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From: dcs2e@darwin.clas.virginia.edu (David Swanson)
Subject: Re: Scientific Epistomology, or "Social Text" Editors Make Ted
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Date: Sun, 9 Jun 1996 13:29:06 GMT
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In article <pfoley-0906960449410001@news.earthlink.net>
pfoley@earthlink.net (Patrick Foley) writes:

> This is the crux, right?  Your argument is not that we can't pursue the
> final theory because we don't know it yet (why we'd be pursuing it, after
> all) but that the idea itself is unintelligible.  Unintelligible in a way
> that the value of pi isn't, since you'll agree we can pursue the value of
> pi, right?
> 
> Well let's pick any old definition to get the ball rolling.  I'll say: 
> "The final theory will be the one that allows us to predict, within the
> desired accuracy, the future behaviour of any particle in the universe." 
> Whatever.  Now is your complaint that that's unintelligible or that it's
> not what you'd call a "final theory"?  And if the latter, then you need to
> tell us just what it is you think we can't have.
> 
> Cheers,
> Pat

Whose desired accuracy (I would have thought you'd say "complete
accuracy")?  Whence the confidence in the eternal usefulness of
"particle," "future," and "universe"?

David

I too am not a bit tamed, I too am untranslatable,
I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world.
