The only thing I can think of is that this reduces scientific thought to "well what can I play with today?".
That's pretty much what it comes down to. Scientists, for the most part, are not philosophers, so they aren't that concerned with "TRUTH." If they think of it at all, they tend to think, following Popper, that scientific Truth is unattainable (or at best, unrecognizable once you have it). Scientists are more concerned with the search than with the goal. Theories are tools for the search. They don't have to be perfect, and they certainly don't have to be True. What they do have to do is provide a basis for research that leads to increased understanding.
This really is the objection that scientists have to Creationism and ID--experience has shown them to be lousy tools for discovery. And that's really why scientists get so irate when people try to slip Creationism or ID into high school science classes. Imagine the uproar you'd hear from auto mechanics if some pressure group insisted that high school auto shop classes should teach their kids that rubber wrenches are just as good as metal ones for fixing cars, and that many top auto mechanics prefer rubber wrenches to metal.
In the most absolute sense, nothing is proveable and everything relies on faith. How do I know that birds can fly? Because I see them flying? How can I believe what I am seeing is real? (Brains-in-the-jar, optical illusions, effects of various recreational drugs)
I don't call it faith, I call it a working hypothesis. I am perfectly aware that I don't know for certain that anything exists outside my own mind. But I choose to make the provisional assumption that there is an external reality. I don't do this out of faith, but out of practicality. The solipsistic assumption is a dead end. It leads to no further conclusions: "Maybe all of this is in my imagination...OK, now what?" All done with that line of thought, let's try the other one and see where it goes.
The "God did it" assumption is very similar. Since there are no constraints on God, who could presumably do things any way He chose, using God as an explanation for physical phenomena is a dead end for scientific investigation, at least until somebody figures out how to cut pieces off of Him and study them in a laboratory. I can't exclude it, but it leads nowhere of scientific interest, so let's follow the other line of thought and see where it leads.
So let's say that things evolved by natural selection. Well, now, that raises a lot of questions. For example:
There needs to be some way of generating novelty and passing changes down through the generations...how could that happen? That line of thought leads to the discovery of mutation and genes, generating an area of study that remains lively to this day.
There needs to be some way of making changes in existing proteins without losing the function of existing ones. That line of thought leads to the discovery of gene duplication and gene families.
There has to be some way that behaviors that appear to be altruistic ultimately increase propagation of the genes that support them. That line of thought leads to investigations of biological nepotism, reciprocal altruism, etc.
This is the real reason why Creationism and its bastard child Intelligent Design fell by the wayside. Sure, there is a lot more evidence to support evolution, but one can always construct a Creationist "scenario" ("theory" is a bit too generous) to fit the existing data. The real reason why Creationism died out as a scientific concept was that it turned out to be a scientific dead end. All of the important biological discoveries were made by the people who were pursuing the evolutionary theory. The Creationists never seemed to discover anything interesting. After a while, the scientists just lost interest. Eventually, people just give up on a dry hole. Faith? No, just practicality.
Yes. Hence, during most of the old testament, between when we told God to STFU in Genesis, until The new testament when he decided to wipe the slate clean with humanity, he was generally pissed at us. Rightly so.
The point isn't to "prove" there is a supreme being but simply to admit that there could be one. Current evolutionary teaching excludes that possibility by claiming that everything happened naturally without a creator or designer.
This is nonsense. In fact, many scientists believe in both evolution and a supreme being. But they tend to have a more ambitious idea of the supreme being, imagining Him to be intelligent enough to set up the universe so well that He doesn't have to personally meddle in the fine details like the creation of individual species.
What is notable about creation "scientists" is that they never seem to accomplish anything of note in biology. Hardly any of them have publications in major scientific peer-reviewed journals. None have won any of the major scientific awards. While scientists who use evolution as a research tool are making discoveries not merely in evolution, but in fields as far afield as biochemistry, genetics, pharmacology, and molecular biology, creation "scientists" don't seem to do anything but creation science. The ultimate test of a theory is how useful it is in providing a basis for discovery. Many scientists don't even care about evolutionary issues per se, any more than they care about number theory. They use evolutionary theory for the same reason that they use mathematics--because their experience has shown them that it is an indispensable tool in their own area of study.
The attitude from the pro-evolution side so far has been "we don't want to discuss it, and we can't believe you want to hold a debate about it". That attitude sounds to me like the "fundamentalists" that thought the world was flat.
Because evolutionary theory is an indispensable tool in biology. In my decades of research experience, I've never met anybody who has accomplished anything of note in biology who doesn't accept evolution. To a biologist, suggesting that the validity of evolution is an appropriate topic of debate in a high school class is like suggesting to an accountant that high school math should include a debate on the validity of division.
