> > An
>earlier paradigm would be Newtonian mechanics.
>
>And this cannot be tested because . . . ?
>
Well, for one thing, two of the Three Laws of Motion are counterfactual. Indeed, the First Law can't even in principle be verified. They're presuppositions of the system that cannot be demonstrated, but need to be taken on faith if Newtonian mechanics is going to get anywhere. Same thing goes for the assertion of the existence of absolute motion and space.
***
Oh, you mean testing each individual proposition. That thought had not even occured to me, which shows how Quinean-Duhemian I am. But the theory can be tested because taken as a whole it has consequences. For example, that objects attract each other according to an inverse square law. That we are able to predict the actual paths and location sof the planets, and even turn up planets we didn't know were there using this apparatus, is a strong confirmation of the theory. If some bit or another of it didn't work, and some of it doesn't, we wouldn't know from the failure of the prediction just what went wrong. But the fact that we cannot direct;y test whether space is absolute does not mean that Newtonian mechanics is in the same boat as creationism, which is really the point of insisting on testability.
--jks ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com
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