George:
You say:
" Start with astronomy. There are 2 things to note about this science.
1st,
> we can't do experiments on stars or galaxies - it would be completely beyond
> the physical ability of any foreseeable technological civilization to
> manipulate the conditions of even our closest star. & 2d, this science is
> historical - all the stars & galaxies we observe are in the past, & in most
> cases the distant past. It's an historical science. However, there are
> billions of stars & of galaxies. We can observe stars of varying masses,
> chemical compositions & ages, in different environments. (Of course all
> those things are inferred but so are all our observational data.) In a
> quite real sense, the experiments on stars have been done for us. It's as if
> we walked into a huge lab & found billions of experiments on the same type of
> system set up under different conditions."
How do you know that it is the same type of system *set up* under
different conditions? This appears to be a conclusion that is beyond the
data, one that we "naturally" make today.
I suppose we might view it as abductive. We try the presumption out for
size. We hope to find confirming or supportive evidence that is
consistent with the presumption. How does that work and not be circular?
Got to go.
bill
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>>>
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>
>
> To unsubscribe, send a message to majordomo@calvin.edu with
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>
To unsubscribe, send a message to majordomo@calvin.edu with
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Received on Sun Aug 2 09:56:36 2009
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.8 : Sun Aug 02 2009 - 09:56:36 EDT