(November 3, 2016 at 6:14 am)pocaracas Wrote: Well.... take the solar system as an example.
Did someone think about it, formulated it in his mind and only then went out to find the planets?
Or did people look up at the stars and saw that while most were fixed, a few were wandering (planet means wandering in greek, or so I've been told). These wandering around the Earth had really odd behaviors, compared to the moon and the sun, but they went around all the same.
First: Observation yields information about the world around.
Second: Formulate a rough description of the events observed. For the Solar System, everything was moving around our own land, the Earth.
Third: keep looking and see if the formulated description fits forever.
Fourth: If ONE instance of some event is found to be countering that description, reformulate the description to take into account the new observation.
Fifth: Repeat 3 - 4 indefinitely.
You can't start with a wild guess... you'll land in the world of fiction.
That isn't how you use logic, facts, and the history of ideas outside of the concepts of our mind in objective reality inside the concepts of our mind. You first formulate a crazy idea, then wave a magic wand, and there it is - in objective reality inside the concepts of the outside of our mind.
“Life is like a grapefruit. Well, it's sort of orangey-yellow and dimpled on the outside, wet and squidgy in the middle. It's got pips inside, too. Oh, and some people have half a one for breakfast.” - Ford Prefect
