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Politics : Sharks in the Septic Tank -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: The Philosopher who wrote (17967)	7/11/2001 12:39:43 PM
From: thames_sider	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 82486

Since everything is written by someone with a point of view, then, there can be no truly independent corroboration of anything. Only if you believe that people will always misreport what they see, hear or do to meet that point of view - knowingly (lying) or subconsciously (through a wish to see a particular end)... hence the scientific requirement for independent experiment, observation, and reproducibility. And the castigation of scientists who don't meet these standards. Beliefs which contradict all we can see and reproduce are one thing: observable facts according to the physical laws we have discovered are another: and confusion of the two is at best a debating trick, worthy of philosophers, at worse deliberate obfuscation by one unable to otherwise validate what they say... You may 'believe' that pregnancy is as a result of a god's wish, or a wandering spirit of reproduction overcoming a woman's resistance, and write what you will to that effect... does that fit what we see in reality? Or does the 'belief' that pregnancy results from the combination of sperm and unfertilised ova... Do you see the difference? What 'independent' corroboration do you require of the latter?