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To: general_re; Diamond
what it is

I don't know exactly what it you are going after. In any case, the conditions is what they are: particular. The result of discovery will be the same, particular.

A certain presumption--perhaps still tame and legitimate in Aristotle but certainly not after Kant--imagined that particular conditions could be generalized beyond themselves and raised to a universal status.

Of course they is what they are. A unified field theory is likewise limited. One of the joys of the press was the political hay they made with Einstein's theory of relativity. Perhaps they did not "universalize" the theory, but they certainly took great pleasure in extending and generalizing it into fields from which it did not originate. Hayek called this the abuse of reason.

1,258 posted on 03/03/2003 11:01:35 AM PST by cornelis (pergo modo)
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To: cornelis
I don't know exactly what it you are going after. In any case, the conditions is what they are: particular. The result of discovery will be the same, particular.

If the design inference consistently passes or consistently fails such tests, we may then inductively reason our way to a conclusion about the worth of it. If we were so inclined, we could then take the next step into Humean skepticism and dismiss that conclusion for the simple reason that the inductive principle is unproven. But, since virtually everything we think we know is gained inductively, that does not strike me as a useful position to take.

1,265 posted on 03/03/2003 12:36:23 PM PST by general_re (Friends help you move. Real friends help you move bodies.)
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