Re: causation in theory

[David Gleicher <104201.2301@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Alan,

I think Jonathan put his finger on what is troubling about the critique,
not to me but to him and I presume you.  It implies that, as mephisto says
to the eager student in Goethe's Faust:

Gray, my dear friend, is every theory,
And green alone life's golden tree.

In the context of the current discussion, there is no absolute privilege to
the truth value of 'scientific knowledge.'   No need, however,  for you (or
me) to defend science by its activities.   No need for us either to deny
that any hegemonic language game has wonderful activities that arise from
it and horrible ones too.  Is one to make some value judgment vis a vis the
Homeric epic, the Gregorian chant and  the computer?

Aquinas explicitly states that the science of the scriptures is
incomprehensible to those who do not already have faith that they are the
word of God.   All the post-modern critique, or at least this aspect of it,
 amounts to saying is that modern physics and economics do not seem, in
that sense, much different.  As Harry Veeder writes, there are fundamental
laws of science  that have no scientific basis.  If one does not have faith
in them, one simply is out of the game.  So be it.

DG