From: John Conover <john@email.johncon.com>
Subject: Re: Philosophy underlying LO? LO272
Date: Mon, 27 Feb 95 22:43 PST
Jim Michmerhuizen writes in LO260:
> On Mon, 20 Feb 1995, John Conover wrote in LO179:
> [...everything snipped up to a sentence of Conover's...]
>> be complete, (but some can, however.) The information theorist have
>> been looking at scientific induction, recently, and there is some
>> evidence (heaven forbid,) that scientific induction is logically
>> inconsistent with itself, (I wouldn't even attempt to speculate on the
> Love it. Classical scientific research _DEPENDS_ critically on bad logic.
> I'm simplifying here, but they did it first:
Jim, you skeptic.
> I wouldn't be the least bit surprised to see a proof turn up one of these
> days that scientific induction is in some way self-contradictory.
Actually, if you believe the last two sentences, that is the claim. If
you look at the Quantum Electro-Dynamics, which is the "queen of
science," it is not that formal, at least in a logical sense. It is
largely an inductive effort, and is one of the most precise sciences
we have, giving results to one part in ten to the tenth types of
accuracies-making it the most accurate theory in all of applied
science. But, as you point out, it tends to have a lot of paradoxes.
John
--
John Conover, john@email.johncon.com, http://www.johncon.com/