Pages

Monday, November 12, 2007

Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity

I started reading an article recently and I was very impressed with it. A link to it can be found here (pdf). It was written by Dr. Alan Sokal from New York University (Department of Physics). It is a little long (the actual article is 27 pages long (with notes), the rest is works cited), but if you have the time I would encourage you to read it and see what you think about the article. I would like to get your input on this.
Posted by Quantumleap42 at 4:32 PM
Labels: , ,

4 comments:

  1. Joseph SmidtNovember 13, 2007 at 9:08:00 AM PST

    I will read this but give me just a couple days. Tuesday through Thursday I am very busy.

    ReplyDelete
  2. AnonymousNovember 13, 2007 at 9:46:00 PM PST

    Sokal wrote this hyperbola filled, meaningless, irrational and anti-scentific article to prove that post modern philosophers are wankers and bullshit artists. You have just revealed your total ignorance of physics, reason and the scientific method.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Quantumleap42November 14, 2007 at 10:45:00 AM PST

    To the "anonymous coward" (see slashdot.org) "murray" please see my next post.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Joseph SmidtNovember 17, 2007 at 9:38:00 AM PST

    Okay I read the paper. I have to admit, I don't know enough philosophy lingo to understand the whole paper but I understood large parts.

    First I want to say I think is is correct that social beliefs shape beliefs and aptitudes towards certain sciences. I will say that I don't know how you fix this. It is in humans blood to want to believe science that conforms with their personal beliefs and reject science that doesn't.

    Now he talks about a post-modern science. To me the biggest problem with philosophy is Occam's razor. Yes, Berkeley may be right and external objects are not really their except in our minds.

    But this is so much harder to work with then the idea that the objects are just their and you get just as good of results as if take the similar model.

    I don't know what the ultimate-true version of science is, but the scientific method done correctly seems to give as good of results as any other approach. I will stick with it until I see there is a better approach that really works better in the real world. Then I will change.

    ReplyDelete

To add a link to text:
<a href="URL">Text</a>

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)