DM> MB> It's interesting you believe that we can get "close enough" without
DM> MB> the ideal of perfecting being something to which we use to gauge
DM> MB> "close enough" in the first place!  It is astounding actually; that
DM> MB> any person would assume we can grasp perfection - but we must
DM> MB> know of its existence; for all our getting "close enough" to it.
DM> KK> Your ideas are nice, but whn NASA has to spend $650 million on a
DM> KK> launch, they don't fuck around.  In the real world there is no
DM> KK> such thing as perfection.  You just do the best that you can.
DM> KK> In the space flight biz, people die horribly because of slight
DM> KK> miscalculations.  It's easy to talk about abstractions like
DM> KK> 'perfection,' but the people who make the ships fly are more
DM> KK> interested in getting it right.
DM> KK> "Perfection" may be a lovely concept in philosophy or theology,
DM> KK> but in science or technology the only important idea is making
DM> KK> it work.  No Shuttle launch has ever achieved a "perfect" orbit,
DM>     At first I took issue with Mark, but then came to realize that
DM>     the term "perfection" only reflects your above philosophy-theology
DM>     comment, or perhaps even more, as an exploratory measuring tool.
DM>     A wonderful unattainable image or goal, it fits into that twilight
DM>     of the imagination that I believe helps fuel what we are to be;
DM>     and where we are going.  We have enough terms to cover rightness
DM>     or adequacy, so that we can leave perfection as "special"-
DM>                     .............dreaming the impossible dream......!
Yep.  I also managed to miss Mark's point.
I reduce it to this: I think we are arguing about the definition of
a word.
We tend to assume that perfection is somehow out there.  This is
why Newton's 'laws' were so named -- in them days they thought
he had discovered the 'laws' God used to govern the universe.
But ever since relativistic physics superseded but did not demolish
Newtonian physics, the modern scientific view is that humans make
mental models, including such 'perfect' ideas as F = ma, but that
the 'perfection' is internal.
Mark made the point well that you have to have an idea of a 'perfect'
orbit clearly in mind in order to get something into orbit.  But I
guess I would make the point that the perfect orbit is a human
invention, not something inherent in external reality.
Does that make any sense?
 * SLMR 2.1a *     Smiley captioned for the irony impaired.
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