Re: Q!Re: Shall We All Leave At Once?

On 22 May, 18:59, "Agamemnon" <agamem...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
"Phil Bowles" <philipbowles2...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message

news:0cb1053e-1d5c-4874-a030-5dd2a5ca7d21@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
On 22 May, 01:26, "Agamemnon" <agamem...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

"Phil Bowles" <philipbowles2...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message

news:b69845fa-ccba-482b-956a-12f22193723c@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

On 19 May, 04:00, "Agamemnon" <agamem...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
"Phil Bowles" <philipbowles2...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message

No. I was talking about the people defending RTD. The reference to
PC
LOONIES should have given you a clue who I was referring to.

Um ... everyone other than you? That seems to be the way you usually
use the term.

No. The PC LOONIES. That is perfectly clear to anyone but a
comprehensionaly
challenged fool.

Ah, so these are the people who, like Steve Wilson, don't mention RTD
at all and you slam them for defending him, right?

POPPY***!

<<<“Opiate-producing flower male chicken”? After all, don’t words mean
the same as the combination of their source words?>>>

IDIOT!

Well, how disappointing... I was so hoping you'd at least try to
defend your absurd attitude on the meanings of words.

They are people like Steve Wilson who want RTD to penetrate their

back side and to suck his ***.

<<<A back doesn’t have a side. Or do you mean backside? Punctuate, dear
boy, punctuate.>>>

IDIOT! Learn to comprehend. "back side" does not mean the side of the back..
It means their rear side.

There's no such thing as a rear side. Something to the rear is not a
side by definition.

It has nothing to do with punctuation. It is your
inability to work out the correct manning from the context.

I know exactly what you meant (hence saying "Do you mean backside?").
I was pointing out that it was not, in fact, what you *said*, given
your inability to punctuate.

Speculative argument (NOT fact): That name must be Zeus-Pater, and the
individual referred to must be the deity generally regarded as
fictitious.

The name on the inscription is Sa-a-si-te-pi which is identical to
Ausstaeb
otherwise known as Istaveon from the Bavarian Chroniclas and other
records.

Istaveon = Zeus Deon. From linguistics when know that in Minoan times the
name Zeus was pronounced Sdeus. Sa-a-si-te-pi was Zeus. Live with it. Zeus
is also referred to in Egyptian inscriptions from the same time as Sheshi.
Sheshi is identical to Saasi.

<<<And even if all this were true, the relevant bit of the above to your
argument – “and the individual referred to must be the deity generally
regarded as fictitious” is *still* opinion, not a “FACT”.>>>

BULL***!

Learn to comprehend English! BULL*** means "male cattle dung". How is
this any different from your claim about "homosexual"?

Zeus is not and has never been regarded as being fictitious. There is NOT
ONE historical source which justifies any thought or idea to the contrary.
EVERY ancient historian accepted Zeus as being a deified king of Crete and
the ancestor of the Greeks that worshiped him.

This has been demolished elsewhere, several times - you really do want
me to make a fool of you yet again over this, don't you?

What you post are opinions,
mostly unsubstantiated.

Depends on the topic - I note when I've giving a personal opinion and
generally provide citations when discussing facts.

Your so called citations are nothing more than personal opinions of
other
peoples personal opinions of other peoples opinions who have never
actually
read the source texts

Hmm, you mean such as translations of Aristotle or the text of the
Travels of Noah?

You have never cited a single source text ever.

<<<I’ve cited both of these, hence using them as examples..>>>

No you have not.

Yes I have.

You cite personal opinions out of context.

Not at all like citing Eusebius out of the context of his biased
agenda, of course.

As I've told you before, sophistry won't let you get away with
sloppy
thinking. If you manifestly (and repeatedly) get things wrong, and

Except I haven't got things wrong. You just think I'm wrong because
you
don't understand and have never studied the subject

You've tried mouthing off about philosophy and science before now,
both subjects I have indeed studied and demonstrably understand
better

Yove not studied real science or philosophy.

Hmm, what was that you were saying about taking the experts at their
word?

You've not studied real science or philosophy. That is perfectly clear.

<<<You’ve never understood Plato, Aristotle, religion, language, history
or science (real or otherwise). That is perfectly clear. Whether or
not you’ve “studied” them is irrelevant since you plainly haven’t
learned from any such study.>>>

WRONG! You’ve never understood Plato, Aristotle, religion, language, history
or science (real or otherwise). That is perfectly clear. Whether or not you’ve
“studied” them is irrelevant since you plainly haven’t learned from any such
study.

