From: ian glendinning (psybertron@gmail.com)
Date: Sun Apr 10 2005 - 06:49:48 BST
Matt, Sam,
sam said:
If a scientist or engineer 'doesn't really care whether or not their
belief is correct' then they don't really care about the outcome.
msh replied:
No. The outcome is ALL they care about. They wanna land that
spacecraft, complete that circuit, build that bridge. What they
don't care about is the literal truth of their assumptions. In
fact, they care so little about the "truth" of the assumptions that,
if the assumptions get in the way of orbiting the satellite, they
will DROP the assumptions. This is pragmatism in action.
If either of you actually believe either of those statements, then you
are sadly misguided by a gross caricature of reality.
I am a professional engineer BSc(Eng) MIMechE, WWeldI, for over 30
years, and an MBA qualified experienced manager in industry, and I can
assure you few engineers (or scientists, or managers) have such a
narrow, blinkered, careless, thoughtless view of the world. You are
creating a disagreement where there is none and spreading the false
memes in the process.
Get real. Give someone other than philosophers credit. At least Sam
started with "if" and is therefore not wrong in what he says in that
sentence.
The "spacecraft landing" is only a "part" of the outcome - go read
Pirsig and his motorcycle maintenance analogies to understand good,
quality engineering (or good, quality anything). Go read my review of
Dawkins and the 10,000 rivets flying in close formation thanks to a
plane-load of social anthropologists. Why make such a colourful world
so black and white ? Repeat after me "There is no dichotomy".
Ian
On Apr 10, 2005 10:40 AM, Mark Steven Heyman
<markheyman@infoproconsulting.com> wrote:
MOQ.ORG - http://www.moq.org
Mail Archives:
Aug '98 - Oct '02 - http://alt.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/
Nov '02 Onward - http://www.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/summary.html
MD Queries - horse@darkstar.uk.net
To unsubscribe from moq_discuss follow the instructions at:
http://www.moq.org/md/subscribe.html
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Sun Apr 10 2005 - 08:06:12 BST