Re: [asa] lock-picking tools

John Burgeson (ASA member) wrote:
> Isn't one of the "closed doors" of science the search for a perpetual
> motion machine?
>
> Generally, attempts in that direction are not made because we "know"
> such things are not possible.
>
> Certainly research along those lines is no doubt very sparse! That
> door is closed and locked. Or maybe tere is no door at all.
>
> Likewise faster than light travel, and a few others.
>
> jb
>
Indeed. Such things like the 1st law & 2nd laws of thermodynamics could
be likened to a hallway wall that serves to guide explorers to other
rooms where fruitful inquiry can continue. Very few try to proceed
laterally into a hallway wall unless rarely when a revolutionary
discovery (secret door behind the panelling) is made and laws previously
considered immutable are demoted to special cases in a newly illuminated
broader context (like classical and relativistic physics ).

This would be a different class of limitation than ID suggestions of a
design conclusion, or somebody outstide of science asserting that
science cannot or should not proceed beyond some barrier. "Laws of
science" are well within science, discovered by science, and subject to
the "have not been circumvented *yet*" caveat. So in that sense I
wouldn't call them barriers of the order that ID and EC proponents are
interested in.

--Merv (ASA member)

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Received on Sat Oct 18 16:12:45 2008