Re: No matter how you pretty it up, shit is still shit -- <font size = "4">The Drunks Bar </font size "4">

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Date Posted: 06:38:32 04/23/01 Mon
Author: OPB
Subject: Re: No matter how you pretty it up, shit is still shit
In reply to: SM78 's message, "No matter how you pretty it up, shit is still shit" on 21:51:08 04/22/01 Sun

Of course a leap is inevitable in our Universe where epistemology, like quantum phenomena, changes the the nature of the knowledge being "observed." Knowledge is propositional and scientifice, and propositions and science are not, and can never be, absolute over time.

One big reason I think an absolute body of knowledge over time is impossible has to do with how we approach understanding the world. We always work with models; from the ancient Greeks' first musings on the nature of matter to baroque modern atomic theory, this has been the case.
And models by definition are not the real thing, but rather approximations. Consequently, many models are possible that explain the very same observations--some better than others, some more complexly than others; which we choose to accept involves balancing our desire for simplicity (e.g., Occam's Razor) against accuracy of prediction (compare Newtonian mechanics vs Einsteinean mechanics where the orbit of Mercury is concerned). As more and more observations about certain things pile up, we revise our models or even shift from one model to another.

(I don't know if this is near what you meant by "epistemology changes the nature of the knowledge being observed," but it fits; in the act of investigating, we press our own models onto the world and try to make them fit--so that the end result (some theory or another) owes a lot to our psychology.)

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