Hi Billy, > I do think that the "junk" metaphor is useful, but technically you may well > be quite right. > Actually, the more technical term is “fudge factor.” :-). That is an extra term added to your formal theory in order to match reality.
In fact Einstein incorrectly added one himself: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmological_constant Also, it IS often quite useful to rewrite equations using “relativistic corrections” that are small perturbations against the classical version. So your instincts weren’t that far off. Just don’t call them junk. :-) E > When it comes to physics you lost me around paragraph #2, > > so I don't know nearly enough to tell if there really is or is not some "junk" > > to allow for in the science involved. But the value of the "junk hypothesis" > > in the social sciences is that it makes us -your favorite word- humble > > when thinking we can devise laws of history when all that is currently > > possible are generalizations or maybe (maybe) weak laws that rest upon > > strong generalizations. > -- -- Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community <[email protected]> Google Group: http://groups.google.com/group/RadicalCentrism Radical Centrism website and blog: http://RadicalCentrism.org --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
