[ExI] The "Unreasonable" Effectiveness of Mathematics in theNatural Sciences

[Jef Allbright]

On Sun, Sep 28, 2008 at 8:00 PM, Lee Corbin <lcorbin at rawbw.com> wrote:

> The logic above seems to be to be of wide (too wide) applicability.
> One might apply it, for example, to baby-eating. Whereas I very
> strongly and adamantly disapprove of the murder of innocents,
> (to remain in a non-emotive analytical vein), I do see a "real need
> at the end of  the day whether worldview A (we can sanction
> murder of innocents) or worldview B (we should not sanction it).
>
> The same holds true for whether it is the Earth that goes around
> the sun, or vice-versa. To me, it is *not* a matter of whose views
> become rarer. If the Church had prevailed in the 1600s and successfully
> suppressed all over the world the view that the
> Earth goes around the sun, then the Church would still be wrong.

Fascinating that even with the recent and repeated talk of
"increasingly coherent over increasing context", there appears an
absence of appreciation (or apprehension) that with regard to
baby-eating or heliocentrism or ..., the tendency still applies; for
adaptive agents to progressively make sense of their umwelt (whatever
its nature, and whatever the nature of their necessarily subjective
priors), integrating and mutually aligning an increasing context of
observations in terms of what appears to work over increasing scope of
increasingly objective consequences.

Yes, this thinking is *very broadly* applicable -- and inescapable --
very close cousin to entropy and its sibling, synergy.

Tell me, Human, how can any system, functioning exactly according to
its nature within its environment, be "wrong", other than with respect
to a particular (necessarily subjective) context from which to make
such an assessment?  Does it seem to you that "Truth" is somehow
diminished, when it is accepted as "merely" the best truth presently
known?

- Jef
- Jef