SUO: Re: Ontology, Epistemology, and Semiotics
> Jay,
>
> That's a good question:
>
> JH> what do you think gives theoretical physics a special
> > "nonsocial" ontological status? And would you distinguish,
> > theoretical physics from, say, theoretical astronomy or
> > cosmology/cosmogony?
>
...
> Re theoretical physics: The development of any science,
> including mathematics is a social activity, which involves
> all the human emotions -- e.g., the battles between the
> Newton and Leibniz over who had priority in disovering
> calculus. But Pierre's claim was that the subject matter
> is nonsocial when considered separately from the development,
>
...
> But I'm not quite so sure about theoretical physics. I was
> willing to concede that point to Pierre to avoid getting
> into too much discussion. However, some of the more recent
> work in both relativity and quantum mechanics suggests that
> even in theoretical physics, the observer must be considered
> part of the formulation. But those are still open questions.
I too was willing to avoid too much discussion.
Are there really theories which litterally consider the observer as part of the
formulation? Can you provide references? This must be a figure of style. The
only people capable to come up with such insanity would be i) French and
certainly not French physicists, ii) their illuminated friends writing
scientific vulgarization book which conclusion is infaillibly that the only
answer to the marvel of the world is some obscur mysticism.
As for the weaker claim that some interpretation babble about problems of
measurements, this is as old as quantum mechanics.
The point is that ontologizing the quantum domain is not doing quantum physics
nor experimenting with beams of particles. Even if there are measurements
issues these doesn't affect the fact that these measurements are interpreted as
being about something. That something (Thirdness?) is important, not the
measurement, not the partiality of your knowledge. Theoretical physics is,
well, theoretical. Issues of measurements are essentially issues of finding
principles, postulates, assumptions about measurements which prove consistent
with the formal part of the theory - which itslef is mathematical.
> In any case, there does seem to be a difference between
> physics, which addresses the ultimate principles that
> govern the behavior of everthing, and the more specialized
> sciences, which only address some selected part or aspect.
>
> As soon as you narrow the scope from everything to something,
> you have to ask the purpose for selecting one part instead
> of another. And that gets us back to questions of purpose
> and intention as an integral part of the subject matter.
Same old weak claim. Yes, there is an issue of relevance. No, that doesn't
matter. These determinations if they exist are implicit and ought to remain so
from the ontological point of view. That is until you enter in 'metatheoretical
flourish', but then this is no longer ontology.
These determinations also correspond to the delimitation of a domain. My
intitial point was about the disconnection of semiology and domain unspecific
ontology.
> If you considered cosmology as an observational science,
> then it gets the questions of how measurement and purpose
> determines the observations.
If the main issue that this point raises is accuracy of observation this is
irrelevant. In the best case, your strongest point is that theories may be
incorrect. Who would contest that a theory should be revisable? Until the
theory is revised, scepticism is just pointless for the ontologist. Again, it
is not the ontologist which will revise the theory.
>
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