Gadianton
I have to run right now, but quickly, Popper wasn't a physicist. He earned his Ph.D in philosophy.
This thread has become a hydra lol. Every head chopped only results in three new heads popping up.
Maybe I should go back to the Hume thing after I finish with Popper's gross misuse of language.
Tal's epistemology (and DCP's)
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_Gadianton
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ugh. how did i manage thinking he was initially a mediocre physics student gone philosopher. anyway, if you decide to answer any of my questions, I hope you'll drop us a name of a philosopher who can explain how we know more now than we did 500 years ago.
Lou Midgley 08/20/2020: "...meat wad," and "cockroach" are pithy descriptions of human beings used by gemli? They were not fashioned by Professor Peterson.
LM 11/23/2018: one can explain away the soul of human beings...as...a Meat Unit, to use Professor Peterson's clever derogatory description of gemli's ideology.
LM 11/23/2018: one can explain away the soul of human beings...as...a Meat Unit, to use Professor Peterson's clever derogatory description of gemli's ideology.
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_Tal Bachman
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I hope you'll drop us a name of a philosopher who can explain how we know more now than we did 500 years ago.
---Well, the good news is that you would no doubt say that the sum total of knowledge about the world has increased over the past five hundred years; we might not be able to present some airtight account of knowledge yet, but at least we're not stuck trying to make the incalculably implausible sound true - and I think that gives us something to feel okay about!
I'll have a look at your post when I get a moment to concentrate.
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_Tal Bachman
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Hi Gad
You wrote:
---I don't think we should believe that induction gives us probabilistic certainty "just because it seems to be common sense"....I need to brood about this some more!
---Well, perhaps we should admire everyone in some way or other. Maybe it would be better to inquire about which arguments seem to hold up best.
I will say that on the business we're talking about, I think the best (certainly the most hilarious) guy out there is the now deceased Australian philosopher David Stove. I think I'll pull his book out for my last section here on how Popper so grossly misuses language. I've done enough of the spadework on this d*** thread!
See ya
Tal
You wrote:
I don't really see the virtue in believing that induction gives us probabilistic certainty just because it seems to be common sense.
---I don't think we should believe that induction gives us probabilistic certainty "just because it seems to be common sense"....I need to brood about this some more!
No one really needs to do deep philosophy at all, science probably won't grind to a halt without it, so we could all just agree on some simple formulation of realism and go on our way. But anyone who digs down is going to get stuck in a mess. I guess the question I still have which I hope you'll answer, is which philosophers should we admire?
---Well, perhaps we should admire everyone in some way or other. Maybe it would be better to inquire about which arguments seem to hold up best.
I will say that on the business we're talking about, I think the best (certainly the most hilarious) guy out there is the now deceased Australian philosopher David Stove. I think I'll pull his book out for my last section here on how Popper so grossly misuses language. I've done enough of the spadework on this d*** thread!
See ya
Tal
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_Tal Bachman
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Now, a few words about Popper's use, or abuse, of the English language. It is relevant to all sorts of discussions about Popper's philosophy. It is also the reason why Popper's philosophy is the subject of some dispute; for no sooner does someone produce ten quotes all appearing to mean one thing, than someone else can produce ten quotes appearing to mean just the opposite. Take the question of knowledge, and of scientific progress, for example.
I have shown in my posts that Popper claims that things about the world can never be known to be true (that he denies [K]). His position, to be more specific, is that we might (rather accidentally) be in posession of the truth, but that we could never know that we were (in fact, he is fond of quoting Xenophanes, who he interprets as saying that "even if by chance [man] were to utter the perfect truth, he would himself not know it; for all is but a woven web of guesses". C&J, p. 34). We forever remain, according to Popper, as the man who has guessed the sole winning number in a lottery of limitless numbers, with no way to ever know that he guessed correctly. ("The Growth of Guesses" - not exactly the most alluring title, is it?).
Anyway, point is, according to Popper, entirely blind, and entirely unverifiable, guess of the lottery player is best described as "scientific knowledge". (Anyone feeling sympathetic to this view, again please try not to think of your wife's epidural block, your last antibiotic prescription, your car, your last plane trip, your lasik surgery, your Palm Pilot, your electric drill, etc. And also, you should feel just fine when, just prior to your wife's operation, the surgeon tells you, "I never know what I am talking about, and I am going to have to guess my way through this". GET REAL, HOMEYS!).
