Logical Critical Thinking

[Ghostisfort]

The only strange thing about all of this is that Tesla predicted this over a century ago and no one ever bothered to check it out. He said that radioactivity was the result of cosmic rays?

From the PDF:"Not quite so well known is Nicola Tesla’s speculation that radioactivity might be caused by small particles which are omnipresent and capable of passing any (non-radioactive) matter almost without leaving any traces [3].
Neutrinos fit that description very well."
So it's Falkenberg who likens Tesla's small particles to neutrinos. Tesla could hardly have spoken of neutrinos 'over a century ago', because their existence was not even postulated until the 1930s, and proof of their existence only came in 1956. (Tesla died in 1943.)

I agree that Tesla could not have used a word not in existence, but what he was saying turned-out to be true in principle.

The same effect has been noted by several other researchers over the years and completely ignored by physicists.

Do you mean these 'other researchers' were not physicists? What were they?

Does it matter? I've spent much of this thread explaining that discoveries attributed to physicists are often not the work of physicists.

 

[Ghostisfort]

So, if you don't believe in science and no definition of the scientific method meets your exacting requirements, what do you believe, what method do you use? Are you of the opinion that nothing can be known? Or, are you of the opinion that things are exactly how you say they are, until you decide differently?

Forget Lovecraft, try Patrick Harpur?
Too many clues Mercurius.

Interesting reference. Don't know much at all about Harpur, hardly encountered the name, but he certainly seems to be a Fortean sort of a cove.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patrick_Harpur


Would be a good guest for this years UnCon!

The point of my threads is to encourage others to think for themselves.
Quoting science is not thinking but quoting what we have already been taught.
Being sceptical, in a contemporary context is connected (loosely in many cases) to science and again quoting a popular misconception.
Very little thinking is involved.
Anyone who looks to science for the answers is missing the point of life.
The point of life is to experience that which science denies, the full creative, imaginitive, experiential, subjective, potential.

 

[rynner2]

It is not possible to pick-up a rock and assign a date that is not arbitrary or a convenient invention of scientific consensus.
Rock and fossil dating is a circular process.

Actually, no it isn't. We date the rocks, and that tells us how old the fossils are.

We date rocks on the basis of the decay of radioactive elements in them.
....

Maybe, to put all our minds at rest, you could explain:
1. How the age of rocks was determined before the advent of radio dating?
2. How these dates can be proven to be accurate?

Answer: stratigraphy. Look up the work of James Hutton, 1726 - 1797.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Hutton

And BTW, dating rocks by their fossils did not begin until after Hutton's death.

Detailed studies between 1820 and 1850 of the strata and fossils of Europe produced the sequence of geological periods still used today.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geologic_time_scale

So your belief in the circularity of geological dating is another nonsense generalisation, like so much else you spout.

 

[Pietro_Mercurios]

My grandfather became a devout Christian in his early middle age, back in the late Nineteen Thirties. As a young man, he worked as a miner in South West Scotland, whilst studying mine management, nights. Having travelled half a mile underground every day, for several years, my grandfather had no trouble with the concept that the coal seams he had worked were about 310 million years old. He understood the concepts of stratigraphy and sedimentary deposition, both through his studies and from his personal experience. They did not contradict his religious beliefs. Even sixty, or seventy, years ago, he had a more enlightened attitude to such things than many modern Christians. We discussed such things often and I had an excellent selection of local fossils, which he helped me collect and which I kept for many years.

When I was younger, I spent several years, digging on various archæological sites up and down the UK, uncovering artefacts, revealing signs of human habitation, following stratified layers deposited by centuries of human habitation, mapping and recording floor plans and cross sections of exploratory trenches, it taught me a lot.

So when someone asks me to think for myself and then presents me with the most skewed and threadbare arguments for the dating of rocks and fossils, apparently Creationist twaddle by an other name, excuse me if I feel slightly affronted. Not for myself, I might add.

