Replies

> The thing that interested me in engineering was the assumptions that began every problem. Most of these assumptions are philosophical assumptions that engineers are habituated to ignore.

Because these "assumptions" hold in the real world.

Yes, but science by its very nature cannot explain why and how. How, for example, do scientists know that the universe is intelligible and ordered? This assumption, which gave rise to the natural sciences in the West, is a particularly Christian belief, and is the reason why science arose and became a self-sustaining enterprise in the West.

How can you explain the fact that the evidence of your senses is reliable? If you're a materialist, you can't, since your brain must reduce to a machine. Under a materialist rubric, there exists no means for determining whether or not your mind is malfunctioning at any given moment. Moreover, if mind is reduced to matter in motion, the collision of atoms in my brain cannot be any more "true" than the collsion of atoms in your brain. Therefore, there would exist no means for determining whether your belief that "materialism is true" and my belief that "materialism is false," is true.

We start from the assumption, for example, that F=M*A isn't going to just change to F=M*1.2A for the hell of it. Engineers leave such assumptions to the Creationists.

How do you know that this law functions everywhere in the universe? Have you been everywhere in the universe and observed this law?

The terms "genus" and "species" are derived from Aristotle's philsophy

Big Deal. "Easter" was derived from "Ostara." Does that make Easter dependant upon pre-Christian pagan Europeans?

No. But the terms "genus" and "species," as used in everyday language, refer to natures or essences (i.e., dictionary definitions). Materialism rejects essential natures necessarily. Yet materialists hypocritically use dictionaries.

Incorrect. I regard as "Liberal Arts" crap things which are "Liberal Arts" crap. Such as this meaningless discussion. Shall we now discuss the philosophical ramifications of the fact that Dog and God are the same word, just spelled differently?

You operate as a naive realist, yet positively adopt false philosophies like materialism. This makes your thought inherently contradictory and confused, particularly regarding the most important issues in life. This can have profoundly damaging effects in your personal experience.

Studying Aristotle would be worthwhile

Studying Archimedes even more so.

Why?

You're a nominalist, whether you recognize it or not.

Meh. And you might well be a Hoosifrudgian, for all you know, in the view of the Circling Poets of Arium. Does it make a difference to you?

Yes, because, for example, I know that God exists with certainty. I also know the true purpose of life with certainty. Therefore I can order my life toward its objective purpose without hesitation, as long as I don't reject the grace to do so.

You can't achieve happiness in life without knowledge of what true happiness consists. You can't achieve eternal happiness without knowledge of what eternal happiness consists, and how you can get there.

Does that snippet of knowledge effect whether you get up and go to work, whether you think the sky is blue, or what your mood is?

It effects every aspect of my life, every moment of my life.

> science by its very nature cannot explain why and how.

Yes, it can, and often does.

> How, for example, do scientists know that the universe is intelligible and ordered?

Observation. Followed by hypothesis and experiment.

> This assumption, which gave rise to the natural sciences in the West, is a particularly Christian belief

Actually, arose in Greece rather a long time before Christianity. The Ionian tradition of naturalism and science gave the world the concept of "cosmos," the notion that the universe was ordered and harmonious. Sadly, the Ionians were beaten by the mystics such as Pyhtagoras and Plato, who greatly affected the first thousand-plus years of Christian thought.

For a good summary:

http://physics.gmu.edu/~jevans/astr103/CourseNotes/ECText/ch01_txt.htm

"According to Aristotle (384-322 B.C.), the dawn of systematic scientific thinking began in the sixth century B.C. in the Hellenic cities of Ionia in western Asia Minor. The times were those following the Homeric period (900-700 B.C.) when the eastern end of the Mediterranean was in great upheaval because of the invasion and destruction of the highly developed civilizations of Knossus, Mycenae, Pylas, and others. This era can be compared to that following the re-emergence that took place in Europe centuries later after the collapse of the Roman Empire. The Ionian cities were prosperous and involved in wide-ranging commerce. Unfortunately little remains of their written texts from that period. What we have are commentaries by later writers, such as Aristotle, of the philosophical activities that began in Ionia. Even though we have only fragments of their work or hearsay reports concerning these pre-Socratic philosophers, enough of Greek philosophy of the fifth and sixth centuries B.C. has been passed on so that various themes can be traced.

"The first Ionian philosopher of whom anything is known was Thales (632-546 B.C.) of Miletus. He said that water is the fundamental substance and all things are derived from it. Exactly what he meant by this we do not know, as no written record by him remains. Aristotle is our authority on Thales and he seems uncertain himself as to Thales' meaning. We are left to guess and to surmise that what he was proposing was the concept of an a unity that permeates nature. What did Thales observe that lead him to propose such a startling idea? Was it an observation of the cycle of water falling as rain, collecting in rivers to run to the sea, there to evaporate forming clouds to fall again as rain? Or did he observe the intimate connection between biological processes in living matter and water? We shall probably never know for sure. But lacking evidence to the contrary, scholars are persuaded that the thoughts of Thales are as good as any in which to place the origin of science.

"More is known of Anaximander (about 590 B.C.), a somewhat younger Milesian. In his writings, we find a fundamental theme found in later Greek thought. He imagines the cause of things not in a mystical or mythical way. Unlike Thales hypothesis that a fundamental substance like water is the source of unity in the physical world, Anaximander postulates that a featureless matrix, called "the Unlimited" or "the Infinite," is the source of physical existence by a separation of opposites. Exactly what he means by this we are not sure. Although his world system is not rooted in mechanism as we might argue today, neither is it rooted in mysticism as his predecessors contended. Its roots are in law: All natural processes, he wrote, are governed by an overriding principle of cosmic justice, or Necessity. By denying man's preferred status in nature, he asserts that things happen because they must, which was the first step on the road to scientific rationalism."

> How can you explain the fact that the evidence of your senses is reliable?

Experience.

> How do you know that this law functions everywhere in the universe?

Observation. There are these things called telescopes, see...

> Have you been everywhere in the universe and observed this law?

The fundamental laws that apply here seem to apply everywhere.

> Materialism rejects essential natures necessarily.

That's so wrong it's laughable. Materialsim is quite conmfortable with the notion that assemblign matter in one way gives you a leopard, and in another way gives you a tiger.

>>> Studying Aristotle would be worthwhile
>> Studying Archimedes even more so.
>Why?

Because Archimedes was a scientist and an engineer. He formulated hypotheses and performed experiments. Aristotle did not. Aristotle sat aroudn and thought about stuff. That's nice, but it won't help me build a house or irrigate a field.

>>And you might well be a Hoosifrudgian, for all you know, in the view of the Circling Poets of Arium. Does it make a difference to you?

>Yes... It effects every aspect of my life, every moment of my life.

How odd.

> I know that God exists with certainty.

Well, bully for you.