"Daniel Prince" wrote in message
...
"Steve Harris" wrote:

Unless of course it contains time machines, FTL drives,
force-field "shields", antigravity, Wesley Crusher, or
workable libertarian utopias. Then it's okay to laugh all
you like. g.

There is one type of force-field "shield" that is possible. It is a
magnetic field that can shield a ship or station against certain types
of radiation (charged particles only).
--


Actually, there is already a force field in use that acts as an air valve
(plasma valve).

I see no reason why you couldn't create such shields of any arbitrary power
(e.g., Star Trek's deflector shields), except, of course, that the power
requirements would be beyond insane.

http://www.bnl.gov/bnlweb/pubaf/pr/2003/bnlpr052803.htm



--
New definition of irony:

'Today's liberal Democrats are like the supporters of the Third Reich of the
'30's and '40's
- they absolutely trusted the government to "make things right". '
-Comment made on the internet by an ardent GW Bush supporter.

"Lawson English" wrote in message
...
"Daniel Prince" wrote in message
...
"Steve Harris" wrote:

Unless of course it contains time machines, FTL drives,
force-field "shields", antigravity, Wesley Crusher, or
workable libertarian utopias. Then it's okay to laugh all
you like. g.

There is one type of force-field "shield" that is possible. It is a
magnetic field that can shield a ship or station against certain types
of radiation (charged particles only).
--


Actually, there is already a force field in use that acts as an air valve
(plasma valve).

I see no reason why you couldn't create such shields of any arbitrary
power
(e.g., Star Trek's deflector shields), except, of course, that the power
requirements would be beyond insane.

That used to be said concerning computing power. Now I can carry the
portable equivalent of a UNIVAC to my seat on the airplane in my knapsack
(with wireless networking and a nice color LCD monitor built in).

http://www.fourmilab.ch/documents/univac/case1107.html

"Jeff Utz" wrote in message
...
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"Richard Alexander" wrote in message
om...
root wrote in message
...
Richard Alexander wrote:
Historical events are--surprise!--History, not Science, and History
is
distinct from Science.

But it might take science to reveal history. The distinction isn't
as clear as you suggest.

There is a difference between science involvement and being a science.
Many church auditoriums are designed through the science of acoustics,
but that doesn't mean that religion is a science.

Certain terms have taken on a life of their own. A "quantum leap" or
"quantum advance" is used where we would normally say a "huge leap" or
a "huge advance." Of course, a true quantum leap is an extremely small
thing, the difference, say, in electron orbits. Likewise, saying that
something is not scientific has become akin to saying that something
is erroneous.

I disagree. I would argue that creationism is not scientific, because the
hypothesis that creation exists is not testable. That does not mean the
creationism does not exist, only that science cannot answer the question
whether or not creationism is true.


What prevents us from using the logical, systematic, scientific method of
investigation to investigate any proposition at all, even a proposition
like, "It is true that a magic invisible creator of everything might really
exist"?

We have an ongoing scientific investigation of the theory that ETs (not in
evidence) might really exist. Here is how that theory is being investigated,
using the scientific method:


Null : of, being, or relating to zero
www.m-w.com
(as in, "There are no ETs.")


---
Testing the Null Hypothesis
by John Marcus, MD
email

http://www.setileague.org/editor/null.htm

SETI is perhaps the most highly interdisciplinary of sciences,
encompassing not only astronomy, biology, engineering and physics, but
also psychology, metaphysics, probability, and belief. But it is, first
and foremost, a science, one to which we hope to apply the scientific
method.

[...]

The Scientific Method for the Argus search is this:

There are no ET's. (null hypothesis).

.... [W]e now design an experiment (Project Argus, for example) to try to
prove that statement wrong, recognizing that it takes only one clear,
unambiguous counter-example to reject the null hypothesis. ...

---

"Lawson English" wrote in message
...
"Daniel Prince" wrote in message
...
"Steve Harris"
wrote:

Unless of course it contains time machines, FTL drives,
force-field "shields", antigravity, Wesley Crusher, or
workable libertarian utopias. Then it's okay to laugh
all
you like. g.

There is one type of force-field "shield" that is
possible. It is a
magnetic field that can shield a ship or station against
certain types
of radiation (charged particles only).
--


Actually, there is already a force field in use that acts
as an air valve
(plasma valve).

