HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: tp0x+@cs.cmu.edu (Thomas Price)
Subject: Re: Which theory before observation ?
Organization: School of Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon
Date: Fri, 8 Jan 1993 19:45:52 GMT

In article <schiller.726487694@hpas5> schiller@prl.philips.nl (schiller c) writes:
>My position as a scientist is that facts, i.e. the  results of observation,
>are the basis of theories. There are no "well-known" flaws of this position. 
>
>Some in the discussion quoted scientists (e.g. Eddington) saying that every 
>observation needs a preceding theory. 

There is no necessary contradiction between these two positions.

>Well, some scientists are 
>unsatisfied by the approach to the world that science pursues,
>and Eddington surely felt this very deeply to be so. I can follow his 
>unsatisfaction, but do not agree with it. He resolved it by 
>saying that science is somehow wrong, and he concluded that 
>this is due to the theoretical framework which supposedly, he says,
>brings people to mix facts and personal prejudices, leading to 
>his statement that theory preceds fact.
>
>The discussion would become more interesting if somebody of the opposing camp
>would  give a precise example of which "theory" is necessary to observe
>something ! (Eddington surely was not able to do so ...)
>
>		Christoph Schiller

I may be opening a can of worms by bringing up a particularly controversial
source, but Paul Feyerabend does so in _Against Method_, with specific
reference to Galileo. My copy is at a friend's apartment but I would be
glad to fetch it and post relevant portions. Email me if you think this
would further discussion.


      Tom Price   |    tp0x@cs.cmu.edu   |   Free will? What free will? 
 *****************************************************************************
  plutoniumsurveillanceterroristCIAassassinationIranContrawirefraudcryptology





Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.tech
From: djb85@thor.albany.edu (Donald J. Byrd)
Subject: The vision driving technological research
Originator: djb85@thor.albany.edu
Organization: State University of New York at Albany
Date: Tue, 12 Jan 93 16:06:05 GMT

	I am interested in locating responsible, speculative
writing about technology: I am thinking, for example, of things
like Eric Drexler's and Hans Moravec's books--the kind of imaginative
writing which is rooted in current theory and close enough to
current techniques to drive research.  It seems to me an 
interesting new genre, somewhere between technical reports
and science fiction.  Perhaps if there were to be an anthology
of such writings, it would begin with Einstein's letter to FDR
about the possibility of nuclear weapons.

 	I would, of course, be interested in readily available 
and obvious things I may have missed, but especially out of the
way pieces.  There was, for example, the transcipt of a talk
by David Justin Ross, which was interesting in this regard,
floating around the net a while back.

	I am interested in thinking about the process by which
ideas move from the sci-fi realm to implementation.

	Thanks in advance for the help.

	Don Byrd
	State University of New York--Albany
From: schiller@prl.philips.nl (schiller c)
Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.tech
Subject: Re: Philosophy before science ? (was : Seman
Date: 6 Jan 93 10:36:10 GMT
Organization: Philips Research Laboratories Eindhoven, Netherlands

Hakki_Kocabas@kcbbs.gen.nz (Hakki Kocabas) writes:

>However My Son!  
>'fact' is not a fact unless it is prescribed by a theory...in other words  
>there are NO facts in science unless we prescribe one by a theory...and when  
>you withdraw the theory away, all the facts attached to it disappear into the 
>thin air....it is like this; if we didn't invent QM then we wouldn't have   
>electrons..but, of course, if electrons are _some_ facts for you :-> then  
>what would you do without QM, you would look like a fish out of pond :-)  
>  
>as you say, fortunately, the middle-ages are over with all their bogeys called
>- scientific-facts...:-)..now we can live happily here-after without clinging 
>to some theories as if they were revealed words of the God...and also  
>we don't confuse the revealed words of the God with scientific-facts....  
>:-)....happy ending....:-)  
>  

However my son ! Facts are never presecribed by theory, facts are the 
results of observation.