 

[Ghostisfort]

The identification of strata by the fossils they contained, pioneered by William Smith, Georges Cuvier, Jean d'Omalius d'Halloy, and Alexandre Brogniart in the early 19th century, enabled geologists to divide Earth history more precisely. It also enabled them to correlate strata across national (or even continental) boundaries. If two strata (however distant in space or different in composition) contained the same fossils, chances were good that they had been laid down at the same time. Detailed studies between 1820 and 1850 of the strata and fossils of Europe produced the sequence of geological periods still used today... [No million year dates]
...When William Smith and Sir Charles Lyell first recognized that rock strata represented successive time periods, time scales could be estimated only very imprecisely since various kinds of rates of change used in estimation were highly variable... [again no dates]
...While creationists had been proposing dates of around six or seven thousand years for the age of the Earth based on the Bible, early geologists were suggesting millions of years for geologic periods with some even suggesting a virtually infinite age for the Earth. Geologists and paleontologists constructed the geologic table based on the relative positions of different strata and fossils, and estimated the time scales based on studying rates of various kinds of weathering, erosion, sedimentation, and lithification.[no dates for eras]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geologic_t ... _and_names

Holmes was a pioneer of geochronology, and performed the first uranium-lead radiometric dating (specifically designed to measure the age of a rock) while an undergraduate at the Royal College of Science (now Imperial College) in London, assigning an age of 370 Ma to a Devonian rock from Norway.... [no information as to how he estimated ages]
...1912 saw Holmes on the staff of Imperial College, publishing his famous booklet The Age of the Earth in 1913 ( he estimated the Earth's age to be 1,600 Ma)...[no information as to how he did this]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Holmes

Before long, scientific inquiries provoked by his claims had pushed back the age of the earth into the millions of years – still too short when compared with the accepted 4.6 billion year age in the 21st century, but a distinct improvement. [still no mention of how geological timescales were derived?] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Hutton

Geochronology is different in application from biostratigraphy, which is the science of assigning sedimentary rocks to a known geological period via describing, cataloguing and comparing fossil floral and faunal assemblages. Biostratigraphy does not directly provide an absolute age determination of a rock, but merely places it within an interval of time at which that fossil assemblage is known to have coexisted. Both disciplines work together hand in hand however, to the point they share the same system of naming rock layers and the time spans utilized to classify layers within a strata.
[this is saying exactly what Richard Milton said in my earier quote]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geochronology

Science seems incapable of functioning without the illogical, circular argument. Although no one seems to know how the geological timescales were derived, we are told that modern dating (4.6 billion) is more accurate than the earlier original millions which were guessed-at by the pioneers.
How is it possible to be more accurate than an inaccurate arbitrary figure and how did we arrive at that figure? Nothing, in any of the above gives a clue as to how the dates were originally determined.
The radiometric dates and any other kind of dating had to be calibrated against some set dates - they appear as if by magic out of a void!

 

[Mythopoeika]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiocarbon_dating

The technique of radiocarbon dating was developed by Willard Libby and his colleagues at the University of Chicago in 1949. Emilio Segrè asserted in his autobiography that Enrico Fermi suggested the concept to Libby in a seminar at Chicago that year. Libby estimated that the steady state radioactivity concentration of exchangeable carbon-14 would be about 14 disintegrations per minute (dpm) per gram. In 1960, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in chemistry for this work. He first demonstrated the accuracy of radiocarbon dating by accurately estimating the age of wood from an ancient Egyptian royal barge for which the age was known from historical documents.

The idea that carbon decay could be used to measure age was demonstrated by testing it on an object for which the historical date was known already.

 

[Ghostisfort]

So when someone asks me to think for myself and then presents me with the most skewed and threadbare arguments for the dating of rocks and fossils, apparently Creationist twaddle by an other name, excuse me if I feel slightly affronted. Not for myself, I might add.

Is any of this a personal affront? - I don't think so. If science is what it claims to be, then it should answer questions about whatever... Any attack is against science and not against any individual.
I've been waiting for the creationist label and twaddle usually arrives at some point, an attempt to ridicule the poster.
I would prefer to stick to the evidence and how science shoots itself in the foot.

I found this on the Talk origins website, would you believe?