I see no reason why you couldn't create such shields of
any arbitrary power
(e.g., Star Trek's deflector shields), except, of course,
that the power
requirements would be beyond insane.

http://www.bnl.gov/bnlweb/pubaf/pr/2003/bnlpr052803.htm



COMMENT:

This "shield" is made of matter (plasma = ionized gas), not
force. As a small curtain of flow, it's no different in
principle from the hail of slugs from a phalanx gun on a
carrier. Doesn't count as a "force field". And even if it
did, plasma magnetic confinement in 3-space, has proven (so
far) impossible for decent times except in interiors of
masses (if it was easy we'd have fusion power). For a nice
exterior shield or plasma confinement field, we're back to
the idea that was already brought up. The Bussard sort of
thing. I personally doubt it's possible except with gravity
(and for that you need mass of a star). Plasmas are clever
and slippery.

But I would love to be proven wrong, of course.

"Bob White" wrote in message news:xEBRa.82631$N7.11056@sccrnsc03...
"Jeff Utz" wrote in message
...
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"Richard Alexander" wrote in message
om...
root wrote in message
...
Richard Alexander wrote:
Historical events are--surprise!--History, not Science, and History
is
distinct from Science.

But it might take science to reveal history. The distinction isn't
as clear as you suggest.

There is a difference between science involvement and being a science.
Many church auditoriums are designed through the science of acoustics,
but that doesn't mean that religion is a science.

Certain terms have taken on a life of their own. A "quantum leap" or
"quantum advance" is used where we would normally say a "huge leap" or
a "huge advance." Of course, a true quantum leap is an extremely small
thing, the difference, say, in electron orbits. Likewise, saying that
something is not scientific has become akin to saying that something
is erroneous.

I disagree. I would argue that creationism is not scientific, because the
hypothesis that creation exists is not testable. That does not mean the
creationism does not exist, only that science cannot answer the question
whether or not creationism is true.


What prevents us from using the logical, systematic, scientific method of
investigation to investigate any proposition at all,

Like the proposition "God does not exist"? Doh! Another Septical
self-refutation.

Septic remains the completely self-refuting, mendacious, and
discredited old idiot fool liar of alt.atheism.

Jeff

[Mike Dubbeld] (apparently quoting Skinner)

| You are the product of your environment.

[Rolf Marvin Bøe Lindgren]

| and where does he say that?

[Bob White]

| Ferster and Skinner demonstrated that bhavior is determined by the
| contingencies of reinforcement from the environment acting upon the genetic
| heritage of the organism. See _Schedules of Reinforcement_ by B. F.
| Skinner, Carl D. Cheney, W. H. Morse, P. B. Dews, Charles B. Ferster

where exactly here does Skinner state that we are products of our
environment?

[Rolf Marvin Bøe Lindgren]

| why do you assume that Skinner studied philosophy, physiology and
| neurology? why did he put so much emphasis on the biological makeup of
| the organism?

[Bob White]

| On the contrary, for Ferster and Skinner, et al, the emphasis is on
| the experimental variable, "contingencies of reinforcement from the
| environment." The variable, "genetic heritage (biological makeup)" is
| a variable that has been controled for in the experiments
| demonstrating that behavior is determined by the contingencies of
| reinforcement.

where does Skinner state that "behavior is determined by the
contingencies of reinforcement"? exactly where does he use the word
_determined_?

--
Rolf Lindgren http://www.roffe.com/

"Mike Ruskai" writes:

On 13 Jul 2003 20:43:01 -0700, Richard Alexander wrote:

Al Klein wrote in message . ..

The definition of "scientific" doesn't include "testable".

I think we should at least settle this question; Can an hypothesis,
theory, principle, claim or statement be scientific if it is not
testable?

Depends on what you mean by "testable". For a theory to be scientific, it
must at least be falsifiable. Whether that's the same as "testable" or
not is mostly a matter of semantics.

Popper's theory of science demanded that a statement had to be in
principle experimentally falsifiable if it was to be considered
scientific. Being unfalsifiable was therefore the mark of the
unscientific.

