Hi Gentlemen,
 
This week we'll hold our LQS meeting on Thursday, September 1, at 2:00 PM
Eastern. We'll take round-table reports and discuss Chapter 1 of the book
Peter mentioned last week: David Deutsch, "The Beginning of Infinity."

Here are some quotes from Chapter 1 that I found interesting (there were
many more):

  "How do we know? One of the most remarkable things about science is the
  contrast between the enormous reach and power of our best theories and
  the precarious, local means by which we create them."

  "Scientific explanations are about reality, most of which does not consist
  of anyone\u2019s experiences."

  "Discovering a new explanation is inherently an act of creativity."

  "Such ideas do not create themselves, nor can they be mechanically derived
  from anything: they have to be guessed \u2013 after which they can be
  criticized and tested."

  "But the real key to science is that our explanatory theories -- which
  include those interpretations -- can be improved, through conjecture,
  criticism and testing."

  "To this day, most courses in the philosophy of knowledge teach that
  knowledge is some form of justified, true belief, where 'justified'
  means designated as true (or at least 'probable') by reference to some
  authoritative source or touchstone of knowledge."

  "The opposing position -- namely the recognition that there are no
  authoritative sources of knowledge, nor any reliable means of justifying
  ideas as being true or probable -- is called fallibilism."

  "Fallibilists expect even their best and most fundamental explanations to
  contain misconceptions in addition to truth, and so they are predisposed
  to try to change them for the better."

  "The quest for authority led empiricists to downplay and even stigmatize
  conjecture, the real source of all our theories."

  "Thus, although scientific theories are not derived from experience, they
  can be tested by experience -- by observation or experiment."

  "Instrumentalism is one of many ways of denying realism, the commonsense,
  and true, doctrine that the physical world really exists, and is accessible
  to rational inquiry."

  "Just as conflicting predictions are the occasion for experiment and
  observation, so conflicting ideas in a broader sense are the occasion for
  all rational thought and inquiry."

  "Good explanations are often strikingly simple or elegant."

  "The best explanations are the ones that are most constrained by existing
  knowledge -- including other good explanations as well as other knowledge
  of the phenomena to be explained."

  "Now we shall see how this explanation-based conception of science answers
  the question that I asked above: how do we know so much about unfamiliar
  aspects of reality?"

  "The theory [axis-tilt of the Earth] reaches out, as it were, from its finite
  origins inside one brain that has been affected only by scraps of patchy
  evidence from a small part of one hemisphere of one planet -- to infinity.
  This reach of explanations is another meaning of 'the beginning of infinity'.
  It is the ability of some of them to solve problems beyond those that they
  were created to solve."

  "Realism The idea that the physical world exists in reality, and that
  knowledge of it can exist too."

  "The real source of our theories is conjecture, and the real source of our
  knowledge is conjecture alternating with criticism. We create theories by
  rearranging, combining, altering and adding to existing ideas with the
  intention of improving upon them."

  "Feeling insignificant because the universe is large has exactly the same
  logic as feeling inadequate for not being a cow. Or a herd of cows. The
  universe is not there to overwhelm us; it is our home, and our resource.
  The bigger the better."

  "But they certainly do not experience such reflections as a result. I
  mention this because I often hear scientific research described in rather
  a bleak way, suggesting that it is mostly mindless toil."

  "After all, computers play chess mindlessly -- by exhaustively searching the
  consequences of all possible moves -- but humans achieve a similar-looking
  functionality in a completely different way, by creative and enjoyable
  thought."

As usual, our call-in number the local ReadyTalk access number for your
country (US: 866-740-1260, or check www.readytalk.com). Access code
is 3144955.
   
Thank you,
 
--Ray