🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1dk972INNemd@chnews.intel.com> bhoughto@sedona.intel.com (Blair P. Houghton) writes:
>In article <BxBpHs.DtF@unixhub.SLAC.Stanford.EDU> sschaff@roc.SLAC.Stanford.EDU (Stephen F. Schaffner) writes:
>>You simply can't do science without the 
>>"unquestioning belief" (usually unconscious) in the foundations upon which 
>>it is built.
>
>NOT.
>
>One makes assumptions, or alludes to the work of others (which
>also is based on assumptions), and deduces the next level of
>facts[*] from those assumptions.
>
>But, in many cases, logic does not require assumptions of
>any kind, since it can make the assumptions irrelevant to
>the results; i.e., the results support themselves.

     It requires the assumption of logic, if nothing else.

     And as much is it pains me to use this particular overworked 
     example, I believe that Godel showed, at least in one restricted
     system, that the system itself is not capable of proving
     all theorems within the system with a limited number of
     assumptions.  I expect no different behavior from such large and messy
     systems as reality.  In other words, 'ya gotta make assumptions',
     lots of them.  Logic doon't help here, laddie.

>If everywhere in the self-supporting loop there are observable
>and repeatable phenomena, then you have an assumptionless
>fact, and faith is not necessary.

     Fact?  Assumptionless?  Hell, you make any number of assumptions
     in looking at a number on a dial, to say nothing of the assumptions
     that proceed down from the dial to whatever phenomenon you happen to   
     be dialing.

>(Thomas Edison made no assumptions; that's why it took over
>six thousand prototypes to make a profitable incandescent
>light-bulb; there was no faith, there was only risk and
>persistence and a passing observation that electrically-
>heated materials can glow).

     Looks to me like he made assumptions by the metric buttload.

     How many insulators did he try?  Did he try Lake Michigan?
     Jellyfish?  Tuna on rye?  Assistants' nostrils?  Every hair
     on his head?  
     
                            dale bass
-- 
C. R. Bass                                          crb7q@virginia.edu        
Department of Mechanical, 
     Aerospace and Nuclear Engineering
University of Virginia                              (804) 924-7926