HSW2 – How I see Newton’s mechanics

This continues my discussion of how science works, a topic that I introduced in a recent post.  The “HSW” in the title of this post is intended to indicate that.  My plan, for this post, is to describe how I look at Newton’s laws.  I won’t be discussing his law of gravity here, mostly to keep this post reasonably short.  I might post on that at a future time.

A note on history

I am not an historian.  My primary concern is with how the science works, rather than with how it was discovered.  If you think that I have said something about history, then you have misunderstood.  Some of what I am discussing here might actually be due to Galileo or to other scientists.

My alternative to materialism – an outline

Since posting “Why I am not a materialist” some comments have suggested that I really am a materialist since I am not proposing anything supernatural nor any immaterial spiritual soul.  Well, fair enough, if that is all that materialism implies.  However, the reason that I deny that I am a materialist, is that I disagree with a lot of what materialists say.  It seems to me that for those who declare themselves materialists, their materialism dictates their approach on how to explain things.  And I don’t want my methodology to be dictated by metaphysical assumptions.

On natural abiogenesis – give that man a PhD

We all know what BS stands for.  MS means “more of the same”, and PhD means “piled higher and deeper.”  (A joke that used to circulate around college campuses).

A post at Uncommon Descent, titled “On the Impossibility of Abiogenesis” purports to prove that natural abiogenesis is impossible.  I shall detail why I see it as piled higher and deeper with nonsense.  The post is by niwrad, and I shall be quoting parts of that post and then commenting on them.

The magical black box

In a discussion in comments to “The Primacy of Thought” at Ron Murphy’s blog, I suggested that I might do a full post here on the title topic.  A link in Ron’s blog took me to “The importance of evidence” which is a post by Mike D.  There, Mike D discusses what he sees as the foundations of knowledge, where he says:

Empiricism requires us to make to two foundational assumptions:

1. I exist
2. My senses generally provide me with reliable information

For myself, I am not making those assumptions, and I want to discuss why and to indicate where I do begin.

Mind, syntax, semantics

While thinking about the implications of a recent post it occurred to me that philosophy is almost an entirely syntactic enterprise, and pays little more than lip service to semantics.  To me, this was a surprising realization.  No doubt it explains why my own ideas are very different from those expressed by philosophers.  For I have long considered semantics to be the primary concern.