So, this entire Collection has been pithily dismissed as "unfortunate" (plus.google.com/u/0/+JohnVerdon-JohnVerdon/posts/JohWg2kB7Fp). I'm not sure that's better or worse than the time I was personally accused of being a fraud on account of thinking that philosophy actually matters for doing science.
I've said it before and I'll say it again : the beliefs of science are evidence-based and provisional. You're allowed to make unproven assumptions, but you have to be aware that these are assumptions. If you're going to assume that the Universe is a purely mechanical, physics-driven place where everything can be explained by laws, that is a belief, an assumption, even a philosophy. It's a necessary one for the scientific method, but it's still damn hard - perhaps impossible - to rigorously prove. You may fairly claim that you can't prove a negative... in which case congratulations, you're doing philosophy.
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I would note that anything that actually makes a difference in the world is, by virtue of making that difference, observable.
ReplyDeleteIt doesn't have to obey our current understanding of physics, and it may be fiendishly difficult to get precise or reproducible measurements, but if it causes change in the world we can observe that change and try to understand it.
Yup, that.
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