At the high school level, it is impossible to do a decent job of teaching all of the evidence behind the fundamental theories of science. There simply isn't enough time. Providing enough information to really understand the theory of evolution and the relevant evidence is something that a graduate program might undertake, in a course of study taking a few years for students who enter the program already having a thorough knowledge of biochemistry and physiology.
At the secondary school level, the role of scientific education is mainly to provide evidence regarding the primary theories that are used in scientific discover, and perhaps a little bit of the evidence behind them to convey something of the "flavor" (although not the substance) of scientific reasoning. That means teaching what scientists actually do, not what some special interest or religious sect wishes that they did. The reality, which Creationists and "Intelligent Design" advocates want to conceal from high schools students, is that evolutionary theory is used virtually universally in biology, and Creationism and Intelligent Design are not taken seriously by the working biologists.
Ok, that makes sense. I wonder where the anticdotial evidence of people getting pushed backwards comes from though? Possibly the shock of being shot causes them to spring backwards I guess.
I wouldn't be surprised if being shot, especially in the brain or spine, could cause a violent convulsion. It could well look like the bullet is throwing them back. And even a light impact, if it happens from the correct angle and at the right moment in a stride, can knock a person down, sometimes violently. A startle at just the right moment can do the same thing. These are a tricks exploited by some of the "soft" martial arts.
You are right, by that logic it certainly does not have enough force to puncture my skin, I think the whole thing about bullets being capable of killing is a total myth.
Your confusion is that you are thinking in terms of force. Prick yourself with a needle. You didn't have to push very hard to get it to go through your skin, did you? That's because what is important for penetration is force per unit area, and the point of a needle has very small area. So a bullet doesn't need that much force, because it is small. Spread that force over a slightly larger area, say by wearing a kevlar vest, and the same bullet will just leave a little bruise. It is not the momentum that causes a bullet to penetrate. A person bumping into you a a slow walk actually delivers more momentum to your body than a bullet impact.
Yeah, I will have to see that. I will bet good money that the bullet passes right though the meat (even with a medium powered rifle, it would easily), so hardly any of the energy is absorbed is it?
They tried it both ways, putting a shield on the front of the "body" so that the bullet didn't penetrate. Made no difference at all. Just not enough momentum.
Not quite. While being thrown 20 feet is of course nuts, it is not unexpected that a bullet would extert more force on the target than the shooter, if we are talking about a semi-automatic. In that case a good portion of the recoil is absorbed into the reloading mechanism (the slide).
Momentum cannot be "absorbed" by the slide because it is conserved. The force can be spread out in time, but the momentum transfer is unchanged. Check out the Mythbusters episode in which they shoot a human-sized hunk of meat hanging from a hook with powerful rifles. It barely moves. There simply isn't that much momentum in a bullet.
These sort of weird problems after an update sometimes turn out to be related to bad RAM. Things get moved around a bit, and an error that was previously mostly benign becomes a killer. If you have more than one RAM stick, try removing all but one. Be particularly suspicious of non-Apple RAM, but Apple RAM can sometimes be a problem, too.
You could also try doing a fresh install of the system, in case something has gotten corrupted, but that is often even more of a pain than swapping RAM sticks.
There are also some utilities that will erase cache and preference files potentially subject to corruption, which can be helpful with some flaky problems.
Once we let individuals declare their "direct" observations factual, we are back in the soup
Remember not to confuse the map with the territory. The fact is that somebody reported a particular observation. Relating that fact to the object of that observation is theory.
In my view, even theories can never be "proven false."
It is trivially easy to construct theories that can easily be proven false. A broad generalization, such as "All objects fall upward when dropped" can be disproved by a single counterexample.
Historically, the Popperian ideal does not match scientific inquiry very well. Thomas Kuhn's whole point is that reasonably "plausible" and even "proven" theories get abandoned before newer theories have accumulated enough observational evidence.
Popper wrote about the logic of proof, Kuhn wrote about sociology of science. There are certainly fads and trends in science. I may favor a theory that does not have as strong evidence as another because it appeals to me esthetically, because it has more interesting implications, or simply because I have better ideas of how to pursue it. A lot of science is like Nasrudin looking "where the light is good." But that has nothing to do with the logic of proof. Ultimately, when we think about what we can really conclude from our results, we end up going back to Popper's reasoning.
What is known with certainty (the facts) are the results of individual direct observations. What is theoretical is the generalizations and conclusions about the real world that we draw from those facts.
The reason we can dismiss the creationists with only brief consideration is that they are attacking the 99.99% certain stuff, with silly arguments, instead of the 60% certain stuff with interesting arguments.
