-----Original Message----- From: lbo-talk-bounces at lbo-talk.org [mailto:lbo-talk-bounces at lbo-talk.org] On Behalf Of Miles Jackson
This is what I love about science: anything held dear at one point in time can be replaced at some point in the future. Given this mutability of science over time, Jon's claim is indefensible. Which "laws" produced by scientists do we say correctly represent the objects of study--Newton? Einstein? A physicist 200 years from now? 500 years from now? (Think how physics has changed since 1500!)
--A scientific law is a contingent understanding of the world that is almost certain to be replaced in the future; it is not an immutable, unchanging characteristic of the universe that existed before humans.
(Arguing that some laws existed prior to humans is precisely analogous to arguing that God existed prior to humans believing in Her. Jon's argument is theological through and through.)
> In short, I think people who want to get involved in this discussion
need to
> do a little homework first.
Obviously I agree!
Miles
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COSMIC UNDERSTANDING Philosophy and Science of the Universe Milton K. Munitz
"One important result of the notion of the intelligible universe is that we cannot coherently use this expression to refer to an entity to which we can have direct access in order to determine its properties and to see whether they are what some cosmological model says they are. The only access is via a cosmological model. The universe as a whole can be described only by means of the grammar of a cosmological model. The grammar is constitutive of the intelligible universe-the universe as a whole. The grammar is not applied to something that already has certain properties. The grammar is not external to that entity; it is internal to it. It constitutes what it is to be such-and-such an intelligible universe. Therefore, apart from that grammar (that model), there is no intelligible universe, no universe as a whole.
"If the intelligible universe can only be thought of in connection with some conceptual scheme, and not as independent of it, then truth for cosmology can only be defined internally to the process of inquiry. If truth is not a matter of correspondence or matching with some antecedently existing subject matter (the universe in itself), then truth cannot be determined independently of a process of evaluation of the comparative merits of different cosmological models. In the course of this inquiry, some decision needs to be made about which scheme to adopt among competing accounts...No account of the known universe can claim finality or perfection for itself... Cosmological inquiry is an indefinitely prolonged search for ever-better accounts of the known universe, a search that has no absolute terminus." [pgs. 178-183]