Re: Joy of this, Joy of that

On Sun, 8 Dec 2024, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

On 08/12/2024 05:31, 186282@ud0s4.net wrote:

On 12/7/24 6:59 AM, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

On 06/12/2024 17:12, D wrote:

If you postulate something which can never be known, it is kind of useless. It goes the same way as god, or a postulated first mover etc.

 And yet that is what people do all the time. In fact it is the necessary foundation of thinking.
 All metaphysics - and we all use it, whether we understand that we do or not -  is to assume the framework for our understanding, and use it not because it is demonstrably true, but because it *works* for us.
 We don't  and can't *know* that time and space exist - at least in the way we understand them, but they do *work* for us, the way we understand them.

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   Careful ... the "luminiferous aether" WORKED - at least
   with the existing physics  :-)
 

Exactly. That was Karl Poppers point. We don't discover the  laws, we actually make them up, and if they work, we use them.

If you are interested, Bas van Fraassen probably has some interesting things to add as well. There was also a german guy who wrote something interesting in the 1920s I think on that theme, but for the moment the name does not come back to me.
Ahh, here we go!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Philosophy_of_%27As_if%27 .

Mickelson-Morley rather gave the lie to a physically meaningful aether, so it was dropped.
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   I suspect 'dark matter' will occupy a similar position.
 

:-) Probably
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