Re: infinite regresses
Onar Aam (onar@HSR.NO)
Thu, 23 Feb 1995 15:09:32 +0100
If Rosen is right, why hasn't he come into the light of the scientific
community? I think Francis answered that neatly once. He noted that scientific
theories might very well be true but not applicable. In fact, that is the whole
instrumentalist idea. Things that survive in science need to be technologically
applicable - or at least be founded on other material that already has areas of
application. This is indeed why General Systems theory never got a grip until
recently. And that's probably why Rosen --if he is right that is-- won't get
massive attention before things start crawling out of the testtubes.
Personally I find the answer to "what is life?" pretty obvious. Life is the
conceptualized prototype of a human. That is, we have defined ourselves as
"living" and as a bi-effect we have categorized other blobs that resemble us as
living too. The more they resemble us, the more living we find them to be. But I
guess that was too much of a sociological definition of life, or what?
Onar.