I want to spend this post talking about how science and reason have evolved over the past few hundred years. I think that all too often scientists are looked at as stubborn lab rats of sorts. We have mentioned in class a few times about the LAW of gravity. I am certainly not denying this law, i won't be jumping off a building hoping to fly any time soon. However, in science (especially in Newtons time) the word law is used where theory should be instead. Peoples need for logical and reasonable arrangement of phenomena was around long before Descartes, just like gravity was around before Newton.
What many people don't completely realize is that although Newtons "laws" describe (very accurately) the kinematics around us, he did in fact have it all wrong. I know how crazy that sounds, nearly everything is based upon newtons laws. Ok "wrong" may have been too harsh. He was just not completely right. Where his mind went wrong was when he though of time as a background for which all events play out separate from. However, a lonely patent boy in the early 1900's showed that time and space were in fact closely tied together, a dialectic of sorts. Newton made great equations describing how fast something would fall when released, but he did not realize the actual source of this force, he could not have imagined that the space around him was in fact bent.
Again, i must stress that all of newtons laws work beautifully in nearly all applications, certainly all that would happen on our earth. But if you start moving very fast, or have a huge mass, Newtonian laws break down. Just like relativistic theories break down at an atomic scale.
Anyway, that entire science history talk was just meant to show that people are able to do great things when they are allowed to make sense of the world framed with a Cartesian outlook. Although the science today works for all of the applications we need it for, it will without a doubt be "fudged" with time.
Do you happen to know how we came to start calling them Laws in the first place? Theory of Gravity and Law of Gravity sound vastly different, you are right......
ReplyDeleteI too wonder the reasoning behind the "law" terminology. Obviously it's used in the case of gravity and Newton as a signifier that they are universal--and unbreakable. If you look into the meaning of "law" you find how beautifully this fits into our current discussions.
ReplyDeleteLaw loosely defined is a system of rules. But, these rules must be enforced by an institution. So then i ask you, who is enforcing these "laws?" The government? The scientific community? God? Laws in our society are meant to maintain order and promote social mediation. They shape the society of which they are controlling. But, laws can be broken. I don't know about anyone else, but the last time I checked the 'law' of gravity hasn't been broken (I wonder what the reprimand of that would be---destruction of the universe maybe?).
Maybe we are playing semantics, but the argument versus the law designation IS important. How we view the science is shaped by how its presented to us. By saying gravity is universal, many of us no longer question the nature of the 'law' and if it can in fact be broken. For now we stay with our current definition--but who knows? Maybe that will all change when we actually figure out how gravity works. gravitons anyone?
In response to the first paragraph:
ReplyDeleteThis class does indeed frequently acknowledge that pedestal under Descartes. I am equally disturbed by the kind of negation - of 'other' forms - required in order to take for granted one way of thinking, echoing a classmate's account of Catholicism as a lifestyle. Still, it is within acknowledgment of the form as a form (rather than as natural) that we are able to take it apart.
Perhaps there is room in this class to discuss these forgotten other ways of thinking, apart from the forms we know so well.
It seems semantics play as large of a role in establishing a scientific paradigm as the application of science itself, and are no less important (especially in the scope of this class).