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I'm a huge fan of Aristotle. He's more or less the founding father of all western intellectual tradition. But he believed things like continuous force is necess
by nonameiguess 17d ago
I'm a huge fan of Aristotle. He's more or less the founding father of all western intellectual tradition. But he believed things like continuous force is necessary to keep an object in motion and object released from a rotational anchor would move perpendicular to the rotation's tangent. Beware any non-experimental version of science that relies entirely upon deducing what seems obvious to you from first principles. Even with strong math behind it, you get things like zero point energy density computed from quantum mechanics being off by triple-digit orders of magnitude from the true observed value, often called the worst prediction in the history of physics. Only reality, not your mind, holds truth. There is no "personal" truth, aside from true statements regarding your own feelings, beliefs, and other indicators of purely subjective internal state.
- itsalwaysgood 17d ago'A person is many things: some things are useful. And usefulness can apply to ourselves, or to others.' I choose deductive reasoning from Aristotle and apply it to my own experience to reach my own conclusions. But you're right, he believed many things that turned out not to be true, and it reduces his credentials and should lessen how much belief I give to his ideas. Was the opening idea I left there 'useful' to you? I have no idea, it was useful to me. But, if the tool is extremely useful, and feels elegant, perhaps there is some 'truth' to the tool itself and it should be considered carefully.... Someone literally posted an article about Dirac and 'beautiful math' here the other day. He suggested Einstein's special relativity persists today and spread because the idea was beautiful, and sake of beauty itself helped it to spread and be more 'true'. Is this proper? I don't know.