SO...
How to reconcile quotes like 1A, or 1E, or 1L above, with quotes like these?
3A.) "...The view proposed here hopefully adheres to the possibility of the growth of knowledge, and therefore of knowledge...One will hardly describe as a skeptic a man who believes in the possibility of the unlimited growth of knowledge". (OK, 99).
3B.) "I assert that continued growth is essential to the rational and empirical character of scientific knowledge; that if science ceases to grow, it must lose that character." (C&J, 291)
3C.) "Within the field of science we have, however, a criterion of progress...I assert that we know (italics in original) what a good scientific theory should be like, and - even before it has been tested - what kind of theory would be better still..." (C&K, p. 293-294).
---Passing comment: I should like to know exactly how Popper could ever "know" anything about a scale of theory quality without some earlier apprehension - that is, some earlier justified belief (which Popper says does not exist) about how the world actually might be. After all, against what standard other than a standard afforded by how the world is, or can best be understood, could a "quality of theory" test ever be run?
3D.) "Truth - absolute truth - remains our aim; and it remains the implicit standard of our criticism" ("Realism and the Aim of Science", 25).
I could cite dozens more examples, and each one of the examples would sound like any scientist might have said them - not a man who considers knowledge equivalent to an unverifiable guess about numerically infinite lottery. What to make of this?
A few possibilities:
1.) The Tal's Fault Theory (TFT): In this possibility, I have either misquoted Popper, or have taken quotes out of context, which if left in, would have been seen to mean something dramatically different...so that, somehow or other, Popper's philosophy is coherent, but somehow or other, something has gotten drastically lost in my translation of it;
2.) The Contradiction Theory (CT): Popper contradicts himself;
and
3.) The Massive Equivocation Theory (MET): Popper uses the same words with very different meanings, without specifying that, so that maybe he isn't really contradicting himself at all, perhaps just is a very sloppy writer.
I don't believe that anyone here will be able to point to any examples of TFT; if they do, I'd like to hear about it, and will be happy to concede my error. I submit that the appearance of many confusions and contradictions in Popper's philosophy is simply a result of...confusions and contradictions in his philosophy.
For CT, take quote 3D above. Can someone explain to me how "absolute truth" could EVER serve as an "implicit", explicit, or any kind of "plicit", "standard of criticism", when according to 8000 passages in Popper, "absolute truth" is TOTALLY, COMPLETELY, HOPELESSLY, beyond any mortal's grasp? Popper, as we have seen, is loathe to admit that beliefs can ever be justified! To say then that "absolute truth" could ever serve as any "standard of criticism" at all, when that would require its discernment, can only be a contradiction, or at least, a total impossibility. It is no different than saying that an irredeemably invisible tape measure serves as our standard of measurement during house building. And that is only one example out of many dozens of contradictions, or impossibilities, I could list.
But what about for MET? How could we not be confused if the MET were true? Take quote 3A above. I regard this statement as, in a way, unforgivable. Anyone reading it, and the passage it was taken from, would never guess that throughout the rest of Popper's writings, "knowledge/scientific knowledge" is explicitly described as being "built on sand", or as capable of referring to UNTRUE BELIEFS, or as being synonymous with "wild guess". And since the passage in question was defensive in nature, a response to those who label him a skeptic, and contained no admission by Popper that he regularly employs this word to mean not just inabsolute knowledge, but nothing approaching the concept of knowledge as described in every dictionary ever compiled at all, it is almost hard not to wonder if Popper equivocated - misled - here deliberately.
What Popper often means when he uses the word knowledge I think I have made clear. Let me include one more quote which makes clear the frequent combination of CT and MET in Popper's thought. It begins sounding innocuous enough, but then terminates in the giveaway:
"The rationalist tradition, the tradition of critical discussion, represent the only practicable way of expanding our knowledge - conjectural or hypothetical knowledge, of course". (C&J, 204).
Let me submit here that "inabsolute knowledge" we could perhaps give a pass to, but..."conjectural knowledge"? Nowhere in his entire corpus does Popper define this oxymoronic phrase, and so we are left with a phrase as meaningless as "absolutely certain guess", "one-dimensional cube", "righteous wickedness", or "black whiteness". And that he could nonchalantly toss in the words "of course", as though the idea that knowledge was no species of belief at all and was genetically identical to a conjecture or "wild guess", was the most natural thing in the world to believe, is perhaps even more testament to the remorseless glee with which Popper utilizes every rhetorical trick available to make an extremely implausible set of assertions, sound less so.