Unfortunately, these figures of 99.99% and 60% are purely arbitrary. There is no logically valid way, based upon any amount of observation, to place a hard number on the level of certainty of a theory. So really it comes down to individuals saying subjectively, "I'm really sure," or "I'm moderately certain." Since you can't calculate a number, you can't have a defined threshold. So you end up saying, "It's a fact rather than a theory because I and a bunch of other people can't think of any plausible other explanations for these observations."
Specific documents and photographs are "facts" of only a very limited extent: at this time and place, I hold this in my hand, and it appears to have certain markings. Behind any interpretation of those observations is an assumption, such as that it hasn't been doctored or forged, that the photographer was at some place at some time, that the camera was in working order, that the writer was a particular person, writing from recent recollection
Correct. That is the point. The facts are that it appears to have certain markings. When you start to interpret it (e.g. as authentic or forged) you are constructing a kind of theory.
Only by enough concordance between observations (inductive reasoning) can we assemble beliefs with some degree of certainty, and at some threshold, begin to take them as proven "facts." Hume showed that all inductive reasoning is intrinsically unproven, but *practically*, we take many things at face value
I tend to take more of a Popperian view. Facts are those things that can be directly verified. All else is theory, which can be proved false, but never proved true. There is no "threshold" at which something passes from one category to the other. It is certainly true that "practically" we take many things at face value, including many things that are wrong. But in science it pays to be more rigorous.
This sort of relativist approach (taking Hume's objections to the limit, EVERY bit of knowledge is provisional and tentative) masks the essential "grading" of knowledge.
Now you are falling into the sort of thinking that one hears from Creationists, who imagine that "theory" denotes doubt. All theories are not equal. For some theories, supported by a huge number of facts, there is a very high level of certainty. It just doesn't transform them into facts.
At some point, however, we will take George Washington's existence as a "fact." Otherwise, we are just playing a silly nihilistic game where NOTHING is factual, and anything could be true or false depending on the current whims of the universe.
No, there are still facts even in history. Specific documents and photographs would qualify as facts. Inferences about historical personages could be regarded as theoretical. But as a scientist rather than a historian, I don't know whether this sort of rigorous distinction between theory and fact is all that useful in the field history.
Unless you're using 'fact' to mean 'known truth', it is not necessary that one have proof of some statement A for it to be true.
That is precisely the distinction that I am making between fact and truth. A fact is not merely something that is true, but something that is known with certainty to be true. Anything that is in principle subject to disproof by further data (additional facts) is a theory.
On a total sidetrack, when you say 'if you want to regard "something else besides gravity" as a subcase of theory 2...', I'm not sure what you had in mind. If there is something that acts similarly to gravity that acts on all massive bodies in an attractive way, how is that not gravity?
It might act arbitrarily on some massive objects but not others, or some of the time but not other times.
All this has nothing to do with the epistemology of the scientific method per se, but that such terms as 'fact', 'truth', 'knowledge', 'theory', 'proof' can be comingled and bandied around erroneously, and is open to abuse by pseudoscienific groups and endevours (to bring us back to the topic!).
Yes, and this I think is the danger in drawing some arbitrary threshold beyond which a theory becomes a fact. Trying to rebut the "evolution is only a theory" complaint by insisting that evolution is not a theory merely leads into a fruitless and logically unsatisfying debate about who decides where that threshold is and when it has been crossed. I think that it makes more sense, and is more logically consistent, to acknowledge out that all generalizations about the universe are fundamentally theoretical. In other words, most of what we think that we know is theory.
So now an observation per se is not a fact, but that an observation is made is? I hope I am not being obtuse if I ask for clarification, or what it is your point is supposed to reveal.
It is fairly simple. If I drop an object and observe it to hit the floor with a time that I measure to be about half a second, the fact is that I made such a measurement. The measurement is of course distinct from the actual time that the object took to hit the floor. The latter is something that cannot be known exactly, although one can develop a theory, based upon statistical analysis of multiple such measurements, of how long it takes objects dropped from a particular height to land.
As for your last paragraph, nothing you mention contradicts the fact the "All massive bodies are attracted to one-another by gravity" and "There exist massive bodies that are not attracted to eachother by gravity" are mutually exclusive and exhaustive...If there is "...no such thing as gravity (and the forces between objects are dictated by something quite different)..." then case 2 is true.
OK, if you want to regard "something else besides gravity" as a subcase of theory 2, then I would say that it is exhaustive. I would consider that to be a statement of ignorance rather than a theory, but it doesn't make much difference. The issue is not whether or not a generalization is true (I am willing to take as a postulate, "there exist true statements about the universe"), but whether we can prove it to be the case. The distinction is fairly simple. Facts are individual observations. Generalizations and explanations are theories, which can be disproved, but never proved. Since they can never be proved, they never become facts, no matter how much evidence you collect.
