Newsgroup sci.physics 203610

Directory

meron@cars3.uchicago.edu wrote:
As a matter of clarification Hipolyte asks the question and Derrida
answers it.  Thus:
Hippolyte speaking:
>>: >: >: >	When I take, for example, the structure of certain algebraic
>>: >: >: >	constructions [ensembles], where is the center? Is the center the
>>: >: >: >	knowledge of general rules which, after a fashion, allow us to
>>: >: >: >	understand the interplay of the elements? Or is the center certain
>>: >: >: >	elements which enjoy a particular privilege within the ensemble?
>>: >: >: >	...With Einstein, for example, we see the end of a kind of
>>: >: >: >	privilege of empiric evidence. And in that connection we see a
>>: >: >: >	constant appear, a constant which is a combination of space-time,
>>: >: >: >	which does not belong to any of the experimenters who live the
>>: >: >: >	experience, but which, in a way, dominates the whole construct;
>>: >: >: >	and this notion of the constant -- is this the center?
Derrida replying:
>>: >: >: >	The Einsteinian constant is not a constant, is not a center. 
>>: >: >: >
>>: >: >: >	It is the very concept of variability -- it is, finally, the
>>: >: >: >	concept of the game. In other words, it is not the concept of
>>: >: >: >	something -- of a center starting from which an observer could
>>: >: >: >	master the field -- but the very concept of the game ...
The attributions are correct in Sokal's article; Zeleny dropped
Hippolyte out and attributed the whole to Derrida.
>>In other words, there are no different kinds of empirical evidence? There 
>>are no different kinds of privilege? Please do explain a bit further just 
>>what about Hippolyte's statement tickled you so much.
>Hippolyte?  And who's this Hippolyte?  Anyway, you ask lots of 
>questions.  Why won't you start with explaining what does Derrida mean 
>by "constant" and "center".  In other words, assume that I'm 
>completely ignorant of the language he uses (a reasonable assumption) 
>and translate the passage above to common speak.  While we're at this, 
>could you also explain in what sense do you use the word "privilege" 
>when referring to empirical evidence.
Derrida's statement (as translated) appears to be fairly clear about
what is meant by a center in this context.  "End  of a kind of
privelege of empiric evidence" may be a reference to an end to
intuitive mechanistic models.  "Einsteinian constant" may be a
reference to the invariance of the observed speed of light or it may
be a reference to the concept of space-time as being united rather
than as absolutely separable.  Then again the speakers may have
something else in mind entirely.  On the face of it the entire
exchange is, to borrow a term, gibberish with respect to physics.
However one must allow that this is a translation; the original may be
clearer.   The translator may simply have had no knowledge of physics
and translated original clarity into vague mush.  Then again, the
original may been confused to begin with.  Derrida's response does not
seem terribly consistent with an understanding of relativity and its
implications.
Richard Harter, cri@tiac.net, The Concord Research Institute
URL = http://www.tiac.net/users/cri, phone = 1-508-369-3911
Life is tough. The other day I was pulled over for doing trochee's
in an iambic pentameter zone and they revoked my poetic license.

"RICHARD J. LOGAN"  wrote:
>Ken MacIver wrote:
>> 
>> Possibly because you contrasted science with religion in your original
>> post, positing  science as dynamic, religion as static.  Martin Luther
>> would certainly smile at your view of religion, as would the countless
>> offshoots of protestantism, and most all religions, down to the
>> present day liberation theology.
>> 
>Thanks for the feedback.  However, I would say none of these offshoots of 
>christianity question the founding assumptions of catholocism, namely the 
>deity of christ and the existance of an afterlife.  Is this a corredct 
>statement?  
>I would then contrast this to the situation in physics where such 
>fundamental concepts as space and time have been questioned and revised. 
> In this respect science is a dynamic process while religion remains 
>firmly rooted (wouldn't the faithful say that the unshakable foundation 
>of their faith is what gives them the greatest comfort?).  
>I would say a person who characterizes science as a form of religion is 
>fundamentally mistaken.
>Your thoughts?
I'd have to go along with Andy Perry's response on this one.  
Ken

In article ,   wrote:
>In article <54juf0$hn3@ssbunews.ih.lucent.com>, lew@ihgp167e.ih.att.com (-Mammel,L.H.) writes:
>>In article ,   wrote:
>>>>
>>>I'm afraid we're mixing two issues here.  It may be partly my fault 
>>>since I responded the way I would respond to a fellow physicist, not 
>>>the way things are phrased in a legal document.  ............... 
>>
>>
>>Pusillanimous prevarication !
>>
>You forgot the smiley.
Not really. If you think the Law of gravity and gravity per se
are the same thing you should stick to your guns. If not, you should
confess to your confusion, or at least claim it was a temporary
lapse. I'm sure we're all ready to believe the sun got in
your eyes.
But to pretend that a distinction this simple is alien to
a physicist's way of thinking. Oh my!
Lew Mammel, Jr.

dangrdoc@sound.net wrote:
: I hate to bring this up again but it is bugging me.  In the original
: example he was talking about temperature.  There is no negative
: infinity for temperature it stops at zero degrees kelvin!!!!!!
Depends on the situation. For systems with an upper bound to possible energy,
one can define a negative temperature. See F. Reif, "Fundamentals of
Statistical and Thermal Physics" for a complete discussion of the definition
of temperature from a statistical view.

-*------
In article ,
SPBurris  wrote:
> Nice table, but a little incomplete.  There are places where 
> the two disciplines can and do intersect -- my own field, 
> classics, is one.  I think it would fit nicely in both columns.
Curious.  I can see how Classics might provide an articulation
point between the two.  On the one hand, some will apply all the
findings and tools of modern linguistics to crack mysterious
parts of languages.  (Any progress on Linear A?)  On the other
hand, those studying Roman satirists are engaged in literary
criticism.
Tell us: in the Classics department, do these two disciplines fit
together well?  Are there those who apply both in some melding
to the same problem?  Or is there tension inside the department,
between the use of these two disciplines, and between Classicists
who favor one in opposition to the other?  Or does everyone just
go their own way?
Russell
-- 
 Newton plain doesn't work, even as an approximation, 
 except within certain limits.        -- Moggin

prb@clark.net (Pat) writes:
>
>While you are probably correct,  the fact is US Fusion warheads
>use tritium gas, which means about every 8 years, they need
>to be re-fueled.  
I seem to recall that they are remanufactured more often than 
that.  Other components probably age while sitting in a hole 
in the ground for a few years. 
>Now the START and SALT talks allowed enough
>warheads to be decommisssioned to provide a substantial
>pool of fuel,  but more tritium would be needed from the
>Hanford N? reactor eventually.  This reactor is still
>shut-down and is in fact a major confidence builder in
>world peace.
The last source was the reactor at Savanah River, I believe, which 
has been off for some time.  However, there is lots of tritium (half, 
to be exact) left after one halflife that can be recycled.  Since 
the stockpile is getting smaller, that can last for some time. 
In addition, there are other ways to make tritium.  
-- 
 James A. Carr        |  Raw data, like raw sewage, needs 
    http://www.scri.fsu.edu/~jac        |  some processing before it can be
 Supercomputer Computations Res. Inst.  |  spread around.  The opposite is
 Florida State, Tallahassee FL 32306    |  true of theories.  -- JAC

