Thread: Philosophy: books and discussion
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Old 06-07-2010, 07:13 PM   #77
WT Sharpe
Bah, humbug!
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Sparrow View Post
Beauty can never be useless imho .
I think what you say about science is, broadly, true - but philosophy is a different matter.
Philosophy can question what science takes on trust.
Quote:
Originally Posted by FlorenceArt View Post


Could you explain what you think science takes "on trust"?
I think Stephen J. Gould said it best:

.....In science "fact" can only mean "confirmed to such a degree that it would be perverse to withhold provisional consent." I suppose that apples might start to rise tomorrow, but the possibility does not merit equal time in physics classrooms.
..........— Stephen Jay Gould, (1941 –2002. "Evolution as Fact and Theory"; Discover, May 1981.


Still, there is a sense in which science subscribes to a certain metaphysical outlook, and that in believing that the world makes sense at all. It didn’t really have to. The laws of physics could have been completely random and arbitrary; and perhaps in some alternate universe, they are. The universality of the laws of nature in this universe, so far as we know its nature and those laws, is a quite remarkable and under-appreciated thing in itself.
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