No, Aggy, that's you PARROTTING. Something you do an awful lot, to be
sure. I suppose I should consider it flattering that you regard me as
being as worthy of parrotting as, say, Plato.

You've really got to get a handle on what "demonstrated" means (SP, is
it in the list?) You provided an example of one Platonic text I
happened not to have read (fair enough, he wrote quite a lot and in

It was a text you were refereeing to and pretending to be an expert on and
yet you had not even read it.

<<<I read it after you posted the relevant extract from it and commented
on its content accordingly.>>>

You commented on its before you even read it and your claims fell apart when
I cited the text in full content.

Ah yes, I remember ... no, hold on, wait, that didn't actually happen,
did it? Ah, NOW I remember - this is where I originally read a
synopsis or extract from the piece in question, and your citation "in
full context" served only to demonstrate that my interpretation of
those soirces was entirely correct.

any case for much of my course I focused on more relevant philosophers
such as Kant). This does not in any way "demonstrate" that "I've never
read a primary text in my life". How does it demonstrate, for example,
that I've never read Leviathan, the Groundwork on the Metaphysics of
Morals, A Treatise of Human Nature, An Essay Concerning Human
Understanding, or for that matter On Friendship or The Republic. All
primary philosophy texts.

We were not discussing those texts.

<<<“You've never read a primary text in your life” was your claim.>>>

We were not discussing those texts.

Does Polly want a cracker?

The texts that were relevant to the

discussion were ones it was clear you had not read and I had, otherwise I
wouldn't have been making the claims I made based on them.

<<<I read them as soon as you brought them up and I’d found the relevant>>>

Yer, you read them in all of 8 minutes.

See above. Look, it's a real shame you've devoted so much of your time
to this stuff when you could have been out in the wider world
molesting other people's cats, and that after all that time and effort
your comprehension of the subject remains some way below that of a
mildly interested amateur coming across the texts for the first time,
but you're hardly going to learn better by staying in denial about it.
Maybe it's just time to accept that your intellectual faculties aren't
up to this particular task and move on to something you'll find less
challenging.

<<<passages online, where you didn’t post the extracts themselves. The
difference is that, having done so, I understood them and it became>>>

No you did not. You continued to parrot out other peoples opinions about
them even when the source text which I cited showed you and they were
blatantly wrong.

You've still not got the hang of the concept of "critical analysis",
have you? It's more than a little ironic that you insist on parrotting
what (you think) the original text says and then complain that anyone
who doesn't is parrotting someone else!

<<<plain that you didn’t. Newsflash: I didn’t go into this with any
grudge against you or even, at the start, any expectation that you’d
be wrong – I just found, again and again, on pretty much every subject
you discussed, that you manifestly misunderstood the sources you were
relying on.>>>

WRONG! You have never understood the sources and neither have the people you
were parroting who hadn't even read them either as was blatantly obvious. I
posted the source text and it demolished your entire argument as being
totally baseless.

I really think you need to go back to those threads and refresh your
memory about what actually happened.

"ethology", a discipline which was for a long time scorned by
biologists themselves (in much the same way physicists - and many
other scientists - sneer at cosmology these days). Such developments

They do not.

in biology as evolutionary theory and ecological modelling have little
if anything to do with behavioural studies.

They are about as scientific as Anaxagoras theories of the cosmos.

<<<The ones you were saying where scientific cosmology?>>>

Subjective speculation.

So why were you calling his theories scientific?

Anaxagoras didn't have a mathematical formulation and was speculating, and
neither do you.

<<<Do you understand what “modelling” means in science? It does, indeed,
mean a mathematical formulation. Hell, even the most basic ecological
and evolutionary principles like Shannon’s diversity index or the
Hardy-Weinberg rule use mathematical formulae.>>>

That just a bunch of statistics. It's called guessing.

Is this a vote for putting "statistics" on the list, or "guessing"?
So, how does some simple arithmetic like, say, e=mc2 represent less
guesswork than H=(sumS)PilnPi (not entirely sure how you represent
that formula without being able to use a 'sum of' symbol)? And plainly
you have no idea what the Shannon index even is to describe it as
"guesswork", since it's a descriptive statistic (just like, say,
e=mc2). You could always do with looking up the thing you're talking
about before spouting.

You can't model and
animals brains and thought processes. Computers aren't advanced enough to
even model the brain of a mouse or a fly.