Jason Williams-Lock wrote:
> 
> Hello all!
> 
> I am wondering if anyone has any ideas or theories of their own as to just
> what could be the reason why electromagnetic energy actually flows, that is
> move through space.
> 
> Now it seems to me interesting that a flow of energy is always made up of
> both electric and magnetic kinds of energy. The two phenomena of electricity
> and magnetism seem to be together in a flow of energy and we talk of
> electromagnetic energy, as opposed to just electric or magnetic. Also we talk
> of "electromagnetic" waves, not just electric or magnetic (please don't
> confuse this with waveguide modes, as we know they speak of transverse
> electric, TE waves, and transverse magnetic TM waves, but I am not concerned
> with waveguides here.
> 
> I also notice that according to Poynting's theorem of energy in the
> electromagnetic field, the S vector, known as Poynting's vector represents
> the flow of electromagnetic energy, I think it goes something like this:
> 
> -div S=dW/dt
> 
> where W = Wm+We, W = total energy, and Wm = magnetic energy, We = electric
> energy, basically then the S vector is made up of *BOTH* electric and
> magnetic kinds of energy and the two are bound together, the flow must
> *somehow* arise from the relations between electricity and magnetism, though
> I am not sure just what it is in the relationship between the two that causes
> the motion of the energy through space, I am still trying to find this out.
> 
> So what are your thoughts and comments ? I would really like to hear from you
> and what you think personally as to just what causes energy to flow ?
> 
> All comments welcome!
> 
> Thanks!
> 
> Jason
You might want to take a look at the Maxwell equations; there is an intimate
connection between the electric and the magnetic fields.  If you rewrite the
equations in a relativistic form (eg, chop up the components, and build the
Maxwell tensor with them), you can view the effects from different inertial
reference frames:  the components shift between the two modes for different
observers.
                            _   _   _
BTW, the Poynting vector is S = E x B; your focusing on one of its uses.
Best Regards, Peter

tmc@eng.cam.ac.uk wrote:
} 
} Anyway one problem that hasn't been mentioned is that the Iraqi Scuds tended 
} to break up on re-entry. One Scud therefore presented say 3 targets to 
} Patriot,
rsansbury  writes:
>
>    I suppose you mean that the detection of the location and speed of 
>the target was inaccurate at first and less inaccurate later. If the 
>proposed method had been used this problem would not have occurred. The 
>targe would have been hit the first time.
Ah, no, I suspect tmc means what is written -- it broke up into 
several pieces that had to be independently targeted by Patriot. 
The Scud is a very primitive ballistic missle where the warhead does 
not separate from the booster rocket.  Reentry forces can break it 
up into pieces all following the same trajectory.  Not good for its 
accuracy, but it is not accurate anyway.  Consider it a primitive 
form of countermeasure. 
The proposed method could not tell one from the other, and might be 
confused if the reflectivity of the target changed with time if it 
was tumbling, unevenly burned during reentry, or just had a bad 
paint job for camoflage in the field. 
-- 
 James A. Carr        |  Raw data, like raw sewage, needs 
    http://www.scri.fsu.edu/~jac        |  some processing before it can be
 Supercomputer Computations Res. Inst.  |  spread around.  The opposite is
 Florida State, Tallahassee FL 32306    |  true of theories.  -- JAC

AdrianTeo@mailhost.net wrote:
>Correct. I know some atheists who are generally law-abiding citizens.
>But I have not yet met one who is living consistently with his/her
>beliefs.
I could say the same about Christians, you know.
> Many atheists are moral relativists and openly preach
>tolerance.
I'm not a moral relativist.  I accept tolerance is some forms, but not
all.

Just my four half cents worth        Standard disclaimer
Ed. Stoebenau                            estoeben@vt.edu

> 
> Book recommendation: Stephen Pinker, who heads an MIT cognitive
> science center, has written a book that this world has long
> needed: a readable account of what linguists now know about
> language.  _The_Language_Instinct does a surprisingly good job of
> explaining topics from the importance of generative grammars to
> the data against which linguists test their theories.  I *highly*
> recommend this book.
> 
If I may: this book is surely overrated. I would suggest instead
 AUTHOR       Jackendoff, Ray S.
 TITLE        Patterns in the mind : language and human nature / Ray Jackendoff.
 PUBLISHER    New York, NY : BasicBooks, c1994.
 DESCRIPT     ix, 246 p. : ill., music ; 21 cm.
 SUBJECT      Psycholinguistics.
              Innateness hypothesis (Linguistics)
              Language acquisition.
              Philosophy of mind.
 NOTE         Includes bibliographical references (p. 223-239) and index.
 ISBN         0465054617 :
which is only slightly less poppy, and more explicit with what the empirical
findings are.
(Why is Pinker's pop book so big? Just cause he is such a bad ass at MIT?
Of course, Jackendoff is no slacker either).
	-Omar

'What about a 'language' requires that it be capable of being 
translated?
Is this seriously a tenet of the philosophy of language, that anything
defined as a 'language' must be translatable?  I hadn't heard that one
before.
                                --puzzled,
                                        Fiona'
That's a good one.  In your off minutes you may enjoy reading Stan 
Lem's 'His Masters Voice'.  Very idealized but still recognizable cold 
war science as carried out prior to the eighties physics debacle.

rsansbury  writes:
>
> It was more of a rhetorical question. If you can describe how a standard 
>tracking system in this context might work that does not detect distance 
>in the way I have described, please do.
A standard tracking system does not triangulate with multiple radars. 
Further, if (as I understand is the case) the radar guides the 
missle on an intercept course, it is tracking both of them so any
error you might imagine (I saw no technical references for your 
assertion that the speed of radar is not known) would cancel out. 
The problem with the system advocated by Sansbury was so basic that 
I did not even bother to comment on it.  If you do what was described 
} The voltages after the emission of a radar or
} laser pulse received by the radar or laser beam detector are recorded at
} nanosecond intervals 
with cm radar I have no clue why you would include sin( 2 pi f t) in 
the fit function.  If you are not averaging over the high frequency 
you will just be measuring noise.  But, worse, this ignores the doppler 
shift in the received f. 
}for T*nanoseconds where T* is estimated as c/R*
} where R* is an estimate of the maximum distance of the reflector from the
} source. The obtained values are then used to find least squares estimates
} of the parameters A and r in the equation V(t)=A(1-exp(-ct/r)) times
} sin(2 pi f t). The least squares estimate of r denoted r* is closer to
} the actual distance, r, than that based on the usual method.
And this fit assumes A is independent of time in order to maintain 
some semblence of independence between variables, which is not the 
case if there is even a minor difference in reflectivity due to 
rotation of the rocket or changes in aspect or even atmospheric 
effects.  It takes more than an assertion to establish that the 
reflected energy is more stable than the speed of light. 
> Also the proposed tracking system would have made the arithmetic  
>accumulation errors in the software that you mention, irrelevant.
I gather you did not read the reference I gave.  Your system only 
changes the way the range is computed, it does not change the way 
this information is used in software to acquire and track a target. 
-- 
 James A. Carr        |  Raw data, like raw sewage, needs 
    http://www.scri.fsu.edu/~jac        |  some processing before it can be
 Supercomputer Computations Res. Inst.  |  spread around.  The opposite is
 Florida State, Tallahassee FL 32306    |  true of theories.  -- JAC

