at understanding, for
>we are finite and fallible. But there are evidences. Bill Williams
>remarks that the Hebreo-Christian scriptures are the only ones that allow
>for a beginning, science's Big Bang.
If he is not careful, someone will accuse him of being a concordist, horror
of horrors! :-)
> We
>recognize there is an absolute standard of truth, and that we cannot be
>certain of attaining it despite our best efforts. It is most inconvenient
>to be human, even though we are the most accomplished creatures on earth.
This is part of that deep mystery of which Howard speaks.
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