and one more thing, john doe

[John Doe]

No...it began as a tool..and became so fucking
reliable, that it persists as a tool...it has not
become an "unconcious filter" that's absurd; the
process is very deliberate....and I've misunderstood
nothing about Glashow's perspectve; notice the passage
you quoted does not tell us WHAT this "new
development" is... and if you don't believe he does
not take String Theory seriously, ask him - I dare
you...he feels it's a nice step to work out the math,
which is "very compelling", BUT his caveat is, that
what are we to do with this elegant set of equations
if we cannot test them? Get It? see, in science, a guy
can feel that way ; he can kinda sorta like a
hypothesis, but nonetheless feel it to be
insufficient...why can't humanities people grasp this?
WHAT id "outside the experimental method"? String
Theory? Yes, but how is that the same thing as this
ambiguous "experiment from a cultural point of
view"?...the final point is, why exactly have you in
mind to replace empiricism; I mean, do you have an
lucid alternative "way" of thinking that will answer
the questions science poses? You keep forgetting; it's
about the nature of the question - science can answer
"why does it fall down" but it FREELY admits it cannot
answer " why does he like Led Zeppelin"? ok? I figured
we all realized this in high school...and find me a
scientist worth his salt who takes pleasure in
diminishing the value of other kinds of thought..as
long as of course someone doesn't try to insist
particle physicists should, say, suddenly shift gears
and take a Wholistic approach when they operate the
linear accelerator at Stanford....does that make
sense? I mean, would you ask a football player to
bring a violin onto the field in hope it will charm
the ball into receiver's hands?...this Eastern Stuff
is like that; it doesn't work or do what need s to get
done when we are asking a question we want a
quantitative answer to...


--- Geocoda at aol.com wrote:

> you say: 
> 
> .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:
> 
> Sheldon Glashow actually said:
> 
> But oddly there has been a new development, in which
> a new class of 
> physicists is doing physics, undeniably physics, but
> physics of a sort that does not 
> relate to anything experimental. This new class is
> interested in experiment from 
> a cultural but not a scientific point of view,
> because they have focused on 
> questions that experiment cannot address.
> 
> So, not to nitpick and qualify, Johnny, but you've
> misunderstood a couple of 
> key points.
> 
> 1) It's physics, for sure
> 2) It is not temporarily, but permanently outside
> the experimental method
> 
> The point I was trying to make is that there are,
> within and without science, 
> significant areas of thought that fall outside the
> basic outlines of 
> experimental method and, secondarily, that there is
> a tendency to diminish the value 
> of such thinking because it doesn't fit the model.
> What began as a tool has now 
> become an unconscious filter of our perception of
> reality.
> 
> --geocoda
> 



	
		
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