In article <54k439$tqu@netnews.upenn.edu>, weinecks@mail2.sas.upenn.edu (Silke-Maria  Weineck) writes:
>meron@cars3.uchicago.edu wrote:
>: Hippolyte?  And who's this Hippolyte?  
>
>The quote that amused you is from Jean Hippolyte, French philosopher. 
>He is asking a question, during a conference at Johns Hopkins 
>University in the 60s, after Derrida's talk on "Structure, Sign, and 
>Play." Zeleny was quoting, I assume, from "The Structuralist 
>Controversy," that collects papers from the conference as well as 
>transcriptions of the discussion section. The second quote (the one 
>about "center") is part of Derrida's oral reply. 
>
>: Anyway, you ask lots of A
>: questions.  Why won't you start with explaining what does Derrida mean 
>: by "constant" and "center".  In other words, assume that I'm 
>: completely ignorant of the language he uses (a reasonable assumption) 
>: and translate the passage above to common speak.  While we're at this, 
>: could you also explain in what sense do you use the word "privilege" 
>: when referring to empirical evidence.
>
>I don't know what Hippolyte meant by "kind of privilege" -- he's asking a 
>tentative question, not publishing an article. I would have liked to ask 
>him. Since I can't, I assume, since I know him to be an intelligent 
>thinker, that he had something specific in mind; probably something 
>rather simple, and he might have agreed that he worded it unfortunately. 
>I don't know, I'm speculating. 
I was rather asking what you mean in your question:  "There are no 
different kinds of privilege?".  But, it can wait.
>
>	I don't have "TSC" at hand, I'm not in my office right now. As 
>far as I remember (and keep in mind that I'm writing off the top of my 
>head), the question is a metaphysical one, not a technical/scientific 
>one. Nobody is doubting here (as some t.o. folks assumed a few months 
>back) that the speed of light isn't constant.
Oh, I assumed in advance that it can't be anything that simple.  I 
just wondered what it refers to.
>The question is rather 
>whether this constancy provides a center in the sense of a grounding. 
>Derrida seems to suggest (and that's off the top of _his_ head, remember 
>he's not giving a talk about physics here, neither is he publishing his 
>thoughts on physics) that SR does not provide that kind of stability that 
>would render Derrida's thoughts on structure in philosophy nil.
Since I don't know what kind of stability he looks for, or even what 
he defines as "stability", I can't answer this.  From physics point of 
view, by itself it provides nothing.  It is only in conjunction with 
the other Einstein's postulate, plus Newtonian mechanics and Maxwell's 
equations, that you start getting somewhere.  But, I doubt that its 
related to Derrida's statement.
>
>"Structure, Sign, and Play" is a rather short essay. If you have trouble 
>finding it in your library, I'd be happy to snailmail you a xerox copy. 
>It should provide the context we'd need here to establish whether 
>Hippolyte and Derrida are really as ridiculous as you seem too ready to 
>assume.
I'm sure that I can find this essay at UofC (whether I can find the 
time for it, that's another question :-( ).  
Mati Meron			| "When you argue with a fool,
meron@cars.uchicago.edu		|  chances are he is doing just the same"

In <54jd0v$7pk@dfw-ixnews7.ix.netcom.com> odessey2@ix.netcom.com(Allen
Meisner) writes: 
>
>In <54itja$ckd@dfw-ixnews11.ix.netcom.com> Alan \"Uncle Al\" Schwartz
> writes: 
>>
>>odessey2@ix.netcom.com(Allen Meisner) wrote:
>>>    Since we know the energy equivalence of the elementary
particles'
>>>rest mass and since we know the dimensions of the elementary
>particles,
>>>shouldn't we also be able to calculate the spacetime curvature of
the
>>>particles themselves, as opposed to the spacetime curvature it
>produces
>>>in the surrounding spacetime?
>>>
>>>Edward Meisner
>>
>>The "dimensions" of elementary particles?  The best we can do for
>nice, 
>>fat, cold, stable atoms is 90% probability thermal ellipsoids.  Have
>you 
>>ever heard of a guy named de Broglie?
>>
>>-- 
>>Alan "Uncle Al" Schwartz
>>UncleAl0@ix.netcom.com ("zero" before @)
>>http://www.netprophet.co.nz/uncleal/        (best of + new)
>>http://www.ultra.net.au/~wisby/uncleal.htm  (lots of + new)
>> (Toxic URLs! Unsafe for children, Democrats, and most mammals)
>>"Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?"  The Net!
>>
>>
>    But we do know the dimensions of the nucleus, don't we? If this is
>so, it shouldn't be such a great step to apply general relativity. I
am
>not sure how the equation would look, but you would probably not need
>the gravitational constant, since you are treating the mass in terms
of
>its energy equivalent. Since the Tensor in general relativity refers
to
>the energy distribution, why couldn't we just substitute the
appropiate
>values into the equation? Or you could use the equations that Jason
>Blood used, in the "finding the curvature for given QM field" posting.
>He used equations to find the curvature of a massless boson. Couldn't
>this equation be used? It might give interesting results.
>
>Edward Meisner
    Could you explain de Broglie's equations to me? Would it be
possible to substitute the spacetime curvatures of the proton and
electron in de Broglie's equations? The expression of the proton and
electron in terms of spacetime curvature might be fruitful. In
particular the problem of the square root of negative numbers might be
redressed. If not, then there will still probably be some intersting
predictions as well as some explanationms of phenomena that are not
well understood at present.

weinecks@mail1.sas.upenn.edu (Silke-Maria  Weineck) writes:
>Michael Zeleny (zeleny@oak.math.ucla.edu) wrote:
>>>>>>Of course not.  Anyone familiar with your argumentative style has long
>>>>>>abandoned the expectation of seeing you consistently take a principled
>>>>>>stand on any position of intellectual consequence
>>>>>How cute. Now it would be a sign of integrity to critique science. So 
>>>>>far, Russell and co. have mostly been berating me for doing it. Even when 
>>>>>I didn't. Why would I?
>>>>How cute, indeed.  What I associated integrity with was consistently
>>>>taking a principled stand on any position of intellectual consequence.
>>>>What you arbitrarily and willfully read into my statement was that the
>>>>positions in question were limited to a critique of science.  Thus you
>>>>demonstrate the twin trademarks of your rhetorical profession: arguing
>>>>at will and without principle or concern for truth on either side of
>>>>any issue, and arbitrarily importing your preferred meaning into the
>>>>words of your interlocutor.
>>>In other words, you made a gratuitous remark without relevance to the 
>>>situation. Thanks for clearing that up for us.
>>Since you and your tapeworm appear to be in need of clarification, I
>>made a remark about your character and comportment of obvious value
>>to anyone engaging in a discussion with you, or considering doing so.
>Oh that. In that case, you're simply wrong. 
Note that gainsaying your interlocutor does not amount to taking a
principled stand on any position of intellectual consequence.
Cordially, - Mikhail | God: "Sum id quod sum." Descartes: "Cogito ergo sum."
Zeleny@math.ucla.edu | Popeye:   "Sum id quod sum et id totum est quod sum."
itinerant philosopher -- will think for food  ** www.ptyx.com ** MZ@ptyx.com 
ptyx ** 6869 Pacific View Drive, LA, CA 90068 ** 213-876-8234/874-4745 (fax)