"Dr. Gove and his colleagues told me they think the evidence so far demonstrates that 14C in coal and other fossil fuels is derived entirely from new production of 14C by local radioactive decay of the uranium-thorium series. Many studies verify that coals vary widely in uranium-thorium content, and that this can result in inflated content of certain isotopes relevant to radiometric dating (such as C14) (see abstracts below). I now understand why fossil fuels are not routinely used in radiometric dating!"
Apparently it correlates best with the content of the natural radioactivity of the rocks surrounding the fossil fuels, particularly the neutron- and alpha-particle-emitting isotopes of the uranium-thorium series. Dr. Gove and his colleagues told me they think the evidence so far demonstrates that 14C in coal and other fossil fuels is derived entirely from new production of 14C by local radioactive decay of the uranium-thorium series. Many studies verify that coals vary widely in uranium-thorium content, and that this can result in inflated content of certain isotopes relevant to radiometric dating (see abstracts below). I now understand why fossil fuels are not routinely used in radiometric dating!for the age of man?"
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/c14.html

How old is coal?

 

[Ghostisfort]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiocarbon_dating

The idea that carbon decay could be used to measure age was demonstrated by testing it on an object for which the historical date was known already.

I think I already said that? Carbon dates are calibrated with artefacts of known age. How do you calibrate something several millions of years old?
How do you check a five million year half-life?

 

[Mythopoeika]

I would prefer to stick to the evidence and how science shoots itself in the foot.

Scientists don't always get things right the first time. That's why, with the gaining of new methods and data, theories are constantly re-evaluated and revised.
That's what science is about, trying to find theories and explanations that fit the observed data.

I don't think we can say the same thing about creationism, which works from a fixed standpoint.

 

[Pietro_Mercurios]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiocarbon_dating

The idea that carbon decay could be used to measure age was demonstrated by testing it on an object for which the historical date was known already.

I think I already said that? Carbon dates are calibrated with artefacts of known age. How do you calibrate something several millions of years old?
How do you check a five million year half-life?

Carbon 14 has a half life of 5700 years, so dating methods using it are not very accurate after a few tens of thousands of years. So, radiometric dating methods over many millions of years, use slower lived isotopes.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiometric_dating

 

[Mythopoeika]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiocarbon_dating

The idea that carbon decay could be used to measure age was demonstrated by testing it on an object for which the historical date was known already.

I think I already said that? Carbon dates are calibrated with artefacts of known age. How do you calibrate something several millions of years old?
How do you check a five million year half-life?

As I'm sure you already know, radio-carbon dating is only used to estimate the age of carbon-bearing materials up to about 58,000 to 62,000 years. After that, you use other methods that are tested and calibrated against the radio-carbon dating...

 

[Pietro_Mercurios]

...

Is any of this a personal affront? - I don't think so. If science is what it claims to be, then it should answer questions about whatever... Any attack is against science and not against any individual.
I've been waiting for the creationist label and twaddle usually arrives at some point, an attempt to ridicule the poster.
...

You're expecting the creationist label, because you're retreading creationist anti-science arguments. At least the creationists have a clear agenda. Undermining science to strengthen their case for an absolute literal interpretation of the Bible as the word of God. The guidebook full of rules, to a World which He created, complete and entire, in seven days, some six and a half thousand years ago. That may not be your reason, but you're certainly using their arguments, or something very like them.

...
I would prefer to stick to the evidence and how science shoots itself in the foot.

I found this on the Talk origins website, would you believe?

"Dr. Gove and his colleagues told me they think the evidence so far demonstrates that 14C in coal and other fossil fuels is derived entirely from new production of 14C by local radioactive decay of the uranium-thorium series. Many studies verify that coals vary widely in uranium-thorium content, and that this can result in inflated content of certain isotopes relevant to radiometric dating (such as C14) (see abstracts below). I now understand why fossil fuels are not routinely used in radiometric dating!"
Apparently it correlates best with the content of the natural radioactivity of the rocks surrounding the fossil fuels, particularly the neutron- and alpha-particle-emitting isotopes of the uranium-thorium series. Dr. Gove and his colleagues told me they think the evidence so far demonstrates that 14C in coal and other fossil fuels is derived entirely from new production of 14C by local radioactive decay of the uranium-thorium series. Many studies verify that coals vary widely in uranium-thorium content, and that this can result in inflated content of certain isotopes relevant to radiometric dating (see abstracts below). I now understand why fossil fuels are not routinely used in radiometric dating!for the age of man?"
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/c14.html

How old is coal?

