From LOJBAN@CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU Sat Mar 6 22:48:46 2010 Return-Path: Delivered-To: veion@XIRON.PC.HELSINKI.FI Received: (qmail 10137 invoked from network); 11 Apr 1997 07:30:56 -0000 Received: from segate.sunet.se (192.36.125.6) by xiron.pc.helsinki.fi with SMTP; 11 Apr 1997 07:30:56 -0000 Received: from segate.sunet.se by SEGATE.SUNET.SE (LSMTP for OpenVMS v1.1a) with SMTP id <6.85670A2E@SEGATE.SUNET.SE>; Fri, 11 Apr 1997 9:30:56 +0100 Date: Thu, 10 Apr 1997 13:26:25 -0700 Reply-To: Lee Daniel Crocker Sender: Lojban list From: Lee Daniel Crocker Organization: Piclab (http://www.piclab.com/) Subject: Re: your mail To: Lojban Group In-Reply-To: <199704101748.KAA27085@mail.calweb.com> from Steven Belknap at "Apr 10, 97 12:45:19 pm" Content-Length: 2329 Lines: 42 Message-ID: > Chinese philosophy is very different from American philosophy. Chinese > biology and American biology converge to the same science, (with the > expected disparity at the cutting edge, of course.) "That which ascends > converges." Science ascends, philosophy does not-it flops about like a > dying fish on top of a heap of the already dead, due to its=20 > nonempirical nature. (Please, lets not get into logical positivism.)=20 > The dictionaries also lack the definition which to my mind gets at the > heart of what philosophy is: a misguided attempt to apply rational > thinking to existential angst. OK, I tried to be polite the first time, but this is precisely the kind of editorial baloney I was trying to avoid putting into the language. And the assertions above are demonstrably wrong anyway. Chinese biology was /nothing/ like Western biology before they started using Western methods. Until then it was all about the flow of chi and breathing patterns and boiled tiger penis. Today they study microbes because we showed them how. Now here's a question: we all agree that Western empirical methods are better at finding biological facts than the old Chinese methods. So, if we were to try to explain /why/ those methods are better, what activity would we be doing? Philosophy. Western biology did better than Chinese biology because of the underlying Western philosophies of empiricism and/or critical rationalism, where the Chinese were still stuck with Confucianism and Taoism. Philosophy often sounds like nonsense--and often is--because that's its very purpose; to explore the limits of every idea from every point of view and see where they break. What's left standing gets spun off into a useful science. The broken remains are left for studying in philosophy class, as well as the methods by which we broke them, and by which to expand further. Something like a post mortem examination; we're studying failures, but learning how to do better. ObLojban: I still like "tadnytadni", but "cmutadni" is OK. -- Lee Daniel Crocker "All inventions or works of authorship original to me, herein and past, are placed irrevocably in the public domain, and may be used or modified for any purpose, without permission, attribution, or notification."--LDC