Recently, a postgraduate student asked me, as part of his thesis (http://vasilis-thesis.blogspot.com/) , to comment on the following claims by Keynes and Galbraith. Keynes claimed that: "The ideas of economists and political philosophers (etc), both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is commonly...
Category: Philosophy of science
Simulation and local realism
Realism is the viewpoint according to which an external reality exists independent of observation. According to Bell’s theorem any theory that is based on the joint assumption of realism and locality (meaning that local events cannot be affected by actions in space-like separated regions – something that Einstein would not...
When I see a tree what do I, really, see?
The question of what comprises an external reality is ancient. The frustrated physicist cries “shut up and measure”; and he is right for all that we can know is only that which we can measure. The rest, we cannot know. The rest is the unknowable. We can only describe the...
The precautionary principle
tavros Dimas, the European Union’s Environment Commissioner, ignoring the opinion of the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA), recently [nb. 2008] indicated that the Commission will ban two genetically engineered varieties of corn, because of the potential harm it may cause on certain beneficial insects. At present, only one transgenic crop...