From: davisson@milton.u.washington.edu (Gordon Davisson)
Subject: Re: Logic and God (was: Young earth creationist logic NOT!)
Organization: University of Washington, Seattle
Distribution: na
Date: Sat, 5 Sep 1992 05:23:45 GMT

In article <25952@dog.ee.lbl.gov> sichase@csa3.lbl.gov writes:
>In article <182qgkINN4jj@agate.berkeley.edu>, utidjian@remarque.berkeley.edu (David M.V. Utidjian) writes...
>>SCIENCE DOES NOT PROVE A THEORY!!! It can only dis-prove a theory.

>That's an awfully myopic view of science.  Consider the following theories:
>
>(1) The Earth is round.
>(2) Atoms have nuclei.
>[etc]
>
>Which of these theories would you say are not yet proven beyond any 
>possible infinitesmal shread of a doubt?

All of them.  Empirical science has *never* absolutely proven any
theory, and it never will.  The fundamental problem is that there is no
such thing as a truly direct observation.  In order to infer reality
from our observations, we need to know the relationship between
observation and reality, and the things that determine this relation are
part of the reality we're trying to infer.  Science has ways to get past
this circularity, and they work very well, but they aren't perfectly
reliable.

To help illustrate the problem, here's an excerpt from something I
posted a few months ago:

:>We can physically see that the earth is round.  Thats an irrefutable 
:>fact.
:
:Sorry, this is wrong.  While the theory that the Earth is approximately
:round has a lot of evidence supporting it, it is not (and like every
:other scientific theory, cannot be) absolutely proven.
:
:Take a frequently cited piece of evidence for roundness: the appearance
:of Earth when seen from space.  Certainly it *looks* round, but the
:view can be equally well explained by assuming that the Earth is flat,
:and that light travels faster at lower altitudes (obviously, due to the
:pressure gradient of the luminiferous aether :-), which refracts the
:light upward, leading to a distortion of the view similar to what you'd
:get from a fisheye lens.  This same explanation works equally well for
:ships that disappear hull-first over the horizon.
:
:There are many other ways of measuring the curvature of the Earth, but
:all such methods may be subject to similar distortions that could make
:the Earth appear round, when it really isn't.  In fact, it's pretty
:easy to construct a general theory which is consistent with all the
:same observations as the round Earth theory (together with general
:relativity): just describe the universe in GR terms, using spherical
:coordinates centered on the Earth, then reinterpret GR so that the
:coordinate system is Cartesian, and the metric terms of GR are
:"universal forces", which distort the laws of physics.  (This theory
:bears roughly the same relation to general relativity that the old
:Fitzgerald-Lorentz theory bears to special relativity.)
:
:This theory is, of course, far inferior to its round-Earth equivalent
:(at least by scientific standards) -- it has less explanatory power,
:and the "universal forces" practically beg for invocation of Occam's
:razor.  But this theory cannot be absolutely disproven (without also
:disproving its round-Earth equivalent).
:
:I'd suggest you take a look at the epistemology of geometry, and in
:particular at Poincare's view that the geometry we use to describe a
:given space is a matter of convention.  Most of the discussion you see
:will likely be addressed to the flatness or curvature of spacetime, but
:the same considerations apply to the surface of the Earth.  See, for
:example, chapter 2 of _Space, Time, and Spacetime_, by Lawrence Sklar.

--
Human:    Gordon Davisson
HASA:     Member, S division.
Internet: davisson@milton.u.washington.edu

	"Scientific knowledge is a body of statements of varying degrees
	 of certainty -- some most unsure, some nearly sure, but none
	 *absolutely* certain."		-- R. P. Feynman
Newsgroups: sci.skeptic,talk.origins