And I suppose it is here I ought to mention David Stove, who I mentioned to Gadianton above.
Off to bed, more later.
T.
I have shown in my posts that Popper claims that things about the world can never be known to be true (that he denies [K]). His position, to be more specific, is that we might (rather accidentally) be in posession of the truth, but that we could never know that we were (in fact, he is fond of quoting Xenophanes, who he interprets as saying that "even if by chance [man] were to utter the perfect truth, he would himself not know it; for all is but a woven web of guesses". C&J, p. 34). We forever remain, according to Popper, as the man who has guessed the sole winning number in a lottery of limitless numbers, with no way to ever know that he guessed correctly. ("The Growth of Guesses" - not exactly the most alluring title, is it?).
Anyway, point is, according to Popper, entirely blind, and entirely unverifiable, guess of the lottery player is best described as "scientific knowledge". (Anyone feeling sympathetic to this view, again please try not to think of your wife's epidural block, your last antibiotic prescription, your car, your last plane trip, your lasik surgery, your Palm Pilot, your electric drill, etc. And also, you should feel just fine when, just prior to your wife's operation, the surgeon tells you, "I never know what I am talking about, and I am going to have to guess my way through this". GET REAL, HOMEYS!).
SO...
How to reconcile quotes like 1A, or 1E, or 1L above, with quotes like these?
3A.) "...The view proposed here hopefully adheres to the possibility of the growth of knowledge, and therefore of knowledge...One will hardly describe as a skeptic a man who believes in the possibility of the unlimited growth of knowledge". (OK, 99).
3B.) "I assert that continued growth is essential to the rational and empirical character of scientific knowledge; that if science ceases to grow, it must lose that character." (C&J, 291)
3C.) "Within the field of science we have, however, a criterion of progress...I assert that we know (italics in original) what a good scientific theory should be like, and - even before it has been tested - what kind of theory would be better still..." (C&K, p. 293-294).
---Passing comment: I should like to know exactly how Popper could ever "know" anything about a scale of theory quality without some earlier apprehension - that is, some earlier justified belief (which Popper says does not exist) about how the world actually might be. After all, against what standard other than a standard afforded by how the world is, or can best be understood, could a "quality of theory" test ever be run?
3D.) "Truth - absolute truth - remains our aim; and it remains the implicit standard of our criticism" ("Realism and the Aim of Science", 25).
I could cite dozens more examples, and each one of the examples would sound like any scientist might have said them - not a man who considers knowledge equivalent to an unverifiable guess about numerically infinite lottery. What to make of this?
A few possibilities:
1.) The Tal's Fault Theory (TFT): In this possibility, I have either misquoted Popper, or have taken quotes out of context, which if left in, would have been seen to mean something dramatically different...so that, somehow or other, Popper's philosophy is coherent, but somehow or other, something has gotten drastically lost in my translation of it;
2.) The Contradiction Theory (CT): Popper contradicts himself;
and
3.) The Massive Equivocation Theory (MET): Popper uses the same words with very different meanings, without specifying that, so that maybe he isn't really contradicting himself at all, perhaps just is a very sloppy writer.
I don't believe that anyone here will be able to point to any examples of TFT; if they do, I'd like to hear about it, and will be happy to concede my error. I submit that the appearance of many confusions and contradictions in Popper's philosophy is simply a result of...confusions and contradictions in his philosophy.
For CT, take quote 3D above. Can someone explain to me how "absolute truth" could EVER serve as an "implicit", explicit, or any kind of "plicit", "standard of criticism", when according to 8000 passages in Popper, "absolute truth" is TOTALLY, COMPLETELY, HOPELESSLY, beyond any mortal's grasp? Popper, as we have seen, is loathe to admit that beliefs can ever be justified! To say then that "absolute truth" could ever serve as any "standard of criticism" at all, when that would require its discernment, can only be a contradiction, or at least, a total impossibility. It is no different than saying that an irredeemably invisible tape measure serves as our standard of measurement during house building. And that is only one example out of many dozens of contradictions, or impossibilities, I could list.