What does this have to do with anything, except neurology? You don't
need to to be able to model stellar or planetary interiors to model
the motion of stars and planets or the sunspot cycle either. You don't
need to be able to model the atoms a physical object is comprised of
to study it (unless doing so is relevant to your specific question).

Having said all that, it is of course absurd to equate "observation of
behaviour" with "personal opinion". Observations are just that -
records of what's actually happening. "Cuttlefish change colour" isn't
a personal opinion, it's an observation. *Why* they change colour may

It's a personal opinion when you start making claims as to why they change
colour and why they were thinking when they did so, for examples all the
bull*** biologists come up with about why certain animals spray on trees
or
adopt certain behaviours towards others.

<<<You mean, such as “My cat wants me to have sex with it because it’s
presenting its rear end to me”?>>>

It wasn't my cat. It belonged to one of my neighbours.

Pointless obfuscation. Was your interpretation personal opinion, a
theory, a hypothesis, a FACT, what?

<<<I notice you manifestly ignore everything I point out about the way
behavioural hypotheses (you really have to learn this word) are
tested. And, once again, ethology is but one fairly minor branch of
biology.>>>

Speculation.

Okay, this goes on The List.

be a matter to hypothesise about, and in the true scientific
tradition, to test - indeed behavioural studies are heavily based on
experiment to develop explanations for behaviours. Now, what's the
word for making observations and conducting experiments in order to
find explanations for those observations?

Speculation is the word you are looking for.

<<<No, the word is “science”, or if you prefer “the scientific method”.>>>

It's not science. It's speculation.

No, it's science. As in, the discipline that applies the scientific
method to make discoveries about the world.



Real sciences are based on
mathematics

Mathematics doesn't predict anything. Nor do statistics. Scientists
use them to make predictions, but in order to do so they need
observations or hypotheses to feed in. Mathematics is just the

Nope. You've never heard of Theoretical Physics then. Einstein predicted
gravitational lensing decades before it was observed.

<<<Correct – Einstein did. Maths didn’t. That was just the tool he used.>>>

The maths did. Gravitational lensing is implicit from the curvature of
space-time.

Maths doesn't know there's such a thing as space-time - all the maths
does is give you new numbers based on the original ones you put in.
Making predictions is a matter of interpretation of those numbers.
Goodness, no wonder you flunked science (as in, not going into it
after your degree - for some reason I'm assuming you successfully
completed it, though this seems increasingly unlikely). You must be a
lazy bugger as well as stupid to think you can just stick numbers into
a formula and it does all the work for you.

computer processing - feed in your data, get your output. Science is
"based on mathematics" in the same way journalism is based on word
processors - it's a tool that makes the process a lot quicker and
simpler, but isn't in any way fundamental to the process. Stats are

You are talking codswallop.

<<<FOOL! Codswallop means “To hit with some big fish”. Only a
comprehensionaly challenged stupid, brainwashed ignorant would use it
to mean “rubbish”.>>>

IDIOT!

FOOL! Codswallop means “To hit with some big fish”. Only a
comprehensionaly challenged stupid, brainwashed ignorant would use it
to mean “rubbish. The word you should be using is "Sloovgorp", which
is Ancient Gibberish for "To speak nonsense".

 Without mathematics modern physics wouldn't

exist, Newtonian physics wouldn't exist either

<<<Your point being? Without modern computer processing power, Bayesian
hierarchical analysis wouldn’t exist – nor would many advanced methods
in modern statistics. That doesn’t mean that scientific disciplines
which use these techniques didn’t exist before high-power desktop
computers came along, it just means they didn’t have these tools. Same
as maths – the science can exist without the maths to make
quantitative predictions (you’ve pointed out yourself that this is
true of cosmology).>>>

HOGWASH

Clean your own pig.

Without the maths to make perditions you wouldn't know what elementary
particles to look for or what energy levels you needed to get to in-order to
create them so how could you build the huge machines costing billions to do
assist you?

So what? Who ever said you didn't need maths to study particular
questions? In fact I've made the point specifically that you do - for,
among other things, Bayesian analysis. But it's nonsense to suggest
that physics didn't exist before the advent of quantum theory, the
standard model or particle accelerators. Maths is not science, testing
hypotheses is science. You can do that with maths. You can do it with
particle accelerators. You can do it with microscopes. Among other
things. That doesn't mean that science HAS to use any of those things.
The fundamental feature of science is the scientific process. This has
already been explained to you.

