Category: Science
-
Explanation and Understanding: More on Bogardus
What follows are some further ruminations occasioned by the article by Tomas Bogardus first referenced and commented upon here. I will begin by explaining the distinction between personal and impersonal explanations. The explanation I am about to give is itself a personal explanation, as should become clear after I define 'personal explanation.' A lightning bolt…
-
Could Kamala Explain the Difference between True and Magnetic North?
I doubt it. She thinks 'the cloud' in cyberspeak refers to a physical object in the sky. Remember that howler? Why are the Dems so dumb? They lack both a message and messenger. The think they failed to 'get their message across.' But they had no message to get across, and no one to get…
-
Lee’s Lunar Lunacy
Another example of a dumb-as-dirt Dem. No Sheila dear, the Moon is not a planet, but a natural satellite of the Earth, the only one in fact. Its singularity is why, in correct orthography, we write 'the Moon' and not 'the moon.' Jupiter has a number of moons, whereas the Earth has exactly one. Our…
-
Is the Enlightenment the Problem?
This is a redacted repost from 21 June 2015. In the subsequent eight years, we in the West are 'infinitely' worse off than before. Time to re-visit the topic and re-assess. Mournful was the tocsin Malcolm Pollack sounded in 2015; what must its sound be today? ……………………….. Malcolm laments via e-mail: Don't things seem to…
-
Jews, Muslims, Science and Technology
Which group has contributed more to science and technology? Jews or Muslims? And why? Question prompted by this: Today, Jewish and Israeli MIT students were physically prevented from attending class by a hostile group of pro-Hamas and anti-Israel MIT students that call themselves the CAA [Coalition Against Apartheid, apparently].
-
The Grain Problem
Ed Buckner writes, Here is another problem that needs to be carefully phrased. I want to say that the pitch of a musical note is continuous through time. I mean, at any point in continuous time, i.e. time as specified by the real numbers, the pitch of the note (e.g. middle C) is the same. However,…
-
A Map of the Philosophy of Science
-
A Frustrating Discussion with a Non-Philosopher about Stephen Hawking
Ed reports on a recent trip to Africa: I didn’t run into any philosophers, but there was a chap I met over dinner who was banging on about Stephen Hawking. I have a strict rule never to discuss philosophy with anyone who has no obvious training in the subject, but he was insistent, and I…
-
Ideology at Odds with Open Inquiry
(Cross-posted at my FB page where comments are allowed.) You will recall how Galileo got in trouble with the Inquisition. But now the Roman Catholic Church is a spent force culturally speaking and, under the 'leadership' of Bergoglio, is busy accommodating itself to the Left, which is now the arbiter of what is 'correct' and…
-
Identity-Political Infiltration of the Hard Sciences
More proof that leftists are destructive: A scientist at UCLA reports: “All across the country the big question now in STEM is: how can we promote more women and minorities by ‘changing’ (i.e., lowering) the requirements we had previously set for graduate level study?” Mathematical problem-solving is being de-emphasized in favor of more qualitative group projects;…
-
Did You Know that there are Climate Heretics?
Malcolm Pollack quotes extensively from Dr. Judith Curry, climatologist, about whom Scientific American published an article in 2010 entitled, "Climate Heretic Judith Curry Turns on Her Colleagues." If Islam is an anti-Enlightenment political ideology masquerading as a religion, then current climatology is an anti-capitalist political ideology masquerading as an empirical science. Or am I exaggerating? …
-
On Natural Science
Natural science pursued for its own sake is a magnificent and noble thing. But in the end one ought to consider whether it is but a high-minded diversion, an extremely high-level form of Pascalian divertissement.
-
The Empirical and the Experimental
The hard sciences are not only empirical but experimental. I leave it to you to work out the distinction and to pursue the question as to how 'hard' climate science is.
-
Einstein, Relativity, and Relativism
A correspondent writes: British (Catholic) historian Paul Johnson in his wonderful Modern Times attributes relativism's rise to Einstein! So does Einstein's latest biographer. There are two questions that must be distinguished. The first is whether Einstein's Theory of Relativity entails either moral or cognitive (alethic) relativism. The second question is whether Einstein's revolutionary contributions to…