Posted on 04/06/2005 11:36:46 AM PDT by Alamo-Girl
Freepers began a most engaging dialogue at the end of another thread! It is not only a fascinating subject - it also presents us with an opportunity to clarify ourselves and hopefully help us appreciate our differences and thus relieve some of the contention on various threads (most especially science and philosophy threads).
The subject is knowledge - which, as it turns out, means different things to different people. Moreover, we each have our own style of classifying “knowledge” – and valuing the certainty of that “knowledge”. Those differences account for much of the differences in our views on all kinds of topics – and the contentiousness which may derive from them.
Below are examples. First is PatrickHenry’s offering of his classification and valuation followed by mine – so that the correspondents here can see the difference. Below mine is js1138’s offering.
Please review these and let us know how you classify and value “knowledge”! We’d appreciate very much your following the same format so it’ll be easier for us to make comparisons and understand differences.
PatrickHenry’s types of “knowledge” and valuation of certainties:
1. Revelation: Spiritual understanding divinely communicated.
Alamo-Girl’s types of “knowledge” and valuation of certainties:
js1138’s types of “knowledge” and valuation of certainties
2. Prediction from scientific theory: I calculate there will be a partial solar eclipse this week.
3. Conclusion from evidence: I conclude from the verifiable evidence that ...
4. Sensory perception of something external to me: I see my dog is lying at my feet.
5. Acceptance of another's opinion: I provisionally accept the opinion of X (an individual or group) as knowledge because (a) I haven't worked it out for myself; and (b) I have what I regard as good reason for confidence in X.
6. Personal memory: I recall I had breakfast this morning.
7. Internal emotional state: I feel I'm happy, or I have empathy, compassion or sympathy for you.
Separate List for theological knowledge:
2. Faith: Belief in a revelation experienced by another.
2. Theological knowledge, indirect revelation: I believe in a revelation experienced by another, i.e. Scripture is confirmed to me by the indwelling Spirit.
4. Evidence/Historical fact, uninterpreted: I have verifiable evidence Reagan was once President.
5. Sensory perception of something external to me: I see my dog is lying at my feet.
6. Personal memory: I recall I had breakfast this morning.
7. Prediction from scientific theory: I calculate there will be a partial solar eclipse this week.
8. Trust in a Mentor: I trust this particular person to always tell me the truth, therefore I know …
9. Internal emotional state: I feel I'm happy, or I have empathy, compassion or sympathy for you.
10. Evidence/Historical fact, interpreted: I conclude from the fossil evidence in the geologic record that …
11. Determined facts: I accept this as fact because of a consensus or veto determination by others, i.e. I trust that these experts or fact finders know what they are talking about.
12. Imaginings: I imagine how things ought to have been in the Schiavo case.
2. Sensory perception of something external to me: I see my dog is lying at my feet. I am aware that this has limitations, but what choices do I have? I learn the limitations and live with them.
3. Personal memory: I recall I had breakfast this morning. Same limitations apply, except that they are more frequent and serious.
4. Logical conclusion: I can prove the Pythagorean theorem is valid and true. The trueness may be unassailable, but the conclusions of axiomatic reasoning are only as true as the axioms, which may be arbitrary. Outside of pure logic and pure mathematics, axiomatic reasoning drops quickly in my estimation of usefulness. People who argue politics and religion from a "rational" perspective are low on my list of useful sources.
5. Prediction from scientific theory: I calculate there will be a partial solar eclipse this week. I am not aware of any scientific theory that I understand which has failed in a major way. Some theories, of course, make sharper predictions than others. Eclipses are pretty certain.
6. Conclusion from evidence: I conclude from the verifiable evidence that ... Oddly enough, "facts" are less certain in my view than theories.
7. Acceptance of another's opinion: I provisionally accept the opinion of X (an individual or group) as knowledge because (a) I haven't worked it out for myself; and (b) I have what I regard as good reason for confidence in X.
As a result of theistic, totalitarian government. The norm for most of Western and middle eastern history.
"A mathematician, a physicist, and an engineer are driving through Wisconsin. By the side of the road they see a Holstein with no (visible) black spots.
'Wow!' says the engineer, 'I didn't know there were white cows in Wisconsin!'
The physicist, slightly more precisely notes, 'Well, all you really know is that there's one white cow in Wisconsin.'
The mathematician, slave to rigor, corrects them both, 'Actually, all we really know is that there is at least one cow in Wisconsin which is white on at a least one side.'"
And then I chirp in from the sidelines: "Wisconsin does not exist, except as an arbitrary opinion of men drawing imaginary lines on pieces of paper which they imagine represents the ground, and accepting that the imaginary lines on the pieces of paper actually create something that is more than an opinion."
"Good theories do not get proven wrong. They just get assigned or limited to a range of conditions."
Right.
Somebody else mentioned Heisenbergian Uncertainty and Einsteinian Relativity.
Both of those things are completely false, untrue, when you are talking about a car accident in an intersection. There is no relativistic effect, and there is no uncertainty. Newtonian physics describe the car crash to a tee. Heisenbergian Uncertainty completely fails to explain the car crash...in fact, it might lead you to erroneously believe that one car could pass right through the other with no damage. But that, in fact, is completely impossible. Heisenberg works for subatomic particles under study at high energy. It is completely wrong for a Buick hitting a Ford. Newton, on the other hand, is completely right for the Buick hitting the Ford.
