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Originally Posted by Ivan Viehoff
Ken, You have now characterised my views quite accurately, including what I think of "unifiable". I thought that was relevant to what OP was asking, but then what he wrote wasn't very clear.
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Then it seems we have been simply talking about different things. Hopefully the discussion has nevertheless served to underscore various different issues to bear in mind, which is really the only point anyway-- the OP doesn't have "a correct answer" as it's not even possible to specify with precision what is being asked.
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So it was all a semantic mess-up between us. I'm pleased about that. I misunderstood you so badly until your last post that I was starting think you were taking a counter-scientific position, as you probably noticed. Pleased I was wrong about that.
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Yes, I view my stance as highly pro-science, but in a narrowly defined realm of the aspects of science that are demonstrably useful rather than philosophically beguiling.
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As I said, OP's thread was not the clearest. He hasn't been back to clarify, and I don't blame him. Given we each had difficulty understanding the other, lord help poor OP.
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She can help us all, and while she's at it, maybe she can help us figure out why axiomatic systems work at all. To me, this is the greatest mystery of all, but I simply note that the logic one often finds is "axiomatic systems work very well when confronted with the objective footprint of reality, and better and better with the sophistication of the axioms, therefore all reality is axiomatic to the point of complete unification". The last step in that syllogism is a logical fallacy, so it's odd that mathematical physicists, who are normally exquisitely logical, invoke the argument tacitly in so many places. I prefer those who stick to the logically supportable position that following the North star is a way to go north, not a way to go to Polaris.