<<<Even if maths is fundamental to physics, so what? That doesn’t say
anything about its relevance in science as a whole. Maths is
fundamental to accountancy, but accountancy isn’t a science. Science
is the practice of applying the scientific method, not an outgrowth of
mathematics – a tool which may or may not be involved in applying the
scientific method in different cases.>>>

Science is applied mathematics

So in your world, scientists are basically glorified accountants?

and has always considered to be since ancient
times.

"Science" as a word means no more than "knowledge". The concept of
science as a discipline never existed in ancient times.

Biology isn't a real science.

You're not exactly in a position to comment on what is or is not a
real science, given that (a) you don't understand the concept of
science, (b) you plainly know nothing about biology and the
mathematics involved, and (c) in any case, by your own definition of
"applied mathematics", biology would qualify.

just a way of organising data and summarising results and trends;
anything the maths can tell you you can work out by staring at the raw
data set long enough if you have the time or inclination.

Staring at the raw data set long enough if you have the time or
inclination?
You are fucking crazy. Sarting at the raw data isn't going to tell you
when
the next solar eclipse is going to occur

<<<Put the dates of eclipses into a graph, and that will tell you if
there’s a trend (say, one every 20 years) – the only maths involved is
the ability to count. In geology, for instance, it’s recognised that>>>

It's still mathematics. Unless you do the arithmetic and work out the
pattern of the series you are not going to be able to predict anything.

You don't need arithmetic, you just need a long sequence and a bar
chart. Or more crudely still, just put your numbers in sequence and
look at them visually.

<<<mathematics is needed to predict the next high point in the solar
cycle, for instance. True, you can’t make quantitative predictions
without maths for the most part (that, after all, is what quantitative
means), but you can make perfectly sound if less precise scientific
predictions with no maths at all. When I carried out a study of>>>

Like how? Unless you have a mathematical model saying sunspots reach a
maximum ever 11 years and you are in the nth year you are not going to be
able to predict when the next maximum will occur.

Aggy, being able to count to eleven is not a "mathematical model",
though I appreciate that for you it may qualify as advanced
arithmetic. And you learn which year you're in just by looking at the
pattern in the data to that point.

<<<factors associated with species distributions in frogs, I carried
out
regression analyses to allow me to predict quantitatively how strong
any associations were, but it would have been entirely possible for me
to look at my data set and say “Hmm, this frog is more common where
canopy cover’s lower – I predict that I’ll find it more often in
disturbed areas with open canopies”. The maths let me pin down the
degree to which that appears to be the case, and was quicker and more
precise than a visual estimation from the data, but I didn’t need
maths to make the basic prediction.>>>

And all I have to do is introduce some French chefs into the area and all
your frogs will be gone. Your model is completely subjective.

You'd make much less of a fool of yourself if you actually understood
even the most basic features of ecology.

Cosmology was the first ever science and Cosmologists were the
first
ever
scientists since before the time of Anaxagoras.

You're thinking of astronomers (and way back then they didn't use

No. Anaxagoras was not an astronomer, not even an astrologer. He was a
cosmologist and purely theoretical.

<<<Your claim wasn’t that cosmology existed in ancient times, but that it
was “the first ever science”. Random speculation about the nature of>>>

It did and it was.

<<<Random speculation about the nature of
the cosmos doesn’t count (it’s arguable whether it counts these days).>>>

It wasn't random speculation.

You described it yourself as "subjective speculation". Then again, of
course, you don't describe almost anything as speculation. In this
case, however, you are correct.

Cosmoslogy is a very recent
science, hence the fact that it's still stuck without the tools to do
anything other than theoretical work.

Nope. Cosmology has existed since Anaxagoras and earlier. It's never had a
proper mathematical footing until modern times

<<<Science is not about “having a proper mathematical footing”. Science
is about observing and making testable predictions. Cosmology has
lacked any ability to test its predictions until maybe a decade ago –
and so far it’s still not actually managed to test them. That’s what
makes its status as a science dubious, not whether it’s based on
maths.>>>

TWADDLE! The expansion of the universe was discovered in the 1950's.

And was predicted not by a cosmological theory but by special
relativity.

Atomic
theory was confirmed in the early 1900's.

Atomic theory isn't cosmology.

Anaxagoras cosmological model was
based on and substantiated by examples in nature 2500 years go.