If both of them were approaching the speed of light, Heisenberg would still fail completely to describe anything.
Newton would still tell you what would happen when the one smacked the other.
But Einstein would chime in that the cars MIGHT miss each other because they each got so small as they approached light speed that more space was opened up so that maybe one could squeak past the other.
A classic mental error is to believe that the newer theory, which describes something at the fringes of observation (Heisenberg, for example) supersedes everything else.
Thus, we have folks saying, and really believing that, theoretically, somebody could walk right through a wall, or that my breakfast fork could simply rise from the Earth and pass out of the gravitational field..."anything is possible"..."theoretically".
Of course, the "theory" that thinks that Heisenberg and Einstein say that, or combined, somehow say that, is just a completely misunderstanding about the very limited and special cases, from our perspective, that Einstein and Heisenberg were speaking of.
What, in the real world, approaches the speed of light?
Nothing.
Everything in our world is at Newtonian speeds, or actually AT the speed of light. We don't get a little bit shorter when we speed up from 45 to 50 miles per hour. And we don't have a "wavelength" either, even though we can plug our numbers into a formula which will give us a "wavelength" for each of us based on our mass.
What, in the world outside of the supercollider and high energy physics lab, behaves uncertainly?
This is trickier.
Strict determinists would probably say "Nothing" and assert Newton. But if you really think about what entropy is and does, it's essentially a randomizer for things working at Newtonian speeds and sizes.
Nevertheless, even entropic "uncertainty" (I am coining an uncomfortable phrase) is bounded. It does not, and CANNOT (ever) literally rain "cats and dogs" unless (a) God intervenes directly - then anything is possible, but we aren't dealing with the laws of Physics at that point but the legislator who, like a US Judge, can basically do anything he wants and everybody has to obey, or (b) a tornado is passing by a pet store.
Yours is the error. Older theories are a subset of the newer.
Your error is assuming you understand quantum mechanics and relativity.
When Benjamin Jowett was Dean of Oxford (mid-19th century), the rhyme associated with him in the yearbook went as follows:
First come I.He's the model, obviously.
My name is Jowett.
There is no knowledge but I know it.
What I don't know isn't knowledge.
I am the Master of this College.
I'm not sure either. I don't even think Asimov was sure. It's been quite some time since I read it, but my recollection (which is an uncertain source of knowledge according to my list) is that he wrote it more as a conjecture than a firm conviction.
In any event, I don't agree with the claim some have posted here that our Western development of science is specifically attributable to Christianity. It's certainly true that science was developed -- since Galileo mostly -- while the religion of the West was Christianity, but there's the awkward fact of a thousand years of Christianity prior to Galileo which are virtually barren of science, and who gets credit for that? As I've pointed out before, poor ol' Zeus is never given credit for the accomplishments of the Greeks. Anyway, without something more persuasive than mere historical sequence, the alleged causal connection between science and Christianity may be no more than post hoc, propter hoc.
It does speak well of Christianity, however, that it coexists with a science-oriented society. There are certainly tensions, as the evolution threads will demonstrate, but it's a whole lot better environment for science than Islam.
Post 247 should have been addressed to you too.
No. Solar eclipses are predicted from a dynamical model of the solar system that extrapolates from the configuration of planetary bodies at present, Newton's laws of motion, and the law of universal gravitation. For solar eclipses (unlike lunar eclipses) the necessary alignment is too precise to expect to see simple regularities, and we don't. We need a fundamental understanding to make the predictions work.
Well, then call me a halfwit.
To do science an orderly universe is necessary. While faith assumes that the rules can be broken at any time in an illogical and unpredictable manner.
You are correct that science was born because of the faith that the universe is consistent because it had one God. But that does not mean that, litterally speaking, faith belongs in the science classroom.
The concept of faith that my perceptions are genuine measurements of reality might be a subject for philosophy class. But science should not concern itself there.
And, by remarkable coincidence, it took about 1000 years to 'Westernize' the Mideast import. ;^)
No. You'd calculate the precision of the momentum measurement, realize that it entailed the position measurement had vanishingly small uncertainty, and decide to ignore quantum. Or better yet, you'd have a simple rule to apply (quantum mechanics, outside a very few specified exceptions, cannot productively be applied to macroscopic objects).
What, in the real world, approaches the speed of light?
The electrons in every iodine atom in every molecule of thyroxine in your body?
Even more relevantly, magnetism is in fact the relativistic effect of moving charges
I'm more inclined to give credit to the Druids. The central characteristic of society that allows science to flourish is individual liberty. And the spirit of individual liberty that characterizes Western culture seems to have its roots in opposotion to the romans.
By the time Rome fell and local kings sprouted up, people were in the habit of opposing tyranny. the habit of opposition gave us the Magna Carta, Parliamentary government and the American Revolution.
Since most western governments were theistic, opposition to government also meant opposition to forced religion, and the idea of secular government.
Science really began to flourish when religious freedom became the norm.
LOL!
Just west of here, there's a rather run-down looking establishment called the Congress Motel.
Hardly anyone else thinks this is funny.
bookmarking for later reading!
Fascinating...
From the same page:
"Dr. Johnson once remarked, of an evening spent in society, that there had been a great deal of talk, but no conversation."
Fair points all.
Let me rephrase:
What part of the Ford and Buick in the intersection approach the speed of light? (and has any effect at all on the outcome)
LOL
It's been a long time since anyone thought "engaging" me in anything was productive.
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