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To: Leftism is Mentally Deranged

"Once again, scientists have to revise their ideas on something."

And you would prefer what, that they stick with ideas in the face of contradictory evidence? That they never come up with any ideas they can't be 100% sure are completely correct?


44 posted on 11/29/2006 12:11:22 PM PST by -YYZ-
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To: -YYZ-; Leftism is Mentally Deranged

It would be vastly preferrable for science to, as appropriate, pose its findings in a fashion which communicates the sense that "this is the best we can tell, right now, given what we presently believe that we know"; to have ideas framed less conclusively, with an implicit openness to further illumination by future discovery; less pretention and more of the honest intellectual grace that unabashedly admits, frankly, "we do not know with absolute certainty" whenever such is the case.

Of course, for such established things as F=ma, one may certainly speak with absolute authority backed by the force of uncontrovortable fact. But, in any scientific quarter where further revelation is probably to be of sustantive impact -- with the potential to radically alter the face of what we now believe that we know -- one ought eschew verbiage that pretends to such ironbound authority.

The future remains an open door; we ought speak of it as such.


69 posted on 11/29/2006 1:32:07 PM PST by HKMk23 (PRO-LIFE: Because a Person's a Person, no matter how small.)
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