No it wasn't.

but Pythagoras had a go at

suggesting one in about 536 BC based on the geometry of triangles.

<<<Pythagoras suggested a religion based on the geometry of triangles
too. Doesn’t make it science.>>>

No he did not. Pythagoras suggested the universe was governed by
mathematical laws based on triangles. The Pythagorean way of life (call it a
religion if you like) was about abstinence from eating meat and excess.

SLOOVGORP!

Pythagoreanism was based around a mystical belief in numbers and
geometry - his cosmology was all part of his religious framework, as
was his "way of life". You can't separate the two.

what they actually do is science. A sizeable number of cosmologists
are among those who complain about the lack of scientific rigour in
that field. It's *fundamental* in science that no claim is accepted
until it's been subjected to and passed tests, even if this ideal
isn't always followed to the letter in practice. Your struggle to
understand even this core concept demonstrates just how weak your
grasp of scientific principles is.

You have no idea what scientific principles are. All theories are
considered
valid unless proven otherwise. That is why they are called THEORIES not
laws!

Two more, SP - theory (scientific) and law (scientific).

A theory is called a theory because it is accepted in science that our
ways of modelling the world are approximations to make things simple
for people to understand, rather than a true description of the world,
and in the knowledge that all theories are replaced in time. And it

HOGWASH!

<<<You’re at it again. What I said had nothing at all to do with cleaning
pigs. Learn to use English, IDIOT!>>>

FOOL!

IGNORANT STUPID!

The aim of Newton's theory of gravitation was to give a true description
of
the world and the entire solar system and universe.

<<<Newton didn’t call it a theory either. I was making a point about>>>

Poppy***.

Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica.

Natural Philosophy of Mathematical Principles.

Quite - as I said, he didn't call it a theory.

It's a theory of nature.

That's how we describe it using the modern concept of a theory, a
concept I just pointed out Newton didn't possess. So Newton's aims in
devising it are rather beside the point.

today as a sub-set of Einstein's theory of general relativity and will
always remain valid as such.

<<<Until the problems with reconciling quantum mechanics and relativity
force people to recognise that Einstein got the rules right, but had>>>

Nope. It wall always remain valid as a sub-set of whatever supersedes it.

The most we can say is probably.

<<<force rather than an intrinsic property of space-time, did), perhaps.>>>

Irrelevant. Newton's equations are a sub-set of Einstein's and that is all
that matters.

A theory isn't just a sequence of equations.

<<<There is indeed a small number of theories which have survived the
tests of time so well that they probably are a pretty accurate (if, as
in Newton’s case, very incomplete) description of the world – it’s

HOGWASH. Newton's theory was an almost perfectly complete description of the
world.

A theory that breaks down at scales greater than a solar system (or
indeed within that scale - hence Mercury) is "am almost perfectly
complete description of the world"? What a load of absolute fishslap.

It was even used to get men to the moon.

Via Jules Verne (the calculations NASA used for the Apollo missions
were taken largely from "From The Earth to the Moon").

A theory is accepted as a theory from the very moment it is proposed as an
explanation for the observed facts.

<<<This is so absurdly at odds with reality I’d be surprised if, well, if
you weren’t you.>>>

A theory is accepted as a theory from the very moment it is proposed as an
explanation for the observed facts. FACT!

More SLOOVGORP!

If it did not explain they observed

facts it would never have been proposed and would not be a theory of any
sort. It is accepted as being valid unless proven otherwise.

<<<No it isn’t. One explanation for Mercury’s orbit is that there is a
planet orbiting between Mercury and the Sun that we haven’t detected;
in fact before Einstein it was the only explanation proposed for this
phenomenon. And even then, without any competition, it wasn’t accepted
as being valid – plenty of people believed in it (poor Leverrier got>>>

If it wasn't accepted then it couldn't stand up mathematically and did not
accurately predict what was observed within the observational margin of
error. In that case it would not have been recognised a theory.

What are you babbling about? It COULD predict the observation it was
created to explain (i.e. the discrepancy between Newtonian predictions
and Mercury's orbit). It wasn't accepted *because the evidence to
support it wasn't there*. THAT'S science - searching for evidence to
support hypotheses, not to invent mathematical constructs and
accepting them.

<<<rather screwed over generally – he didn’t even get a planet named
after him, since someone else pinched his discovery), but that’s not
at all the same thing. The ones who believed in it tested it by
looking for said planet; by the time Leverrier died almost everyone
else recognised that it was not valid, even though it’s only in the
last few years that we’ve been able to make sufficiently precise
measurements to rule it out altogether.>>>

So you are saying that it was accepted as a perfectly valid theory along
with that of Einstein up until recently.