This is now regarded as an oversimplification. For example, Lakatos, a
pupil of Popper, showed that there was a class of scientific
statements which were not falsifiable by an experiment. Instead they
were used to generate falsifiable hypotheses. Instead of being
abandoned because they had been falsified, they were abandoned when
they became unproductive generators of falsifiable hypotheses.

Unfortunately Popper's oversimplification caught the imagination of
science teachers and armchair philosophers, and its Procrustean view
of science is still believed to be the last word by many, whereas it
was only Popper's hypothesis of how science worked, which has since
been falsified :-)
--
Chris Malcolm +44 (0)131 650 3085 DoD #205
School of Informatics, Edinburgh University, 5 Forrest Hill,
Edinburgh, EH1 2QL, UK. [http://www.dai.ed.ac.uk/homes/cam/ ]

"greywolf42" writes:

No hypothesis can be considered part of the scientific method if it is not
fundamentally disprovable.

Only if you adhere to Popper's hypothesis about the scientfic method,
which has been falsified. There are more classes of scientific
statements, hypotheses, etc., than Popper considered.
--
Chris Malcolm +44 (0)131 650 3085 DoD #205
School of Informatics, Edinburgh University, 5 Forrest Hill,
Edinburgh, EH1 2QL, UK. [http://www.dai.ed.ac.uk/homes/cam/ ]

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"Bob White" wrote in message
news:xEBRa.82631$N7.11056@sccrnsc03...

(...)

What prevents us from using the logical, systematic, scientific method of
investigation to investigate any proposition at all, even a proposition
like, "It is true that a magic invisible creator of everything might
really
exist"?

How would you test this?

(...)

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"Bob White" wrote in message
news:_OARa.82779$Ph3.7611@sccrnsc04...

"Lawson English" wrote in message
...
"Daniel Prince" wrote in message
...
"Steve Harris" wrote:

Unless of course it contains time machines, FTL drives,
force-field "shields", antigravity, Wesley Crusher, or
workable libertarian utopias. Then it's okay to laugh all
you like. g.

There is one type of force-field "shield" that is possible. It is a
magnetic field that can shield a ship or station against certain types
of radiation (charged particles only).
--


Actually, there is already a force field in use that acts as an air
valve
(plasma valve).

I see no reason why you couldn't create such shields of any arbitrary
power
(e.g., Star Trek's deflector shields), except, of course, that the power
requirements would be beyond insane.

That used to be said concerning computing power. Now I can carry the
portable equivalent of a UNIVAC to my seat on the airplane in my knapsack
(with wireless networking and a nice color LCD monitor built in).

http://www.fourmilab.ch/documents/univac/case1107.html


Really? Calculators have color monitors and networking built in too? I knew
laptops do, but you said the equivalent of the Univac, essentially a giant
calculator + printer.

Even a palmtop is much more powerful than a Univac.

Jeff

"Jeff Young" wrote in message
m...
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news:xEBRa.82631$N7.11056@sccrnsc03...
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...
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"Richard Alexander" wrote in message
om...
root wrote in message
...
Richard Alexander wrote:
Historical events are--surprise!--History, not Science, and
History
is
distinct from Science.

But it might take science to reveal history. The distinction isn't
as clear as you suggest.

There is a difference between science involvement and being a
science.
Many church auditoriums are designed through the science of
acoustics,
but that doesn't mean that religion is a science.

Certain terms have taken on a life of their own. A "quantum leap" or
"quantum advance" is used where we would normally say a "huge leap"
or
a "huge advance." Of course, a true quantum leap is an extremely
small
thing, the difference, say, in electron orbits. Likewise, saying
that
something is not scientific has become akin to saying that something
is erroneous.

I disagree. I would argue that creationism is not scientific, because
the
hypothesis that creation exists is not testable. That does not mean
the
creationism does not exist, only that science cannot answer the
question
whether or not creationism is true.


What prevents us from using the logical, systematic, scientific method
of
investigation to investigate any proposition at all,

Like the proposition "God does not exist"?

That what does not exist? Define your term. So far none of you
true-believers has ever presented anything for consideration, nor specified
anything meaningful, verifiable to search for.

The proposition in question is that an invisible something (still
essentially undefined) may in reality exist, knucklehead. "There is no such
thing" never stands in need of proof, since the burden of proof cannot be
shifted. I'm sure you know this principle of valid argument (logic) by now.