For example, electrons were there much before quantum mechanics
(at least 30 years before) when they were observed in Braun tubes
and similar devices. By the way, your TV and your terminal
(except if LCD) is a Braun tube, and a
ray of electrons produces the image. No quantum mechanics is
necessary to observe this fact ... :-)

Your (wrong) statement that "if we didn't invent QM then we wouldn't have   
electrons" is a nice example which shows the difference between a
fact (based on observation) and a speculation "prescribed" by 
what you (but not scientists) call a "theory", namely your 
conviction that theories precede facts ... :-)

I guess you many :-) signs mean to show that you have some theory
which comes before all your facts. Can you at least spell it out in more
detail, to enlighten us more ? :-) 


		Cheers

			Christoph Schiller
Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.tech
From: schiller@prl.philips.nl (schiller c)
Subject: Re: Philosophy before science ? (was : S
Organization: Philips Research Laboratories Eindhoven, Netherlands
Date: Fri, 8 Jan 1993 08:48:20 GMT

Hakki_Kocabas@kcbbs.gen.nz (Hakki Kocabas) writes:

>> For example, electrons were there much before quantum mechanics  
>> (at least 30 years before) when they were observed in Braun tubes  
>> and similar devices. By the way, your TV and your terminal  
>  
>Whose electrons ?!  
>  
>> (except if LCD) is a Braun tube, and a  
>> ray of electrons produces the image. No quantum mechanics is  
>> necessary to observe this fact ... :-)  
>  
>WoW !  
>So it is a fact that my CRT emits electrons, is that right ?  
>but fact according to what theory ? How can I prove that  
>my CRT emits electrons, according to what theory ?  
>  

Electrons are a good counterexample to your idea. They were
discovered by chance, when people were playing around with
vacuum tubes with a little gas in them, and high voltage.

I guess you have seen electron rays in high school, where you can
see the nice blue colour (blue if the rest gas is air, as usual)
emitted by the ray inside the tube, when you look at it from the side.

Electrons were discovered like this, noting a coloured ray 
in a vacuum tube. No theory preceded the observation. 
You can say that you need a theory of what a colour is, and of what
glas is, but we can leave this for a later thread ... :-)

In high schools they show this experiment in the same way, because 
it shows that by putting a power supply to to pieces of metal in a vacuum, 
you get a beam of something. This something is called "electron".

Later, you can start to measure the mass of it (yes, you need the concept
of mass to do that), the charge (idem) etc.

This fortuitious observation was the reason we say (and you too)
that electron's were *discovered*, and not *invented* or *constructed*.


			Christoph Schiller  
Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.tech
From: sasghm@theseus.unx.sas.com (Gary Merrill)
Subject: Re: Inappropriate rejections in science  (was: Truzzi Lecture)
Originator: sasghm@theseus.unx.sas.com
Date: Mon, 11 Jan 1993 13:59:11 GMT
Organization: SAS Institute Inc.


In article <NS14.93Jan9190020@crux3.crux2.cit.cornell.edu>, ns14@crux3.crux2.cit.cornell.edu (Nathan Otto Siemers) writes:

|> 	How about the tetrahedral nature of the carbon atom?  The idea
|> and subsequent notions of stereochemistry were first posited by Van
|> Hoft and Lebel  (sp?).   Wohler,  widely considered to be the "father"
|> of organic chemistry,  denounced them as mystics quite publicly.
|> 
|> 
|> 	Slightly more specialized is the decades long argument about
|> hypervalent carbon,  fought to the death, literally, by H.C. Brown and
|> the late Saul Winstein.  Winstein happened to be correct, but it
|> wasn't conclusively demonstrated until after his death.  Literally
|> MILLIONS and MILLIONS of dollars were spent fighting this chemistry
|> "war". 

I am not familiar with the details of these episodes.  I do seem to
recall that certain of the fundamental ideas of Avogadro were
ignored (even ridiculed?) for quite some time despite the fact that
ultimately they proved to be correct.  However, a closer look at this
particular episode shows that although Avogadro had the correct insight,
neither he nor anyone else at the time at a reasonably successful
theoretical structure that could compete with the one currently in
vogue (and with respect to which his ideas appeared to be a bit wild).
-- 
Gary H. Merrill  [Principal Systems Developer, C Compiler Development]
SAS Institute Inc. / SAS Campus Dr. / Cary, NC  27513 / (919) 677-8000
sasghm@theseus.unx.sas.com ... !mcnc!sas!sasghm
Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.tech,talk.philosophy.misc,talk.religion.misc
From: pmsc13sg@UMASSD.EDU (Stephen Grossman)
Subject: Re: The vision driving technological research
Reply-To: pmsc13sg@UMASSD.EDU
Organization: UMASS DARTMOUTH, NO. DARTMOUTH, MA.
Date: Tue, 12 Jan 1993 22:12:32 GMT

In article <1993Jan12.160605.27799@sarah.albany.edu>, djb85@thor.albany.edu 
(Donald J. Byrd) writes:

>	I am interested in locating responsible, speculative
>writing about technology: I am thinking, for example, of things

