[lit-ideas] Re: Understanding Why Newton Contributed To Human Knowledge With A False Theory

On Nov 30, 2007 9:48 AM, Robert Paul <rpaul@xxxxxxxx> wrote:

If someone pointed out to me that one of my dogs was eating the rug, and
> I responded as the 'philosopher' does above, I think he or she would be
> justified in thinking me just a tiny bit disturbed.
>

Robert, can we back up a bit? I will admit to a certain levity, even a bit
of mockery, in the way I have framed my comments. However, the intention is
serious. I refer, in particular, to the "How" in "How do we know p in the
first place?" That "how" is very important to me. It is why I have, since
switching  from philosophy to anthropology for graduate school, collected a
small library of books on research methods (experimental, non-experimental
hypothesis testing, ethnographic and exploratory), historiography, clinical,
legal and statistical inference, and also followed with interest
developments in history of science, behavioral economics, general systems
theory, and cognitive science.
Moreover, at this particular moment in my life, I have embarked on a serious
piece of social network analysis, using quantitative methods that generate
numbers that control the drawing of complex graphs. I am plagued by the
question what counts as a significant result, since conventional statistical
tests assume independent random sampling, and network analysis makes
precisely the opposite assumption, that all observations are interconnected.
Pondering the issues involved makes our recent conversations seem--what
shall I say? Similar conversations played an important part in my education,
when I was a college freshman, and reading Tarski was followed by reading
(damn, what was that fellow's name?), anyway someone discussing temperature,
who remarked on the need for a theory to connect measurements made using a
mercury thermometer with those made using a spectrometer to measure the
temperature of the surface of the Sun. That was good preparation for courses
on statistical inference and experimental design and a lot of subsequent
thinking about what we "know" when we can't perform experiments or collect
random samples—which seems to be most of the time. As a blast from the past,
Tarski, etc., evokes a pleasant "once we were young" feeling. But please, oh
God, can't we move on?

John

-- 
John McCreery
The Word Works, Ltd., Yokohama, JAPAN
Tel. +81-45-314-9324
http://www.wordworks.jp/

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