Article View: sci.physics.relativity
Article #961Re: ETHICS IN THE ERA OF POSTSCIENTISM
From: Pentcho Valev
Date: Thu, 26 Nov 2009 06:36
Date: Thu, 26 Nov 2009 06:36
23 lines
3021 bytes
3021 bytes
W. H. Newton-Smith, The Rationality of Science, Routledge, London, 1981, pp. 70-71: "For Popper a theory is scientific if and only if it is falsifiable. This means that it must entail some basic statement which could turn out to be false, thereby falsifying the theory. How do theories entail basic statements? The short answer is that they do not. If we think of a theory as the set of postulates such as the laws of Newtonian mechanics together with their deductive consequences, we shall not find among those consequences any basic statements. In order to derive a testable prediction from a theory we need to specify initial conditions together with a host of auxiliary hypotheses." The problem emerging at the end of Newton-Smith's text is purely ethical. The choice of auxiliary hypotheses unavoidably involves some arbitrariness so one can bias it in favour of either falsifying or saving the theory. Needless to say, saving predominates - e.g. FitzGerald and Lorentz introduced the auxiliary hypothesis known as "length contraction" and saved the ether theory for a while. If they had not introduced it, the ether theory would have been falsified, Newton's emission theory of light confirmed and Divine Albert's Divine Theory nonexistent. Pentcho Valev pvalev@yahoo.com
Technical Details
Message-ID:
<708c4182-ef89-42b1-8f08-8524ba327978@z41g2000yqz.googlegroups.com>Path:
arc1-ca.pugleaf.net!g2news1.google.com!news3.google.com!postnews.google.com!z41g2000yqz.googlegroups.com!not-for-mailReferences:
<94ec153a-3a42-4290-967f-2effb7dd38e1@t2g2000yqn.googlegroups.com> <8f2d5c5f-8804-4014-b5f4-e08aad12b8d4@c3g2000yqd.googlegroups.com> <aa9c8a77-ebdf-41bb-9304-0bb2173fdb25@n35g2000yqm.googlegroups.com> <82ff1d51-bc7a-4b29-bf47-7156ce5e466d@b2g2000yqi.googlegroups.com> <c1f41bc7-3a8d-46c9-aece-925b1e2813e6@w19g2000yqk.googlegroups.com> <ab59a553-15eb-4eb0-b3af-05af7b6c8273@m16g2000yqc.googlegroups.com> <16c8264c-2fa5-4ffb-975f-54c98463e40f@t18g2000vbj.googlegroups.com>Show Full Headers
Complete Article Headers
X-Google-Thread: 237b8ad48,c03712c0a1ac3b94 X-Google-Attributes: gid237b8ad48,public,usenet X-Google-NewGroupId: yes X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit Path: arc1-ca.pugleaf.net!g2news1.google.com!news3.google.com!postnews.google.com!z41g2000yqz.googlegroups.com!not-for-mail From: Pentcho Valev <pvalev@yahoo.com> Newsgroups: sci.physics.relativity,sci.physics,fr.sci.physique,fr.sci.astrophysique Subject: Re: ETHICS IN THE ERA OF POSTSCIENTISM Date: Wed, 25 Nov 2009 22:36:12 -0800 (PST) Organization: http://groups.google.com Lines: 23 Message-ID: <708c4182-ef89-42b1-8f08-8524ba327978@z41g2000yqz.googlegroups.com> References: <94ec153a-3a42-4290-967f-2effb7dd38e1@t2g2000yqn.googlegroups.com> <8f2d5c5f-8804-4014-b5f4-e08aad12b8d4@c3g2000yqd.googlegroups.com> <aa9c8a77-ebdf-41bb-9304-0bb2173fdb25@n35g2000yqm.googlegroups.com> <82ff1d51-bc7a-4b29-bf47-7156ce5e466d@b2g2000yqi.googlegroups.com> <c1f41bc7-3a8d-46c9-aece-925b1e2813e6@w19g2000yqk.googlegroups.com> <ab59a553-15eb-4eb0-b3af-05af7b6c8273@m16g2000yqc.googlegroups.com> <16c8264c-2fa5-4ffb-975f-54c98463e40f@t18g2000vbj.googlegroups.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: 89.215.201.48 Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 X-Trace: posting.google.com 1259217373 26595 127.0.0.1 (26 Nov 2009 06:36:13 GMT) X-Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com NNTP-Posting-Date: Thu, 26 Nov 2009 06:36:13 +0000 (UTC) Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com Injection-Info: z41g2000yqz.googlegroups.com; posting-host=89.215.201.48; posting-account=Lz-LbgoAAABPDavKeW-eYeobwLHD_cvQ User-Agent: G2/1.0 X-HTTP-UserAgent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 5.1; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; .NET CLR 1.1.4322),gzip(gfe),gzip(gfe)