OT: Speed of light [was Re: Why not a Python compiler?]

[Dotan Cohen]

On 09/02/2008, Ron Provost <ron.longo at cox.net> wrote:
>
> The division between philosophy and science can be fine indeed.  Philosophy
> and science are the two rigorous methods of inquiry into the fundamental
> nature of things (other methods include religion and superstition).  Because
> of it's process, science limits itself to those questions which can be
> tested expermientally.  Philosophy is left to address the remaining
> questions which can be examined through reason (mostly deduction).  Of many
> of the questions which were thought to be only answerably via philosophy,
> often someone finds a way to test some of them.  This is very often the case
> in areas of philosophy studying the fields involving the mind and nature.
> Thus whold chunks of philosophy slowly become the realms of psychology,
> lingustics, logic (Which as a whole became the realm of the theoretical
> science of math around), and many of the questions about the nature of the
> universe, existance and time have become the realm of physics.  In this way
> philosophy may be thought of as the cutting edge of science.
>
> Similarly science itself has uncovered new questions which currently can
> only be addressed through the methods of philosophy.  One of the most
> interested and recently practical have been investigations into the
> foundations of science.  For example, Karl Popper was interested in the
> process of science and what constitutes a scientific theory vs.
> non-scientific theory.  His answer:  A scientific theory is falsifyable via
> the techniques of science (that is experimentation).  This is practical
> today, because it excludes the whole "intelligent design" theory from
> science, little if any of which is falsifyable.
>
> Thus the line that divides philosophy and science is fine.  The two
> disciplies in fact need oneanother.  Science uncovers new information used
> by philosophy to build new philosophical theories while philosophy spends a
> huge amount of time questioning or judging the practices of other fields
> such as science in much the same way as the US supreme court is supposed to
> work to check on the other branches of the government.

+5 Informative

Dotan Cohen

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A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text.
Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?