ME>KK>ME>Logic is the art of noncontradictory identification. To speak of
he
ME>KK>ME>"infinite" is to speak of something beyond measurement. Measurement
is
ME>KK>ME>the relation or effect of one thing to or upon others. If something
ME>KK>ME>cannot be measured it has no relation and no effect to or on
nything
ME>KK>ME>else, which is another way of saying it does not exist.
ME>KK>Wrong. Plain wrong. Under the rules of scientific methodology,
ME>KK>you cannot talk about anything unless you can measure it in a way
ME>KK>that can be repeated. If something cannot be measured, that
ME>KK>does not mean it exists or does not exist; it means you have
ME>KK>nothing to say about it.
ME>Oh, I have plenty to say about things which cannot be measured in any
ME>way, and so does science...
I should have written that you would have nothing _scientific_ to say.
ME> Or do you simply have nothing to say about
ME>the existence of a substance known as Phlogiston? Or nothing to say
ME>about a prehistoric race known as Piltdown Man?
I could talk about the history of the Piltdown hoax, sure, but
scientifically, no for-real evidence of such a beast has turned up
since then. And here's my point: altho the existence of a
large-brained ape-jawed hominid seems extremely unlikely, I cannot
prove that they never existed. You can't prove a negative in science.
ME>KK>To claim
ME>KK>ME>something exists which does not exist is quite illogical.
ME>KK>Word games, pure and simple.
ME>No, not word games-- straight logic from straight facts. Refute the
ME>logic, or refute the facts... Or admit the truth of it.
It's the difference between math and logic on the one hand, and
empirical science on the other. In Euclidean geometry, the
included angles of a triangle always add up to 180 degrees.
Why? Because the system was defined that way by humans, using
axioms and theorems. Similarly, if you state that something
does not exist, then to state that it does exist is logically
contradictory. But the point is that in math and logic, the
system has only the artificial attributes you attribute to it.
Altho science uses math and logic, its datasets come from the
huge, messy real world, and your dataset is never complete.
For example, in logic you could write a syllogism that includes
the statement, "No crows are white." (But you could also create
a syllogism with the statement "All Fidos belch routinely.")
But in science you cannot say that no crows are white, because
somewhere in the world there might be crows that are white.
So in logic you can say that things don't exist, but in the
realm of science, you can't. Therefore I think we're haggling
about a category error here.
Science has no measureable evidence for the existence of God.
Contrary to the unscientific opinions of a few scientists,
that does not prove the nonexistence of God. Under strict
scientific methodology, it means science is silent on that
question. Or as the aphorism puts it, absence of evidence
is not evidence of absence.
ME>The only other choice is to go mad in a mass of contradictions.
Seems a bit binary to me.
ME> But
ME>that's what tenure's made of these days!
Yeah, but the physical world often seems to be a mass of contradictions,
and often seems to continue as such in spite of decades of work on
the part of good scientists, and, I might add, good engineers.
Here's a quote that might give you a chuckle:
Physics is love, and engineering is marriage.
-- Norman Mailer
* SLMR 2.1a * You can observe a lot by watching. -- Yogi Berra
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