In article , jamesl@netcom.com (James Logajan) writes:
>dangrdoc@sound.net wrote:
>: I hate to bring this up again but it is bugging me.  In the original
>: example he was talking about temperature.  There is no negative
>: infinity for temperature it stops at zero degrees kelvin!!!!!!
>
>Depends on the situation. For systems with an upper bound to possible energy,
>one can define a negative temperature. See F. Reif, "Fundamentals of
>Statistical and Thermal Physics" for a complete discussion of the definition
>of temperature from a statistical view.
>
Yeah, but the funny thing is that a negative temperature is "hotter" 
then any positive temperature.
Mati Meron			| "When you argue with a fool,
meron@cars.uchicago.edu		|  chances are he is doing just the same"

In article <326D7480.3B07@ix.netcom.com>, mfriesel@ix.netcom.com writes:
>'What about a 'language' requires that it be capable of being 
>translated?
>Is this seriously a tenet of the philosophy of language, that anything
>defined as a 'language' must be translatable?  I hadn't heard that one
>before.
>
>                                --puzzled,
>
>                                        Fiona'
>
>That's a good one.  In your off minutes you may enjoy reading Stan 
>Lem's 'His Masters Voice'.  Very idealized but still recognizable cold 
>war science as carried out prior to the eighties physics debacle.
I'll second this.  By all means, read it.
Mati Meron			| "When you argue with a fool,
meron@cars.uchicago.edu		|  chances are he is doing just the same"

RICHARD J. LOGAN (RJL@OVPR.UGA.EDU) wrote:
:
: I don't understand what the last sentence means.  Please clarify.
weinecks@mail2.sas.upenn.edu (Silke-Maria  Weineck) writes:
>
>Forgive me. You are perhaps fortunate enough not to have followed the 
>threat. As a quick catch-up: moggin mentioned in passing that "Newton was 
>wrong," and a big to=do erupted about whether he was, in what way, under 
>what circumstances, and whether moggin had any right to say so. 
Stop right there.  No one doubted moggin's right to say anything; 
what was questioned was whether moggin had the background knowledge 
to be taken seriously.  Once it was clear that moggin did not have 
enough knowledge of math or physics to understand, let alone discuss 
intelligently, those matters, the only think left to do is to point 
out those errors as they are made and hope for the best. 
So moggin has a perfect right to say anything at all about physics 
in this forum, but that does not mean that moggin will come across 
as much more than another crank.  A unique one, perhaps deserving 
of an alt.physics.moggin+friends newsgroup, but a crank nonetheless. 
Someone interested in the philosophical issues would normally make 
an effort to learn about things like limits rather than using ignorance 
as an excuse to be ignorant.  Similarly, someone who knows the math 
and physics but not much about philosophy would be expected to do the 
same, and a Usenet forum *could* be a place where two such people 
educate one another.  However, I see no indication that this has, is, 
or will happen as this thread threatens to expand cancerlike into 
more threads than there are participants. 
This has turned into a meta-argument arguing about the argument, 
and has no place in sci.physics since there is no indication that 
any of the participants are interested in anything that involves 
science or even logic.  It may not be on topic in *any* of the 
groups where it appears, but please take it to _one_ of them.  
-- 
 James A. Carr        |  Raw data, like raw sewage, needs 
    http://www.scri.fsu.edu/~jac        |  some processing before it can be
 Supercomputer Computations Res. Inst.  |  spread around.  The opposite is
 Florida State, Tallahassee FL 32306    |  true of theories.  -- JAC

In article <326D5006.6E5C@pe.net> Gordon Talge  writes:
>>   But what about the rest of the non-metric world?
>> Has the Republic of Tonga gone metric yet?
>> 
>
>I thought it was the Kingdom of Tonga. Probably what ever the King or 
>Queen says goes.
>
"It's good to be the king!"  Mel Brooks, in _History of the World, pt 1_

We American ham radio operators routinely use metric measurements, for
things like radio wavelengths (80 meters, 40 meters, 2 meters) and
then there are electrical measurements where the metric system is the
only ball game in town.  Amps, Volts, Watts, and such.  
One minor annoyance is that the word "meter" also refers to those
devices that measure volts and amps and such.  "2 meters" by itself
could mean the 146MHz ham band, or a pair of voltmeters.  
Would guess that "meter" came from something meaning "measurement"
and a meter is eighter 39 1/3 inches or that thing in your basement
the power company insists on having to figure out your electric bill.
Why does noone ever say "megameter" instead of "thousand kilometers"

conover@tiac.net (Harry H Conover) writes:
>
>The fact is, Patriot was able to reduce the effects of Scud bombardment
>of Israel...which it did surprisingly well.  
Most of that reduction was psychological, through effective public 
relations while the military controlled information flow to the media. 
Hence the contrast between those thank-you notes and the hearings 
held in the US Congress.  And didn't Israel decide to develop its 
own system rather than keep the Patriot? 
What I would like to see is the equivalent of the post WW II analysis 
presented in the Strategic Bombing Reports.  Is there a DoD publication 
that gives quantitative data on the results of each intercept attempt? 
>Another non-disputed fact is that, after the war, a few disgruntled 
>acadaemics, who had themselves contributed nothing whatever to the defense
>of the Israeli, people took it upon themselves to orchestrate an 
>anti-Patriot campaign (with a purpose is not entirely clear to me).
One would hope it would provide a reality check.  People who did not 
read the Strategic Bombing Reports thought strategic bombing destroyed 
the will of the bombee, and proceeded to rely on it in Vietnam.  If 
all you knew was the PR, and not the facts, someone might think the 
Patriot was the answer and future soldiers might end up like the 
28 who died because Patriot did not work as well as claimed.  Worse, 
they might assume a similar system would work against a more advanced 
offensive missle system. 
-- 
 James A. Carr        |  Raw data, like raw sewage, needs 
    http://www.scri.fsu.edu/~jac        |  some processing before it can be
 Supercomputer Computations Res. Inst.  |  spread around.  The opposite is
 Florida State, Tallahassee FL 32306    |  true of theories.  -- JAC

