[malignd at aol.com]

We're on the same page, I think.  Perhaps algebra was a crude choice with which to make my point.  But doesn't math require some sort of empirical check?  Isn't that what Godel showed?

But Mathematics is completely un-empirical and completely independent of science! ... Mathematics would never settle for an empirical proof.




-----Original Message-----
From: bandwraith <bandwraith at aol.com>
To: pynchon-l <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Tue, Apr 16, 2013 9:37 pm
Subject: Re:


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 -- from methods to what specifically is studied, and how -- depends on the medley of personalities, funding and need one finds in modern scientific contexts. To call it "science" and then sort it into the right morality-bin is to discuss a  popular, a layman's, version of science. It's fine, but don't expect such an analysis to say anything about "real science". Prejudice, greed, and the fleshandblood motivations of modern scientists are indispensable to discovery. See also: Against Method 4th ed., Paul Feyerabend.


To say "science gave us computers" is to say quite literally nothing. How? What sequence of discoveries produces a computer? and, now, should I permute the order? What then? One more: how can we be sure of counterfactuals: "devices which wouldn't exist were it not for science." ? This is a stronger statement than it appears. Is science a unique historical process, with equally unique material correlates? See also: Historical Ontology, Ian Hacking.


Let me say as well, this discussion calls on a particularly Western suppressed premise: the moral rectitude of progress itself. So what if we don't have computers? Fuck 'em.


And now to generalisation. I'm sure you see where I'm going by now, so let me just say this. The choices scientists are presented with, and the decisions which they make, differ in substance between disciplines. And technological innovation from scientific discovery is a process distinct from science itself.  See also: You figure it out...


P



On 16 April 2013 08:04, alice wellintown <alicewellintown at gmail.com> wrote:

I didn't say anyone attacked me. I don't think anyone did. 




On Mon, Apr 15, 2013 at 5:45 PM, Rev'd Seventy-Six <revd.76 at gmail.com> wrote:


"...rather than argue against what I've argued, which is, that science is the new religion, the greatest risk to life on Earth, the P-Lister elected to distort my argument and recast it as an atack on people who work in science or scientists."



For starters, it wasn't an attack on you personally; point of fact, it wasn't an attack at all.  It was a ramble and probably poorly written, sparked by confusion which caused me to ask you to clarify your position--  which I couldn't quite tell was farcical or not, considering we're having this little chat on devices that allow to communicate over vast distances  --devices which wouldn't exist were it not for science.  For as many hazards as you might argue science has produced, it has produced an equal number of benefits.  I don't see it as being particularly sacred, but I do think it's taken an unfair number of knocks over the last little while because there's this weird tendency to characterize a vast, fascinating field encompassing a scintillating number of disciplines as somehow being Against Humanity.  In P there's a certain cautiousness throughout to the uses of science, and that's what I thought we were discussing, not whether or not capital-S science were going to stomp us with Karloff size twelves for our failure to be god-fearing enough. 


You've again stated science is the greatest risk to life on earth, which I don't hold to be any more or less true than the statement that human greed is the greatest risk to life on earth.  We're at an impasse, is all.  Not a matter of fault if we disagree.  Again, sorry for any offense.


-David










 
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