But what about for MET? How could we not be confused if the MET were true? Take quote 3A above. I regard this statement as, in a way, unforgivable. Anyone reading it, and the passage it was taken from, would never guess that throughout the rest of Popper's writings, "knowledge/scientific knowledge" is explicitly described as being "built on sand", or as capable of referring to UNTRUE BELIEFS, or as being synonymous with "wild guess". And since the passage in question was defensive in nature, a response to those who label him a skeptic, and contained no admission by Popper that he regularly employs this word to mean not just inabsolute knowledge, but nothing approaching the concept of knowledge as described in every dictionary ever compiled at all, it is almost hard not to wonder if Popper equivocated - misled - here deliberately.
What Popper often means when he uses the word knowledge I think I have made clear. Let me include one more quote which makes clear the frequent combination of CT and MET in Popper's thought. It begins sounding innocuous enough, but then terminates in the giveaway:
"The rationalist tradition, the tradition of critical discussion, represent the only practicable way of expanding our knowledge - conjectural or hypothetical knowledge, of course". (C&J, 204).
Let me submit here that "inabsolute knowledge" we could perhaps give a pass to, but..."conjectural knowledge"? Nowhere in his entire corpus does Popper define this oxymoronic phrase, and so we are left with a phrase as meaningless as "absolutely certain guess", "one-dimensional cube", "righteous wickedness", or "black whiteness". And that he could nonchalantly toss in the words "of course", as though the idea that knowledge was no species of belief at all and was genetically identical to a conjecture or "wild guess", was the most natural thing in the world to believe, is perhaps even more testament to the remorseless glee with which Popper utilizes every rhetorical trick available to make an extremely implausible set of assertions, sound less so.
And I suppose it is here I ought to mention David Stove, who I mentioned to Gadianton above.
Off to bed, more later.
T.
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_Gadianton
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I'll read through this stuff more tommorow. But I had to make a quick comment about David Stove. He's probably the first philosopher I ever read, not knowing what philosophy was at that time. I was a teenager exploring every pseudoscience and occult topic I could get my hands on and if I remember right, I read a book or a paper by David Stove that, if I'm even close to remembering right, kind of 'Jan Shipped' Immanuel Velikovsky's work.
Lou Midgley 08/20/2020: "...meat wad," and "cockroach" are pithy descriptions of human beings used by gemli? They were not fashioned by Professor Peterson.
LM 11/23/2018: one can explain away the soul of human beings...as...a Meat Unit, to use Professor Peterson's clever derogatory description of gemli's ideology.
LM 11/23/2018: one can explain away the soul of human beings...as...a Meat Unit, to use Professor Peterson's clever derogatory description of gemli's ideology.
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_Ren
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Tal,
I would like to see quote 3A in context. I would hazard a guess that he was refering to [scientific] knowledge.
This can be plainly inferred from 3B, where he specifically quantifies it as 'scientific knowledge' that can be considered to be 'growing'.
As far as 3C -well -he's 'logically' assessing the theory itself. Which can exist as an abstract logical 'entity', seperately from reality. That's why he's saying he can 'know' something about it. Because a theory can be inspected and 'judged' completely seperately from reality.
I will agree that it's not a particularly 'satisfying' type of 'growth'. You can be confident about a lot of stuff being 'probably not true', but not about a lot else.
Well, I can accept the basic point without letting it force me to it's most extreme, drastic conclusion. That's nothing to do with 'interepereting Popper', as much as just making up my own mind. As I made clear before, I don't entirely agree with Popper. I had already moved 'away' from him as I explained way back on Page 2 - in relation to Kuhn. This thread has only given me further doubt. But I don't 'cling' to some of Popper's central ideas just because Popper said them. I 'cling' to them because they make sense scientifically. I can see how they work practically...
A comment that AlitD made earlier I related to. He was talking about the idea of 'discounting a theory on one failed experiement!'. Go back a few years, and I think I would have argued that to be the case! I wouldn't dream of it now, but that doesn't mean I don't see a place for 'some' of Popper's ideas. Falsification is obviously (at least to me) a central part of science. I just see that as - well - obvious. I don't need to accept the 'extremes' of Popper's thought processes to accept that...
Your bringing up a lot of examples that should make me feel a bit 'daft' for doubting modern science in any real way. Well, that may be so. Perhaps in 500 years time, we'll look back at the past 500 years as the only time in human history where we DON'T look back 500 years and have a bit of a snigger at what people used to think, and used to belevie. Are you confident we won't be? Cos I'm not...