In article <54k5lm$if4@ssbunews.ih.lucent.com>, lew@ihgp167e.ih.att.com (-Mammel,L.H.) writes:
>In article ,   wrote:
>>In article <54juf0$hn3@ssbunews.ih.lucent.com>, lew@ihgp167e.ih.att.com (-Mammel,L.H.) writes:
>>>In article ,   wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>I'm afraid we're mixing two issues here.  It may be partly my fault 
>>>>since I responded the way I would respond to a fellow physicist, not 
>>>>the way things are phrased in a legal document.  ............... 
>>>
>>>
>>>Pusillanimous prevarication !
>>>
>>You forgot the smiley.
>
>Not really. If you think the Law of gravity and gravity per se
>are the same thing you should stick to your guns. If not, you should
>confess to your confusion, or at least claim it was a temporary
>lapse. I'm sure we're all ready to believe the sun got in
>your eyes.
>
Ah, so there wasn't supposed to be a smiley?  Never mind, it was funny 
anyway.
>But to pretend that a distinction this simple is alien to
>a physicist's way of thinking. Oh my!
If you think that physicists use disclaimers all the time like "... I'm 
talking about the law of gravity which of course is only our model for 
the phenomenon of gravity... etc. etc." then, sorry as I'm, I have to 
disappoint you.  We would never get anywhere talking like this.  We 
tend to expect the listener to understand from the context what it is 
that is being referred to and clarify matters if and when asked.  Of 
course I do realize that this is a completely different culture from 
this of folks who engage in arguments not in order to clarify matters 
but for the sole purpose of "scoering points" and who, therefore, are 
in a constant lookout for phrases the meaning of which they can twist 
around and use against their originator.  However, having graduated 
from the kindergarten quite a few years ago, it is not my intention to 
play this sort of games.
Mati Meron			| "When you argue with a fool,
meron@cars.uchicago.edu		|  chances are he is doing just the same"

moggin@bessel.nando.net (moggin) writes:
>zeleny@oak.math.ucla.edu (Michael Zeleny):
>>Thus spake Jacques Derrida:
>>
>>        When I take, for example, the structure of certain algebraic
>>        constructions [ensembles], where is the center? Is the center the
>>        knowledge of general rules which, after a fashion, allow us to
>>        understand the interplay of the elements? Or is the center certain
>>        elements which enjoy a particular privilege within the ensemble?
>>        ...With Einstein, for example, we see the end of a kind of
>>        privilege of empiric evidence. And in that connection we see a
>>        constant appear, a constant which is a combination of space-time,
>>        which does not belong to any of the experimenters who live the
>>        experience, but which, in a way, dominates the whole construct;
>>        and this notion of the constant -- is this the center?
>   I'm afraid you're badly mistaken: Derrida didn't say any of the above.
I am afraid that you are correct.  I have omitted the attribution of
the above question to a Derridean sycophant.  Not that apportioning
boundless ignorance to two parties makes any difference in the outcome.
>>As Sokal rightly says, "Derrida's perceptive reply went to the heart of
>>classical general relativity:"
>>        The Einsteinian constant is not a constant, is not a center. 
>>
>>        It is the very concept of variability -- it is, finally, the
>>        concept of the game. In other words, it is not the concept of
>>        something -- of a center starting from which an observer could
>>        master the field -- but the very concept of the game ...
>>
>>(Derrida, Jacques. 1970. Structure, sign and play in the discourse of
>>the human sciences. In The Languages of Criticism and the Sciences of
>>Man: The Structuralist Controversy, pp. 247-272, edited by Richard
>>Macksey and Eugenio Donato.  Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press.)
>   Here your attribution is half-right and wholly misleading.  The
>passage you quote comes not from the well-known essay, "Structure,
>Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences," as one would
>expect from your reference, but rather from the discussion following
>Derrida's presentation of that essay at the Hopkins symposium, "The
>Languages of Criticism and the Sciences of Man," in the fall of 1966.
EXCUSE ME?  Are you implying that having railed against the evils of
phallogocentrism entitles Derrida to a special dispensation to issue
inconsequential howlers, provided that someone else transcribes them?
Hippolyte offers an egregious question.  Derrida obliges him with an
egregious answer.  Sokal shows that both are blathering.  Case closed.
Cordially, - Mikhail | God: "Sum id quod sum." Descartes: "Cogito ergo sum."
Zeleny@math.ucla.edu | Popeye:   "Sum id quod sum et id totum est quod sum."
itinerant philosopher -- will think for food  ** www.ptyx.com ** MZ@ptyx.com 
ptyx ** 6869 Pacific View Drive, LA, CA 90068 ** 213-876-8234/874-4745 (fax)

wetboy@shore.net (wetboy) writes:
>
>              ....                                     Now,
>the collision point, X, and the positions of the pucks form
>three corners of a quadrilateral which must be a rectangle, 
>because the diagonals are equal and bisect each other.
A purely geometric argument.  Nice. 
Newton would be pleased. 
-- 
 James A. Carr        |  Raw data, like raw sewage, needs 
    http://www.scri.fsu.edu/~jac        |  some processing before it can be
 Supercomputer Computations Res. Inst.  |  spread around.  The opposite is
 Florida State, Tallahassee FL 32306    |  true of theories.  -- JAC

Does anybody know anything about the mathemetician/physicist H. Nyquist,
whose criterion is very important?  I'm desperate here...
Thanks, 
--
Nathan Eric Lundblad                               These are the pale deaths
lundblad@ocf.berkeley.edu			that men miscall their lives
http://www.ugastro.berkeley.edu/~lundblad       ----------------------------

 > From: andersw+@pitt.edu (Anders N Weinstein)
 > Date: 18 Oct 1996 16:20:17 GMT
 > In article <845525515snz@longley.demon.co.uk>,
 > David Longley  wrote:
|>                                   I said diagnosis currently
makes
|> essential use of interpreted verbal reports and does not
respect
|> a priori constraints on an observation vocabulary at all.
 > |
 > |Then  you think self report more valuable than most  doctors
 and 
 > |psychologists  -  why  I  don'ty  understand  -  given  the 
poor 
 > |reliability.
> Are you saying there is an *entirely* "extensional" method for
> diagnosing depression and that clinicians in practice do (or
ought
Sleep habits, response times, REM sleep latency, posture, verbal
responses...
Terry

nickb@primenet.com (Nick S Bensema) writes:
>Chris Cracknell  wrote:
>>Or I suppose you could just freak out everyone in your town by waiting
>>for an overcast night and playing vectrex games on the cloud canopy.
>
>But you know, I bet spam-advertisers will discover the way first and put
>billboards on the moon or clouds or something...
Hey, scorekeepers - do third-level indirect references to obscure Heinlein
stories also kill threads dead?
Dave "Cuz if they do I have some ideas about calling Boursy a fifth columnist"
 DeLaney
-- 
\/David	DeLaney	dbd@panacea.phys.utk.edu "It's not the pot that	grows the flower
It's not the clock that	slows the hour 	The definition's plain for anyone to see
Love is	all it takes to	make a family" - R&P.; VISUALIZE	HAPPYNET VRbeable
http://enigma.phys.utk.edu/~dbd/ - net.legends FAQ / I WUV you in all CAPS! --K.

