Drake – This is the tip of a large intellectual iceberg. So simply: the dominant logical positivist philosophy of science is largely an exposition of the Mechanical Philosophy resurrected by Galileo and Descartes et al. The Laplacean version was that Newtonian Mechanics allowed an 'in principle' supermind to predict and explain everything (viz as well as retrodict). The Modern version has been Einstein's Unified Field Theory research program and the later posturing about a Theory of Everything. I recently asked Brian Greene (Columbia U, Elegant Universe; Fabric of teh Cosmos) where he though that String Theory might be a Fully Deterministic Theory of Everything. He said that that was the goal and expectation.
The problem with the opposite 'un-scientific' position is that it is unable to account for or make sense of the success – limited as it may be – of the mechanical theories (Newton, Maxwell, quantum etc.). A post-scientific theory seeks to be able to make sense of the success of science (mechanical theories and relationships) while rejecting the Scientific Hypothesis (SH) that all phenomena in the universe can be understood as governed by one (time-space invariant) order. SH is what links ancient science and modern science – that they are both science. Peirce and the American Pragmatists embraced the Evolutionary Hypothesis – linked to Schiller and Hegel and so forth and again linked to ancient theories – Plato, Socrates and Aristotle. The Socratic Turn (cf Bartlett's brilliant Great Courses exposition) is the same as the Pragmatic Turn (IMO) where there is a paradigmatic problem shift from the scientific – how does the world work (necessarily fixed over time to be 'learnable'? – to the pragmatic – how should we live? A post-scientific, pragmatic model of reality must still be able to make sense of the successes of the scientific enterprise – precluding a shift to an un-scientific model. Enough of the iceberg. Terry ========================================= On Aug 16, 2011, at 8:05 PM, vony wrote: Why is “post-scientific” a better characterization than “unscientific” of the sentence “our understanding of the physical world is complete in all important respects." ? To my mind the proposition "our understanding of the physical world is complete in all important respects" is absurd, Not just “unscientific” but counter-scientific. It doesn’t seem to be consistent to any idea I have of “religion”, either. Drake From: Terry Bristol………… 'Post-scientific' is a better characterization than unscientific – methinks. What Peirce et al are after is a More General Theory that can account for the inherently limited success of various material or mechanical theories as special cases. T ================================= On Aug 16, 2011, at 12:59 PM, Gary Richmond wrote: Steven, List, ………….. While I concur that Peirce would have certainly agreed that the position that "our understanding of the physical world is complete in all important respects" is unscientific, ….. …. Gary --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- You are receiving this message because you are subscribed to the PEIRCE-L listserv. To remove yourself from this list, send a message [email protected] with the line "SIGNOFF PEIRCE-L" in the body of the message. To post a message to the list, send it to [email protected] --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- You are receiving this message because you are subscribed to the PEIRCE-L listserv. To remove yourself from this list, send a message to [email protected] with the line "SIGNOFF PEIRCE-L" in the body of the message. To post a message to the list, send it to [email protected]
