tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10584495.post113518749340356588..comments2024-03-28T12:34:14.649-07:00Comments on dangerous idea: On defining the supernaturalVictor Repperthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10962948073162156902noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10584495.post-1135364072958215582005-12-23T11:54:00.000-07:002005-12-23T11:54:00.000-07:00Some critics of ID use "supernatural" as a short-h...Some critics of ID use "supernatural" as a short-hand for a religious notion that is not productive in generating hypotheses for empirical testing or methodologies of any demonstrable or practical value in scientific work. It's not the term "supernatural" that's the problem, it's the lack of anything of scientific value.<BR/><BR/>Parapsychology has a better record than ID, by far.Lippardhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16826768452963498005noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10584495.post-1135220106328151302005-12-21T19:55:00.000-07:002005-12-21T19:55:00.000-07:00I hate to have to keep repeating myself, but it's ...I hate to have to keep repeating myself, but it's the enemies of ID who exclude ID from science because of its supernaturalism. IDers do not introduce the term, the critics do. So I just want to understand their complaint.Victor Repperthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10962948073162156902noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10584495.post-1135212667694298912005-12-21T17:51:00.000-07:002005-12-21T17:51:00.000-07:00I disagree that supernatural means outside of spac...I disagree that supernatural means outside of space-time--the many worlds hypothesis doesn't involve the supernatural. There has to be more to it than that, specifically involving violations of physical laws or somehow being beyond their scope. I'm not sure the notion is entirely coherent, since if we did discover such entities we'd be likely to revise our understanding of physical law to incorporate them.<BR/><BR/>Didn't Abraham Robinson call some set of numbers supernatural? Or was that somebody else doing work in non-standard analysis?<BR/><BR/>The metaphysics of mathematics is an interesting subject, and most mathematicians seem to be mathematical realists/Platonists, but there are still competing ontologies under which numbers are not outside of space-time. George Lakoff and Rafael Nunez address this subject in their book _Where Mathematics Comes From: How the Embodied Mind Brings Mathematics Into Being_ (2000, Basic Books), which I've not yet read, but have read excerpts from and discussions of. I think their approach is very interesting.Lippardhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16826768452963498005noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10584495.post-1135189965540634652005-12-21T11:32:00.000-07:002005-12-21T11:32:00.000-07:00I'm not the one claiming the supernatural can be i...I'm not the one claiming the supernatural can be included in science.<BR/>What is it that you wish science to study? Provide the definition. Maybe it would help if you gave some examples of what is supernatural?<BR/>Perhaps the reason science doesn't rely on the supernatural is that no one can give an agreed upon definition of it?Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com