“Popper’s great and tireless efforts to expunge the word induction from scientific and philosophical discourse has utterly failed. Except for a small but noisy group of British Popperians, induction is just too firmly embedded in the way philosophers of science and even ordinary people talk and think.
Confirming instances underlie our beliefs that the Sun will rise tomorrow, that dropped objects will fall, that water will freeze and boil, and a million other events. It is hard to think of another philosophical battle so decisively lost.”—M.Gardner.
Gardner can be taken as seriously on Popper as he can on the MWI, i.e, not at all.
BTW, the sun does not rise in Murmansk in the middle of winter, live flies that are dropped do not fall, and water can be prevented from freezing in my car radiator by adding anti-freeze.
Carnap had a major influence on me. He persuaded me that all metaphysical questions are “meaningless” in the sense that they cannot be answered empirically or by reason. They can be defended only on emotive grounds. Carnap was an atheist, but I managed to retain my youthful theism in the form of what is called “fideism.” I like to call it “theological positivism,” a play on Carnap’s “logical positivism.
As far as we can tell, universes are not as plentiful as even two blackberries. Surely the conjecture that there is just one universe and its Creator is infinitely simpler and easier to believe than that there are countless billions upon billions of worlds, constantly increasing in number and created by nobody. I can only marvel at the low state to which today’s philosophy of science has fallen
So why the downvote? Gardner doesn’t understand quantum physics and he doesn’t understand epistemology.
“Popper’s great and tireless efforts to expunge the word induction from scientific and philosophical discourse has utterly failed. Except for a small but noisy group of British Popperians, induction is just too firmly embedded in the way philosophers of science and even ordinary people talk and think.
Confirming instances underlie our beliefs that the Sun will rise tomorrow, that dropped objects will fall, that water will freeze and boil, and a million other events. It is hard to think of another philosophical battle so decisively lost.”—M.Gardner.
http://www.stephenjaygould.org/ctrl/gardner_popper.html
Gardner can be taken as seriously on Popper as he can on the MWI, i.e, not at all.
BTW, the sun does not rise in Murmansk in the middle of winter, live flies that are dropped do not fall, and water can be prevented from freezing in my car radiator by adding anti-freeze.
Edit: Here are some quotes from Gardner:
http://www.csicop.org/si/show/mind_at_play_an_interview_with_martin_gardner/
Carnap had a major influence on me. He persuaded me that all metaphysical questions are “meaningless” in the sense that they cannot be answered empirically or by reason. They can be defended only on emotive grounds. Carnap was an atheist, but I managed to retain my youthful theism in the form of what is called “fideism.” I like to call it “theological positivism,” a play on Carnap’s “logical positivism.
http://www.csicop.org/si/show/multiverses_and_blackberries/
As far as we can tell, universes are not as plentiful as even two blackberries. Surely the conjecture that there is just one universe and its Creator is infinitely simpler and easier to believe than that there are countless billions upon billions of worlds, constantly increasing in number and created by nobody. I can only marvel at the low state to which today’s philosophy of science has fallen
So why the downvote? Gardner doesn’t understand quantum physics and he doesn’t understand epistemology.