At this point, one should come to the realisation that facts are not unassailable certainties. Their accuracy, even their definition, are all part of whichever paradigm is being used to model them. Which is to say, points of data, observations, are subject to the same kind (though probably not degree) of doubt that theories themselves are.
An observation is not a certainty about the external world. The fact is simply that a particular observation was made or reported to have been made. All inferences about the world itself (including the degree of accuracy of specific observations) fall into the category of theory.
Even if you do not agree with the above, let me pose this. "All massive bodies are attracted to one-another by gravity," and "There exist massive bodies that are not attracted to eachother by gravity." One of these is a fact, since their disjunction is exhaustive.
I would say rather that these theories are mutually exclusive. A set of facts (observations) may let us exclude the first theory (the second cannot be excluded), leading us to believe that the second theory is correct. But there is always the possibility that there could be an alternative theory that fits the observations equally well (even though we may not know what that theory might be). For example, if you happen discover an object that does not appear to be subject to gravity, there could be some other interfering force or measurement error that is preventing you from detecting the influence of gravity. Or there may be no such thing as gravity (and the forces between objects are dictated by something quite different), in which case both theories are wrong.
Now, someone commented that CRT's are dead. Not if you have a budget, they're not! I've owned an HD set for over three years now, and it only ran me $700. It is a CRT. It has a beautiful picture.
Even today, it's very hard to match the picture quality of a modestly priced HD CRT. To my eye, only the very top end LCD displays, costing in the thousands, come close. CRT based HD displays are now well within the price range of the "average" TV viewer, and the improvement in quality over standard TV is dramatic.
Would you view Newton's theory of gravitation a theory, or a fact? Now, would you view gravity itself as a theory or a fact?
Theory, in both cases. The only facts are specific observations, i.e. "On May 2, I dropped a pencil and it fell to the floor." All generalizations (e.g. "objects fall when dropped") and explanations ("there is a force that attracts all masses to one another") are theories, subject, at least in principle, to disconfirmation by subsequent observations. Some theories, such as the idea that there is such a thing as gravity, are extremely well confirmed, to the point that no sane person doubts them, but that doesn't turn them into facts.
Cancer is largely irrelevant to (and immune from) evoloutionary forces because it typically does not affect creatures until after they are past breeding age.
Cancer really reflects a balance of competing selective forces. At the level of the organism, selection favors survival long enough to have a reasonable chance of propagating the genes. But individual cells are also subject to selection in the environment of the body for more rapid division. To slow down the "evolution" of cancer cells within the body, there are various safeguards to limit cell division. But these safeguards generally have costs to the organism, so selection at the level of the organism only favors strong enough safeguards to stave off cancer long enough to have a good chance of reproducing.
As a fundimentalist I think perhaps my views could be valuable. First, intellegent design does not contradict evolution. Intellegent design does not support evolution. It simply states that there probably was some intellegence involved in this phenominon we call "life."
The concept of God is not inconsistent with science or evolution. The objections to intelligent design are not to the concept of an intelligent creator, but rather to the temptation to assert "God did it" as a sufficient and complete explanation of biological phenomena such as the origin of species. Evolution does not invalidate a role for God, because God could be intelligent enough not to have to micromanage the design of each individual species.
Complexity *does* spring into existence without cause. Entropy is forever increasing. We are moving toward zero complexity.
This reveals a fundamental misunderstanding of entropy. Entropy is actually a movement toward increased complexity at a molecular level. Consider, for example, the mixing of ink, an entropic process. When you initially add ink to water, all of the ink is in one place, and all of the water without ink is in another, a very simple system. Over time the molecules of ink become intermixed with the molecules of water in increasingly complex ways. This is really why entropy increases--there are more ways in which ink molecules can be intermixed with water than there are ways in which they can be segregated. The mixture is more complex. Life depends upon retaining certain configurations of matter of relatively low complexity. Entropic processes--such as random mutations and replication errors increasing the complexity of DNA--are crucial for evolution. All processes of life, including evolution, are ultimately driven by the tendency of entropy to increase. Without increasing entropy, we would all be dead.
The earth is maintained in a nonequilibrium (submaximal entropy) state by energy from the sun. The thermonuclear reactions in the sun generate enormous amounts of entropy. Hence, the total entropy of the system (sun + earth) increases constantly, in agreement with the 2nd Law.
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The only thing I can think of is that this reduces scientific thought to "well what can I play with today?".
