Disqus - Latest Comments for Rob Light

Re: Metaphysics is Boring When You Know the Answers

Rob Light — Mon, 08 Jan 2007 19:06:38 -0000

As to Jane Galt's statement above (science will contiunue to fill the in the gaps for which we used to posit God as the explanation), consider the following from Stanley Jaki -- from one of his books of essays, the eponymously titled essay "The Limits of a Limitless Science."

(It might bear mentioning, that Jaki -- a physicist and leading historian of science -- holds two Ph.D.'s, one in physics (written under Victor Hess, the nobel laureate discoverer of cosmic rays), the other in theology).

To wit:

"It would be a mistake to assume that science finds new entities in the ontological sense. Science merely uncovers new aspects in the vast gamut of material existence. Were it otherwise, one would endorse the Platonic fallacy that it is the quantitative properties that give existence to material entities. Moreover, were such the case, nothing would exist that cannot be given a quantitative formulation. In that case, such words as conscience, free will, purpose, moral responsibility, to say nothing of the soul, would be so many empty words, standing for anthropomorphic illusions. But, there would be no scientists who would investigate things freely and be conscious of the fact they are investigating.

The distinctness between quantitative and non-quantitative (qualitative) realms of knowledge is not a starting point for human knowledge. Sensory knowledge begins with the registering of external reality, or 'things' in short. This is true eventhough what is most directly perceived in things is their size. This is why the category of quantities holds first place among all categories [cf. Aristotle, Categories, 16a]. Sensible qualities cannot be understood unless quantity is presupposed and neither can we understand something to be the subject of motion unless we understand it to possess quantity. Quantities do not admit analogical degrees of understanding. This constitutes their radical difference from other categories and even from substance and existence. The inseperability of quantities from matter justifies the quantitative character of the scientific method. Compared with it, all other considerations about science are of secondary importance.

Re: Stephen Stich: Quote of the Day

Rob Light — Sun, 04 Feb 2007 05:11:23 -0000

"The more exact is a science, such as physics, the more its conclusions become independent of the philosophical matrix out of which they have grown. For insofar as those conclusions are quantitative, they have a validity independent of the philosophy which
the individual scientist tags on them. Thus, science can be compared to the building of an edifice: The completed theory is like an edifice from which all the scaffolding (including philosophy) has been removed. The edifice, however, contains nothing philosophical. It is a mere structure in numbers. It is in this sense that one should take Hertz's famous dictum: 'Maxwell's theory [of electromagnetism] is Maxwell's system of equations," a dictum that I cannot repeat often
enough. Nothing remotely as fundamental has ever been said by a great physicist about the physical theory of an even greater physicist.

When cut to the bare bones, exact science is nothing more, nothing less than a system of equations. There would be no conflict whatever between science and theology were scientists truly mindful of this truth. But scientists are, like all of us, philosophers as well. The only way to avoid philosophy is to say nothing. The trouble is that nothing can sell a bad philosophy more effectively than attaching it to a splendid science. (Thus science is turned into one of the three S's of modern life: Sports, Sex, Science, all writ large). The converse is not true; no amount of science, insofar as it is science and not something more, can justify a single philosophical proposition
and much less a single theological statement, which has to be a proposition not about how the heavens go, but how to go to Heaven. Unfortunately, theologians, believing themselves to be in possession of eternal truths, are prone to discourse about mere temporalities, such as the physical universe, about whose measurments, large and small, science is the sole arbiter."
--Stanley Jaki, "Cosmic Rays and Water Spiders" The Limits of a Limitless Science, pp. 239-241.

Re: Do We Have a Duty to Breed?

Rob Light — Thu, 19 Apr 2007 14:24:25 -0000

If what William adduces in the first paragraph above is true - i.e., that population can continue to decline (in advanced countries?) because the population size outstrips the amount of labor needed, and so we can "grow and refine even if we do not have as many people tomarrow as we did today - then why is it that Europeans need a constant influx immigrants? Seems the first paragraph conflicts with the next two paragraphs.

As to the issue of successful societies being predicated on immigration, there's the nagging little problem that people immigrating to Europe do so in order to escape poverty and nothing else; immigrants to the U.S. largely do so for the same reason, but with an important, additional, distinguishing motive: they by and large come here to pursue the 'American dream.' There is no corresponding 'European dream' to speak of whatsoever. Europe is a deeply historical society, United States is not, owing much to the fact that it is "one of the highest and most extreme achievements of the rational quest for the good life according to nature" (Bloom, _Closing_, p. 39).

Re: Do We Have a Duty to Breed?

Rob Light — Thu, 19 Apr 2007 14:35:05 -0000

Just to clarify above: 'historical people' = historical right, historical identity, and in contradistinction to 'natural right.' And pursuing 'American Dream' connotes assimilation; and national identity as an American, even if - or often times, especially if - as an immigrant.