You can stop any time your fallacy of trying to shift the burden of proof to
the non-believers. The non-believers have nothing (no thing) to prove,
knucklehead.


[unsnip]

What prevents us from using the logical, systematic, scientific method of
investigation to investigate any proposition at all, even a proposition
like, "It is true that a magic invisible creator of everything might really
exist"?

We have an ongoing scientific investigation of the theory that ETs (not in
evidence) might really exist. Here is how that theory is being investigated,
using the scientific method:


Null : of, being, or relating to zero
www.m-w.com
(as in, "There are no ETs.")


---
Testing the Null Hypothesis
by John Marcus, MD
email

http://www.setileague.org/editor/null.htm

SETI is perhaps the most highly interdisciplinary of sciences,
encompassing not only astronomy, biology, engineering and physics, but
also psychology, metaphysics, probability, and belief. But it is, first
and foremost, a science, one to which we hope to apply the scientific
method.

[...]

The Scientific Method for the Argus search is this:

There are no ET's. (null hypothesis).

.... [W]e now design an experiment (Project Argus, for example) to try to
prove that statement wrong, recognizing that it takes only one clear,
unambiguous counter-example to reject the null hypothesis. ...

---

"Jeff Utz" wrote in message
...
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"Bob White" wrote in message
news:_OARa.82779$Ph3.7611@sccrnsc04...

"Lawson English" wrote in message
...
"Daniel Prince" wrote in message
...
"Steve Harris" wrote:

Unless of course it contains time machines, FTL drives,
force-field "shields", antigravity, Wesley Crusher, or
workable libertarian utopias. Then it's okay to laugh all
you like. g.

There is one type of force-field "shield" that is possible. It is a
magnetic field that can shield a ship or station against certain
types
of radiation (charged particles only).
--


Actually, there is already a force field in use that acts as an air
valve
(plasma valve).

I see no reason why you couldn't create such shields of any arbitrary
power
(e.g., Star Trek's deflector shields), except, of course, that the
power
requirements would be beyond insane.

That used to be said concerning computing power. Now I can carry the
portable equivalent of a UNIVAC to my seat on the airplane in my
knapsack
(with wireless networking and a nice color LCD monitor built in).

http://www.fourmilab.ch/documents/univac/case1107.html


Really? Calculators have color monitors and networking built in too? I
knew
laptops do, but you said the equivalent of the Univac, essentially a giant
calculator + printer.

Even a palmtop is much more powerful than a Univac.


My point precisely, knucklehead.

wrote in message
...
In article , "Steve Harris"
writes:

wrote in message
...
In article ,
"Joe Bugeja" writes:

When Einstein raised relativity, it was not all
immediately testable, that
came later.

The requirement is for "testable in principle", not
"immediately
testable". Of course, it helps if at least some parts of
it are
readily testable. But not necessarily all of it.


It's an interesting question how "testable in principle"
needs to be in practice. Is a theory "scientific" even if
only testable by making a superconducting accelerator that
loops around the entire equator of the planet? How much of
string theory is science, in Popper's sense?

I would say that the question here is primarily not about "scientific"
but about "theory". You know, we've been over this topic before, how
the usage of the term "theory" in science differs from this in layman
language (which is why we get all these posts harping on "but this is
not proven, this is just a theory":-)).

So, it is usually understood (though rarely spelled out) in science
that in order to call something "theory" it should have at least some
empirical support. Thus I would say that it is premature to call
string theory a "scientific theory".

Why? It has lots of support, including emperical support.

How does one saying "this is not proven; it's just a theory" differ from a
scientific theory? Not all scientific theories are proven. Having evidence
in support of a theory is not the same thing as proving a theory.

Jeff


Or how about cryonics? It's testable in theory, BUT not
now. You have to wait 100 years to see if technology comes
up to the point that quick-frozen "corpses" in liquid
nitrogen really are repairable (or not). What do we say
about the idea in the meantime?

We call it "scientific speculation" or something of the sort.

