Head To Head
Log In
Register
U-Know! Forum »
God demands emissions?
Log In to post a reply

55 messages
Topic View: Flat | Threaded
grufty jim
grufty jim
1978 posts

Edited May 09, 2006, 22:04
Re: God demands emissions?
May 09, 2006, 22:02
>
> You haven't understood my post have you? Or science.
>
That's fairly arrogant of you to say. I spent a decade working as an industrial engineer. A more than adequate understanding of science was a prerequisite for the job (the year spent studying The Philosophy of Science as part of my degree probably didn't hurt).

>
> The fundamental principle of science are the creation of
> hypotheses which are tested. You isolate the variable you think
> is responsible and leave EVERYTHING else the same (or near
> as damn it) and see the effect (gross simplification of the
> scientific method). Has this been done with the whole complex
> system that makes up the Earths climate? No. Can it be done?
> No. Unless you are a god....
>
That definition seems to exclude astronomy, astrophysics (indeed huge swathes of advanced physics) and all other "sciences" which rely upon mathematical modelling. Einstein's theory of relativity did not qualify as "science" by your definition until 14 years after it was formulated and the bending of light was observed during a solar eclipse.

And even then, the inability to isolate all elements of this complex system mean that no physicist - not Newton, not Einstein, not Mach, not Lorentz, none of them were engaged in scientific work. This is a mind-boggling assertion.

What you have actually done is to take a single narrow definition of "science" and dismissed anything which falls outside it as "not scientific". This is despite the fact that your definition is clearly neither exhaustive nor exclusive. See any dictionary definition of the word to confirm this:

http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=science

Or else read the writings of Einstein, Planck, Bohr or Feynmann. All of whom discuss definitions of science which are at some variance to the one you provide. Does your arrogance extend to insisting they, like me, also "don't understand science".

I would point you towards Einstein's "Principles of Research", "Geometry and Experience" and "Physics and Reality" as examples of perfectly plausible alternate views of science (these essays are available in most "collected writings" - check out "Ideas & Opinions" which is one of the more complete collections).

"Laws concerning variables connected more directly with experimental facts (for example; temperature, pressure, speed) were deduced from the fundamental ideas by means of complicated calculations. In this manner physics (at least part of it), originally more phenomenologically constructed, was reduced, by being founded upon Newton's mechanics for atoms and molecules, to a basis further removed from direct experiment, but more uniform in character".
- Albert Einstein, Physics and Reality.

I'm not saying that your definition cannot be considered *a* definition of science, but do you genuinely want to insist that Einstein was not engaged in science when developing the theory of relativity? Fair enough if so; but I'd suggest that far from taking the "agnostic" / objective view, you've simply retreated into denial using a definition of a word that's almost exclusive to yourself.
Topic Outline:

U-Know! Forum Index