Redress said:
Relativity is two theories, not one. That would be factual error number 1.
I suppose depending on how you dice it, it could be several theories. But I would agree that special relativity was the result of the 1905 paper, general relativity the result of the 1916 paper.
Redress said:
You refer to 1905, so one would assume you are referring to "special relativity". The Paper On The Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies was not a theory, but a pair of postulates and then a look at what would result from them. The postulates where based on the current observations of the time. Therefore it was science. They where testable, therefore they where science. So your first point fails a miserable death.
Really? It doesn't seem so to me. My interlocutor wasn't saying anything about testability; he was talking about testing (i.e. practice, not conceptual) and basing propositions on observations. My point was twofold:
1) Plenty of science originates from untested propositions.
2) Other disciplines do testing and revision all the time; if that's what's supposed to distinguish science, it doesn't do a very good job.
Anyway, before we continue, you seem to have the idea that I'm somehow anti-science. This is not correct. I have a great deal of respect for science. I am very critical of certain interpretations of science, however, and I believe I have good reason to be.
With that out of the way, let's discuss this
The Paper On The Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies was not a theory, but a pair of postulates and then a look at what would result from them. The postulates where based on the current observations of the time.
a little more carefully.
First, I'm not sure I understand why you'd say special relativity isn't a theory (at least here, though you seem to say that it is elsewhere). But that aside, those two postulates were not
determined by the available observations. By that, I just mean that the available observations didn't make the postulates inevitable (indeed, how could they?). Before the experiments that are taken to confirm relativity occurred, it was just as likely (and was in fact proposed) that the MM aparatus was faulty. Or that the properties of the aethyr were not sufficiently understood. Or even that the data was falsified, or etc.
Einstein revived Galileo's proposition of relative inertial frames, and mixed in the notion that light in a vaccuum has an absolute velocity. From there, as you note, he deduced what might be observed. But just what role can deduction, which is entirely independent of observation, play in science? If it is to play a role, it seems perforce that philosophy plays a role in science. Since my initial point was simply that science is much more difficult to distinguish from other areas than most people believe, this is a relevant point.
Further, if all it takes for something to be science is to be "based on" observations, then of course special relativity was science. But then, so is a lot of stuff that I bet you wouldn't want to see counted as science. For instance, was Locke's philosophy of mind, "based on" the notion of the mind as Tabula Rasa at birth which was in turn "based on" the best available observations science? I suspect you'd probably think not. But how is that case distinguishable from relativity
in principle? If you're going to try to define science, you'll have to do better than this.
redress said:
You repeat the same error in your second point. Theories do not leap out full cloth, there is a process to become a theory.
Where did I say otherwise?
Redress said:
Just because something is not yet a theory does not mean it is not part of science. If you make one or more hypothesis based on observation that can be tested and falsified, that is what we call the scientific method. That is, it is science.
Again, this seems either to be false, or to include too much.
Redress said:
Your whole post reads of stealing from an anti-science site designed to confuse those who have no clue about science. It is flat out nonsense.
Well, I came up with all of it, and didn't visit any websites to find it. I did spend about ten years in undergraduate and graduate courses at reputable and accredited universities in the U.S., several of which were devoted to the practice, history, and philosophy of science, from which I managed to distill most of my views. In any case, I made no similar remarks to my interlocutors; your words here are rather insulting.
Redress said:
You completely fail to understand the scientific process. A hypothesis is built from observation.
What does that even mean? How do you build something from observation? It seems rather that we build hypotheses from symbols which encode interpretations of observations. Which goes to my point about Quine-Duhem.
Redress said:
That is inaccurate due to your failed understanding of the scientific process. In fact, rather than going back and tearing each section of your post apart by repeating the same thing
This approach hardly seems fruitful. I might just as easily lambast your entire post, and we could just exchange that way. But what would be exchanged? Certainly not ideas, and it'd hardly be a debate. So I can hardly credit this tactic. And I don't think the moon landing was faked.