That's pretty much what it comes down to. Scientists, for the most part, are not philosophers, so they aren't that concerned with "TRUTH." If they think of it at all, they tend to think, following Popper, that scientific Truth is unattainable (or at best, unrecognizable once you have it). Scientists are more concerned with the search than with the goal. Theories are tools for the search. They don't have to be perfect, and they certainly don't have to be True. What they do have to do is provide a basis for research that leads to increased understanding.
This really is the objection that scientists have to Creationism and ID--experience has shown them to be lousy tools for discovery. And that's really why scientists get so irate when people try to slip Creationism or ID into high school science classes. Imagine the uproar you'd hear from auto mechanics if some pressure group insisted that high school auto shop classes should teach their kids that rubber wrenches are just as good as metal ones for fixing cars, and that many top auto mechanics prefer rubber wrenches to metal.
In the most absolute sense, nothing is proveable and everything relies on faith. How do I know that birds can fly? Because I see them flying? How can I believe what I am seeing is real? (Brains-in-the-jar, optical illusions, effects of various recreational drugs)
I don't call it faith, I call it a working hypothesis. I am perfectly aware that I don't know for certain that anything exists outside my own mind. But I choose to make the provisional assumption that there is an external reality. I don't do this out of faith, but out of practicality. The solipsistic assumption is a dead end. It leads to no further conclusions: "Maybe all of this is in my imagination...OK, now what?" All done with that line of thought, let's try the other one and see where it goes.
The "God did it" assumption is very similar. Since there are no constraints on God, who could presumably do things any way He chose, using God as an explanation for physical phenomena is a dead end for scientific investigation, at least until somebody figures out how to cut pieces off of Him and study them in a laboratory. I can't exclude it, but it leads nowhere of scientific interest, so let's follow the other line of thought and see where it leads.
So let's say that things evolved by natural selection. Well, now, that raises a lot of questions. For example:
There needs to be some way of generating novelty and passing changes down through the generations...how could that happen? That line of thought leads to the discovery of mutation and genes, generating an area of study that remains lively to this day.
There needs to be some way of making changes in existing proteins without losing the function of existing ones. That line of thought leads to the discovery of gene duplication and gene families.
There has to be some way that behaviors that appear to be altruistic ultimately increase propagation of the genes that support them. That line of thought leads to investigations of biological nepotism, reciprocal altruism, etc.
This is the real reason why Creationism and its bastard child Intelligent Design fell by the wayside. Sure, there is a lot more evidence to support evolution, but one can always construct a Creationist "scenario" ("theory" is a bit too generous) to fit the existing data. The real reason why Creationism died out as a scientific concept was that it turned out to be a scientific dead end. All of the important biological discoveries were made by the people who were pursuing the evolutionary theory. The Creationists never seemed to discover anything interesting. After a while, the scientists just lost interest. Eventually, people just give up on a dry hole. Faith? No, just practicality.
Yes. Hence, during most of the old testament, between when we told God to STFU in Genesis, until The new testament when he decided to wipe the slate clean with humanity, he was generally pissed at us. Rightly so.
And you see this as an excuse for mass murder?
The point isn't to "prove" there is a supreme being but simply to admit that there could be one. Current evolutionary teaching excludes that possibility by claiming that everything happened naturally without a creator or designer.
This is nonsense. In fact, many scientists believe in both evolution and a supreme being. But they tend to have a more ambitious idea of the supreme being, imagining Him to be intelligent enough to set up the universe so well that He doesn't have to personally meddle in the fine details like the creation of individual species.
here is an entire organization of them: http://www.icr.org/creationscientists/biologicalsc ientists.html
What is notable about creation "scientists" is that they never seem to accomplish anything of note in biology. Hardly any of them have publications in major scientific peer-reviewed journals. None have won any of the major scientific awards. While scientists who use evolution as a research tool are making discoveries not merely in evolution, but in fields as far afield as biochemistry, genetics, pharmacology, and molecular biology, creation "scientists" don't seem to do anything but creation science. The ultimate test of a theory is how useful it is in providing a basis for discovery. Many scientists don't even care about evolutionary issues per se, any more than they care about number theory. They use evolutionary theory for the same reason that they use mathematics--because their experience has shown them that it is an indispensable tool in their own area of study.
The attitude from the pro-evolution side so far has been "we don't want to discuss it, and we can't believe you want to hold a debate about it". That attitude sounds to me like the "fundamentalists" that thought the world was flat.
Because evolutionary theory is an indispensable tool in biology. In my decades of research experience, I've never met anybody who has accomplished anything of note in biology who doesn't accept evolution. To a biologist, suggesting that the validity of evolution is an appropriate topic of debate in a high school class is like suggesting to an accountant that high school math should include a debate on the validity of division.