As far as TFT's, CT's and MET's - heh - I think that if your gonna get into philosophy, you have to be clear in your language. If you aren't, then you deserve the critism. So I think Popper 'deserves the critism'. What else can I say? I can't justify quotes that - taken in isolation - clearly say something 'rediculous' to somebody who takes the literal meaning in isolation. (And indeed, why wouldn't they?)
We can hope to beleive that we are getting closer and closer to 'absolute' truth, but we never nessesarily reach it. And would have no way of actually knowing for sure when we reached 'absolute truth' anyway.
You seem to see this notion as rediculous, crazy and self-defeatist.
I see it as healthy (if kept in due persepctive), backed up by history and practically obvious. And yet I also see it as fairly obvious that we DO 'know' more than we did 500 years ago. I don't think those two concepts are contridictory. Not if your willing to accept that you can't know that 'blood flows in your veins' in the same way that you know that '2 + 2 = 4'.
I would like to see quote 3A in context. I would hazard a guess that he was refering to [scientific] knowledge.
This can be plainly inferred from 3B, where he specifically quantifies it as 'scientific knowledge' that can be considered to be 'growing'.
As far as 3C -well -he's 'logically' assessing the theory itself. Which can exist as an abstract logical 'entity', seperately from reality. That's why he's saying he can 'know' something about it. Because a theory can be inspected and 'judged' completely seperately from reality.
I will agree that it's not a particularly 'satisfying' type of 'growth'. You can be confident about a lot of stuff being 'probably not true', but not about a lot else.
Well, I can accept the basic point without letting it force me to it's most extreme, drastic conclusion. That's nothing to do with 'interepereting Popper', as much as just making up my own mind. As I made clear before, I don't entirely agree with Popper. I had already moved 'away' from him as I explained way back on Page 2 - in relation to Kuhn. This thread has only given me further doubt. But I don't 'cling' to some of Popper's central ideas just because Popper said them. I 'cling' to them because they make sense scientifically. I can see how they work practically...
A comment that AlitD made earlier I related to. He was talking about the idea of 'discounting a theory on one failed experiement!'. Go back a few years, and I think I would have argued that to be the case! I wouldn't dream of it now, but that doesn't mean I don't see a place for 'some' of Popper's ideas. Falsification is obviously (at least to me) a central part of science. I just see that as - well - obvious. I don't need to accept the 'extremes' of Popper's thought processes to accept that...
Your bringing up a lot of examples that should make me feel a bit 'daft' for doubting modern science in any real way. Well, that may be so. Perhaps in 500 years time, we'll look back at the past 500 years as the only time in human history where we DON'T look back 500 years and have a bit of a snigger at what people used to think, and used to belevie. Are you confident we won't be? Cos I'm not...
As far as TFT's, CT's and MET's - heh - I think that if your gonna get into philosophy, you have to be clear in your language. If you aren't, then you deserve the critism. So I think Popper 'deserves the critism'. What else can I say? I can't justify quotes that - taken in isolation - clearly say something 'rediculous' to somebody who takes the literal meaning in isolation. (And indeed, why wouldn't they?)
3D.) "Truth - absolute truth - remains our aim; and it remains the implicit standard of our criticism" ("Realism and the Aim of Science", 25).
We can hope to beleive that we are getting closer and closer to 'absolute' truth, but we never nessesarily reach it. And would have no way of actually knowing for sure when we reached 'absolute truth' anyway.
You seem to see this notion as rediculous, crazy and self-defeatist.
I see it as healthy (if kept in due persepctive), backed up by history and practically obvious. And yet I also see it as fairly obvious that we DO 'know' more than we did 500 years ago. I don't think those two concepts are contridictory. Not if your willing to accept that you can't know that 'blood flows in your veins' in the same way that you know that '2 + 2 = 4'.
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_A Light in the Darkness
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A few points.
The idea that science more and more approximates the truth in an absolute sense is hotly disputed. If you deny it, it doesn't mean you deny progress in knowledge. This is just one way to think about how progress in knowledge happens. If you criticize someone because they deny increasing knowledge happens in the form of increasingly better representations of the world "out there" and you regard it as prima facie true, then you are just begging the question. Pragmatist theories of truth, for instance, do not necessitate this. You can't declare instrumentalist theories of knowledge irrational by definition and refute a person by pointing out they talk about knowledge in instrumentalist terms.
