pynchon-l-digest V2 #4508

John Doe tristero69 at yahoo.com
Sun Oct 9 22:35:02 CDT 2005


Einstein said a lot of things, and they should be
taken in context; he was an ardent subscriber to
testing, as are all scientists...and sorry but it is
self-correcting,and if you can't see that, you're
reading too much trendy theory; wich is obvious since
you use the term positivist, as if it really means
anything anymore...and I don;t know any scientists who
are part of "scientism" ; that's a dopey label oanly a
non-scientist would invent...scientists enjoy many
things taht can't be tested..again..everytime somebody
goes slinging hip Lit Crit lingo at me I just gotta
ask - do you KNOW any scientists personally? Do you
realize they enjoy art, Ben & Jerry's, Bauhaus ( both
the school and the band ), etc...and no, sane
scientists don't undervalue all that stuff ....and
they don't claim testing hypothesis the is the
comprehensive definition of Truth, since what truth is
to people varies...apparently my qulaifiers about
science using approximations and provisional concepts
has fallen on deaf ears...and no Sheldon Glashow
didn't say String Theory is not true cuz it can't be
proven false, he said that String Theory is
"philosophy, not science" because there is no way to
test it at the moment...again, qualification: he, like
any sanr scientist, would be perfectly happy to accept
String theory the minute it's tested and the results
fit the math. Whoever said what you claim they said
was making the same point, or else he/she was not
scientist of any repute. Blake's little aphorism there
seems to me to describe science pretty well; Newton
first imagined Gravitation operating, then he
described it and mathematically formulated it - what
was imagined became what is known....;  )



--- Geocoda at aol.com wrote:

> This rhetoric about scientific method being purely
> self-correcting is just a 
> positivist's wet dream. Proposing hypotheses and
> testing them is a valuable 
> technique, but hardly the comprehensive definition
> of truth some people claim. 
> Einstein said imagination was more powerful than
> knowledge, and described the 
> importance of dreams in his work.
> 
> The problem with scientism is that it undervalues
> anything 'science' in its 
> current state does not understand. Some contemporary
> physicists say string 
> theory can't be true for the simple reason that no
> experiment can ever prove it 
> false. What kind of reasoning is that? (Hint: not
> inductive.)
> 
> Put down that petrie dish and read your William
> Blake: "What now is known was 
> once only imagined." Paradigm shift, anyone?
> 
> --Geocoda
> 



		
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