Etienne wrote:
>
> But measurement and experiment (although doubtless essential to the
> practice of science) are not really where maths becomes essential to
> understanding science.
This makes sense to me. It's been quite a few years since I read some account of Feynman's discoveries (and I can't even remember if it was Feynman's own or by someone else), but the part that left me quite baffled involved math which had nothing whatever to do with either measuring or any experiment. Something about some strange way of summing to get rid of infinities or something????????? Some features of the world revealed by physics simply have no corresponding or even analogous features in the 'visible' world which common language deals with. John Thornton's responses to Justin seem valid, but he seems to be mostly establishing that a "superficial" understanding _may_ be only _somewhat_ superficial and offer some, significant, real understanding. That does not seem to me inconsistent with the essential drive of Justin's posts.
Many scientists have produced some very bad metaphysics -- but they can get away with it in part, I would say in large part, because of the over-confidence of so many non-scientists that they can understand correctly the science involved. The arrogance of non-scientists indulging in science-based philosophy is one of the plagues of 20th/21st century intellectual life.
Justin likes to self-label his own thought as pejoratively (from some assumed 'popular' perspective) as possible, and that may be making his posts on this thread stick in the craw of some unnecessarly. :-)
Carrol