Re: [asa] YEC--What can we offer them?

Perhaps we should say that Newton was right on the whole and superb for his day, even though he got some things wrong.

Then in the 1820s most thought the "atomic Weight " of Carbon was 6 - even Darwin had that in his chemistry notes made at Edinburgh. Again they had not got it right and got it wrong in a way. I have spent some time studying Darwin's geology especially before and after his Beagle voyage, like any beginner in 1831 he got things wrong but even when he did he showed considerable geological understanding. This is my key point when I take people to Cwm Idwal in Snowdonia. Then some of his glacial work in 1842 is wrong by today's standards but very perceptive all the same.

However when we look at YEC "science" no matter how charitable we are we simply have to say that it is

TOTALLY AND UTTERLY WRONG

There are very few scientific ideas from the past we could describe like that e.g. Clerk-Maxwell's ether, phlogiston, Copernicus and his circular orbits, or even ANE ideas of a flat earth!!!

Science progresses by researchers finding that predecessors were partly wrong and often realise why they were partly wrong.

Michael
  ----- Original Message -----
  From: Don Winterstein
  To: asa ; george murphy
  Sent: Wednesday, July 11, 2007 1:30 PM
  Subject: Re: [asa] YEC--What can we offer them?

  I think I hear where you're coming from: To say Newton was wrong sets off something like jangled dissonance among the spheres, and it kind of hurts my feelings just to say it. I justify my remarks purely on grounds of philosophical purity. I want to have "right" and "wrong" mean roughly the same thing for all scientific theories.

  And how do we know that no existing theory is absolutely true? This is also philosophy. In life as in science we start out with no access to anything like Platonic ideals but rather very inadequate models. (Sorry, Socrates.) Through experience our models keep improving, but we can never escape the fact that the very concepts we work with have only a relative kind of validity. Our words and symbols get their meaning only from other words and symbols, none of which is absolute. They were generated in environments replete with inadequate models. Experience is (or can be) truth, but as soon as we try to express it symbolically, much of the truth of it escapes articulation.

  (Theologically, the Word of God is truth, but only insofar as it involves actual experience of God through his Spirit. The written words of the Bible are not in themselves truth; they can mean a whole lot of different things to different people, with a chance that none of those things is close to the truth. The most that Bible words can do is lead a person to the truth.)

  Some kinds of models really do keep improving absolutely, and that means they're getting ever closer to some kind of absolute truth. If physicists can come up with a valid TOE I'd concede they may be in possession of absolute truth for physical phenomena. I'd remain convinced, however, that their formulations did not apply to the whole world.

  Otherwise, as long as we are stuck with having to define everything in terms of other things whose meanings exist only relative to still other things, we can't have absolute truth. We can't get symbolically outside this net we're in.

  Don

    ----- Original Message -----
    From: George L. Murphygmurphy@raex.com
    To: Don Winterstein ; asa ; george murphy
    Sent: Tuesday, July 10, 2007 5:51 PM
    Subject: Re: [asa] YEC--What can we offer them?

> > > "The fundamental model is the math." > > I disagree. For one thing, much of science is not > mathematical. If the math is fundamental to physics, then one must use > fundamentally different criteria for judging the validity of, say, geology > theories than physics theories. So I claim that the math is an expression > of the ideas behind the math, and that the ideas are what are truly > fundamental.

    I deliberately limited my remarks here to gravitational theory & was not trying to address geology. We'll still probably have to agree to disagree on this. The sciences that aren't as mathematical as physics aren't as close to the basic level of physical reality as physics. Please note the qualification "physical"! I am not saying that physicas is "better" than other sciences or that all truth can be reduced to it.

> > "Einstein needs Newton." > > OK, but this is just because we weren't smart enough to > look at Einstein by himself and figure out how to interpret him. Newton > was an invaluable crutch, but now that we've learned how to interpret Einstein, > we can assume ever after that GMm/r^2 as we now apply it comes from > Einstein. (Can't we?) (I know how GMm/r^2 is applied > as force but confess ignorance on how it's applied as geometry!) I'm > not saying Newton wasn't a most important and creative guy, just that he > was wrong in the current big picture of scientific theory. > > >

    I'm not saying that Newton was "right," just that "wrong" is too crude a way to describe the situation. If you do that it sounds as if Newton was as mistaken about gravitation as Henry Morris was about the age of the earth - which is wrong!

    "Classical general relativity is only an approximation to > a better theory." > > I covered this below: "Globally > all theories are wrong because none is absolutely true. What we mean when > we say a theory is correct is that it is the best theory currently > available."

    & - how do we know for sure that none is absolutely sure?

    But more to the point - While Einstein's theory is "wronger" than a correct theory of quantum gravity, is "righter" than Newton, whose theory was in turn righter than Aristotle's. You just need more nuanced language.

    Shalom,

    George

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Received on Wed Jul 11 09:08:16 2007