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From: bzs@bu-cs.UUCP (Barry Shein)
Newsgroups: net.philosophy,net.sci
Subject: Re: Contempt prior to Investigation
Message-ID: <316@bu-cs.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 27-Mar-86 00:54:04 EST
Article-I.D.: bu-cs.316
Posted: Thu Mar 27 00:54:04 1986
Date-Received: Tue, 1-Apr-86 04:52:33 EST
Organization: Boston Univ Comp. Sci.
Lines: 32
Xref: watmath net.philosophy:4789 net.sci:674


>>It's mighty clear to me that your Western definition of evidence is to
>>limited to be worth anything.
>	Western science does indeed admit it when it's wrong, and is constantly
>incorporating new ideas -IF THEY'RE PROVEN.

Yes, but the argument is that the method by which they accept
something as 'proven' is faulty. I dunno, works well for me but I'm
always open to something useful. Isn't this going round and round in
circles? The statements you are objecting to are purposely
disregarding the scientific method as being of insufficient power to
delve into whatever secrets the writer was interested in. Fine, gets
us to the moon but as far as dealing with each other and ourselves,
well, science seems to offer almost nil, thus the perceived vacuum
and the attempts to fill such. And, as much as I love it, I have to
admit that science denies that which it cannot explain (not always,
not even often, but when it does, annoyingly so.)

I don't think this argument is going to get anyone anywhere, science
is a nature religion rejecting intuitions of humans in favor of
reproducible experiment with fairly strict rules of methodology
(not that they won't start with an intuition, they just won't end
with one.) The sort of opposite argument seen here is a 'human'
religion accepting intuitions over the need for reproducibility or
proof, the fact that we can conceive of it must mean it has some
element of truth, if it can't be proven then the system which sought
to prove it must be wrong.

No argument is likely to resolve these two views, they are dealing
in entirely different worlds.

	-Barry Shein, Boston University