On 11/14/2019 7:27 PM, Alan Grayson wrote:
On Thursday, November 14, 2019 at 8:15:18 PM UTC-7, Brent wrote: On 11/14/2019 6:30 PM, Alan Grayson wrote:On Thursday, November 14, 2019 at 7:18:02 PM UTC-7, Brent wrote: On 11/14/2019 5:48 PM, Alan Grayson wrote:On Thursday, November 14, 2019 at 5:34:02 PM UTC-7, Brent wrote: On 11/14/2019 4:20 PM, Alan Grayson wrote:Newton is considered superior, not just because his theory was more accurate, but because it had a universal application. The greatest importance of Newton was that he broke the idea that the heavens went by different rules than the Earth. So "truth" per se is not the distinction. As Bill can tell you astronomers have no problem with regarding the Earth as stationary and the Sun going around it. But they use Newton's equations to determine how it goes. It's convenience...not truth. Bill's failing, as I recall, was the belief and insistence that he's always right. No astronomer of sound mind would regard the Earth as stationary and the Sun going around it. AGNot at all. They do it all the time, because when it comes to aiming your telescope you do it relative to the Earth, not the Sun. Brent I was thinking of calculating the orbit of a planet. For stars apparently fixed on the celestial sphere, Earth centered calculations are convenient. AGWhich is the point. There is no "true" center of the solar system, there are just more and less convenient coordinate systems in which to calculate things. So you need to ask yourself what do you mean when you say it is more true that the Sun is the center of the solar system and the Earth orbits the Sun than the other way around? If you're honest you will conclude that you mean it is easier to make good estimates of the future in that coordinate system. Why is Einstein's gravity "truer" than Newton's. Why is the quantum atom better than the Bohr atom? Why is Darwinian theory better than Lamarckian. The reason one scientific theory is better than another is three dimensional: 1. It gives more accurate predictions where the theories overlap and no emprically false ones. 2. It has a wider domain of application. It applies in more places or over a bigger range of parameters. 3. It is consilient with our other best theories. So it reduces the number of different things we must understand as independent. A theory that is better on all three dimensions, we regard as truer. Not the other way around: It is not the case that we judge it better because it's truer, because we don't, and can't, know where the truth is. Brent So when we see ~200 billion stars rotating around the galactic enter, it's equally true that each star can be regarded as the center, with everything rotating about itself.Sure. I meant to put a question mark at the end of that sentence. AG You know there's no 'center of the universe' in any current model. To the extent that galaxies rotate, they have a center. AG For such a center to have any operational meaning would require that momentum not be conserved.This is a form of relativity, let's call it the relativity of truth, that find obscures the value of evolving models in better describing the external world. AGExcept that still invites looking at it backwards; as though there is something called "the truth" but it's relative to what we know. I'm saying that there is a concept of "truer" that has an operational meaning, but there is no operational meaning to "the truth" that we are approximating. The only meaning I can give "the truth" is the collection of propositions expressing the known empirical facts; but even those are ambiguous because every observation depends on some theories. I've explicitly described how we define models as better ("truer") when we evolve them. Do you have some other criterion? Something involving what's true? BrentThere's a philosophical principle that I endorse; namely, that there exists an external world and hopefully our models are increasingly better descriptions of that world. At least that's our goal. Beneath your words seems to be a denial of that principle. We can call this "the truth", although I don't think I used that phrase. AG
You make it just an unsupported article of faith. In my epistemology we hypothesize that there is some reality as a meta-theory and that is supported by our experience of finding a sequence of truer theories, by which I mean more accurate, more comprehensive, and more consilient theories.
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