From: miner@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu
Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.tech
Subject: Re: The Cosmological Bad Dream
Date: 28 Sep 92 07:06:27 CDT
Organization: University of Kansas Academic Computing Services

In article <2885@news.cerf.net>, snodgras@cyber.net (John E. Snodgrass) writes:
> 
>       In his book "Infinite in All Directions", Freeman Dyson is
> reacting negatively to Steven Weiberg's  remark in "The First Three Minutes"
> that "The more the universe seems comprehensible, the more it also seems
> pointless." His response is to go on a long science-fictionish description
> of how in an infinitely expanding and cooling universe, human life could
> still survive  -- a notion he claims to have bolstered up with some
> 150 equations -- indefinately into the future. Basically, he thinks that
> life is defined not by parts but the arrangement etc., so it ends up
> taking forms that operate slower and slower (whatever).
> 
>       His point is that, in spite of the grim truth implied by Weinberg's
> observations, and by modern cosmology in general, there is still room
> in all this for a "philosophy of hope".
> 
>       Personally, an appropriate analogy to this would be a drunk crying
> about how somebody stole his car, suddenly perking up with the notion
> that, hey, he can live without a car! He can walk to work! He can get a
> bicycle! And so on. When actually, his car is still sitting out in the
> parking lot where he left it, he was just so drunk he forgot where he
> parked it.
> 
>       It strikes me as ludicrous that scientists so totally forget
> themselves when considering the abstractions of their work. We humans are
> such that we need hope because we have a purpose, but we are also products
> of nature and the cosmos -- part-in-parcel with the universe. Hence it
> is absurd to suppose that the universe itself lacks a purpose while we
> magically have one, and therefore that we are forlorn lost little lambs
> in a mechanist void.
> 
>       It seems unlikely that we could be mistaken in our sense of being
> alive and having purpose; while on the ohter hand highly likely that we
> are mistaken in our various assessments of "the universe". Thus the
> foolishness of Weinberg's remark is evident. It is we ourselves -- incarnated
> as scientists like Weinberg, who have created the random, pointless
> universe, just like a dreamer creates a bad dream -- and perhaps in some
> sense for the same reason. If the dreamer didn't see it as "truth" it
> wouldn't scare him. But when we wake up from this nightmare, we will be
> suffused with the relief -- it was just a bad dream.
> 
>       John E. Snodgrass [snodgras@cyber.net]


This is good and I'm surprised you didn't get any net comment on
it. 

I'm a linguist, and though you might think linguistics has little
relevance to the issue you raised, I think it does.  The problem in
the public's perception of cosmology is that the public takes
what scientists say about the universe as a set of *assertions*
while the speech act that cosmologists are actually performing is
that of *assumption* or *working assumption.*  The difference is
important.

Take, for example, the homogeneity principle:

     Everywhere in the universe, the same physical laws hold that
     hold locally.

As an assertion, this statement is absurd, because assertions can
only be rationally (felicitously, as we say) made when the speaker
has evidence to back them up.  No one has such knowledge about the
far reaches of the universe or about the universe as a whole. 
Anyone who expressed the homogeneity principle as a genuine assertion
would legitimately be pronounced mad.

The same goes for the details of "the first three minutes."  When
scientists describe those "events" they are expressing working
assumptions; real assertions state that something is the case.
"Describing" the first three minutes is not like describing your Mom. 
Assertions have truth values; working assumptions have usefulness
values within the scientific method.  If scientists made no working
assumptions, there would be no direction to their research.

Moreover it is typical of working assumptions that those scientists
who express them do not have evidence for their truth, as in the
case of assertions.  If they had evidence for their truth, they
would not be needed as working assumptions.

However, don't bother checking this with scientists, because many
of them have little use even for the philosophy of science (check
out the last few weeks of discussion on sci.philosophy.tech), and
would have even less use for pragmatics (the branch of linguistics
concerned with language use) if indeed they were aware of it.  Most
scientists just do their work and drink their beer like the rest of
us...

The issue of scientific metaphor is also part of this, but that's
another subject.
-- 
********************************** +.............................+
*- Ken <miner@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu>* :All opinions expressed herein:
*There is no privileged position.* :are my own and are not to be :
*	-God, Derrida, others    * : attributed to my employer   :
********************************** +.............................+

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