Books, Brochures, and Chapters>Book: Stephen , Pollock , Clifford (2010-03), Lectures and Essays, by the Late William Kingdon Clifford, Nabu Press, Retrieved on 2012-01-31Source Material [books.google.com]
Folksonomies: history Memes
31 JAN 2012
The Beauty of Newton's Hypothesis
Newton supposed that the case of the planet was similar to that of [a ball spun around on the end of an elastic string]; that it was always pulled in the direction of the sun, and that this attraction or pulling of the sun produced the revolution of the planet, in the same way that the traction or pulling of the elastic string produces the revolution of the ball. What there is between the sun and the planet that makes each of them pull the other, Newton did not know; nobody knows to this day;...Folksonomies: gravity hypothesis
Folksonomies: gravity hypothesis
1 
notes
notesIs that it worked, produced measurable results and predictions, and it didn't matter that what gravity is remained a mystery.
31 JAN 2012
Science Takes Us Beyond Our Experience
The aim of scientific thought, then, is to apply past experience to new circumstances; the instrument is an observed uniformity in the course of events. By the use of this instrument it gives us information transcending our experience, it enables us to infer things that we have not seen from things that we have seen; and the evidence for the truth of that information depends on our supposing that the uniformity holds good beyond our experience. Folksonomies: inference experience
Folksonomies: inference experience
1 notes
notesThe act of inference is positing behaviors and laws onto things we have no experience of yet.
