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To: edsheppa
Some even appear to hold both positions, which I find curious.

While I find evolution in almost everything, I find that some kind of design or consistency in the laws of substance are also necessary for those who do science. What good would the law of gravity do, or Snell's law do, if the nature of mass and light were evolving?

213 posted on 12/07/2005 12:58:21 PM PST by RightWhale (Not transferable -- Good only for this trip)
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To: RightWhale
What good would the law of gravity do, or Snell's law do, if the nature of mass and light were evolving?

While I agree there must be some level of consistency and patterns for science (and irrespective of science, who would deny that our reality is consistent?), I don't agree with your point above. In the first place I don't see how this is fundamentally different from our evolving understanding of the nature of mass and light. In the second, a scientific theory can be a good approximation even if the underlying reality is changing.

Fun side note: I read a book awhile back called Blood Music (I think it was Greg Bear). IIRC, one of the themes in the end of the book is that the nature of reality is changed when a new physical theory is constructed so long as the theory is consistent with what has come before. This is a sort of meta-version of the idea that consciousness creates reality (I guess the pomo version is that reality is socially constructed).

220 posted on 12/07/2005 5:33:30 PM PST by edsheppa
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