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In Our Time
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 Thursday 9.00-9.45am, repeated 9.30pm. |
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Programme details |
Thursday 21 June 2007 |
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Audience reactions to this edition |
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Dr. Akira Kanda
Here is a response to Dr. Cooper's posting on the common sense philosophy. The issue of empiricism v.s. rationalism is an essential for the discussion on the common sense from philosophical point of view. The religion of empiricism reached to its peak with Special Theory of Relativity. Putting the deductive inconsistency of this troubled theory aside, it presented what empiricism could do in mechanics under totally unrealistic restrictions. There is no physical universe without masses. To unease this situation, Einstein added some totally unrealistic and anti-empirical assumption to the space time geometry of universe. He proclaimed that the universe is equipped with unsynchronised clocks everywhere! In this way Einstein had to transcend the limited religion of empiricism. There are many other alternative theories to Einstein's General Relativity Theory. To my knowledge, all of them transcends empiricism. In Qunatum Mechanics, the mistery of inderminism in the oucome of measurement prompted physicists to assume anti-empricistic assumptions as its ontology. Its epistomology adresses the empiricistic issues of the theory. In either case, the part which transcends the empiricism is governed by rationalism. It appears that the denouncing of Kant's rationalism was just a fashion orchestrated by the hype of Einstein's General Relativity Theory. Such fashion was based upon lack of understanding of geometry. In geometry, as Kant said Eucledian Geometry has a prime status. Mathematical models for non-Eucledian Geometry is created by bending Eucledian space.
Robert Kennedy Common Sense
Yes, excellent, but the real role of faith was left out. One believes that there is an external reality out there, and a reality much like it appears to one to be. This is a two-fold act of faith, not much buttressed by the most advanced science. A naive Englightenment view, which ignores the role of faith in all our beliefs (and actions), leads to a simplistic scientism conducive to an intolerant atheism
Peter Household - Astrology - action at a distance
Would it be fair to say that the Royal Society fell out of love with astrology because they couldn’t countenance spooky action at a distance? Compare Newton’s unease that his theory of gravitation suggested one body acting upon another at a distance, through a vacuum - see Christopher Fox-Walker’s post below (re gravitational waves).
James Baring Comon sense
Absolutely excellent. That's all. The best exercise is to try to see things from the point of view of all the philosophers so brilliantly discussed and then imagine a reality that satisfies them all. We do of course come trailing clouds... the gene pool gives us not a blank sheet but a massive structure to fill in and develop according to our particular environment < |
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