Ginkgo wrote:
What you mean to say is, "there are instances whereby words can be open to interpretation"
Each word has many definitions as well as many connotations dependent on the percieved definition. Words take their meaning from context and the listener assigns these meaning on an ongoing basis as he listens or reads. Even the speaker might not know quite where a sentence is going and end up almost anywhere. The end of a sentence may not have as much bearing on the beginning as it should.
There isn't an infinite number of sciences that one can define. It is a finite number. Probably about a dozen or so.
I believe I can identify two major types; experimental and logical. No doubt there are at least several subtypes and there may be other major types. It's something I've put little thought into so far.
You are saying nothing new under the sun. In fact you provide the solution to you own problem, almost in the same breath as it were. Yes I agree, most people who are educated in Newtonian physics understand what Newton was on about. So let the car enthusiast and the preacher get educated in classical physics.
I don't disagree but car enthusiasts can say things that are correct and apropos and still be misunderstood by the scientist. We can't all be a specialist in everything.
When Ed Witten and Brian Greene talk about classical cars they may well have many misunderstandings leading to gobbledygook. However ,when they come to talk about string theory no such problem exists.
I'm not sure this is true. Perhaps p[eople sit up and take notice but this hardly proves them correct. I know nothing at all but can "promise" you that it will never be proven that there are an infinite number of earths with an infinite number of pyramids built with ramps. There can't be an infinite number of anything real. Reality requires an origin for all real things and there's just not enough room in the universe for anything infinite. Mathmatical models, ideas, numbers, points, etc can be infinite but not reality.
"All that I have, up to that moment, accepted as possessed of the highest truth and certainty, I receive from or through the senses. I observed, however, that these sometimes mislead us; and it is the part of prudence not to place absolute confidence in that by which we have been once deceived"
"I think therefore I am" is far more dependent on the senses and the beliefs of others and their senses than our own perceptions. This is because thinking requires language which he had forgotten he even learned. All the beliefs in the world are acquired with language. Some we adopt or are spoon fed and the others we reject. We are a product of language and can't see it because of the perspective of language. He looked out on the world through Descartes' eyes never realizing the information from these eyes was being processed by thought. He saw what he knew like the sun going down without realizing he learned the words on his parents' knee. It was his parent's senses with which he saw the sun set even though it was really the earth spinning . The apple didn't simply fall and hit Newton but rather it had a complex trajectory through space as it fell on the moving earth when Newton's head intervened. The reality is that Descartes thought which merely showed he had language; a language he gained through his senses. He existed even before he had language. Life is a product of language for most practical purposes.