Science is messy, it does throw up anomalies. Usually, those anomalies can prove interesting in themselves, throwing up new problems and new possible solutions. Radio carbon dating becomes totally unreliable after 40 to 60 thousand years. Can traces of carbon 14 be used to reliably date fossil carbon from strata that are dated to be many millions years old using other methods? Obviously not.

Accounting for the traces of carbon 14 throws up new possible solutions. New carbon 14 being created through the radioactive decay of other radioactive elements in the strata is one possibility. Also possible is the existence of bacteria deep in those strata, forming new, living and dying, sources of carbon 14.

http://sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/69620/title/Buried_microbes_coax_energy_from_rock

It's a new field of scientific inquiry with evidence to back it up. Hardly an example of science shooting itself in the foot.

I agree that science has its limitations, but that's a far stretch from attempting to undermine it, by misrepresenting its strengths.

 

[Ghostisfort]

Scientific rationale is taught in education, its sole purpose to support science and its doctrines. It has no affinity for logic and this has been shown to be true in earlier posts. Rationale is scientific dogma.
Science has become the very thing it tried so hard to dispel - a religion.

 

[SHAYBARSABE]

Science has become the very thing it tried so hard to dispel - a religion.

Or rather Science has become an institution like almost any other long-standing human social activity.

We had the commemoration of Copernicus on the 24th, and got to sing "The Spacious Firmament" which includes the marvelous lines:

What though no real voice nor sound
Amid the radiant orbs be found?
In reason’s ear they all rejoice,
And utter forth a glorious voice,
Forever singing as they shine,
"The hand that made us is Divine."
(Joseph Addison)

It was the 18th century, and, as my husband says, after singing that, the gentlemen all strolled outside, gazed though their telescopes, and discussed the rights of man.

 

[Jerry_B]

Scientific rationale is taught in education, its sole purpose to support science and its doctrines. It has no affinity for logic and this has been shown to be true in earlier posts.

No, this hasn't been shown at all. You've tried to pitch various things that think that, but don't seem to have any takers. So as yet there is no 'true'.

Rationale is scientific dogma.
Science has become the very thing it tried so hard to dispel - a religion.

Nonsense. So why are you so keen to have certain things (i.e. cold fusion) accepted into the scientific pantheon? If science is all bunkum, why the need to have it validate various ideas? Surely you can just ignore it as a mechanism?

 

[Ghostisfort]

Science has become the very thing it tried so hard to dispel - a religion.

Or rather Science has become an institution like almost any other long-standing human social activity.

I would say that science has become institutionalised.

We had the commemoration of Copernicus on the 24th, and got to sing "The Spacious Firmament" which includes the marvelous lines:

What though no real voice nor sound
Amid the radiant orbs be found?
In reason’s ear they all rejoice,
And utter forth a glorious voice,
Forever singing as they shine,
"The hand that made us is Divine."
(Joseph Addison)
It was the 18th century, and, as my husband says, after singing that, the gentlemen all strolled outside, gazed though their telescopes, and discussed the rights of man.

I have no axe to grind with Copernicus. I'm sure I pointed-out in an earlier post that science took a wrong turn around the 1930's and has been rolling downhill ever since? The price paid for a scientific superman.

 

[Ghostisfort]

Scientific rationale is taught in education, its sole purpose to support science and its doctrines. It has no affinity for logic and this has been shown to be true in earlier posts.

No, this hasn't been shown at all. You've tried to pitch various things that think that, but don't seem to have any takers. So as yet there is no 'true'.

Rationale is scientific dogma.
Science has become the very thing it tried so hard to dispel - a religion.

