Page 3 of 3

Re: fansworth working on his fusor again....

Posted: Thu Feb 14, 2013 3:10 am
by KitemanSA
Pleeease take this ap-cray to General.

Re: fansworth working on his fusor again....

Posted: Thu Feb 14, 2013 3:48 am
by happyjack27
i was actually hoping there'd be more discussion about young fansworth and what he's doing... and less apologetics...

Re: fansworth working on his fusor again....

Posted: Thu Feb 14, 2013 6:07 am
by Stubby
says the guy who brought up the church thing

Re: fansworth working on his fusor again....

Posted: Thu Feb 14, 2013 11:29 am
by MSimon
We place no reliance on virgin or pigeon our method is science our aim is religion.

Re: fansworth working on his fusor again....

Posted: Thu Feb 14, 2013 1:47 pm
by happyjack27
i didn't expect such passionate apologetics from what i expected to be pretty logical and scientific people. if anything i was hoping for someone to present evidence to the contrary. e.g. show something innovative that the kid did w/the polywel design that showed a deep understanding of the math and physics behind it. so far, nothing.

Re: fansworth working on his fusor again....

Posted: Thu Feb 14, 2013 2:31 pm
by Diogenes
happyjack27 wrote:i was actually hoping there'd be more discussion about young fansworth and what he's doing... and less apologetics...

You don't want to be confronted on a controversial comment? Don't make a controversial comment, especially one so out of touch with the real history of science.

Re: fansworth working on his fusor again....

Posted: Thu Feb 14, 2013 2:36 pm
by Diogenes
happyjack27 wrote:i didn't expect such passionate apologetics from what i expected to be pretty logical and scientific people. if anything i was hoping for someone to present evidence to the contrary. e.g. show something innovative that the kid did w/the polywel design that showed a deep understanding of the math and physics behind it. so far, nothing.



Your statement encompasses the entirety of science. I'm sure a lot of people were not motivated so much by a desire to defend religion as they were to object to a proposition that was clearly wrong.


That's how science often works, by the way. Someone proposes a theory, (Religious people are incapable of doing good science) others provide evidence which demonstrates the theory to be wrong. (Isaac Newton was a Religious nut.)


Another false theory dis-proven; Science advanced.

Re: fansworth working on his fusor again....

Posted: Thu Feb 14, 2013 6:34 pm
by dnavas
Diogenes wrote:
happyjack27 wrote:...if anything i was hoping for someone to present evidence to the contrary. e.g. show something innovative that the kid did w/the polywel design that showed a deep understanding of the math and physics behind it.
Your statement encompasses the entirety of science.
Did it? I surely didn't take it that way initially. "...have the mind for it" lacked a proper antecedent. In its absence we were left to imagine what 'it' was, which I took from the title "working on his fusor". My first response attempted to point out the ridiculousness of arguing that Farnsworth didn't have the mind for doing something that he clearly had. In my mind, the whole science vs. religion boorishness was just the internet demonstrating the irrepressible nature of our immature species again, and that this was really a question of engineering, not science.
From the above quote you're proved right of course. It is not shocking to be wrong on an imprecisely defined subject. Regardless, the evidence of interest in science wasn't apparent to me from the start.
I'm sure a lot of people were not motivated so much by a desire to defend religion as they were to object to a proposition that was clearly wrong.
Of course. The argument is an appeal to probability (a formal fallacy) or at the very least in this case, an ecological fallacy. And that's without consideration of the shaky grounds upon which the presented fact of his religious nature is based. [Apparently, being taken to church as a child in Wyoming is proof of the worst forms of religious inflexibility. As someone from non-urban America, I find the idea hilarious, but I chalked that up to ignorance and found it mildly charming :shrug:]

As to the wider argument that this unfortunate statement spawned, I'm more than interested in the epistemological foundations of science, but I think any discussion of such has to shy away from dragging religion into it -- pushes too many buttons of fanatics on both sides of the issue. I can't see any use of continuing this thread for those purposes at all. Poisoned well.

Re: fansworth working on his fusor again....

Posted: Fri Feb 15, 2013 8:14 am
by MSimon
And well poisoned at that.

Re: fansworth working on his fusor again....

Posted: Tue Feb 19, 2013 8:22 pm
by GIThruster
dnavas wrote:. . .I'm more than interested in the epistemological foundations of science. . .
I highly recommend all the relevent works of Alvin Plantinga. His series on Warrant and Proper Function is excellent and I understand more recently he's written some things about science and religion as well, though I have not read them. The work on Warrant is the best in all the field of epistemology, IMHO.

IIRC, though he teaches at Notre Dame, he comes from the Reformed tradition and especially that of the Scottish Common Sense Philosophers, like G.E Moore. Makes for delightful reading.

Re: fansworth working on his fusor again....

Posted: Fri Feb 22, 2013 9:16 pm
by happyjack27
does anyone have any news about the kid doing anything innovative and correct w/the polywell concept?

anything to demonstrate that he "has the mind for it" would be nice... remember this was supposed to be a news thread about the kid's progress.