[alice wellintown]

What P does is to set science and mathematics against the day labor of men
and women. Is it OK to be a Luddite? Yes, it is. Itz not an
anti-intellectual stance, or anti-science or mathematics position, but
certainly it puts the workers and their solidarity, at cross-purposes with
science and industry (GR's Big Science and the "German sickness", that is,
of course, not a German pathology, but a Western one, one that is most
evident and most powerful and dangerous in the USA), and
then....Vineland....the end of the cold war...a 1984 that, like a rocket
that has not Yaw, veers off target and lands not with a bang but a budget
cut.


On Wed, Apr 17, 2013 at 5:41 AM, Prashant Kumar <
siva.prashant.kumar at gmail.com> wrote:

> Fair enough. In less douchey terms: we have to care about the fact that
> different kinds of science are introduced, amended, and extended according
> to the dictates of a specific discipline. It doesn't make sense to base the
> kind of cultural analysis I mean on, say, the sequence quantum mechanical
> discoveries which led to The Bomb, for e.g., because such an analysis is
> post hoc. Discoveries which supposedly constitute a science look different
> on a smaller time scale. Physics in the service of "techno-science"
> understands its conceptual basis and proper mechanism of operation
> differently to "normal" physics. In the former a lot of things are
> phenomenological, ad hoc, guess-timates etc.
>
> P.
>
>
>
>
> On 17 April 2013 19:27, alice wellintown <alicewellintown at gmail.com>wrote:
>
>> Wha?
>> Respect the conceptual divides which obtain in science?
>>
>>
>> In any event, science, big science and big math are subjected to P's
>> satire.
>>
>>
>> On Wednesday, April 17, 2013, Prashant Kumar wrote:
>>
>>> I of course agree that science needs critics, critics who look at its
>>> cultural *as well as* conceptual dimensions. My point is just that in
>>> doing so, we have to respect the conceptual divides which obtain in
>>> science.
>>>
>>> As to comments above on mathematics, mathematics is *not* independent
>>> of science. Physical theory relies on mathematics, and if we accept results
>>> following from physics, then we need to admit that mathematical
>>> structures have some empirical basis<http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/structural-realism/>.
>>> Let's take this argument further still, and say that mathematics which
>>> isn't invoked in physics constitutes a giant archive of (unrealised)
>>> possibilities. In other words, one can argue that *quantitative* *
>>> representation* is contingent, and divides into the realised and the
>>> counterfactual. In such a picture, mathematics is a formalised way of
>>> making counterfactual statements about physical reality. This a variant of
>>> Constructivism, and is counter to the mathematical Platonism you seem to
>>> assume, bandwraith. Now, the truth statements made in mathematics are of a
>>> different class than those made by science: mathematical truths which do
>>> not have empirical basis are riffs on reality. And, all of mathematics is
>>> just possible (counterfactually speaking) physics. The concept of rigor
>>> goes out the window, since it is easy to make rigorous statements if they
>>> are epistemic, rather than ontic. The truth criteria of science and maths
>>> are, in the account just given, incommensurable.
>>>
>>> This opens up an interesting possibility. Consider quantitative truths
>>> which *do* have some basis in reality; that is, they describe some
>>> physical phenomenon. Well, why can't we test a theorem by doing an
>>> experiment? If theorem T_1 is true, then phenomenon P_1 will occur, else
>>> P_2. In quantum physics, it is now possible to conceive of a kind of
>>> quantum computer which could prove theorems through experiment, in just
>>> this fashion. The subtle cheat is that we are not proceeding inductively,
>>> but deductively. Indeed, parts of string theory (the sci am article I
>>> linked in the gravity thread; "the thing" is called AdS/CFT) have been
>>> tested in a similar fashion.
>>>
>>> Prashant
>>>
>>>
>>> On 17 April 2013 11:36, <bandwraith at aol.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> Interesting you should mention that. Arguing against "science" is like
