Brought to You by www.SEPP.org The Science and Environmental Policy Project

By Ken Haapala, President

Hollow Models? The long writing career of British logician and philosopher Bertrand Russell covered a period of marked change in science. The term natural philosophy was giving way to the term physical science and extensive divisions were occurring into branches such as physics, chemistry, etc. Already, it had been shown that long-held beliefs needed continuing empirical verification. For example, European philosophers long held the view that knowledge can be logically deduced from generally held beliefs, or propositions, such as: all swans are white; if it is a swan, it is white. This logical view was broken when the premise was falsified with the discovery of black swans in Australia in 1697. The occurrence has been used to demonstrate that logic alone is not sufficient to demonstrate a proposition has meaning in the physical world (truth). [Stock market investor Nassim Nicholas Taleb developed an investment (speculation) strategy based on unlikely events, which has different meaning.]

Continue reading →