SG	Try Ayn Rand's novel _Atlas Shrugged_ and her essays in _For The New 
Intellectual_.
________________________________________________________________________________
	"In that world, you'll be able to rise in the morning with the spirit
you had known in your childhood: that spirit of eagerness, adventure and cer-
tainty which comes from dealing with a rational universe."
                                                              AYN RAND
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Stephen Grossman <PMSC13SG@UMASSD.EDU>
================================================================================
Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.tech
From: christo@psych.toronto.edu (Christopher Green)
Subject: Re: Which theory before observation ?
Organization: Department of Psychology, University of Toronto
Date: Sat, 9 Jan 1993 16:18:51 GMT

>In article <schiller.726487694@hpas5> schiller@prl.philips.nl (schiller c) writes:
>>My position as a scientist is that facts, i.e. the  results of observation,
>>are the basis of theories. There are no "well-known" flaws of this position. 
>>
I'm afriad that this is simply ill-informed. The observation-theory distinction
has long been a matter a controversy in philosophy of science. The best-known
"flaws" are put forward in Putnam's "What theories are not."  The position
outlined there is a little technical, but the central example is that one
cannot establish, through obsevation, that a thing is red unless one has
a conceptual scheme for colors that includes red in advance.

Other more controversial critiques have been put forward by Paul Feyerabend
(as mentioned by another poster) and Rom Harre (take a look at his article on
philosophy of science  in the _Encyclopedia of Philosophy_). 


-- 
Christopher D. Green                christo@psych.toronto.edu
Psychology Department               cgreen@lake.scar.utoronto.ca
University of Toronto
Toronto, Ontario M5S 1A1
From: schiller@prl.philips.nl ()
Subject: Philosophy before science ? (was : Semantics of Set Theory)
Originator: schiller@prl.philips.nl
Organization: Philips Research Laboratories, Eindhoven, The Netherlands
Date: Tue, 5 Jan 1993 16:39:22 GMT


You write : 

 Philosophy is the context of science. Science (inc/math) cannot prove
 nor refute philosophy. Philosophy is the study of the basic facts of existence
 whereas science is the study of non-basic facts. 
 ...
 Philosophy must not be made consistent with science. It is science
 which must be made consistent with philosophy. Science always contains an
 implicit philosophy which must be judged without any reference to science.
 ...
 Apart from the intellectual fraud, philosophy causes science.

-------------------------------------

These statements are provoking and therefore interesting, but sadly they are
mostly wrong.

- Philosophy is not the cause of science. The cause and origin of science is
curiosity. 

- Science *is* the study of basic facts, in contrast to what you assume. For
example, physics studies time, space, matter, interactions, motion, change. All
of these are basic facts. Theoretical physics is trying hard to find more basic
ones, at the moment, and perhaps we can tell you more in a few years.

- Science can very well prove or refute philosophical ideas. It has done so many
times. Creation of life, supernatural forces in daily life, infinity of the
universe, and many more are philosophical ideas that have been shown false by
careful observation.

- Natural science does not contain implicit philosophy (whatever that means).
And surely it is not to be judged by philosophy. Science is to be judged
by facts, not by philosophy. (The middle age is over, happily.)

- You should define in more precise terms what you mean by philosophy. From your
use of the word (as in " an implicit philosophy " ), you seem to use the term
as another word for "beliefs".  But to provoke you a little more, there are no
beliefs in science (at least not in natural sciences). No belief is needed to be
curious about the world around. 


		Cheers
				Christoph



Christoph Schiller                       
Philips Research Laboratories            It has been proven scientifically  
Eindhoven, The Netherlands               that male rats are more attracted
schiller@prl.philips.nl                  to female rats than to tennis balls.


Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.tech
From: schiller@prl.philips.nl (schiller c)
Subject: Re: Which theory before observation ?
Organization: Philips Research Laboratories Eindhoven, Netherlands
Date: Mon, 11 Jan 1993 08:38:09 GMT

christo@psych.toronto.edu (Christopher Green) writes:

>>In article <schiller.726487694@hpas5> schiller@prl.philips.nl (schiller c) writes:
>>>My position as a scientist is that facts, i.e. the  results of observation,
>>>are the basis of theories. There are no "well-known" flaws of this position. 
>>>
>I'm afriad that this is simply ill-informed. The observation-theory distinction
>has long been a matter a controversy in philosophy of science. The best-known
>"flaws" are put forward in Putnam's "What theories are not."  The position
>outlined there is a little technical, but the central example is that one
>cannot establish, through obsevation, that a thing is red unless one has
>a conceptual scheme for colors that includes red in advance.