The reason Gadianton is asking you for philosophers you admire Tal is because the criticisms you are lobbing against Hume, et. al. are apt for all or almost alll modern philosophers. Very few people, for instance, deny that Hume's argument is a good one. Most people just carry on with induction anyway, hence why the argument is called the problem of induction. Interestingly, you finally drop the other shoe and list David Stove, someone who does think he has showed where Hume goes wrong with his argument in favor of inductive skepticism. Indeed, it turns out that you are very much a disciple of him in this thread. (And perhaps other threads, given that he argues that "the intellectual capacity of women is on the whole inferior to that of men." : http://web.maths.unsw.edu.au/~jim/women.html). That's where the quotemining of Popper is coming from.
Also, I think you need to carefully distinguish between what philosophers thought about their own thoughts and what you think the consequences of their thoughts are. If I said, "no ethical philosophers believe in moral truth" most people would laugh this position off the table because quite clearly there are many who believe in moral truth. However, it is true that no one has come up with a crack account of moral truth and definitions of what "moral truth" even is vary and are not always intuitive. Everyone's accounts of it fail at least in some respect. Some more than others. (I'd liken the situation to physical theories known to be inadequate but the best running absent alternatives.) If all I'm saying is that no one has accounted for moral truth, therefore no one reasonably believes in it, that should be distinguished from the former claim.
Gaditanton -
Yes, that's the guy:
http://www.kronia.com/library/journals/scimafia.txt
In essence, he argues that the "scientific mafia" has unfairly and dogmatically shut out Velikovsky who, in his view, has a legitimate case with "startling evidence" in its favor.
RoP -
That's a pretty good metaphor.
The idea that science more and more approximates the truth in an absolute sense is hotly disputed. If you deny it, it doesn't mean you deny progress in knowledge. This is just one way to think about how progress in knowledge happens. If you criticize someone because they deny increasing knowledge happens in the form of increasingly better representations of the world "out there" and you regard it as prima facie true, then you are just begging the question. Pragmatist theories of truth, for instance, do not necessitate this. You can't declare instrumentalist theories of knowledge irrational by definition and refute a person by pointing out they talk about knowledge in instrumentalist terms.
The reason Gadianton is asking you for philosophers you admire Tal is because the criticisms you are lobbing against Hume, et. al. are apt for all or almost alll modern philosophers. Very few people, for instance, deny that Hume's argument is a good one. Most people just carry on with induction anyway, hence why the argument is called the problem of induction. Interestingly, you finally drop the other shoe and list David Stove, someone who does think he has showed where Hume goes wrong with his argument in favor of inductive skepticism. Indeed, it turns out that you are very much a disciple of him in this thread. (And perhaps other threads, given that he argues that "the intellectual capacity of women is on the whole inferior to that of men." : http://web.maths.unsw.edu.au/~jim/women.html). That's where the quotemining of Popper is coming from.
Also, I think you need to carefully distinguish between what philosophers thought about their own thoughts and what you think the consequences of their thoughts are. If I said, "no ethical philosophers believe in moral truth" most people would laugh this position off the table because quite clearly there are many who believe in moral truth. However, it is true that no one has come up with a crack account of moral truth and definitions of what "moral truth" even is vary and are not always intuitive. Everyone's accounts of it fail at least in some respect. Some more than others. (I'd liken the situation to physical theories known to be inadequate but the best running absent alternatives.) If all I'm saying is that no one has accounted for moral truth, therefore no one reasonably believes in it, that should be distinguished from the former claim.
Gaditanton -
Yes, that's the guy:
http://www.kronia.com/library/journals/scimafia.txt
In essence, he argues that the "scientific mafia" has unfairly and dogmatically shut out Velikovsky who, in his view, has a legitimate case with "startling evidence" in its favor.
RoP -
The way Popper might have imagined it (or at least how I visualise what I think Popper thought) is a bunch of people lined in a row, representing different theories. The people can't ever step forward. Not even one step. But they CAN step backwards. And one by one, as you falsify each theory, each person will step backwards. Leaving (ideally) just one person who hasn't stepped backwards. They now 'stand out' against the others - I.e. you CAN judge between them, but the 'last man standing' doesn't move forward. Essentially, the remaing theory remains a 'guess', But our 'very best' guess, that has survived for X years. But still a guess non-the-less. It never moves forward. At all. Ever.
That's a pretty good metaphor.