At the high school level, it is impossible to do a decent job of teaching all of the evidence behind the fundamental theories of science. There simply isn't enough time. Providing enough information to really understand the theory of evolution and the relevant evidence is something that a graduate program might undertake, in a course of study taking a few years for students who enter the program already having a thorough knowledge of biochemistry and physiology.
At the secondary school level, the role of scientific education is mainly to provide evidence regarding the primary theories that are used in scientific discover, and perhaps a little bit of the evidence behind them to convey something of the "flavor" (although not the substance) of scientific reasoning. That means teaching what scientists actually do, not what some special interest or religious sect wishes that they did. The reality, which Creationists and "Intelligent Design" advocates want to conceal from high schools students, is that evolutionary theory is used virtually universally in biology, and Creationism and Intelligent Design are not taken seriously by the working biologists.
I wouldn't be surprised if being shot, especially in the brain or spine, could cause a violent convulsion. It could well look like the bullet is throwing them back. And even a light impact, if it happens from the correct angle and at the right moment in a stride, can knock a person down, sometimes violently. A startle at just the right moment can do the same thing. These are a tricks exploited by some of the "soft" martial arts.
You are right, by that logic it certainly does not have enough force to puncture my skin, I think the whole thing about bullets being capable of killing is a total myth.
Your confusion is that you are thinking in terms of force. Prick yourself with a needle. You didn't have to push very hard to get it to go through your skin, did you? That's because what is important for penetration is force per unit area, and the point of a needle has very small area. So a bullet doesn't need that much force, because it is small. Spread that force over a slightly larger area, say by wearing a kevlar vest, and the same bullet will just leave a little bruise. It is not the momentum that causes a bullet to penetrate. A person bumping into you a a slow walk actually delivers more momentum to your body than a bullet impact.
Yeah, I will have to see that. I will bet good money that the bullet passes right though the meat (even with a medium powered rifle, it would easily), so hardly any of the energy is absorbed is it?
They tried it both ways, putting a shield on the front of the "body" so that the bullet didn't penetrate. Made no difference at all. Just not enough momentum.
Not quite. While being thrown 20 feet is of course nuts, it is not unexpected that a bullet would extert more force on the target than the shooter, if we are talking about a semi-automatic. In that case a good portion of the recoil is absorbed into the reloading mechanism (the slide).
Momentum cannot be "absorbed" by the slide because it is conserved. The force can be spread out in time, but the momentum transfer is unchanged. Check out the Mythbusters episode in which they shoot a human-sized hunk of meat hanging from a hook with powerful rifles. It barely moves. There simply isn't that much momentum in a bullet.
These sort of weird problems after an update sometimes turn out to be related to bad RAM. Things get moved around a bit, and an error that was previously mostly benign becomes a killer. If you have more than one RAM stick, try removing all but one. Be particularly suspicious of non-Apple RAM, but Apple RAM can sometimes be a problem, too.
You could also try doing a fresh install of the system, in case something has gotten corrupted, but that is often even more of a pain than swapping RAM sticks.
There are also some utilities that will erase cache and preference files potentially subject to corruption, which can be helpful with some flaky problems.
Once we let individuals declare their "direct" observations factual, we are back in the soup
Remember not to confuse the map with the territory. The fact is that somebody reported a particular observation. Relating that fact to the object of that observation is theory.
In my view, even theories can never be "proven false."
It is trivially easy to construct theories that can easily be proven false. A broad generalization, such as "All objects fall upward when dropped" can be disproved by a single counterexample.
Historically, the Popperian ideal does not match scientific inquiry very well. Thomas Kuhn's whole point is that reasonably "plausible" and even "proven" theories get abandoned before newer theories have accumulated enough observational evidence.
Popper wrote about the logic of proof, Kuhn wrote about sociology of science. There are certainly fads and trends in science. I may favor a theory that does not have as strong evidence as another because it appeals to me esthetically, because it has more interesting implications, or simply because I have better ideas of how to pursue it. A lot of science is like Nasrudin looking "where the light is good." But that has nothing to do with the logic of proof. Ultimately, when we think about what we can really conclude from our results, we end up going back to Popper's reasoning.
But NOTHING is known "with [absolute] certainty"
What is known with certainty (the facts) are the results of individual direct observations. What is theoretical is the generalizations and conclusions about the real world that we draw from those facts.
The reason we can dismiss the creationists with only brief consideration is that they are attacking the 99.99% certain stuff, with silly arguments, instead of the 60% certain stuff with interesting arguments.
