Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!helios!n025fc From: n025fc@tamuts.tamu.edu (Kevin Weller) Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy Subject: Re: Science (was Re: Consciousness) Message-ID: Date: 4 Dec 90 01:55:43 GMT References: <1990Nov9.202525.11717@ncsuvx.ncsu.edu> <3489@aipna.ed.ac.uk> <15724@venera.isi.edu> <1990Nov21.045833.11768@mentor.com> Sender: usenet@helios.TAMU.EDU Organization: Texas A&M University, Computer Science Department Lines: 33 In-reply-to: yamauchi@cs.rochester.edu's message of 1 Dec 90 20:58:48 GMT In article yamauchi@cs.rochester.edu (Brian Yamauchi) writes: > > .... I would argue that, to a large extent, > technology is what "validates" science. (This is why it always > surprises me to find scientists who are anti-technology, although this > disease is relatively rare in the "applied" sciences like CS and AI. > Ironically, businesspeople seem more enamored of high-tech than basic > scientists.) > .... > Brian Yamauchi University of Rochester > yamauchi@cs.rochester.edu Computer Science Department I would agree that technology is the major indication of science's validity, but you must remember that technology in and of itself is not an unqualified good (few things are). Consider the current and future effects of acid rain, the threat of nuclear weapons, etc. If technology went away tomorrow (unlikely [thankfully], but still possible), the ways of science would still be valid, though more difficult. Those anti-tech scientists you mention recognize the negative side of the tech coin, often via science itself. Undeniably, some of them go overboard and declare technology generally bad, which is not true either. They misconstrue the technology question as an either/or proposition; I've see the law of the excluded middle misapplied to so many issues that it doesn't surprise me anymore. In any case, I'm anything but a Luddite back-to-nature freak, but I do understand the reservations some harbor toward over-zealous "technologization." -- Kevin L. Weller /-------+--------------------\ internet: n025fc@tamuts.tamu.edu | aTm | GIG 'EM, AGGIES! | CIS: 73327,1447 \-------+--------------------/