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From: padraig@ut-emx.UUCP (Padraig John Houlahan)
Newsgroups: talk.origins,talk.religion.misc,sci.philosophy.tech,sci.physics,sci.misc,comp.ai
Subject: Re: The Law of Conservation of Knowledge
Keywords: knowledge
Message-ID: <6934@ut-emx.UUCP>
Date: 15 Oct 88 17:26:50 GMT
References: <424@soleil.UUCP>
Reply-To: padraig@emx.UUCP (Padraig John Houlahan)
Organization: UTexas Computation Center, Austin, Texas
Lines: 40

In article <424@soleil.UUCP> peru@soleil.UUCP (Dave Peru) writes:
~Truths plus Falsehoods equals Constant.   T+F=C
~
~For example, when you measure a propagational delay time of an IC gate.  A
~value of 4.5nS is read.  All other values are now considered false. 

All this reveals is your lack of understanding of science. There is such a
thing as experimental error (which is one of the defining properties of science
-when was the last time you heard someone say that god exist with X% 
probability?)

~Have
~we really done anything?  We've created a machine to take the measurement,
~and a machine to make the measurement.

Well if they knew beforehand that the value was absolutely guaranteed to be
4.5ns then there would be no point in the measurement. If you are disappointed
that the measuring device didn't have speech synthesizer that might have said
"god does/doesn't exist" as a result of the measurement then too bad.

Science certainly has its limitations, however deviations
from expected results have driven most of the revolutions that have occurred
in science. It is simplistic to state that the machines give us the results
we want. For example, discovering the constancy of the speed of light 
undermined much of physics and gave birth to relativity; the paradoxical 
wave-particle duality of atomic particles gave birth to quantum mechanics;
the observed galaxy redshift gave rise to the expanding universe and big bang
cosmology and so on.

~Has physics fallen victim to Kurt Godel's Incompleteness Theorem?

Has non-science? Do you lose sleep over that?
 
~Do scientists simply play "cosmic-connect-the-dot" until they die?
 
 Maybe. What about non-scientists?

 Regards,

 Padraig Houlahan.