Unfortunately, these figures of 99.99% and 60% are purely arbitrary. There is no logically valid way, based upon any amount of observation, to place a hard number on the level of certainty of a theory. So really it comes down to individuals saying subjectively, "I'm really sure," or "I'm moderately certain." Since you can't calculate a number, you can't have a defined threshold. So you end up saying, "It's a fact rather than a theory because I and a bunch of other people can't think of any plausible other explanations for these observations."
Specific documents and photographs are "facts" of only a very limited extent: at this time and place, I hold this in my hand, and it appears to have certain markings. Behind any interpretation of those observations is an assumption, such as that it hasn't been doctored or forged, that the photographer was at some place at some time, that the camera was in working order, that the writer was a particular person, writing from recent recollection
Correct. That is the point. The facts are that it appears to have certain markings. When you start to interpret it (e.g. as authentic or forged) you are constructing a kind of theory.
Only by enough concordance between observations (inductive reasoning) can we assemble beliefs with some degree of certainty, and at some threshold, begin to take them as proven "facts." Hume showed that all inductive reasoning is intrinsically unproven, but *practically*, we take many things at face value
I tend to take more of a Popperian view. Facts are those things that can be directly verified. All else is theory, which can be proved false, but never proved true. There is no "threshold" at which something passes from one category to the other. It is certainly true that "practically" we take many things at face value, including many things that are wrong. But in science it pays to be more rigorous.
This sort of relativist approach (taking Hume's objections to the limit, EVERY bit of knowledge is provisional and tentative) masks the essential "grading" of knowledge.
Now you are falling into the sort of thinking that one hears from Creationists, who imagine that "theory" denotes doubt. All theories are not equal. For some theories, supported by a huge number of facts, there is a very high level of certainty. It just doesn't transform them into facts.
At some point, however, we will take George Washington's existence as a "fact." Otherwise, we are just playing a silly nihilistic game where NOTHING is factual, and anything could be true or false depending on the current whims of the universe.
No, there are still facts even in history. Specific documents and photographs would qualify as facts. Inferences about historical personages could be regarded as theoretical. But as a scientist rather than a historian, I don't know whether this sort of rigorous distinction between theory and fact is all that useful in the field history.
Fifty dollars for only the last year is far too steep. For $50/year, I'd want online access to the entire archives of the NYT back to the beginning.
Unless you're using 'fact' to mean 'known truth', it is not necessary that one have proof of some statement A for it to be true.
That is precisely the distinction that I am making between fact and truth. A fact is not merely something that is true, but something that is known with certainty to be true. Anything that is in principle subject to disproof by further data (additional facts) is a theory.
On a total sidetrack, when you say 'if you want to regard "something else besides gravity" as a subcase of theory 2...', I'm not sure what you had in mind. If there is something that acts similarly to gravity that acts on all massive bodies in an attractive way, how is that not gravity?
It might act arbitrarily on some massive objects but not others, or some of the time but not other times.
All this has nothing to do with the epistemology of the scientific method per se, but that such terms as 'fact', 'truth', 'knowledge', 'theory', 'proof' can be comingled and bandied around erroneously, and is open to abuse by pseudoscienific groups and endevours (to bring us back to the topic!).
Yes, and this I think is the danger in drawing some arbitrary threshold beyond which a theory becomes a fact. Trying to rebut the "evolution is only a theory" complaint by insisting that evolution is not a theory merely leads into a fruitless and logically unsatisfying debate about who decides where that threshold is and when it has been crossed. I think that it makes more sense, and is more logically consistent, to acknowledge out that all generalizations about the universe are fundamentally theoretical. In other words, most of what we think that we know is theory.
So now an observation per se is not a fact, but that an observation is made is? I hope I am not being obtuse if I ask for clarification, or what it is your point is supposed to reveal.
It is fairly simple. If I drop an object and observe it to hit the floor with a time that I measure to be about half a second, the fact is that I made such a measurement. The measurement is of course distinct from the actual time that the object took to hit the floor. The latter is something that cannot be known exactly, although one can develop a theory, based upon statistical analysis of multiple such measurements, of how long it takes objects dropped from a particular height to land.
As for your last paragraph, nothing you mention contradicts the fact the "All massive bodies are attracted to one-another by gravity" and "There exist massive bodies that are not attracted to eachother by gravity" are mutually exclusive and exhaustive...If there is "...no such thing as gravity (and the forces between objects are dictated by something quite different)..." then case 2 is true.
