---- Original Message ----
From: "J Dunlop" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Friday, July 26, 2002 11:36 AM
Subject: Re: [HP3000-L] OT: Darwin, Satan & Macintoshes

> Roy,
> Thanks for your thoughts on the subject(s).
> You said :

>> Science is not, and does not claim to
>> be, the answer to everything.

> No, I didn't think I was inferring that.
> I meant that people who regard Science as the explanation for
> everything are missing a lot.

OK. But Science has to be the explanation for everything 'scientific'. You
can't have anything - mystical, magical, whatever - that breaks scientific
laws when it thinks it will, and then goes back to 'obeying' them. If we find
something that seems to break a scientific law, then we look for a
more-encompassing law that explains everything to date *plus* the new
observations.

Because they're not laws really, they're theories. But the precept of science
is that while we may not yet, or may not ever, have the all-encompassing
theory, there *is* such a theory, and all observations are subject to it.
Bottom line: you can't break the laws of science. You can break what you
*imagine* are the laws of science as you fumble towards the truth - that's
all.

But if you could break the *real* laws, there wouldn't be any science. There
is a word for such breaks - miracles, used in its strictest sense. And
religious people believe, no doubt, in miracles. But if there were such
things, science would just be a toy we amused ourselves with, while waiting to
be judged as to where we should go in the afterlife....

>>> Indeed, some of these
>>> "unmeasurable features" are closer to everyone's daily experiences
>>> than most people realise. For example, all living beings use
>>> energy. I would like to know how that energy is stored and how it
>>> is used.
>>
>> Well, that *is* science, and can be related in explicable
>> biochemical and biomechanical processes. There is a device called a
>> calorimeter, in which a human can be placed and in which his/her
>> energy intake and output can be measured, and which will demonstrate
>> that the principle of Conservation of Energy, from the branch of
>> science called physics, holds for living creatures as well as for
>> inert matter.

> I don't recall that anyone has actually managed to measure the energy
> (or life force or "Chi" or "Ki") in a meaningful way.

In order to measure it, we must first define it. Has anyone defined it in a
way that opens it to scientific investigation?
For instance, if I said 'I don't think it exists', how would you refute my
assertion?

[snip]

> I think you are attempting to apply scientific values to something
> basically unmeasurable by science which is my point.

There are many things that are unmeasurable by science, due to their nature.
But this thing has a nature such that, were it to exist, it *should* be
measurable by science.

> You may be able to measure some changes using a calorimeter, but it does not
explain anything.

Nothing you measure explains anything; you need a theory to do that. But the
theory must agree with past measurements, and predict new ones.


>> But if such powers exist, I am sure that they will be amenable to the
>> disciplines of scientific measurement, and eventually of explanation
>> too. They might be mysterious, but they won't be mystical....

> Once again you assume that science will "eventually" provide an
> explanation. I tend to disagree.

Science does not admit of the inexplicable in its realm, only of the
unexplained. So either these things are outside the realm of science (and I
don't agree that they are), or they are explicable. Of course, being
explicable is only a principle; it does not mean that we will necessarily
*succeed* in explaining them, but only that the effort is not ontologically
futile.


--
Roy Brown

Posting with the OEnemy, tamed by OE-QuoteFix
http://jump.to/oe-quotefix

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