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PEIRCE-L Digest 1323 - March 9-10, 1998
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From PEIRCE-L Forum, Jan 5, 1998, [name of author of message],
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Topics covered in this issue include:
1) Re: Of Laws and [Wo]Men
by Peter_Skagestad[…]uml.edu (Peter Skagestad)
2) Tears From Heaven
by Mark Weisz
3) Re: Blind Luck
by OMOFOLABO AJAYI
4) Re: Tears From Heaven
by BugDaddy[…]cris.com (BugDaddy)
5) Re: Tears From Heaven
by patcop[…]bo.nettuno.it (Patrick J. Coppock)
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Date: Mon, 09 Mar 1998 11:16:59 -0800
From: Peter_Skagestad[…]uml.edu (Peter Skagestad)
To: peirce-l[…]ttacs6.ttu.edu
Subject: Re: Of Laws and [Wo]Men
Message-ID: <3504402B.46CD[…]uml.edu>
Patrick J. Coppock wrote:
>
> Peter, you wrote:
>
> >Whether the review is any good is for others to judge, but I reviewed Misak's
> >book (which, by the way, I greatly enjoyed reading) in The Transactions of the
> >Charles S. Peirce Society, Spring 1992, Vol. XXVIII, No. 2, pp. 311-321. While
> >mostly favorable, the review does take issue with Misak on a couple of key
> >points of interpretation. I think I still have an electronic copy on file, so
> >if it is awkward for you to lay your hands on the relevant issue of the
> >Transactions, I'll be happy to e-mail you a copy of my review.
>
> I would be interested in reading your review. Can you e-mail it to me please?
>
> Have you considered posting it to the Arisbe site, by the way? (I can't
> really imagine the CSP Society opposing that on copyright grounds if you
> were to ask permission to do so)
>
> All best
>
> Patrick
>
> _______________________________________________________________
> Patrick J. Coppock tel. +47 73 59 08 71 (office)
> The Norwegian University of tel. +47 73 59 88 70 (lab)
> Technology and Science tel. +47 72 55 50 91 (home)
> Dept. of Applied Linguistics fax: +47 73 59 81 50 (Norway)
> N-7055 Dragvoll, Norway : +39 51 33 29 39 (Italy)
> e-mail:
> patcop[…]alfa.itea.ntnu.no (Norway)
> patcop[…]bo.nettuno.it (Italy)
>
> WWW http://www.hf.ntnu.no/anv/wwwpages/PJCHome2.html
> _______________________________________________________________
> "What is seductive about the causal approach is that it leads
> one to say: "Of course, that's how it must be". While one
> ought to think: In this, and in many other ways it may have
> occurred." L. Wittgenstein, 2.7.1940
> _______________________________________________________________
Pat:
I'll send you a copy of the Misak review shortly. To answer your
question, yes, I have thought about (and am thinking about) posting this,
as well as other things, to Arisbe, but it has so far gone on my list of
things to do. Although I agree that I do not think obtaining permissions
will be a problem, it is still something that I would need to do. i also
need to familiarize myself with the mechanics of the process of posting
to the site, something I have not yet done. One of these days...
All the best,
Peter
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 09 Mar 1998 18:15:20 -0500
From: Mark Weisz
To: Peirce List
Subject: Tears From Heaven
Message-ID: <199803091816_MC2-3621-ABD6[…]compuserve.com>
Hi again folks,
My left eye is almost totally blind, surgery on Wednesday. If you have
Rosary Beads (or equivalent) it's time to pull them out. I'm not counting
on ever seeing out of it again, so if the second operation works, great. I
go from sadness to fear to resignation to being OK.
Right now I'm OK. I can't do the eye any more damage by writing this
(although I suppose I could do other kinds of damage ;-) so I have to get
this off my chest. I will be completely offline from 3/11 to 3/25 or so.
These are my last licks for a while.
One of the things that bothered me about Sokal is that he sounded bitter
and competitive in the worst tradition of science (as in Newton vs.
Leibniz). Maybe I'm reading him wrong and maybe his antagonist was just as
bad, but I didn't like the tone. Anyway, enough of that.
The problem with a "Law of Gravity," or Law of Anything for that matter,
is that to me (and I may be WAY off base here) it isn't very "parsimonious"
in the scientific sense. I was led, in my youth, to understand that
parsimony was a good thing (at least in science, if not in other human
affairs).
But saying that things fall because of a "Law of Gravity," rather then
because of gravitational attraction (which we don't understand), is not
particularly parsimonious to my way of looking (one-eyed, half-brained) at
it. The two are not semantically equivalent in my opinion. One could as
easily (and no doubt many do or did) say that things fall because it's
God's Will that they do.
It's fine to call something a law, like The Second Law of Thermodynamics,
but that doesn't make it a law like one enacted by a legislature and
enforced by an executive. So the word has baggage that follows it around.
Furthermore, laws (pretty much all of them) typically apply within a
defined framework or with a subset of all possible situations. Doesn't
Newton's gravity get a little mussed in Einstein's relative world near the
speed of light?
And now that I think of it, where is the scientific evidence for a law
such as the one Mr. Sokal postulates?
As a more practical matter, I don't particularly care if things fall
because there is a Law of Gravity, or because of gravitational attraction,
or because of God's will, or forty million other reasons. If Sokal or
anyone believes in such laws, "outside of human minds," as Alan Manning put
it, that's fine with me. I don't see any harm in it, though I also don't
see what's to be gained -- and here someone could maybe fill me in about
what is to be gained.