You are right: one needs a concept of red. But a concept and a theory
are two different things. Red is a concept formed by children
before they are six months old, and it gives a name to certain class 
of colours. When a child says: "it is red", it just says, "it has a similar
look than all the previous things I have observed, which I call red".
The statement "It is red" therefore just compares different observations.
Not much of theory there.

			Christoph Schiller
From: turpin@cs.utexas.edu (Russell Turpin)
Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.tech
Subject: Re: Inappropriate rejections in science  (was: Truzzi Lecture)
Date: 10 Jan 1993 11:13:09 -0600
Organization: CS Dept, University of Texas at Austin
NNTP-Posting-Host: im4u.cs.utexas.edu
Summary: Details!  Details!

-*----
In article <NS14.93Jan9190020@crux3.crux2.cit.cornell.edu> ns14@crux3.crux2.cit.cornell.edu (Nathan Otto Siemers) writes:
> How about the tetrahedral nature of the carbon atom?  The idea
> and subsequent notions of stereochemistry were first posited by 
> Van Hoft and Lebel  (sp?).   Wohler,  widely considered to be 
> the "father" of organic chemistry,  denounced them as mystics 
> quite publicly.

Let me beg some more details, especially related to the issue at
hand.  How (and how long) did Wohler's opposition retard the
discovery of evidence related to stereochemistry?  How effective
was it at retarding the acceptance of these ideas? 

> Slightly more specialized is the decades long argument about
> hypervalent carbon,  fought to the death, literally, by 
> H.C. Brown and the late Saul Winstein.  Winstein happened to
> be correct, but it wasn't conclusively demonstrated until 
> after his death. ...

Why was it not conclusively demonstrated until after Winstein's
death?  How did Brown's opposition delay this? 

Russell

Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.tech
From: holmes@opal.idbsu.edu (Randall Holmes)
Subject: Re: Philosophy before science ? (was : Seman
Organization: Boise State University
Date: Wed, 6 Jan 1993 17:50:44 GMT

In article <102936.2005.14241@kcbbs.gen.nz> Hakki_Kocabas@kcbbs.gen.nz (Hakki Kocabas) writes:
>  
>>  Science *is* the study of basic facts, ....  
>   (science, basic-facts)  
>  
>>  ..time, space, matter, interactions, motion, change. All of these are   
>>  basic facts.   
>   (basic-facts)  
>  
>>  Science is to be judged by facts...  
>   (science, facts)  
>  
>However My Son!  
>'fact' is not a fact unless it is prescribed by a theory...in other words  
>there are NO facts in science unless we prescribe one by a theory...and when  
>you withdraw the theory away, all the facts attached to it disappear into the 
>thin air....

This is pure, unadulterated nonsense.  Theories arise in reaction to
facts discovered beforehand (not by "induction", certainly, but there
are facts before the theory).  It's true that some facts framed in
terms of a theory depend heavily on the theory itself for their sense,
but not all of them.

it is like this; if we didn't invent QM then we wouldn't have   
>electrons..but, of course, if electrons are _some_ facts for you :-> then  
>what would you do without QM, you would look like a fish out of pond
:-)

The discovery of the electron predates formal QM :-) :-)

  
>  
>as you say, fortunately, the middle-ages are over with all their bogeys called
>- scientific-facts...:-)

There is a world, and some statements about it are true and known to
us.  The term "scientific facts" is unfortunate; "scientific" refers
to the way the facts were uncovered, not any feature of the facts
themselves.


..now we can live happily here-after without clinging 
>to some theories as if they were revealed words of the God...

Such clinging would not be proper scientific methodology.

and also  
>we don't confuse the revealed words of the God with
scientific-facts....

God reveals Its (real) Word only to those whose methodology is
properly scientific :-)

  
>:-)....happy ending....:-)  

If you say so.


>  
>> Christoph Schiller                         


-- 
The opinions expressed		|     --Sincerely,
above are not the "official"	|     M. Randall Holmes
opinions of any person		|     Math. Dept., Boise State Univ.
or institution.			|     holmes@opal.idbsu.edu
From: Chris.Holt@newcastle.ac.uk (Chris Holt)
Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.tech
Subject: Re: Philosophy before science ? (was : Seman
Date: 9 Jan 93 18:52:25 GMT
Organization: University of Newcastle upon Tyne, UK, NE1 7RU

schiller@prl.philips.nl (schiller c) writes:

>To dismiss an argument because it is "simplistic" is a
>typical example of, well, ... arrgogance !
>A statement is either true or false, but "simplistic" is not
>evidence for false.

