Judging empiricism with 21st century perspectives

It such a complicated thing to an extent that it may be impossible to untangle an indoctrination we inherited from another era to an audience which has already made up its mind on the matter. Empiricists themselves don't enjoy the history of this thing but that is owing to the spiritless nature of their convictions. The roots of the issues and problems predate the late 17th century ideology and although not entirely accurate it does show something of the unresolved issues left behind by the contention between denominational Christianity and the first heliocentric astronomers who were themselves still attached to observations dictated by geocentric astronomers and their methods -

"When the ordinary man hears that the Church told Galileo that he might teach Copernicanism as a hypothesis which saved all the celestial phenomena satisfactorily, but "not as being the truth," he laughs. But this was really how Ptolemaic astronomy had been taught! In its actual place in history it was not a casuistical quibble; it was the refusal (unjustified it may be) to allow the introduction of a new and momentous doctrine. It was not simply a new theory of the nature of the celestial movements that was feared, but a new theory of the nature of theory; namely, that, if a hypothesis saves all the appearances. It is identical with truth." Barfield 1957

It is a long technical story that couldn't have been resolved until the 21st century so that Newton's ideology which came in under the radar of the 'theory of gravity' was really the 'scientific method' which took a hypothesis at an experimental level and bumped it all the way up to an astronomical scale - the fall of an apple (experimental science) scaled up to planetary orbital motion (universal qualities) being the most familiar of this destructive ideology -

"Rule III. The qualities of bodies, which admit neither [intensification] nor remission of degrees, and which are found to belong to all bodies within the reach of our experiments, are to be esteemed the universal qualities of all bodies whatsoever." Newton

There was no 'theory of gravity', there is only an overreaching ideology which only a few admitted that they did not understand -

"The demonstrations throughout the book [Principia] are geometrical, but to readers of ordinary ability are rendered unnecessarily difficult by the absence of illustrations and explanations, and by the fact that no clue is given to the method by which Newton arrived at his results. The reason why it was presented in a geometrical form appears to have been that the infinitesimal calculus was then unknown, and, had Newton used it to demonstrate results which were in themselves opposed to the prevalent philosophy of the time, the controversy as to the truth of his results would have been hampered by a dispute concerning the validity of the methods used in proving them. He therefore cast the whole reasoning into a geometrical shape" Rouse Ball 1908

If things were reasonably normal there would be an effort to place issues in context or a degree of priority but so far any progress, apart from happens in this forum, is non existent.

On Sunday, February 21, 2016 at 3:29:46 PM UTC-7, oriel36 quoted, in part:

"When the ordinary man hears that the Church told Galileo that he might teach
Copernicanism as a hypothesis which saved all the celestial phenomena
satisfactorily, but "not as being the truth," he laughs. But this was really
how Ptolemaic astronomy had been taught! In its actual place in history it
was not a casuistical quibble; it was the refusal (unjustified it may be) to
allow the introduction of a new and momentous doctrine. It was not simply a
new theory of the nature of the celestial movements that was feared, but a
new theory of the nature of theory; namely, that, if a hypothesis saves all
the appearances. It is identical with truth." Barfield 1957

So, according to him, the Church placed this restriction on Copernicus in order
to fight the introduction of empiricism.

This, which I will call "strong empiricism", probably _does_ deserve criticism.

But it's hard for me to believe that empiricism was the issue with respect to
the Copernican controversy. After all, the Ptolemaic model and the Copernican
model _both_ saved the phenomena equally well. So, if that which saves the
appearances _is_ the truth, both these theories, *although they contradict each
other*, must be true.

Instead, both the Ptolemaic and the Copernican models were preferred by their
respective advocates for reasons _beyond_ the phenomena.

The Ptolemaic model was preferred because there were passages in Scripture -
such as when Joshua, with God's aid, commanded the Sun not to advance in the
sky - which seemed to imply that the Sun moved while the Earth stood still.

The Copernican model was preferred because it was simpler and neater.

Of course, Kepler came along, and with elliptical orbits and the law of areas,
an amended Copernican theory ended up saving the phenomena to a higher accuracy
than the Ptolemaic theory.

Today's philosophers of science tend towards a position which I will call "weak
empiricism"; rather than claiming that what saves the phenomena _is_ the truth,
they basically say that there is no truth, or at least that since the truth
cannot be known, it is meaningless for us to speak of the truth. We can have
theories, and we can judge them by how well they save the appearances, but we
are only fooling ourselves if we think those theories describe how things
actually are.

Such a position need not be incompatible with Christianity; it can be an
expression of humility, reserving to God the knowledge of the true nature of
things. After all, if we look at a pile of wooden balls and iron balls of the
same size, all painted different brilliant colors, we see the colorful paint
and not the bulk material within - what things really are, and what we perceive
of them with our senses are obviously different.

John Savard

It is not that these threads are ruined by nuisances spraying graffiti on what are very technical arguments but rather a standard that I have yet to see when dealing with these great astronomical issues. Not even the appeal of breaking worthless indoctrination received from other eras makes a difference but the higher standards are there in any case.