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16415
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Esoteric metaphysics aims to be top science, investigating ultimate reality [Hofweber]
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Full Idea:
Esoteric metaphysics appeals to those, I conjecture, who deep down hold that philosophy is the queen of sciences after all, since it investigates what the world is REALLY like.
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From:
Thomas Hofweber (Ambitious, yet modest, Metaphysics [2009], 2)
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A reaction:
He mentions Kit Fine and Jonathan Schaffer as esoteric metaphysicians. I see a pyramid of increasing generality and abstraction, with metaphysics at the top. This doesn't make it 'queen', though, because uncertainties multiply higher up.
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22363
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You have only begun to do real science when you can express it in numbers [Kelvin]
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Full Idea:
When you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meagre and unsatisfactory kind; it may be the beginning of knowledge, but you have scarcely, in your thoughts, advanced to the stage of science, whatever the matter may be.
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From:
Lord Kelvin (Wm Thomson) (works [1881]), quoted by Reiss,J/Spreger,J - Scientific Objectivity 4.1
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A reaction:
[Popular Lectures 1 p.73] Clearly the writer is a physicist! Astronomers discover objects, geologists discover structures, biologists reveal mechanisms.
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20644
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Energy has progressed from a mere formula, to a principle pervading all nature [Kelvin]
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Full Idea:
The name 'energy', first used by Thomas Young, has come into use after it was raised from a mere formula of mathematical dynamics to become a principle pervading all nature, and guiding every field of science.
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From:
Lord Kelvin (Wm Thomson) (works [1881]), quoted by Peter Watson - Convergence 01 'Principle'
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A reaction:
[bit compressed] As far as I can see energy behaves exactly as if it were a substance, like water conserved in rainfalls, and yet it isn't a stuff, and seems to result from a process of abstraction. I take it to be one of the biggest mysteries in physics.
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