Mark Gilbert wrote:
> 
> No.  Photons of different energies travel at different speeds in
> material.  It is this difference in speed that enables a prism to spread
> Mark Gilbert
This is not really true of course. The reason light spreads out in its
different colours is simply because of the different refraction indices
of the different components.
Peter.
-- 
Leiden University, Leiden Institute of Chemistry, Gorlaeus Laboratories.
Address:      Einsteinweg 55 / P.O. Box 9502 2300RA, Leiden The
Netherlands.
Phone:        +31 71 274400    TeleFax:      +31 71 274537
Department:                    Phone:        +31 71 27

Matt McIrvin wrote:
> 
> In article <54glu6$7hl@csugrad.cs.vt.edu>, nurban@vt.edu wrote:
> 
> > One of the most profound results in all of physics, embodied in
> > Noether's theorem, is that every symmetry gives rise to a conserved
> > quantity and vice versa.  For example, conservation of angular momentum
> > comes from rotational symmetry ("isotropy") of space, and conservation
> > of energy comes from time translation symmetry.
> 
> Every time I see a post like this, I get the evil urge to post, once again,
> the following puzzle: "What is the conserved quantity associated with
> Lorentz boost invariance?"
What about the symmetry under permutation of identical
particles? What is the conserved quantity associated
with that?
-- 
====================================================
Phil Gibbs     pg@pobox.com     http://pobox.com/~pg

A few days ago I posted a question on wether it was possible to attain
a certain field strength without arcing (because when I did my
experiment in air it arced).  I made the suggestion of doing this in
vaccum and somebody pointed out that vacuum is a poor resistor.  How
can this be?  If a vacuum can be defined as nothing (well...I think 10
e -6 torr is almost nothing) how can it be a poor resistor?  Somebody
else pointed out that vacuum is a good resistor at a low enough
pressure but as it gets lower the resistance then lowers (he refered
to Paschens law)  

In article <54k4li$njo@dfw-ixnews7.ix.netcom.com>, sammya@ix.netcom.com writes:
>
>A few days ago I posted a question on wether it was possible to attain
>a certain field strength without arcing (because when I did my
>experiment in air it arced).  I made the suggestion of doing this in
>vaccum and somebody pointed out that vacuum is a poor resistor.  How
>can this be?  If a vacuum can be defined as nothing (well...I think 10
>e -6 torr is almost nothing) how can it be a poor resistor?  Somebody
>else pointed out that vacuum is a good resistor at a low enough
>pressure but as it gets lower the resistance then lowers (he refered
>to Paschens law)  
>
Referring to a gap as resistor is misleading since it doesn't follow 
Ohm's Law.  So lets talk in terms of "discharge potential", the 
potential difference for which you'll get arcing between two 
electrodes.  As you lower the pressure from atmospheric this valuewill 
get lower and lower till you reach a minimum in the vicinity of 
10^-3 Torr.  Form this point it'll improve again and typically it'll 
roughly return to the same value you had at atmospheric pressure, 
around 10^-6 Torr.  If you lower the pressure further the resistance 
to arcing will get better and better.  However, getting below 10-6 
requires special equipment, materials etc.  A better approach is to 
work at elevated pressure (higher then atmospheric) with the 
appropriate gas mixture.  Small Van de Graafs routinely use an 
nitrogen- Carbon diaxide mixture at few atmospheres.  SF6 works even 
better but is not as easy to obtain.
Mati Meron			| "When you argue with a fool,
meron@cars.uchicago.edu		|  chances are he is doing just the same"

In talk.origins weinecks@mail2.sas.upenn.edu (Silke-Maria  Weineck)
wrote:
[snip]
>
>I think we are having a misunderstanding; you use "aesthetics" to denote 
>"the xperience of beauty," or "something beautiful" -- I used it to 
>denote "the discourse on the beautiful qua beautiful." In other words, 
>I'm saying that the history of aesthetics as a sub=field of philosophy 
>cannot be "scientized" without changing into something entirely different 
>from what it's been. This is not to suggest that working in science 
>cannot be an expericne of beauty, or motivated by a desire to experience 
>beauty. Scientific discourse itself, however, is hardly ever a discourse 
>_on_ beauty even though it can be a discouse on the beautiful.
>
It seems to me that people can and do make the same argument against
the field of aesthetics itself, scientized or not. That is, that
beauty is to be experienced, not studied. For myself, I find beauty
from the studying, but I can see the other point.
Matt Silberstein
===========================
Let others praise ancient times, I am glad to live in these.
Ovid

In talk.origins gcf@panix.com (G*rd*n) wrote:
>taboada@mtha.usc.edu (Mario Taboada):
>| 	More importantly, you need the calculus to properly formulate
>| concepts like instantaneous velocity and acceleration, without which
>| kinematics cannot be studied "exactly".  ...
>
>What do you mean by "properly formulate"?  I drive my car
>around, intuiting instantaneous velocity and acceleration,
>without performing even informal thumbnail calculus.  Or
>does my nervous system do it sneakily out of sight of
>my consciousness?
>
Gordon, the topic was the study of the philosophy of science and (IMO)
the study of science. You cannot study the philosophy of car making
without some reasonable understanding of the internal combustion
engine, the nature of corporations and "free" markets, etc. But you
can drive a car with understand and of these or of science. Different
uses, different needs.
Matt Silberstein
===========================
Let others praise ancient times, I am glad to live in these.
Ovid

In talk.origins gcf@panix.com (G*rd*n) wrote:
>+@+.+ (G*rd*n) wrote:
>| [snip]
>| >Which text are we reading?  One certainly doesn't need
>| >Calculus to understand Newton's theories of celestial
>| >mechanics.
>
>matts2@ix.netcom.com (Matt Silberstein):
>| I may be confused here. But don't you need the calculus to understand
>| that sphere's act as point masses? And isn't that one of the major
>| reasons he invented/discovered/worked out calculus?
>
>I don't have much trouble taking spheres acting as point
>masses on faith.  It may be difficult to calculate (without
>Calculus) but it's easy to intuit.
>
>Are we barking up the wrong tree, however?  It may not be
>difficult to understand Newton, at least intuitively,
>without Calculus, but maybe the message of science isn't
>Newton.  
If all you want is an intuitive understanding then you should go
wherever you intuition takes you. I had thought you wanted to
understand what was happening in science. I have found, for myself,
that when I don't have the math, I don't see the steps.
BTW, I don't think Newton is the message of science. I think Galileo
is the start of modern science and Newton is the first great
theoretician. But there is much to science in the last 200 years and
physics is only one branch.
>Patrick pointed out the difference between modern
>and ancient war, and likewise there's a difference between
>modern and classical (e.g. Newtonian) science.  
I think of Newton's work as modern science. There is a difference
between Classical Mechanics (Newton) and GR/SR. I do note that is
distinction I am making here is purely definitional.
>For all I
>know modern scientists shovel math the way I shovel stupid
>C code.  Or maybe they don't.  
Gordon, you have put layers of meaning in this passage. 
>Maybe the claims about
>math are just a way of keeping the unsanctified out of the
>temple.  That's what I'm trying to find out.
If you can follow the material without the math, great. If you can
intuitively see what they are doing then you don't need the math. But
if you start to say that they are unjustified for taking a step, or
that they are "really" drawing the work from somewhere else, then you
have reached the limit of your intuition. At the point where you can't
follow, you have to step back and learn their language.
BTW, Gordon, did you think that I have been giving you rules, that I
have been trying to restrict your investigation of science? Have I
presented requirements that you had to pass before you were allowed to
talk about the philosophy of science? Because I think that I have
tried to help you understand what you should know in order to study
the subject, not what I required you to know.
Matt Silberstein
===========================
Let others praise ancient times, I am glad to live in these.
Ovid

Anthony Potts wrote:
> 
> On Mon, 21 Oct 1996, Dick Brewster wrote:
> 
> >
> > The Brits pronounce both words the same as we do, they spell them that
> > way to suck up to their idols, the French.
> >
> If you had ever actually studied us British, you would have found that if
> we are able to annoy the French, we can.
> 
> This includes wars, rugby, and so on. They feel similarly towards us, and
> so set fire to our sheep at Calais.
> 
> You may thyink that the British and US citizens sometimes feel slightly
> antagonistic towards each other, but this is as nothing compared to the
> British national sport of French baiting.
> 
> Anthony Potts
> 
> CERN, Geneva
Anthony, Please excuse me for leaving off the smiley face for the humor 
impaired...  Or did I just bite into a piece of smelly old bait?

