Conatus: THIRD EDITION by Tom Wallace - HTML preview

C O N A T U S

1. Gather information about reality through

observation.

2. Put forward a theory concerning the

cause of the phenomena observed.

3. Test the theory by further observation.

4. If the theory holds good, then accept as

probably true, if not then return to step 2.

What’s especially telling is the use that is made of mathematics. Science’s use of mathematics is basically a rationalist approach. What is happening here is that a scientific theory is put forward that tries to make objects or events in the real world correspond to the formal system of mathematics and then to draw conclusions by deduction. Science, in effect, is piggy-backing on the supposed greater certainty of deduction, via mathematics and logic. So, if the reader has followed the descriptions carefully above, then this link to mathematics takes science out of the realm of empiricism and into the realm of pure reasoning. But once again there’s an inductive leap being made to try to make mathematics correspond to reality.

The coherence element is important here, since potentially any number of possible worlds might be imagined, but a more limited number will be worlds where what happens — the way things are related, for instance — is logical and consistent. If, for instance, a possible world contradicts our laws of physics — and there is no alternative set of physical laws — then this is not really a viable possible world. However, as

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