It’s not just economics 6 Aug 2009 “The real world is a special case.” Horngren’s Observation Philosophy Quotes Quotes
Philosophy On the straits of philosophy 11 Apr 2010 My recent post on “Mammals” led one commentator at Panda’s Thumb to reiterate the old joke about philosophy being like mathematicians but without erasers and rubbish bins, and more serious comments about philosophy having a GIGO problem. Coincidentally, Jason Stanley has a piece in the Times Higher Education Supplement bemoaning… Read More
Evolution Evolution quotes: Quetelet on populations 12 Jan 201212 Jan 2012 Populations arise imperceptibly; it is only when they have reached a certain degree of development that we begin to think of their existence. This increase is more or less rapid, and it proceeds either from an excess of births over deaths, or from immigrations, or both. In general, it is… Read More
History How many ways can you make a logical mistake? 31 May 2009 A while back I got interested in the various taxonomies of fallacies, such as the Fallacy Files, each giving their own set of names. It set me thinking: how many fallacies are there? From that question it hit me: there are as many fallacies as their are of unique ways… Read More
All right, I’ll ask the obvious question – How does he know? how many other worlds did he live in? (OK, two obvious questions)
Pretty obvious. Any theoretical model one can set up has an indefinite number of values each parameter can take. It follows that each coordinate is a special case of the model. The world is therefore (since it must be represented by a coordinate if the model is adequate) a special case.