>>> arguing that there's no such thing as gravity. Which is fine to do, but
>>> what is the counter-explanation for all the phenomenon that General
>>> Relativity explains? Until one comes up with a better explanation, GR
>>> stands. That's the beauty of science. Unlike religion, it's open to
>>> challenge. There is a backdoor way to attack the scientific process,
>>> however, that is less boneheaded, and that's to attack the language, after
>>> Gallileo, in which it finds expression- mathematics, which is often taken
>>> for granted. Statistics is the obvious but not the most fundamental
>>> example. Many scientific hypothesis are accepted or rejected on the
>>> strength of a statistical analysis of measurements of some kind. The
>>> assumptions behind statistical validity can be faulty, but science protects
>>> itself from this by admitting that possibility and allowing for
>>> reinterpretation and possible rejection of previously accepted results. The
>>> final description however will still generally be in mathematical terms.
>>> Biology, which has resisted this trend for a long time, in favor of a
>>> purely descriptive approach, is also becoming more and more computational.
>>> And even if biological meaning demands a qualitative framework, many of the
>>> techniques involved in biological science are heavily dependent on
>>> mathematical inferences.
>>>
>>> But Mathematics is completely un-empirical and completely independent of
>>> science! Truth, as it is understood mathematically, does not require a
>>> single empirical observation. It is a purely logical exercise, and much
>>> more rigorous in its proofs than science. Mathematics would never settle
>>> for an empirical proof. It may be that reality, in a scientific sense,
>>> happens to be perfectly congruent and consistent with a mathematical
>>> description, but that possibility is not a given, otherwise String Theory,
>>> for example, would be true on the basis of mathematics alone.
>>>
>>> Furthermore, mathematics itself, as Pynchon has humorously indicated, is
>>> by no means a closed case- with all its questions locked up. Science, by
>>> keeping close to the empirical, avoids these problems. It is a question
>>> that is suggested by the current cover of The Bleeding Edge- the vanishing
>>> point- where all dichotomy comes to a final resolution, in this case, the
>>> divide between description and the described, or, epistemology and
>>> ontology. Choose your complementary terms.
>>>
>>> In the end it is a question of how we know. Mathematics, the chosen
>>> language of science, is as close to art and music and poetry, as it is
>>> to dirt and air and stardust- and just as prone to flights of fantasy.
>>> Algebra is perfectly logical. No such proof exists for reality.
>>>
>>> p.s. Anybody made it to The Museum of Mathematics yet? Worth the trip?
>>>
>>>      http://momath.org/
>>>
>>>
>>> -----Original Message-----
>>> From: malignd <malignd at aol.com>
>>> To: pynchon-l <pynchon-l at waste.org>
>>> Sent: Tue, Apr 16, 2013 5:59 pm
>>> Subject: Re:
>>>
>>> This is a smart post with which I agree.  I would add that science is a
>>> method -- of investigation and discovery.  To rail against science is like
>>> railing against algebra.
>>>
>>>
>>> -----Original Message-----
>>> From: Prashant Kumar <siva.prashant.kumar at gmail.com>
>>> Cc: pynchon -l <pynchon-l at waste.org>
>>> Sent: Mon, Apr 15, 2013 7:36 pm
>>> Subject: Re:
>>>
>>>  So, a couple of things; a two-step if you like: reification and
>>> generalisation.
>>>
>>>  First: science is not a contiguous set of practices. It is not
>>> monolithic, and therefore its meat and method is not isolable in the way
>>> our dear interlocutors have presumed. So, whatever you say about the
>>> ethical colour of man or machine depends peculiarly on man, machine, and
>>> the way the former uses and is changed by, the latter. *See also*:
>>> technologies of the self. Variegated of course by a soupcon of historicism.
>>>
>>>  What I'm saying maybe does seem irrelevant, but consider that the kind
>>> of science we get -- fr
>>>
>>>
>
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