[MD] Tit's

[Krimel]

[Krimel]
Science provides us with unprecedented opportunities to remake the world in
our own images.

[Marsha]
What exactly does that last sentence mean?

[Krimel]
It means that from stone tools to skyscrapers we as a species have learned
to reshape the world according to our conceptions of how it ought to be. 

[Marsha]
The extended life expectancy might be for no better reason than men learned 
they needed to wash their hands.  You've written scientific public-relation 
nonsense.   Children are still starving in numbers too large to contemplate.

[Krimel]
And your complaints sound like little more that the whining of ZMM's
romantics. Cancer and heart attacks are not prevented by hand washing.
Certainly cleanliness helps but dismissing antibiotics, vaccines, surgery,
advanced medical diagnostic techniques and the myriad contributions of
medicine to longer life and greater health is ludicrous.

If children are starving in the world it is because they don't have access
to the benefits of science. Starvation is a political and economic problem
far more than a scientific one. The science is available to end starvation.
You are venting fury masked as hyperbole. 

[Marsha]
Science, politics and economics are in a codependent relationship with each 
other.  As are technology and the user of technology.  They are mutually 
dependent.  Interconnect patterns.

[Krimel]
This is true but look at the pattern of interaction. Politics is a formal
process for establishing social value. Economics is a process for
distributing and redistributing the value of goods and services. Science is
a method of discovery. Again I would say your bitch is with politics and
economics not science.


> [Krimel]
> Ham refuses to address the many points I have raised about his affection 
> of philosophical sophistication. So I have little to say about his third 
> person allusions to my posts. But I would point out for your benefits that

> Pirsig advocates an expanded view of empiricism. He also at some point 
> advocates a kind of scientific idealism.

[Marsha]
For this last sentence, you will have to elaborate and site references.  And

what this has to do with an expanded empiricism?

[Krimel]
I don't recall exactly were the reference to scientific idealism came from.
As I can not lay hands on the reference I will gladly withdraw the
statement.
 
As for the "expanded view of empiricism" it is James' radical empiricism.
dmb goes on about it all the time. 

> [Krimel]
> At this point I would mention that he is acknowledging the essential
> monistic quality of science.

[Marsha]
Please explain.

[Krimel]
Science is the quest for the simplest terms that can be found to describe
and account for the greatest number of phenomena. Much has been written
about the notion of a "theory of everything", for example. Many scientists,
Einstein for example have expressed a conviction that reality is a monism.

[Marsha]
I don't see that Quality can be defined as either idealistic or 
materialistic.  It's undefinable.

As long as one keeps it in mind that mountains are ultuimately not 
mountains, one can proceed safely acknowledging mountains.

[Krimel]
If one blind man touches an elephant and says it is like a wall and another
blind man touches an elephant and says like a rope. Both have defined
aspects of the elephant but neither definition is complete. It is not that
we cannot conceptualize mountains, elephants or Quality itself; it is that
no conceptualization in complete. I believe this is the point you are
making. What bothers me about your attitude towards all this is that you
seem to be saying the effort is futile and the blind men should just keep
their hands in their pockets. While I would say the more blind men touch the
elephant the better their joint conceptualization becomes. While no
conceptualize is perfect some are more accurate than others and certainly
more accurate than none at all.


> [Krimel]
> I would also insist that the Value of science is its refusal to make
> dogmatic claims about nature.

[Marsha]
And it dogmatically believes this statement to be true.

[Krimel]
I expect that kind of ignorant rubbish from Platt. It is truly disappointing
coming from you. But I have no intention of dignifying it with comment.

> [Krimel]
> Rather it constantly scrutinizes and questions its assumptions and 
> its findings.

[Marsha]
Only when forced to by litigation.  Science, as well as politics, is owned 
and controlled by capital producing entities.

[Krimel]
As an argument for changes in the funding of pure research I whole heartedly
agree. Beyond that it sounds like more anti-intellectual venom.

[Marsha]
I've never stated that conceptual patterns are in any way worthless.  Don't 
put words in my mouth.  It is important that they be acknowledged for what 
they are, and they are conceptual patterns.  They are also the way the 
conventional world functions.

[Krimel]
I was addressing the afore mentioned fury and venom of your comments. Where
do you get the idea that science or scientists are not working with
conceptual patterns. Theories and equations are stated as conceptual
patterns. Methods of research are set up as a set of conceptual steps that
are undertaken to support or falsify these conceptual patterns and are
themselves conceptual patterns.

Science is rubbish? Science is wrong? Science is misguided? Science is
without value? WTF are you getting at?

[Marsha]
This genetic code thing hasn't proven itself to be all that was initally 
claimed.  It's story is still being written, and the pen is in the hands of 
the pharmaceutical companies at the moment.

[Krimel]
So now science is guilty of false advertising because it isn't living up to
Marsha's expectations? This sounds more like a misunderstanding of what is
going on than a serious indictment of or prediction of the results of the
human genome project.

[Marsha]
The patterns are the meaning.   That's why it's important to understand them

first as conceptual entities.

[Krimel]
If you think this point is lost on me then you have misunderstood me.