Newton famously wrote [1] [2]: I have not as yet been able to discover the reason for these properties of gravity from phenomena, and I do not feign hypotheses… It is enough that gravity does really exist and acts according to the laws I have explained, and that it abundantly serves to account for all the motions of celestial bodies. as a response to those who challenged him to provide causes of gravity. He said, […]
Category: physics
Against Physics as Ontologically Basic
1. Biology is epistemically independent of physics: Let’s assume that biology is not epistemically independent of physics, i.e. to know any biology we must first know something about physics. However, consider evolution as determined by natural selection and the struggle for survival. We can know about the struggle for survival and natural selection without appealing to physics — just as Darwin did when he created the theory — and hence we can fundamentally understand at […]
Aristotle’s Theory of TOPOS (Place)
[This is something I wrote before I had this blog, but I really like it and hope the readers here will find it interesting.] The task of explaining Aristotle’s theory of place lies in the interpretation of this sentence: “Hence the place of a thing is the innermost motionless boundary of what contains it,” (Physics IV 212a20). Now the idea of a motionless boundary for perceptible and obviously movable objects seems impossibly counterintuitive. However, using […]
Genetic Drift and the Uncertainty Principle
I have previously argued that the history of species must be treated like a evolutionary trajectory: we can only appreciate a species in a relative sense, just as we must evaluate physical trajectories relative to our own motion. But what happens when we try to measure the very small in physics? We find there is a limit to the precision at which we can measure, as given by the uncertainty principle. This suggests that there […]
A Priori Against Physicalism
I saw that Richard Brown is working to defend physicalism against a priori arguments. He says that most (all?) arguments use the same intuitions found in the zombie-knowledge arguments. This got me to thinking about a priori arguments against physicalism and I came up with something different: If physicalism is, as Dr. Brown says, “… the view that only physical things exist. Physical things are those things that are postulated by a completed physics,” then […]
Happy Birthday, H. C. O.
Today, as Google/Wikipedia tells me, is Hans Christian Ørsted’s birthday. He coined the term ‘Thought Experiment’ and, if he had done nothing else, I’d still think he ought to be remembered far and wide.
The Non-Reducibility & Scientific Explanation Problem
Q: What is a multiple star system? A: More than one star in a non-reducible mutual relationship spinning around each other. Q: How did it begin? A: Well, I guess, the stars were out in space and at some point they became close in proximity. Then their gravitations caused each other to alter their course and become intertwined. Q: How did the gravitations cause the courses of the stars to become intertwined? Gravity does one […]
Aether Propeller?
I was trying to figure out how planes stay in the sky. So this is what I came up with. As the plane moves forward, a small vacuum is created above the wing. The vacuum is a low pressure zone which pulls the wing up and the air down to fill itself in (because Nature HATES a vacuum). This upward pull that the low pressure zone creates we call lift. I thought, “Hooray. This isn’t […]
Dismantling Fodor’s Argument
Fodor argued that the theory of evolution is not a legitimate theory of science because it is either vacuously true or wrong. He accused Darwin of committing the intentional fallacy. (synopsis here) Insofar as he made no logical mistakes in his reasoning, we need a different strategy to defend the theory of evolution. In this post I will argue that his argument is an instance of gerneral underdetermination, and hence not a problem of evolution […]
What Fodor Got Wrong
Jerry Fodor recently (4 March) gave a talk entitled “What Darwin Got Wrong” at the CUNY Graduate Center in New York City. He accused Darwin of committing the intentional fallacy and hence said, straight out, that he didn’t believe in the theory of evolution. So what exactly does Fodor think Darwin got wrong? He believes that the theory of evolution is vacuously true (or just wrong) and hence not a worthwhile theory of science. You […]