From: Mikalac Norman S NSSC <MikalacNS-AT-navsea.navy.mil> Subject: RE: Actually it's potential Date: Wed, 14 Feb 2001 08:28:01 -0500 maybe some definitions are in order because i'm having trouble accepting some statements below. "Bhaskar argues that laws are the tendencies that reside in objects." take, for example, the Law of Gravitation: F = G*M1*M2/d^2, i.e., the force between two objects is proportional to their masses and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them. (G is the proportionality constant, the "gravitational constant".) the "law", in this case, does not reside in the objects (M1 and M2), but rather outside them (the gravitational field, another hypothesis). the L of G shows the tendency of an EVENT (force of attraction at some time) between 2 objects. IOW, i prefer to say that laws are more or less probable tendencies for events to occur among objects. (i'll leave it to more subtle minds to define "event".) agreed, we do not experience any laws, but rather their effects (falling toward the earth, in the case of the L of G). agreed, the laws exist outside of human existence. however, they are not readily discernable, so it happens that homo sapiens sapiens has a brain sufficient to inference SOME laws with SOME credibility (in the case of gravity, on the sense evidence of objects falling toward the earth). i suppose it's conventional to call physical laws, "laws", although it has to be understood that these laws are really probable hypotheses or theories subject to change as all scientists will admit. hence, the above gravitational "law" discovered by Newton, was superseded by the more general Einstein's General Theory of gravitation which replaced it. in the social sciences, "laws" are much less readily discernable by human brains because of the complexity of human behaviors over time not subject to experimental control. hence, the interminable debates over the causes (motivation) of individual and group human behavior. want to call these human behavior "laws"? maybe better to refer to them as debatable theories and hypotheses. maybe there are no human behavior laws except to ideologues who can pull out of complex human history the particular facts that support their "theory". norm -----Original Message----- From: Greg Hall [mailto:gregoryjayhall-AT-hotmail.com] Sent: Tuesday, February 13, 2001 9:17 PM To: seminar-14-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu Subject: Actually it's potential Viren asks: >Would Bhaskar say that we experience laws? Does the scientist >experience a >law when he is doing an experiment? I would say no we do not experience laws directly. Bhaskar argues that laws are the tendencies that reside in objects. They are mere potentialities. We only experience events that are the actualizations of these tendencies. It is the inability to observe the laws directly that forces the scientist to construct the experiment to try to get the laws to actualize in a way that the scientist can understand and then use them. Hence, during the experiment the scientist is not experiencing the law itself. Rather, the scientist is experiencing the actaulization of the laws in a controlled and artificial environment that makes the functions of the laws more apparent. If this is true, as long as something exists even if humans do not exist, then there would still be scientific laws. These laws would reside in whatever exists and govern its behavior. P.S. Why is there something rather than nothing? _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com --- from list seminar-14-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu --- --- from list seminar-14-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
Display software: ArchTracker © Malgosia Askanas, 2000-2005