No, I'm not. Looking up the words "accepted" and "valid". No one
*accepted* the Vulcan HYPOTHESIS by the time Einstein came along -
Mercury's orbit remained an unexplained puzzle. General relativity
successfully explained it without needing to invoke Vulcan; that
didn't mean it was impossible for Vulcan to exist, only that it wasn't
necessary to invoke a new planet to explain Mercury's orbit. And
general relativity wasn't formulated to provide an alternative to the
Vulcan hypothesis (though it was, in part, inspired by the need to
explain Mercury's orbit - precisely because Vulcan had failed to do so
years earlier). So no one accepted Vulcan or even regarded it as a
valid hypothesis. But it was only as a trivial consequence of modern,
more precise measurements that researchers concluded nothing larger
than an asteroid can exist closer to the sun than Mercury; it wasn't a
valid hypothesis people were still trying to knock down.

<<<Each of these HYPOTHESES is just a possible
scenario predicted by one standard model (and the failure of any of
these scenarios to accurately describe the universe as we see it has>>>
led to a backlash against the standard model itself – I do wonder if
you’ve kept up to date with this stuff since your degree, and I take>>>

At the time I took my degree the debate was about which theory to follow. It
was beginning to transpire that all the theories worked but they predicted
slightly different things all of which had been observed as predicted.

You might want to consider a refresher course. More recent
measurements of fundamental particles, the accelerating expansion of
the universe, the discovery that neutrinos have mass, the failure of
particles like the Higgs boson to show up at the wavelengths where
most of these scenarios predict them - these have all called them into
question, and the standard model itself is on the brink of collapse,
held together mostly by speculation about dark energy to try and
reconcile it with the observed universe. Meanwhile no theory of
everything is forthcoming, probably because either general relativity
is fundamentally wrong or our understanding of quantium mechanics is -
which is a problem because these are the two most successful theories
in modern physics.

For example if you observed a ball falling and saw that it's
speed increased as a function of time you would devise a theory which
accounted for that and that theory would be considered perfectly valid
unless proven otherwise,

Not until it had been pretty firmly established that not only is this
a common feature of balls, but that the same principle can be applied
to other objects. And you have to go back a few centuries, before the

Nope. Your theory is concerning just that ball under the conditions you
made
the observations.

<<<*sigh* THAT IS NOT A THEORY. It’s a hypothesised explanation for one
result.>>> It's a theory.

You wouldn't apply it to balls in general unless you'd

tested other balls and other conditions. Testing it on other objects would
be one of your tests to try to disprove it.

<<<And if you do it enough and it passes enough, one day your hypothesis
might form the basis of a theory. But it is not a theory as soon as it
is proposed, let alone one accepted as valid (if it was accepted as
valid, no one would be going out of their way to try and disprove it,
would they?)>>>

It's a theory if it accounts for the observed data.

No, it's a hypothesis. Any hypothesis worth testing "accounts for the
observed data", at least partially - that's why it's proposed.

If
a claim always gives the same results within the confines of the theory
and
the experiment then it is called a law. But you wouldn't understand
that
because there are no laws of Biology

See the above example. The truth is, biology is a lot more complex
than chemistry, maths - probably even than advanced physics, since
although it contains systems that are difficult to conceptualise, they
tend to be governed by a fairly small set of simple laws. "Laws of
biology" are often difficult to isolate, the mechanisms aren't
intuitive, and they are often hard to test - why does species richness
increase towards the tropics, for instance? It's been about three
hundred years since this question was first asked, and we still don't
know. But it does qualify as a law, or very nearly so.

It's a load of subjective speculations and which can be rendered totally
invalid by climate change.

<<<On the contrary, climate change is a golden opportunity for ecologists
precisely because they can test how well their theoretical predictions
hold up under novel environmental conditions.>>>

Oh, so the speculations of ecologists are now theories are they?

No, ecological theories are now theories. The ones based on rigorous
testing of hypotheses like those in any other scientific discipline,
you know.

Has anyone ever managed to categorically prove classical physics? It
can't
be done.

This is why science isn't about categorical proof. Who ever said it
was? As I've said before, proof is the preserve of mathematicians and
philosophers, not scientists.

