From: Jan de Koning (jan@dekoning.ca)
Date: Fri Dec 20 2002 - 11:25:17 EST
At 12:16 AM 20/12/2002 -0800, Lucien Carroll wrote:
>I think the problem here is different understanding of what the word
>science means. I tend to look at a science as something one _does_, as
>it appears Michael does. But the word is also used to mean knowledge of
>the natural world, and sometimes merely potentially apprehensible
>knowledge as it appears you, Rich, mean. The two of you are talking
>about entirely different things, both called science.
"Science" is a difficult word, though I have a "science" degree. But it is
really a remainder of the Middle Ages, when they split knowledge in Arts
and Sciences. The result is that we now have "arts" which are more like
science than art. I find it difficult to define a proper
division. Probably because my first experience was with the European
system: Faculty of Mathemathics: Faculty of Physics; etc. Even Faculty
of Theology. Even the word "faculty" has a different meaning.
But, science is not limited to the "natural" world. Writing down "natural"
made me realize, that even the word "natural" has many meanings. That is
why discussions on this forum are so awfully difficult. Very often one
discovers in an ongoing conversation "Oh, but she is talking about
something entirely different than I do, and you have to start from the
beginning again. In the meantime your conversation-partner became
impatient and stopped answering. After all most of us, maybe all of us,
have other goals for the spending of time.
Jan de Koning
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