Some of us think that requiring a statement to be either true or
false is, well, a bit simplistic. :-)

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
 Chris.Holt@newcastle.ac.uk      Computing Lab, U of Newcastle upon Tyne, UK
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
 Some ideas are frost giants: pouring cold water on them helps them to grow.
Xref: sparky sci.philosophy.tech:4685 sci.logic:2539
From: zeleny@husc10.harvard.edu (Michael Zeleny)
Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.tech,sci.logic
Subject: Re: Expression
Date: 5 Jan 93 12:30:10 GMT
Organization: The Phallogocentric Cabal

In article <C0CuM3.sv@ccu.umanitoba.ca>
feld@ccu.umanitoba.ca (Michael Feld) writes:

>In article <1993Jan3.194211.18969@husc3.harvard.edu>
>zeleny@husc10.harvard.edu (Michael Zeleny) writes:

>>In article <C0Apzo.IDG@ccu.umanitoba.ca> 
>>feld@ccu.umanitoba.ca (Michael Feld) writes:

MF:
>>>1) That every case of (A&B) is also a case of (A) does not establish
>>>that there is no distinction betwen (A&B) and (A);

MZ:
>>Soit.  Was anyone stupid enough to claim otherwise?

MF:
>Well, yeah, sort of; or at least, accidentally committed himself to
>some such; but the villain escapes just deserts, because the line to
>which I was replying seems to have gone missing, and I don't keep a
>file of old discussions.  So one of us is dead lucky, boy oh boy.

The most you can accuse me of, is having said something that lends
itself to misinterpretation when taken out of context.  I think the
same is true of all human discourse.

MZ:
>>are you really suggesting that the fact
>>of expressing one's attitude, is not _ipso facto_ an occasion of
>>reporting one's dispositional property to behave in a certain fashion,

MF:
>Oh, yes; certainly; of course: the whole point of doing a taxonomy of
>speech acts is to win the freedom to distinguish EXPRESSING from
>REPORTING.  Whether or not emotivism is true (and, of course, you and
>I know it to be false), it does not dissolve into egoism; expressing
>distaste does not equate to correctly reporting distaste -- else,
>logical positivists would never have hoped to simultaneously espouse
>value noncognitivism and emotivism.  And as to setting snares under my own
>feet, your admirer proposes a "what? you offer vulgar behaviourism?" metaphor.

Surely the correct question is whether logical positivists *could*
ever have hoped to simultaneously espouse value noncognitivism and
emotivism.  Surely you can figure out my answer to the question on the
basis of what I have said.

MZ:
>>or a factual property of having a certain type of belief?

MF:
>Don't know what you mean here.  That one may validly infer from the
>expression of distaste to the presence of some belief about inherent
>value?  Depends on context, as we pragmatists say.  Babies express
>dis-taste for green olives, but their beliefs are probably restricted
>to theorems about squares on triangles.

Wasn't that Norman Malcolm who attributed a belief that a squirrel was
up in *that* (factually wrong) tree, to his befuddled dog?

>-- 
>Michael Feld                  | E-mail: <feld@ccu.umanitoba.ca>
>Dept. of Philosophy           | FAX: (204) 261-0021
>University of Manitoba        | Voice: (204) 474-9136
>Winnipeg, MB, R3T 2M8, Canada


cordially,
mikhail zeleny@husc.harvard.edu
"Les beaulx bastisseurs nouveaulx de pierres mortes ne sont escriptz
en mon livre de vie.  Je ne bastis que pierres vives: ce sont hommes."
Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.tech
From: Chris.Holt@newcastle.ac.uk (Chris Holt)
Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.tech
Subject: Re: Which theory before observation ?
Date: 9 Jan 93 19:04:48 GMT
Organization: University of Newcastle upon Tyne, UK, NE1 7RU

schiller@prl.philips.nl (schiller c) writes:

>The discussion would become more interesting if somebody of the opposing camp
>would  give a precise example of which "theory" is necessary to observe
>something ! (Eddington surely was not able to do so ...)

Go over to a libertarian newsgroup and they will be able to assure
you that changes in money supply caused the Depression of the '30s.
They see this as an observation, because they are full of the theory
of von Mises.  Keynesians perceive no such phenomenon, however,
because they have a different theory of causal relationships within
an economy.  Of course, you may not call this related to science... :-)
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
 Chris.Holt@newcastle.ac.uk      Computing Lab, U of Newcastle upon Tyne, UK
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
 Some ideas are frost giants: pouring cold water on them helps them to grow.
Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.tech