Im Artikel <54hp4v$j43@news-central.tiac.net>, cri@tiac.net (Richard
Harter) schreibt:
[Mati]
>>: It is hardly an appropriate way to look at a physical theory.  A 
>>: theory is a multi-element structure.  You my find that one of the 
>>: elements is inadequate but by replacing it (or fixing it) while 
>>: maintaining the restyou get again a good theory.  This is not the same
>>: as rejecting it and starting from scratch (do you junk a car because 
>>: the fuel pump died?).  Of course, a purist will say "but that's a 
>>: different theory".  same purist will say that once you replaced the 
>>: fuel pump you've a different car.  So, the issue becomes how much was 
>>: replaced and how much was maintained.
[Silke]
>>There seems to be a slight problem with the analogy: if a part of my car
>>breaks, I try to get a replacement that's identical to the now-broken 
>>part when it was in prime condition. 
>>	If Mercedes, let's say, develops a _new_ part, they _will_ call it
>>a different car most of the time. Unless the modification is next-to
>>irrelevant. 
...
[Richard]
>Point well taken.  
Sorry, but again it seems, that in the humanities there is not much
understanding of technical things, thus Silkes point wasn't well thought
up at all. If her (Oh Lord, won't you buy me) Mercedes Benz would contain
a fuel pump which goes broke after too short a time, Mercedes will
silently replace it with a _newly_ engineered and differently made model
for to fix the bug, which otherwise would just occur again. This is what
Mati quite obviously meant (a fault in the construction of one element)
and not the replacing of the same element after just a mechanical wore-out
of the first. Such an assumption wouldn't have helped in the analogy at
all, as elements of theories do not wear out, but do have to be replaced
by _different_ ones, if there's a bug to fix. In my opinion that wasn't
too hard to see even without a technical background.
Also, as a sidenote, what appears to Silke as a completely new model of
one brand is mostly only the outer appearance. Over lots of generations
lots of parts are kept (like motors, axles and the like) and only
reluctantly exchanged for newer ones. So of course 'Classical mechanics'
vs. 'Relativistic mechanics' may look like two different models to the
onlooker, the brandnew one replacing the older one, when in fact the same
heart still is beating under the bonnet.
>A more appropriate analogy for Mati's argument is a
>house.  ..... But structurally it remains the same house; the
>foundation and the load bearing walls, the main framing keep their
>integrity. 
Certainly the house is not a bad analogy either, but refering to
Aristoteles villa, we would see only ruins of it - of coursed swarmed by
tourists who are attracted by ruins like the bees by nectar. I do have
positive proof of the latter, living just in sight of much too well known
castle ruins...
If you don't bite back, when a dog bites you,
it will say that you have no teeth (from Sudan).
__________________________________
Lorenz Borsche
Per the FCA: this eMail adress is not to 
be added to any commercial mailing list.
Uncalled for eMail maybe treated as public.

Im Artikel , andrew@cee.hw.ac.uk (Andrew Dinn)
schreibt:
>Mati Meron replied:
>That's a nice proof that they don't know what they are talking about.
>The law of gravity isn't useful, nor not useful, it just is.  Arguing 
>"how it is used" or "whether it should be used" is appropriate to 
>devices.  But the law of gravity isn't a device.  It is there and 
>that's it.  You can take it into account in what you're doing, or you 
>can ignore it, at your peril, bu the way gravity acts is independent 
>of philosophers ideas regarding "how it should be used".
[and much further down, Andrew Dinn reflected this quote like this]:
>... since here we have Mati, a working scientist, disagreeing with
>Patrick. For him the law of gravity is not a `description of how
>falling objects behave' but rather `it just is', `It is there and
>that's it'.
He certainly said the latter, but he said this to illuminate his first
point, which was:
>The law of gravity isn't useful, nor not useful, it just is.  Arguing 
>"how it is used" or "whether it should be used" is appropriate to 
>devices.  But the law of gravity isn't a device. 
I really wonder how this translates to:
>For him the law of gravity is not a `description of how
>falling objects behave' but rather `it just is', `It is there and
>that's it'.
And further on:
> But 4) 
     [i.e.:  The version current could easily be replaced
     with something else that did a better job of describing 
     how falling objects behave. ]
>will presumably stick in Mati's
>craw since, the law of gravity being something which just `is', I
>don't suppose he is expecting it to go away.
Do you expect Newtons apple to rise from ground? Or does any of Patrick
Juolas comments give any hint in this direction?
> And he certainly does not
>seem to think that it is up to us to choose whether the current law of
>gravity (sorry, *the* law of gravity) or some other law is more
>appropriate for describing how things fall.
Of course we are not up to choose, but, you obviously confused what Mati
may have meant with 'Law' and what not, as your 'clarification' in the
parenthesis does show. We do have a mathematical formula, which we suspect
to represent a universal law, although we cannot prove this to be the case
to the last decimal. It is by far the most correct formula derived by now,
as far as we can tell, which is why we choose it as being the most
appropriate (this is what you mean by 'current law'). But we certainly
cannot choose a different 'law' as (at least all scientists are convinced,
that) there is only one (which is what you called '*the* law'). If we will
ever have a completely correct mathematical description of it, remains
unknown.
>The questions may well be trivial but that is not to say that most
>scientists are capable of answering them correctly. How many other
>scientists think like Mati that the law of gravity `just is'?
As I said, most probably all. Do not get that mixed up with the current
mathematical description which may not be the last word in this respect,
as Patrick Juola pointed out as quoted above below '4)' - even hough the
word 'easily' seems to be a bit overoptimistic here ;-). In the above you
actually just offered a good example of Matis strongly worded assumption: 
>That's a nice proof that they don't know what they are talking about.
Where I would be very coutious with the word proof here ;-)
Cheerio
If you don't bite back, when a dog bites you,
it will say that you have no teeth (from Sudan).
__________________________________
Lorenz Borsche
Per the FCA: this eMail adress is not to 
be added to any commercial mailing list.
Uncalled for eMail maybe treated as public.

mkluge@wizard.net (Mark D. Kluge) wrote:

