5 ideas
| 17060 | Best Explanation is the core notion of epistemology [Harman, by Smart] |
| Full Idea: Gilbert Harman introduced the term 'inference to the best explanation', and argued that it is the core notion of epistemology. | |
| From: report of Gilbert Harman (The Inference to the Best Explanation [1974]) by J.J.C. Smart - Explanation - Opening Address p. 01 | |
| A reaction: Hard to assess that, but it sounds right. I'm a fan of coherence theories of justification, and also coherence theories of explanation, and there is a neat package there somewhere. |
| 22824 | Magna Carta forbids prison without trial, and insists on neutral and correct process [-, by Charvet] |
| Full Idea: The Magna Carta forbids the King to imprison indefinitely without trial, and also binds the King to follow due process in his courts and not allow the justice provided to be for sale. | |
| From: report of - (Magna Carta [1215]) by John Charvet - Liberalism: the basics 02 | |
| A reaction: Very exasperating for a medieval monarch. In current times British law is exceedingly slow (so long imprisonment before trial), and the necessary effective advocates cost vastly too much for all but a tiny minority. So it's going badly. |
| 21236 | Instead of gravitational force, we now have a pervasive gravitational field [Farmelo] |
| Full Idea: Physics replaced the notion that bodies exert gravitational force on each other by the more effective picture that the bodies in the universe give rise to a pervasive gravitational field which exerts a force on each particle. | |
| From: Graham Farmelo (The Strangest Man [2009], 08) | |
| A reaction: This still uses the word 'force'. I sometimes get the impression that gravity is the curvature of space, but gravity needs more. Which direction along the curvature are particles attracted? The bottom line is the power of the bodies. |
| 21235 | The Schrödinger waves are just the maths of transforming energy values to positions [Farmelo] |
| Full Idea: Dirac showed that the Schrödinger waves were simply the mathematical quantities involved in transforming the description of a quantum based on its energy values to one based on possible values of its position. | |
| From: Graham Farmelo (The Strangest Man [2009], 08) | |
| A reaction: Does this eliminate actual physical 'waves' from the theory? |
| 21234 | Experiments show that fundamental particles of one type are identical [Farmelo] |
| Full Idea: It is an established experimental fact ...that every single fundamental particle in the universe is the same and identical to all other particles of the same type. | |
| From: Graham Farmelo (The Strangest Man [2009], 07) | |
| A reaction: A loud groan is heard from the tomb of Leibniz. I'm unclear how experiments can establish this. If electrons have internal structure (which is not ruled out) then uniformity is highly unlikely. |