Nonsense. So why are you so keen to have certain things (i.e. cold fusion) accepted into the scientific pantheon? If science is all bunkum, why the need to have it validate various ideas? Surely you can just ignore it as a mechanism?

I was under the impression that debunking and scepticism were an important part of science? I don't understand why you object to it being used to examine science?

 

[Jerry_B]

I was under the impression that debunking and scepticism were an important part of science? I don't understand why you object to it being used to examine science?

That wasn't my point. Go back and re-read what I said.

 

[Ghostisfort]

Jerry_B
I've already gone over all of this: A post and a link to Wiki where it clearly says that critical thinking is not part of higher education. I also supplied an additional link to my own site and the Logic page where there are links to show that logic is discouraged by educators, the educator highlighted being a professor of physics at an academic institution.

I certainly don't want cold fusion validated by science, but researched without input from academics, manufactured by a private organisation and sold directly to the public. I can and will ignore science!

 

[rynner2]

I certainly don't want cold fusion validated by science, but researched without input from academics, manufactured by a private organisation and sold directly to the public. I can and will ignore science!

The public won't buy it if it doesn't work, regardless of who researched or built it!

 

[Ghostisfort]

I note with some interest the article by David Hambling in the current June 2011 edition of FT267, "The Men in White Suits", he covers some of the subjects that I have highlighted in my recent posts.
Even more interesting, is the article on p40 "Starlight Man" and the Richard Milton quote:

"One other interesting consequence is that the large corporations who had rejected his (Ward's) initial approaches in such a knee-jerk fashion, conducted internal inquests to find out what had gone wrong, both with their own research and with their dealings with the outside world... ICI's own paints laboratory held an internal audit... [which] showed that the most scientifically qualified of its research chemists had contributed to the least number of patents, and the fewer scientific qualifications the staff possessed, the greater the number of patents they had contributed to. In the most striking case of all, the person who had contributed most to ICI's patents had no scientific qualifications at all."
Milton concluded: "It seems that Maurice Ward's greatest strength as a researcher was that he had not been taught how to think..."

As fate would have it, this week I've been reading about Jack Parsons, one of the original founders of the JPL. Although it was Parsons who came-up with most of the ideas and also engaged in the building of the early rockets, the letters of his scientific manager have been preserved. What caught my eye were the snide comments about Parsons being messy in his science and having the characteristics of an inventor? It seems that even in the 1940's, scientists considered the actual process of discovery to be beneath them.

I can only conclude that a scientific education successfully removes any aptitude for invention or innovation and what is worse is that academia is quite happy with the situation.
[/quote]

 

[Ghostisfort]

I certainly don't want cold fusion validated by science, but researched without input from academics, manufactured by a private organisation and sold directly to the public. I can and will ignore science!

The public won't buy it if it doesn't work, regardless of who researched or built it!

If the negative geniuses get their way, we will never know.

 

[Jerry_B]

Jerry_B
I've already gone over all of this: A post and a link to Wiki where it clearly says that critical thinking is not part of higher education. I also supplied an additional link to my own site and the Logic page where there are links to show that logic is discouraged by educators, the educator highlighted being a professor of physics at an academic institution.

So you're taking a few educators and writing off all of higher education because of that? I work as an educator in higher education, covering a subject which involves logical thinking. As far as I am aware, none of my colleagues disavow logic or it's use. I don't think we're the exception to the rule.

It seems to me that you are simply making assumptions from not much evidence, if evidence is what it really is. What actually seems to be the case is that you're taking someone's opinion and creating 'arguments' for your supposed case from that.

 

[Jerry_B]

As fate would have it, this week I've been reading about Jack Parsons, one of the original founders of the JPL. Although it was Parsons who came-up with most of the ideas and also engaged in the building of the early rockets, the letters of his scientific manager have been preserved. What caught my eye were the snide comments about Parsons being messy in his science and having the characteristics of an inventor? It seems that even in the 1940's, scientists considered the actual process of discovery to be beneath them.

