Posted on 03/13/2004 11:53:26 AM PST by js1138
With the high vacuum of the moon, an area shielded from the sun will be heated by solar energy only by conduction through the rocks, which would be very inefficient over a long distance. It will equilibrate with space by radiation, which gets inefficient as the temperature drops. At some point you'll reach a steady state, where the heat arriving equals the heat being lost, and the steady state will likely be very cold. The vapor pressure of ice goes almost to zero at -100 C, and as importantly the rate of sublimation is almost zero. So ice in a crater could potentially last a long time. In principle, you're right; at equilibrium, it would all sublime away. However, calculating how long that might take involves so many very loose estimates that I'm sure people could come up with scientifically justifiable estimates that differed by orders of magnitude
If that's supposed to be "Romans go home!" it's grammatically grotesque. Not even the right verb. Probably slave graffiti.
Reminds me of the tale of the philosopher who claimed that everything was determined. He arrived home one day to discover that a servant had neglected his duties, and instead of carrying out his master's wishes, the fellow had gotten drunk and slept the day away. As the philosopher prepared to punish the disobediant wretch, the servant said: "But master, it's not my fault. According to your own teachings, I was pre-determined to disobey you!" To which the philosopher replied: "Yes, just as I was pre-determined to beat you for it."
The moral of the story is that an "explanation" that accounts for all events, and predicts none, is an explanation of nothing.
Yeah. I missed out on all those bell-bottoms and polyester suits. I wonder if it's too late for me to catch up.
Your personal Hell will be to spend eternity selling polyester leisure suits to fat, bald, non-English speaking Japanese businessmen with bad teeth.
"[T]he opposition and conflict between the 'natural scientific' and the more 'spiritual scientifically' oriented medical traditions in a deeper sense appears as an expression of the difference between the perspectives you come to when you develop a thought-sight experience or a will-touch experience in a too one-sided way."
-Sune Nordwall
It is no mystery to me that some assume a rigorous definition of science for themselves, and most likely practice science within a strict discipline. Hence we get statements like, "It is not dealing with proven facts, so it is not science." We need to deal with that, and we need to ask whether public schools can accomodate a wider definition of science.
I would also like to add the following questions which I would like to hear you out on:
1.) Can intelligence be quantified? If so, on what basis? If not, why not?
2.) Can design be quantified? If so, on what basis? If not, why not?
The Greatest "Missed Marketing Opportunity" of all time was for Monty Python to pass up re-releasing "Life of Brian" on the same day Mel Gibson released "Passion". Would have been cheeky, too.
No, because there is no objective basis. We can certaintly rate people, and even animals on scale according to their ability to solve puzzles, but this is just a self-definition. You are saying that intelligence is what I measure with my test of intelligence. It's useful, though, if your test measures a skill needed in a real application.
2.) Can design be quantified? If so, on what basis? If not, why not?
Give it a try. Attempt to give us an objective basis.
Well, here I'll put on my Feyerabend hat, and question whether a strict discipline of this sort exists, and whether such a discipline would be a good thing. Physicists tend to do science in quite different ways from biologists and from chemists., Even within any given discipline, some of us are cautious; some take huge leaps. Some tend to fly by the seat of their pants; some insist of theoretical rigor. Some try to look at the big picture; others focus on details. And I can give you good historical instances where science done from each of these perspectives was essential to solving an important problem.
Science has a very limited philosophical underpinnings. An insistence on openness and honesty; an insistence that theories must be broadly consistent with, and explanatory of, observations; reproducibility, self-consistency, and rationality, and that's it. Try to put science in a tighter philosophical straitjacket than that, and you'll choke it to death. My problem with high-school textbooks is not that they omit to discuss the scientific method; it's that the scientific method they claim exists is in many cases a fiction.
Can intelligence be quantified? If so, on what basis? If not, why not?
Within limits. we can apply tests of general intelligence to humans; despite the abhorrence of the left, these are largely reproducible and valid. We can do cross-species experiments to compare the intelligence of animals.
Can design be quantified? If so, on what basis? If not, why not?
Dembski claims it can, but I'm highly skeptical. It's akin to asking if one can tell if a given number is random. Take the nth digit of pi to base 10. If you use that as a way to select a one-digit number with equal probabilities of being anything from 0 to 9, it's essentially random. Someone who doesn't know what you're doing has no better than 1 in 10 odds of guessing the number. On the other hand, anyone with a computer who knows what algorithm you're using can calculate it with 100% probability. There really aren't any random numbers; there are only random processes. And, in the same way, there is no way to tell if an entity is designed, without looking at how it came to be.
There would have been riots!
When The Life of Brian opened here, we had only 3 days to catch it before the local fundamentalist witch doctors got it banned.
But it is a classic! The shoe, the shoe! No, the gourd, the Holy Gourd of Jerusalem!
It would be interesting to see what various high school textbooks propose for both a definition of science and scientific method. Against those definitions I would like to test the contention of some that "it is not science unless it is based upon proven facts." I've always thought it to be the part of science to explore reality on the basis of reasonable guesses and thereby arrive at the facts.
I would contend that both intelligence and design are quantifiable to a degree. Also that the manner and degree to which they manifest themselves is highly dependent upon the observer. But I know you will not receive these on face value.
My vocation (parts and service representative) makes it difficult to plot out in writing a detailed thesis on the subject, but I do hope to propose a series of definitions and questions to assist in a better understanding between us.
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