🚀 go-pugleaf

mhorning@zeus.calpoly.edu (Mark E. Horning (Captain Neutrino)) writes:
>No, no. You have to treat science as an approximation. As information
>goes towards infinity, science goes towards reality. Therefore whe it 
>changes it more closely approximates the truth.
 
I should keep my mouth shut, but here goes.  The concept of science
as a series of successive approximations to some "truth" (of nature,
or whatever) is fatally flawed.  Let's trot out a couple of hoary
examples.  Does one consider general relativity to be a "second-order
correction" to Newtonian gravity, an extra term in the series of truth?
Well, in the post-Newtonian approximation, it is literally a bunch of
higher-order terms, but that seems to me to miss the point.  I would
argue that general relativity is a fundamentally different world-view
from Newtonian gravity, and should be seen as not just "closer to the
truth," but as a radical reformulation of our assumptions about the
world.  One could say similar things about quantum mechanics, especially
in e.g. the theory of metals (conductivity, etc.).  Similarly for
concepts of inheritance before and after the acceptance of Mendel ...