Posted on 02/16/2006 6:00:37 PM PST by jwalsh07
Life on Earth was unlikely to have emerged from volcanic springs or hydrothermal vents, according to a leading US researcher.
Experiments carried out in volcanic pools suggest they do not provide the right conditions to spawn life.
The findings are being discussed at an international two-day meeting to explore the latest thinking on the origin of life on Earth.
It is taking place at the Royal Society in London.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.bbc.co.uk ...
You are correct, inaccurate example, and sloppy thought. 1+1=2 can be proved absolute by the method of mathematics and such proofs define and perfect mathematical method. I should simply have said mathematics and its method is defined by the thought of man and cannot be proved absolute.
On a side note, here is a link to some theories about how life formed on earth...I'm not putting my name on any of them or anything, just a little FYI, if you care to peek.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origin_of_life#The_Bubble_Theory
You will have to tell them. 47 years ago when I started attending college one could be proficient in most of the science and math that was known. A scant 30 years prior to that time all the chemistry known was composed and taught from a single text book. What was superior knowledge then is but general and basic knowledge today. There has been a avalanche of new thought, methods, and specialties. I hardly know what qualifies as science today other than what is required by method and it would appear to be abused. My apology but I would defer.
Soon to be added to The List-O-Links.
The concept that all life evolved from some warm soup.
That crock.
Oh, I get it. LOL. Sorry for my obtuseness.
I can understand that.
How's this: "There is life on earth". More scientific "proof".
(scoff again)
"And please explain to me how the "hypothesis" of the naturalistic origin of the first living cell can be "falsified."
I can't explain that -- I claim no expertise in biology, nor theology.
My post #67 was written in support of Ichneumon's #52; and concerned the philosophy of science. As this debate is often framed as "science" versus "superstition" -- it is important that those purporting to speak for "science" don't misrepresent what science actually is.
I believe that, used properly, the scientific method is a powerful tool for discovery. I also acknowledge that there are many things that science cannot tell us (at least not yet).
For a better explanation on scientific semantics, see Ichneumon's post #52.
That you "scoff again" at the precise definitions of words in science says much about how much weight we should give to your comments.
Been there, done that for 30+ years. Science has nothing to do with it. Learning obscure rules and following them does.
If you were really a programmer, you'd know that .99 + .99 sometimes does "equal" 2.
Put this little line in your C program and smoke it:
printf("%3.0f\n", .99 + .99);
"Semantics". The last word from a person who refuses to admit they have no idea what they are talking about.
(sigh)
(How ignorant can people be?)
(SCOFF)
You may think that science has nothing to do with being a programmer, but you speak for yourself. My work is detailed, but it's anything but "obscure". I write code that can measure and process the difference between events that can change in nanoseconds. That's 0.000 000 001 seconds. How "obscure" can that be? I can assure you that in my line of work fudging numbers by dropping a half a dozen decimal places would most surly motivate my boss to put me on the street.
And random assembly of random "organic" molecules into random life into more and more random and complex life is anything but science.
Exactly what "real world" are you speaking of? Yours? Mine? President Bush's?
There is no "reality". No law. No science. No cause-and-affect.
Life is pointless, vain and hopeless.
Will no details, sounds like you're dealing with post processing of hardware measurements. So what. Nothing different than processing a checking account balance.
That's 0.000 000 001 seconds.
Yeah. I knew that. So what.
I can assure you that in my line of work fudging numbers...
Almost every programmer is in that boat. The first job I had as a cub programmer was to write a stereotype spread sheet, back before SuperCalc existed, to reconcile the final numbers for a fortune 100 company on the NYSE. Yeah, they'd have fired me if I screwed it up, and have put me in jail if I did anything untoward.
As for timing, a recent program I did measures, and actively controls, things with a precision of around 2 microseconds.
That's 0.000 002 seconds.
The only hardware in the loop is a fast interrupt, no PALs or ASICs or custom hardware involved. Just software and an interrupt, and my software in a highly deterministic processor with known execution times for specific machine instructions. Oh yeah, the control time can vary too, so we're not talking about adding NOPs until the scope says the code is right.
The bottom line is science still has nothing to do with it. I merely learned obscure rules and followed them. Science is conceiving of a new substrate substance on a chip. Science is developing a new etching process to make smaller transistors so you can put more on a chip. Science is changing the doping and deposition on a chip to reduce the voltage required so as to reduce power consumption and heat.
What you and I do is technology that we've learned from the genuine scientists that developed it many years ago. We don't do science, and an understanding of what real science is, such as Ichneumon's description above, is not required for our work.
3 > 2
except for unusually large values of 2!
Cheers!
And about 1 and .9999999999999999 ;
You can subtract them by hand with pencil and paper :-)
I recklessly made the same observation as you earlier in the post. I had forgot my math. 1 is absolute and a number and can be proved absolute. .9999999999999999 is not a number. 1+9999999999999999=1.9999999999999999 I had to go to goggle and review absolute. 1+1=2 is proved absolute. A simple explanation is that a string .999999 inches long is not as long as a string 1 inche long even thought the difference is not observable. It is observable if one string is 1 mile long and another is .999999 miles long.
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