On 24 Feb 2010 at 1:01, Allen Esterson wrote: > I'm up to my neck in preparing an article, so can't rise to Stephen's > bait
I'm wounded by this. I had intended not a bait but a de-bate. :-) >Allen then said, "I'll respond to one remark of Louis Menand's: "For some disorders, such as depression, we may never know, in any useful way, what the underlying pathology is, since we can´t distinguish biologically patients who are suffering from depression from patients who are enduring a depressing life problem." Allen then commented: "It may or many not turn our to be relevant, but I'm reminded of a comment by a scientist in the nineteenth century (anyone recall who it was?) who gave as an example of scientific facts we could never know -- the constitution of the stars. This was shortly before the discoveries of Fraunhofer and Kirchhoff enabled scientists to achieve that feat using spectroscopy. " I helpfully reply: I believe it was the philosopher Auguste Comte, who is quoted as saying (Cours de la Philosophie Positive (1835), which I read every night before bedtime): "On the subject of stars, all investigations which are not ultimately reducible to simple visual observations are ... necessarily denied to us. While we can conceive of the possibility of determining their shapes, their sizes, and their motions, we shall never be able by any means to study their chemical composition or their mineralogical structure ... I regard any notion concerning the true mean temperature of the various stars as forever denied to us. Comte inflicted sociology on us too. See http://www.astro.virginia.edu/class/oconnell/astr121/comte.html [Wikiquote gives a somewhat different quote and a different source, but the sentiment is similar. Perhaps he said it more than once.] Of course, Menard did cautiously say " _may_ never know". Comte would have been advised to have done the same. Stephen ----------------------------------------------------------------- Stephen L. Black, Ph.D. Professor of Psychology, Emeritus Bishop's University e-mail: sblack at ubishops.ca 2600 College St. Sherbrooke QC J1M 1Z7 Canada ----------------------------------------------------------------------- --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: [email protected]. To unsubscribe click here: http://fsulist.frostburg.edu/u?id=13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df5d5&n=T&l=tips&o=825 or send a blank email to leave-825-13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df...@fsulist.frostburg.edu
