Always good to see a full-on spods-against-fops battle!
First up, whatever else is true, I think we can agree that irrational numbers very definitely *are* irrational, in the sense that they are not ratios. Offensiveness to rationality had nothing to do with it, historically or otherwise.
Further comments:
>>
>>Hmmm well, the distinction between "up" and "down" is taught to us in
>>primary school, and up quarks don't point in the opposite direction to
>>down
>>quarks, so I guess Murray Gell-Mann's a worthless faker too. And
>>superstrings aren't strings, so that's bad news for Hawking.
>It is obvious that you don't understand how such terms are
>used in physics.
I thought it might be obvious that I *did*know how they're used in physics, and knew that they were not used to mean "up" and "down".
>The terms "up" and "down" refer to possible
>quantum states that quarks can occupy in Gell-Mann's theory.
>Within the context of this theory these terms have very definate
>meanings and the theory itself is very much testable and
>falsifiable (in fact Gell-Mann's quark hypothesis and the
>related theory of quantum chromodynamics have survived
>the most rigorous experimental tests). The notion of "superstrings"
>has a rather definate meaning within the context of quantum
>gravitational theory and the quest for unification of gravity
>with the electroweak and strong fields.
Thank you, very clear. But the context was Sokal & Bricmont's book which explicitly said it "made no claim about the validity of postmodern theory", but was a many-page diatribe about misuse of maths & physics words by fops. My point was that spods misuse words too.
[snip]
>>I've never understood what's up with science-spod types who refuse to
>>learn
>>a few technical terms, apply themselves and accept some metaphorical
>>language when it's someone else's field, but demand limitless
>>indulgence in
>>their own.
>Looks like Sokal & Bricment struck a nerve with you.
I have no horse in this race -- I'm an economics spod, myself. But I've had my nerves struck hard and often by maths and physics types who regularly truck into the markets, call themselves "rocket scientists" and then proceed to misapply their models to economic data while refusing to understand basic concepts of finance. I've no reason to suspect that they'd be any better when in comes to the fops' turf.
>What you
>fail to understand is that even when scientists use such colorful
>language as "up" and "down" quarks (are you aware that quarks
>are also said to come in "flavors" and to have "colors"?
How strange, I'm charmed.
[snip for fear of saying something rude about Karl Popper]
>Can the pomos that Sokal & Bricment make the same claim
>for the theories that they champion. Why the attempt by
>so many pomo authors to take on the auror of science when
>their theories are clearly not scientific.
Why the attempt by so many spods to take on the auror of literature ("Finnegan's Wake", ye faith!) when their theories are not literary? Same reason the fops use spod-talk -- it sometimes seems like it might help get a point across, I would think.
>And I fail to see the
>point of metaphors which are based on very clear misunderstandings
>of basic scientific or mathematical concepts.
But are happy with ones which are based on very clear misunderstandings of simple English words. "Up" as a property of quarks is not the opposite of "down". Evocative or nay, that's a wrong use.
-------------------------------
And while I'm typing, more of the same:
[same post]
>dd
>ah, metaphor--he never says so, but great. please
>unravel the terms of the "metaphor" for us.
As George Formby said "It's no good looking at me!". I've never read a word of this stuff, as I hoped would be clear from my naive and simple-minded words. But nor have the spods present. So the position is:
1. I know pretty little about Lacan, but am prepared to believe there might be something to him.
2. The spods know pretty little about Lacan, but regard him as a crank and faker.
So we're as ignorant as each other, but I'm slightly nicer. I'll take those odds as not bad for a Thursday.
dd
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