[lit-ideas] Re: Sherlock Holmes on knowledge of the solar system and the workings of the brain
- From: Donal McEvoy <donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Tue, 1 Jul 2008 07:17:06 +0000 (GMT)
--- On Tue, 1/7/08, Robert Paul <rpaul@xxxxxxxx> wrote:
> "What the deuce is it to me?" he interrupted
> impatiently;
> "you say that we go round the sun. If we went round
> the moon it
> would not make a pennyworth of difference to me or to my
> work."
This reminds me of the comment by, or attributed to, Wittgenstein along the
lines that from an observational point of view things are consistent either
with us going round the sun or it going round us (he puts it rather more
pleasingly than this of course).
This comment is fair enough if it is to defend our forebears against charges of
observational blindness and it is also a way of conveying the important point
that observational evidence is always consistent with more than one hypothesis,
indeed that it may be consistent with an alternative to one of our most basic
assumptions.
Though no expert, I suggest that, like flat earthery, the view the sun goes
round the us is partly based on the absence of disconfirming evidence: that is,
just as our inertial system does not detect that we are walking on a sphere
(because it is so large it may as well be 'flat' as far as we can detect) it
does not detect we are on a sphere hurtling round the sun. In the absence of
obvious disconfirming evidence, and given our proclivity to take ourselves as
the centre of the universe, we adhere to the instinct we are not moving - the
sun is. [Of course, at least as far back as the Greeks both the idea the earth
is a sphere and that it goes round the sun were canvassed].
The point Wittgenstein does not [afaik] go on to emphasise, but which Popper
does, is that in all such cases we should look hard for (a) alternatives to our
standard-issue theory; (b) disconfirming evidence for our standard-issue theory
and its alternatives. In order to do (b) properly we will often have to devise
observational tests that are not themselves otherwise part of normal day-to-day
experience, and to do that we shall have to develop theoretical frameworks
within which those tests have significance.
That is, the point Wittgenstein makes should not be taken as supporting a
duck/rabbit relativist approach that what is seen by someone one way can
equally be seen another way [though this is largely true], but as showing the
need for a critical approach where we canvas alternatives and then look to see
how far we can critically decide between them using more developed theories and
relevant tests.
Donal
Dropping a barbel from a tower
Watching it fall directly below
Proving that our earth is not really moving
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