There's a lot of stuff that is on the borderlands of
science. It's conjecture that isn't testable, but should be
one day. It sounds reasonable to some scientists, but
completely looney to others. Cryonics. Terraforming Mars.
Sending "people" to Alpha Centauri. Construction of
artificial intelligence. Nanotechnology, including the holy
grail of duplication of humans (not just cloning, but full
duplication up to the point of raising questions of
identity). Production of group minds formed by connected
clusters of humans and/or machine minds (borganisms).

All this is not really religion, but it's not really
science-as-we-know it either. It's borderland stuff. My best
term for it is the old one: science fiction.

That's fine, for some of it. Point is, you've a whole spectrum.
Starting with stuff which is a pretty immediate extension of existing
science and/or technology and ending with some really speculative
things.

Beware making fun of science fiction as "science fantasy."


Good point

Mati Meron | "When you argue with a fool,
| chances are he is doing just the same"

"Eric Pepke" wrote in message
om...

A theory, however, is a kind of logical and rational
tool. It
takes a set of input statements and uses logic, reason,
mathematics, etc. to get a set of output statements.


As you've given the definition, there's nothing that says
"science," since it is still true that GIGO. She floats,
therefore is a witch.

For example, Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity is a
theory
because it takes input statements (such as the idea that
the laws
of physics should be the same for all intertial observers)
and
produced output statements (time dilation, Lorentz
contraction,
etc.)


No, the real reason it's a theory is that Einstein said it
was a Theorie in German, and it got translated to "theory"
in English.



The idea that the laws of physics should be the same for
all
inertial observers is due to POINCARE, not EINSTEIN. So
why
don't we talk about Poincare's theory of relativity?


Because Poincare was French? A trick question?

Einstein put in some stuff about lightspeed invarience also
(this doesn't follow from physical law invarience).

In my view
and definition of "theory," it's because it wasn't a
theory. It
was just an assertion, usable as a hypothesis or as an
input
statement to a theory. It's pretty simple. You'd have to
come
up with some other reason why Poincare's assertion is not
called a theory.

See above.



However, I'm defining "theory" in a way that I think is
consistent
with the way most modern scientists use the term and is
also
consistent with the half-century-old distinction between
theoretical
and experimental physics. I've worked with a lot of
theoretical
physicists, and as far as I can tell, they take hypotheses
that they
get from experimentalists or else just make up themselves,
put
them through the rational process that I have called
making a
theory, and produce output statements that can be used as
hypotheses.


As do experimentalists. But experimentalists take data and
separate it from noise, whereas theorists have to rely on
somebody else to do that for them. The difference lies not
not in what theorists do, but in what they don't do.
It's sort of like the difference between surgeons and other
kinds of doctors.


You're welcome to argue that I'm wrong, that a theory is
really
just a glorified hypothesis or something, but it would be
a lot
more persuasive if there were some referent to your
argument.


Burdon is really on you. "Theory" as a term has not been
used consistently over the years, even by physicists. I'm
sorry about that. You can't fix it.

SBH

In article , "Jeff Utz" writes:

wrote in message
...
In article , "Steve Harris"
writes:

wrote in message
...
In article ,
"Joe Bugeja" writes:

When Einstein raised relativity, it was not all
immediately testable, that
came later.

The requirement is for "testable in principle", not
"immediately
testable". Of course, it helps if at least some parts of
it are
readily testable. But not necessarily all of it.


It's an interesting question how "testable in principle"
needs to be in practice. Is a theory "scientific" even if
only testable by making a superconducting accelerator that
loops around the entire equator of the planet? How much of
string theory is science, in Popper's sense?

I would say that the question here is primarily not about "scientific"
but about "theory". You know, we've been over this topic before, how
the usage of the term "theory" in science differs from this in layman
language (which is why we get all these posts harping on "but this is
not proven, this is just a theory":-)).

So, it is usually understood (though rarely spelled out) in science
that in order to call something "theory" it should have at least some
empirical support. Thus I would say that it is premature to call
string theory a "scientific theory".

Why? It has lots of support, including emperical support.

Not at the moment. It may be enticing and elegant, but there is no
empirical support currently available, and it'll take quite a while
before we reach the regions of physical parameter space where we can
get such support.

How does one saying "this is not proven; it's just a theory" differ from a
scientific theory? Not all scientific theories are proven.

Correction. No scientific theory is proven, nor can it be.

Mati Meron | "When you argue with a fool,
| chances are he is doing just the same"