OK, if you want to regard "something else besides gravity" as a subcase of theory 2, then I would say that it is exhaustive. I would consider that to be a statement of ignorance rather than a theory, but it doesn't make much difference. The issue is not whether or not a generalization is true (I am willing to take as a postulate, "there exist true statements about the universe"), but whether we can prove it to be the case. The distinction is fairly simple. Facts are individual observations. Generalizations and explanations are theories, which can be disproved, but never proved. Since they can never be proved, they never become facts, no matter how much evidence you collect.
At this point, one should come to the realisation that facts are not unassailable certainties. Their accuracy, even their definition, are all part of whichever paradigm is being used to model them. Which is to say, points of data, observations, are subject to the same kind (though probably not degree) of doubt that theories themselves are.
An observation is not a certainty about the external world. The fact is simply that a particular observation was made or reported to have been made. All inferences about the world itself (including the degree of accuracy of specific observations) fall into the category of theory.
Even if you do not agree with the above, let me pose this. "All massive bodies are attracted to one-another by gravity," and "There exist massive bodies that are not attracted to eachother by gravity." One of these is a fact, since their disjunction is exhaustive.
I would say rather that these theories are mutually exclusive. A set of facts (observations) may let us exclude the first theory (the second cannot be excluded), leading us to believe that the second theory is correct. But there is always the possibility that there could be an alternative theory that fits the observations equally well (even though we may not know what that theory might be). For example, if you happen discover an object that does not appear to be subject to gravity, there could be some other interfering force or measurement error that is preventing you from detecting the influence of gravity. Or there may be no such thing as gravity (and the forces between objects are dictated by something quite different), in which case both theories are wrong.
Now, someone commented that CRT's are dead. Not if you have a budget, they're not! I've owned an HD set for over three years now, and it only ran me $700. It is a CRT. It has a beautiful picture.
Even today, it's very hard to match the picture quality of a modestly priced HD CRT. To my eye, only the very top end LCD displays, costing in the thousands, come close. CRT based HD displays are now well within the price range of the "average" TV viewer, and the improvement in quality over standard TV is dramatic.
Would you view Newton's theory of gravitation a theory, or a fact? Now, would you view gravity itself as a theory or a fact?
Theory, in both cases. The only facts are specific observations, i.e. "On May 2, I dropped a pencil and it fell to the floor." All generalizations (e.g. "objects fall when dropped") and explanations ("there is a force that attracts all masses to one another") are theories, subject, at least in principle, to disconfirmation by subsequent observations. Some theories, such as the idea that there is such a thing as gravity, are extremely well confirmed, to the point that no sane person doubts them, but that doesn't turn them into facts.
Cancer is largely irrelevant to (and immune from) evoloutionary forces because it typically does not affect creatures until after they are past breeding age.
Cancer really reflects a balance of competing selective forces. At the level of the organism, selection favors survival long enough to have a reasonable chance of propagating the genes. But individual cells are also subject to selection in the environment of the body for more rapid division. To slow down the "evolution" of cancer cells within the body, there are various safeguards to limit cell division. But these safeguards generally have costs to the organism, so selection at the level of the organism only favors strong enough safeguards to stave off cancer long enough to have a good chance of reproducing.
As a fundimentalist I think perhaps my views could be valuable. First, intellegent design does not contradict evolution. Intellegent design does not support evolution. It simply states that there probably was some intellegence involved in this phenominon we call "life."
The concept of God is not inconsistent with science or evolution. The objections to intelligent design are not to the concept of an intelligent creator, but rather to the temptation to assert "God did it" as a sufficient and complete explanation of biological phenomena such as the origin of species. Evolution does not invalidate a role for God, because God could be intelligent enough not to have to micromanage the design of each individual species.
Complexity *does* spring into existence without cause.
Entropy is forever increasing. We are moving toward zero complexity.
This reveals a fundamental misunderstanding of entropy. Entropy is actually a movement toward increased complexity at a molecular level. Consider, for example, the mixing of ink, an entropic process. When you initially add ink to water, all of the ink is in one place, and all of the water without ink is in another, a very simple system. Over time the molecules of ink become intermixed with the molecules of water in increasingly complex ways. This is really why entropy increases--there are more ways in which ink molecules can be intermixed with water than there are ways in which they can be segregated. The mixture is more complex. Life depends upon retaining certain configurations of matter of relatively low complexity. Entropic processes--such as random mutations and replication errors increasing the complexity of DNA--are crucial for evolution. All processes of life, including evolution, are ultimately driven by the tendency of entropy to increase. Without increasing entropy, we would all be dead.
The earth is maintained in a nonequilibrium (submaximal entropy) state by energy from the sun. The thermonuclear reactions in the sun generate enormous amounts of entropy. Hence, the total entropy of the system (sun + earth) increases constantly, in agreement with the 2nd Law.