On Sat, 28 Aug 2010, Mike Spencer wrote: > > Ed wrote: > >> Just one more thought and then I'll shut up. > > Oh, don't do that. > >> I'd say that even theoretical and highly speculative science is not >> myth because.... > > I hope I didn't convey the notion that *I* think of science as > intrinsically a myth structure. Your remark, > >> Nevertheless, I'd still make a distinction between myth and science, >> with science being concerned with the discovery of the true state of >> things and myth being what is placed on some original perceived >> truth whether derived scientifically, mystically, or whatever. > > leads me to suspect that I did. I fully agree that science, qua > science, is "concerned with the discovery of the true state of > things". > > What I think is that "Science", in scare quotes with optional > dingbats, is the name of a myth structure in 20th c. culture that has > only a tenuous connection to the pursuit of science by scientists or > to the study of basic (but real, textbook- or journal-level) > chemistry, physics & biology by anybody who ardently desires to grok > how the world works.
I think you want to be using the word "scientism". It is a very useful word. Scientism is to science as truthiness is to truth. I do like your explanation of the mechanism of the scanning tunneling microscope, it works for me. I'd only edit that the electrons are detected by simply measuring the electric current which flows from the probe tip to the subject surface. -Pete PS, with all this talk about the LHC and Higgs bosons and whathaveyou, I guess you'd be interested to know I'm off to Japan Sunday, for the fourth time in the last year, where I'll be puttering about with a great block of detectors in the bottom of a hole, which will be detecting the neutrinos which we're firing 295km across Japan from J-PARC just north of Tokyo to the great neutrino telescope at Kamioka. Here's a drift for the curious to skim (it appears a bit rough, but for some reason that's the only one up on the public site...): http://t2k-canada.nd280.org/Conferences/cap2010/wilking_cap2010.pdf/at_download/file _______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list [email protected] https://lists.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