Now quite frankly, most philosophy baffles me. I like a little Spinoza and
I like a little Wittgenstein and a little Bertrand Russell (the stress is
always on the "little"). I like the Stoic philosophers. Epicetus maybe. I
don't know too much "technical" philosophy but I think I can safely say
that we know *empirically* that things do fall. I'm not all that concerned
with why they fall, or exactly what gravity is. I am more concerned that,
say, if Mr. Sokal has children, that he protects them from falling from his
balcony, regardless whether laws intervene in the process or not.
That way he can avoid the fate of Eric Clapton, whose little son died in a
fall from the blues guitarist's New York apartment balcony. That event
inspired the beautiful but tragic ballad, "Tears From Heaven," which is on
his "Unplugged" CD. My pal Tom Anderson loved blues music and we used to
gush over a guitarist named Stevie Ray Vaughn.
Finally, I return again to the paper clip on the desk in front of you. Do
you believe that there is gravity between you and that paper clip? (or that
"The Law of Gravity obtains between you and the paper clip," or whatever
suits your fancy -- you know what I mean)
And if you do believe that there is gravity between you and that clip, why
isn't that gravitation taken into account when we launch a satellite into
orbit, or an explorer into space?
I pose these as serious questions. Unfortunately, I won't be around for a
couple of weeks to entertain answers, or comments, or rotten tomatoes, but
there they are. Thank you again for your time, for your gracious comments
and well wishes. I'll be raring to go in a couple of weeks.
Best regards,
Mark Weisz
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 9 Mar 1998 20:27:31 -0600 (CST)
From: OMOFOLABO AJAYI
To: Mark Weisz
Subject: Re: Blind Luck
Message-ID:
Best of luck with your surgery. There are occassional setbacks like that,
but things will be alright in no time. I went through a similar
expereince a couple of years ago.
Folabo.
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 10 Mar 1998 04:13:14 GMT
From: BugDaddy[…]cris.com (BugDaddy)
To: peirce-l[…]ttacs6.ttu.edu
Subject: Re: Tears From Heaven
Message-ID: <3511bd63.6830562[…]pop3.cris.com>
Mark Weisz wrote:
> And if you do believe that there is gravity between you and that clip, why
>isn't that gravitation taken into account when we launch a satellite into
>orbit, or an explorer into space?
But satellites are falling constantly. Otherwise they would
follow a straight line out of orbit and away from earth.
----
Best wishes on your surgery.
----------------------------------------------------------
The light which puts out our eyes is darkness to us.
Only that day dawns to which we are awake. There is more day to
dawn. The sun is but a morning star.
Henry David Thoreau, *Walden*
http://www.cris.com/~bugdaddy/sophia
-----------------------------------
Life is a miracle waiting to happen.
http://www.cris.com/~bugdaddy/life.htm
-----------------------------------
Bill Overcamp
-----------------------------------
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 10 Mar 1998 10:21:14 +0100 (MET)
From: patcop[…]bo.nettuno.it (Patrick J. Coppock)
To: peirce-l[…]ttacs6.ttu.edu
Subject: Re: Tears From Heaven
Message-ID:
Mark, you wrote:
> But saying that things fall because of a "Law of Gravity," rather then
>because of gravitational attraction (which we don't understand), is not
>particularly parsimonious to my way of looking (one-eyed, half-brained) at
>it. The two are not semantically equivalent in my opinion. One could as
>easily (and no doubt many do or did) say that things fall because it's
>God's Will that they do.
What's more, seen from here in the northern hemisphere, things falling in
Australia are actually "falling" at an angle "upwards", aren't they? Isn't
the notion of the law of gravity really a very subjective, not to say
"embodied", kind of thing? I sometimes used to wonder as a kid - still do,
actually - whether if we were to drill a hole right through the centre of
the earth (assuming there is some way we could avoid the magma coming
bubbling out at both ends) and drop a very large ball-bearing (I used to
love playing with these) into the hole, what would happen to it? Would it
end up hanging out in there at the very centre of the earth, unable to move
any more "outwards" in either direction? If so, is gravitational attraction
then actually a tendency for things to 'want' to be all centred at the same
place - a kind of tendency towards a reversal of what we generally believe
happened with the Big Bang?
Who knows?
In any case, all the very best of luck with your eye operation tomorrow,
Mark, and many thanks for all the small glimpses of those other facets of
Tom you have kindly given us through your messages to the list.
We'll all be thinking of you tomorrow.
Very best wishes
Patrick
_______________________________________________________________
Patrick J. Coppock tel. +47 73 59 08 71 (office)
The Norwegian University of tel. +47 73 59 88 70 (lab)
Technology and Science tel. +47 72 55 50 91 (home)
Dept. of Applied Linguistics fax: +47 73 59 81 50 (Norway)
N-7055 Dragvoll, Norway : +39 51 33 29 39 (Italy)
e-mail:
patcop[…]alfa.itea.ntnu.no (Norway)
patcop[…]bo.nettuno.it (Italy)
WWW http://www.hf.ntnu.no/anv/wwwpages/PJCHome2.html
_______________________________________________________________
"What is seductive about the causal approach is that it leads
one to say: "Of course, that's how it must be". While one
ought to think: In this, and in many other ways it may have
occurred." L. Wittgenstein, 2.7.1940
_______________________________________________________________
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