On 02 Jan 2013, at 21:01, meekerdb wrote:
On 1/2/2013 10:34 AM, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote:
A nice quote from Galileo by John L. Heilbron that shows:
1) One could trace the falsifiability to Jesuits of Galileo's time.
2) It could be a link between falsifiability and theology.
p. 318 ‘However, false is not useless. The motion supposed by
Copernicus can be employed in calculations,
The Copernican model was less accurate than the Ptolemaic one. It
wasn't until Kepler and elliptical orbits that the heliocentric
model became superior for celestial predictions.
Interesting.
and might even be useful to the faith if mathematicians emphasized
their falsity along with their utility. Here Inchofer had in mind
the minor truth later rediscovered by Karl Popper: “mathematicians
[should] … work more and more toward trying to falsify theories
rather than to defend them“.
This seems confused. Mathematicians prove theorems from axioms -
they don't have theories that can be falsified.
That's not true. Most first theories of set, lambda term, combinator
have been falsified. It took time for some.
The NF theory of set might still be. The falsification is a proof of a
contradiction in the theory.
A different example are the fertile conjecture. many results in number
theory are proved from assuming the Riemann hypothesis, which might be
falsified, even empirically (by finding a zero of the zeta function
out of the critical line).
Likewise, many result in theoretical computer science remains on the
assumption P = NP, and might be all falsified in the case someone
prove P = NP.
Etc.
Bruno
At worst they may think a proof is valid when it's not. He must
have been using "mathematician" carelessly to mean scientist.
Brent
I don't know if God exists, but it would be better for His
reputation if He did not.
--- Jules Renard
To this anticipation of modern epistemology Inchofer added a pinch
of ancient wisdom, Urban’s Simple in the words of the Preacher: “no
man can find out the work that
God maketh from beginning to end.”‘
Evgenii
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