Philosophy can't prove anything. That's why its Philosophy.

<<<Ever heard of logic? Probably not since you’re unable to apply it.
Rationalism? Same applies.  Major branches of philosophy are devoted
entirely to working out what can and can’t be proved, what is
necessarily true from given first principles and so on and so forth.>>>

Logic is incompatible with the mathematics of quantum mechanics, yet the
mathematics is always right.

Logic IS mathematics. There's nothing logically incompatible in
quantum mechanics; there are things that on the face of it defy common
sense, but that's not what logic means in a philosophical or
scientific context. For example, in quantum mechanics particles are
diffuse wave-like structures and what we measure as a discrete object
is essentially a spot measurement. Hence the idea that in quantum
mechanics something can be described as either a wave or a particle
(though actually what is being represented is always a wave, it can
just be described as a particle for scientific convenience). Now, if
your 'particle' is a wave, then it makes perfect logical sense that it
behaves like a wave - being in multiple places at once, for example.

Classical physics is chaotic and you can never construct an
isolated system to test it out on. So what scientists do is state that
within such and such limits and margins of error Newton's laws are
valid
and
within such and such limits and margins of error Einstein's laws are
valid
and so on. If you claim they are not, then you must prove otherwise.

Once again you miss the point - you're talking about theories that
have been subjected to and passed numerous tests. Yet your claim was
that any claim a scientist makes is treated as a valid theory until
disproven, which is simply false.

Wrong. It is a fact.

<<<Wrong. It is simply false.>>>

Wrong. It is a fact.

Wrong. It is complete sloovgorp.

nothing to do with it, as I explained. You can't describe the concept
of a car by reference to the concepts "wheel", "axle", "engine" etc.

Twaddle.

<<<You think a car can be described by these concepts? Ever heard the
expression "The whole is more than the sum of its parts"?>>>

Ever read Plato's, Parmenides?

Wasn't that the one you cited a large extract from that I commented on
at length? If so, yes.

words, and in a world which has had dictionaries for about three
centuries, ultimately people learn how to use the words from the
dictionary in the first place. Now, *every* dictionary in the English

The *** they do. They didn't need dictionaries 2,000 years ago or even
when
Shakespeare was alive.

You really never have got the hang of the idea that society changes,
have you? Journalists didn't need computers three hundred years ago
either, but you try finding any today who don't rely on computers to
do their job.

Oh, so the computers write their articles for them now do they, all by
themselves?

<<<You’d be surprised. But I’m not sure what point you’re trying to make
– a dictionary doesn’t teach you what words mean all by itself,
either, you have to be using it. Same with a journalist’s computer.>>>

Nonsense. A dictionary doesn't teach you anything.

Plainly it never taught you anything. But I think I lost the plot of
that section - wasn't the comparison with mathematics rather than
dictionaries? Nevertheless the point remains valid - like any tool,
maths does nothing unless it's used. It's just rearranging numbers;
you can't get anything out of it you don't put in. Maths is basically
just a way of fiddling the figures to allow you to look at them from a
different perspective. Like a computer, its only function is to make
its subject, in this case numbers, easier to work with.

language defines "homosexual" as "sexual attraction towards one's own
sex". This is what the word *means* - i.e. the concept this
particular

That's what you have been deceived into thinking it means.

It's what it means in the English language.

No it doesn't.

<<<Oh yes it does.>>>

Oh no it doesn't.

OH YES IT DOES! Just like "codswallop" means "rubbish" rather than "to
hit with some big fish".

explaining in detail to you that the logic you were using to
define
the word - that it was defined as the meanings of each of the
individual words it was derived from - is flawed. Someone even
gave
an

And you never managed to convincingly do that. All that you did was
to
express a personal opinion.

Not so; it was substantiated through reference to the way the word is

No it was not. You can't substantiate anything through ignorant usage..

The usage was entirely gnorant. See? I can make up words too!

That's like believing that the world is flat because everyone else who
is
ignorant of science says it looks flat.

Ah, but the difference is that here the people saying what homosexual
means are not ignorant of the English language - to the contrary
they're experts, so by your own logic shouldn't their word be taken as
gospel truth?

They are completely ignorant because they don't know what it really means.

<<<They do know what it really means; maybe you’re the completely
ignorant one. Ever thought of that?>>>

No they don't and the don't know they don't know because they are ignorant..

Or maybe they do know because they're not ignorant, and YOU don't know
they do know because you are ignorant.

Phil
.