Not so. Parsons and the other people working with him simply had a somewhat 'loose' approach to their work and experimentation. His superior's disapproval was more akin to the generation gap. Parsons still did the science as well as the experimentation, but he was quite blasé about his materials. This is what ended up killing him.

 

[Ghostisfort]

Jerry_B
I've already gone over all of this: A post and a link to Wiki where it clearly says that critical thinking is not part of higher education. I also supplied an additional link to my own site and the Logic page where there are links to show that logic is discouraged by educators, the educator highlighted being a professor of physics at an academic institution.

So you're taking a few educators and writing off all of higher education because of that? I work as an educator in higher education, covering a subject which involves logical thinking. As far as I am aware, none of my colleagues disavow logic or it's use. I don't think we're the exception to the rule.

It seems to me that you are simply making assumptions from not much evidence, if evidence is what it really is. What actually seems to be the case is that you're taking someone's opinion and creating 'arguments' for your supposed case from that.

I honestly don't think that you know what logic is.
Convince me that I'm wrong with a logical statement?

I work as an educator in higher education, covering a subject which involves logical thinking.

I was also an educator in higher education and I don't recall any emphasis on logic or critical thinking. It was, in fact discouraged, just as I said.
Tell me how many times you have departed from the curriculum because of an awkward question from a student? How many times have you even considered an awkward question?

 

[Ghostisfort]

As fate would have it, this week I've been reading about Jack Parsons, one of the original founders of the JPL. Although it was Parsons who came-up with most of the ideas and also engaged in the building of the early rockets, the letters of his scientific manager have been preserved. What caught my eye were the snide comments about Parsons being messy in his science and having the characteristics of an inventor? It seems that even in the 1940's, scientists considered the actual process of discovery to be beneath them.

Not so. Parsons and the other people working with him simply had a somewhat 'loose' approach to their work and experimentation. His superior's disapproval was more akin to the generation gap. Parsons still did the science as well as the experimentation, but he was quite blasé about his materials. This is what ended up killing him.

Parsons was selected for the job because of his expertise. he knew more about explosives that the scientists and, incidentally had more imagination and inventive ability. What does "the generation gap" mean?

 

[Jerry_B]

I honestly don't think that you know what logic is.
Convince me that I'm wrong with a logical statement?

You tell me. You started this thread, after all

For the record, I don't teach logic as a standalone subject. But it's part and parcel of the field I work in.

 

[Ghostisfort]

I honestly don't think that you know what logic is.
Convince me that I'm wrong with a logical statement?

You tell me. You started this thread, after all

For the record, I don't teach logic as a standalone subject. But it's part and parcel of the field I work in.

Computer, electronic or mathematical logic?
What does "the generation gap" mean?

 

[Jerry_B]

It's related to computers in a way - but more to do with rules. You can look up generation gap, surely?

 

[Ghostisfort]

It's related to computers in a way - but more to do with rules. You can look up generation gap, surely?

That's just as I thought.
What I'm referring to is formal logic and nothing whatsoever to do with computers: An outline can be found at the link below, but it's much more simple than at first perceived. Complications occur as a result of such things as scepticism and the counterintuitive. The latter being an invention in support of the crazy physics introduced in the 1930's, "that no one understands".

"Kant stated in the Critique of Pure Reason that Aristotle's theory of logic completely accounted for the core of deductive inference."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aristotle

My own thoughts on the subject can be found here:
http://www.n-atlantis.com/logic.htm

The recent rise in fanatical scepticism has done us all a favour, in that it has shown just how unsound the philosophy is. For example: that because something can be attributed to one cause it cannot be attributed to any other - if something can be duplicated by trickery, then all examples are due to trickery. This is where logic is used to show that such sceptical thinking is flawed.

At this link counterintuitive is defined, but all of the examples given can be shown to be the result of the intellectualisation of simple concepts.
I found the Monty Hall problem the most amusing, being a simple choice of one in three that becomes a fifty/fifty chance of winning a prize.
The idea that the Earth was once thought to be flat is simply untrue, as it has been know to be spherical throughout recorded history.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Counterintuitive