>Probably not for most people, for whom the turning on of a white-noise 
>generator carries no significance. For you, however, for whatever reason, the 
>turning on of a white-noise generator brings expectations of certain dreams. 
No, it doesn't. The literature that comes with the generator makes no 
claim that it affects dreams. I discovered its effects by accidentially 
leaving it on during the night.
>Some people are able to control the subject of their dreams. You might be one 
>of them based upon your expectation of certain dream subjects when you turn 
>the WN generator. Or your dreams might be the result of the noise generated by 
>the WN generator. 
There is a dream-state called "lucid dreaming" where some people can 
control the content of the dream. However this state is on the borderline 
between being awake and sleeping, and cannot be called true dreaming.
During a regular dream-state, a person has no conscious awareness of his 
environment and cannot control the content of a dream.
>Until you do a proper experiment, though, you will not know which. In 
>experiments testing the effects of a certain stimlus, it is best if the 
>subject of the experiment does not control, and is not even aware of the 
>stimulus. One should be sure that it is not the expectation of the stimulus, 
>or some other circumstance ssurrounding the application of the stimulus, that 
>yields a response. (For example, for all I know you might only turn on your WN 
>generator after you've had sardines for dinner, and sardines might affect your 
>digestion in such a way as to stimulate the dreams you are having. Now you 
>have probably avoided an error so obvious, but short of drawing a random 
>number each night before bed-time to determine whether to activate the WN 
>generator, you cannot rule out some other happening correlated with both your 
>turning on the WN generator and your unusual dreams. 
All I can say at this point is that when I turn on the WN generator, the 
dreams differ considerably. Whether this is true just in my case or also 
for the general populace, I do not know. 
Bernie

Im Artikel <54h44d$6d8@panix2.panix.com>, +@+.+ (G*rd*n) schreibt:
>Now, if I were to call Jesus (or Karl Marx) a raving
>necrophiliac, I'm sure I'd be ignored.  Or a racist
>slaveholder, for that matter.  So it seems we have changed
>our gods.  Isn't this a matter of interest to you?  It is
>to me.
>
>I have to admit (hi, Patrick!) that the Jefferson tizzy was
>pretty mild next to the Newton tizzy.  But I think it had
>similar qualities.  (But the Newton tizzy's isn't even over
>yet -- I've caught sight of yet more earnest crusaders
>soldiering up the hillside to Moggin Keep....)
Sorry to interupt, or even being late in this thread, but actually the
Newton tizzy did show a completely different picture wrt the 'similar
qualities, as some posters unwithspoken and unasked for referred to the
most unpleasant personality of Mr. Newton himself - which of course
doesn't devaluate his achievements. Thus one shouldn't confuse the
defending of the validity of Newtons findings with defending the person
himself, which you may not be lucky to find anyone doing.
Cheerio
If you don't bite back, when a dog bites you,
it will say that you have no teeth (from Sudan).
__________________________________
Lorenz Borsche
Per the FCA: this eMail adress is not to 
be added to any commercial mailing list.
Uncalled for eMail maybe treated as public.

	First of all, Adam, let me apologize for the less than civil tone 
in my last article.  I tend to take certain well-refuted philosophical 
theses as personal affronts - I thought I detected one of these in your 
last post. But now, I've just come off a newsgroup where someone was 
invoking *Descartes* as an intellectual authority...*gasp*...words fail...
In article ,
Adam Hibbert  wrote:
>In article <540mcf$bch@muss.CIS.McMaster.CA>,
>pritchjm@muss.cis.McMaster.CA (J.M. Pritchard) wrote:
>>         In light of your own admission: APPROXIMATION TO *WHAT*??? You 
>>         beg the entire point by saying;
>>         1) That absolute truth does not exist
>>         2) That we have limited access to it, and can "approximate" it.
>>         These are mutually exclusive theses which render your argument 
>>         incoherent.
>Excuse me. I did not say (or mean to say) that we have limited access to
>something that does not exist. I meant, and maintain, that we have limited
>access to what we are pleased to call reality - and that it seems
>inconceivable that we should ever arrive at a *total* unity of our
>knowledge with that external experience (ie Absolute Truth). 
	Hmmm, I would say that any talk about "limited access" is bound 
to beg the question at some point - and I think you understand this better 
than you are letting on. If reality really is "external" as you say, then 
we ought to have NO access to it, by definition. These are Kantian 
problems.
>These are not the incompatible theses rightly ridiculed above; I wish only
>to suggest that while (a) the search for the ultimate truth in, say,
>Particle Physics, is essentially a Snark hunt, it remains the case that
>(b) there is an independent (of us) reality out there composed of (at one
>level) interacting particles, and perhaps that (c) we should therefore
>concern ourselves once again with essentialist philosophy, which doesn't
>fall apart everytime someone cracks open the ultimate particle and finds
>another five inside.
	If there really is a reality "external" to and "independent" of 
us then we *cannot* speak about it, because as soon as we begin to use 
words we bring it "inside".  Obviously, this is absurd because it 
requires us to be entirely silent if we are to be methodologically 
rigorous.
	I think you might find that there are better alternatives to 
foundationalist philosophy than you imagine (I will briefly describe one 
below). The difficulty lies in breaking with some deeply-rooted 
assumptions - we tend to pattern our philosophies after grammar.
>> >If your description of Wittgenstein is true, then it seems to me he had
>> >only half an argument: the other half was to show out of what stuff the
>> >conventions themselves were built (where I suspect one has to begin to
>> >deal with 'the ways of things' rather than the imaginations of people).
>> >Did he do that?
>>         Evolution. Intersubjectivity. Anti-epistemology.
>Duh. Can you spell these out for me? I'm not up to speed here.
	Consider a world of traffic-lights - the red, yellow and green 
kind. Lets assume that all the beings in this world drive high-speed 
vehicles, and obey the regular rules: red for stop, green for go. Let us 
also assume that we can plant a test subject in this world identical in 
every way to the other inhabitants except that he floors it when he sees 
a red light and stops at green ones.
	It is my contention that this subject (S) would not last very 
long, even if it were the case in "absolute reality" that red *actually 
stands for go* and green *actually stands for stop*. He was RIGHT, but it 
didn't help him.
	Obviously, it is stupid to talk of an external reality in this 
case. The "absolute" fact-of-the-matter about whether one should stop 
or go at a red light can only be a matter of the sheerest indifference. 
The only thing which matters is what everyone else is doing, and what 
behaviors you will have to emulate in order to survive/and not be 
institutionalized.
	Evolutionarily speaking, the "false" gets weeded out because it is 
insufficiently adapted to a dangerous environment. Our environment *is* 
dangerous. If we consider intersubjectivity, the demands made on us by 
society in order that we can operate within it are not slight either - 
there are languages to learn, traditions to follow, practices of hygene 
and courtship to internalize.  Anti-epistemology merely notes that 
"ontologically speaking", no belief is a closer approximation to an 
absolute than any other - or more to the point, that such a distinction 
must be meaningless for us.  It is what /passes/ for true that is 
important to us.
	Wittgenstein does not deny that the world exists.  He 
just denies that language has a particular relation to it. The 
constraints of living successfully are constraints enough.
				Jeff