Re: more squiggly lines

[Alan G Isaac <aisaac@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Sun, 28 Jul 2002 08:48:39 -0400 Gunnar Tomasson <gunnar.tomasson@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Yes, as indicated by your resort to rhetorical assertion in lieu of reasoned
> argument, you guess right - contemporary economics exemplifies the kind of
> 'science' of which Albert Einstein wrote:

Actually what I argued in the text that you failed to quote is that
your ability to quote Newton in support of the point you were trying
to make "works" only because you ignore almost everything he wrote and
indeed further ignore the evident meaning of the paragraph you
selected.  If you care to take up that specific point, feel free.
Until then, stop pretending that quoting inappropriately and out of
context amounts to i. an argument in any sense, or even ii. an
interesting sort of appeal to authority.

The misguided and presumptuous desire of philosophers of science to
impose themselves on people who actually produce science is widely
discussed even in the philosophy of science, and as a rule with few
exceptions the worst offenders are those who gave up their science in
favor of a hobby of philosophical critique.  I am not arguing that
there is anything wrong with enjoying this hobby---I read the stuff
occasionally myself---but we should know better than to mistake a
hobbyist's enthusiasms for anything more serious.

Since I do not wish to make that mistake, I did not address your
epistemlogical claims (such as they are), but rather focused on the
method of "argument": an appeal to authority that relied on a serious
misinterpretation of one of Newton's most well-known and widely cited
passages.  Since your appeal to authority was completely
inappropriate, I did not take up further questions such as whether
appeal to authority is an interesting approach to epistemology,
whether great physicists are authorities in questions of epistemology,
whether epistemological controversies render appeal to authority
suspect in this area, etc.

Cheers,
Alan