Last edited by Guest on Thu Jul 19, 2007 3:05 pm, edited 3 times in total.
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_A Light in the Darkness
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e.g.
But I must mention some of the more startling pieces of evidence that have
come to light since Velikovsky published. According to Velikovsky, there were
tremendous electrical discharges between the earth and the giant comet, and
between the comet's head and tail. This among other things, led him to
ascribe an altogether novel importance to electrical and magnetic forces in
the solar system. You must remember that this was in 1950- i.e., before the
dawn of the space age; these were the good old days when inertia and
gravitation were still thought to be equal to every task (plus only a little
help from the sun's light-pressure, to blow comet-tails the right way.)
Well, the whole trend of discovery since then has of course been Velikovsky's
way. He did not actually predict the Van Allen belts, but he said that the
earth must have a magnetosphere much stronger, and extending much further into
space, than anyone else believed possible. He did predict that Jupiter would
be found to be a radio source, long before the astonished radio-astronomers
found it so. And there is much more like that. According to Velikovsky,
there were all over the world, as folklore alleges, rains of burning pitch.
This, among other things, led him to assert in 1950 that the clouds of Venus
must be very rich in petroleum gas. All contemporary knowledge of the
chemistry of the planet's clouds was flatly against it. Yet it has turned out
to be so. If you think this is a bit creepy, you have heard nothing yet.
According to Velikovsky in 1950, Venus must still be very hot, because of the
circumstances or its recent birth and subsequent career. The astronomers had
long "known" that it was cool, and as late as 1959 accepted estimates of its
temperature, such as 59 degrees centi- grade, were still being revised
slightly downward. Yet it has turned out that the planet has a surface
temperature around 800 degrees Fahrenheit.
Backward Venus
This would be hard enough to reconcile with any "uniformitarian" theory which
requires a common origin for all the planets. But worse was to come. For
Mariner II put it beyond doubt that the rotation of Venus is retrograde- that
is, while it revolves in the same direction as that in which all the other
planets both revolve and rotate, it rotates in the contrary sense! No doubt
ad hoc amendments will be tried, to fit this fact into conventional theories
of the origin of the planets (just as desperate ad hoc amendments to a
"greenhouse" theory are still being made to account for the temperature); but
this one will test their ingenuity, that is certain.
Of things that have come to light since the de Grazia book was published, two
deserve mention, however briefly. First, the fantastically turbulent and hot
state of Jupiter- the enormous explosions it suffers, the changes in its speed
of rotation, and a surface temperature perhaps around 1,000 degrees F.
(Remember your astronomical textbooks, and all that ice, miles thick, on
Jupiter? We all "knew," ages ago, how cold and dead Jupiter is.) Second,
what appears to be a vestige of an earlier gravitational "lock" of the earth
on Venus: for Venus is found to turn the same face to us at each inferior
conjunction! (For references on these two matters, see Yale Scientific
Magazine 41, [April, 1967}
well, this is how things are going. The process of silently "borrowing"
Velikovsky's ideas began as soon as he first published; but as can easily be
imagined, with everything going his way, this industry has become enormous.
(One distinguished archaeological career has been made out of a single
paragraph in "Worlds in Collision".) But still no power on earth, apparently,
is strong enough to oblige a single professional scientist to give Velikovsky
the smallest footnote acknowledgement in a learned publication. The stony
silence continues perfectly unbroken
-
_KimberlyAnn
- _Emeritus
- Posts: 3171
- Joined: Thu Mar 22, 2007 2:03 pm
Since this is a forum about Mormonism, have Popper's philosophies ever actually been used by any Mormon apologist to defend Mormonism? I can't imagine it would behoove any Mopologist to claim we can't really know if Mormonism is true or not, though I suppose they could use Popper to show it's impossible to disprove Mormonism, but wouldn't that be a mistake? It seems self-evident (at least to me) that the historical and doctrinal claims of Mormonism have been sufficiently falsified to cast enough doubt on the statement, "I know the church is true", that no one should believe the Mormon church to be true, though they cannot know without a doubt that it is not true.
Perhaps no one can know for a certainty that Mormonism is absolutely false, but it seems employing Popper's flawed, but still useful falsification renders Mormonism's truth claims beyond believability.
KA
Perhaps no one can know for a certainty that Mormonism is absolutely false, but it seems employing Popper's flawed, but still useful falsification renders Mormonism's truth claims beyond believability.
KA