The full text of Galileo's
Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems is available online. It's quite long, so I didn't have the time to read it, but I did a quick search for the words "subject" and "object". When the former appears, it's usually in the sense of "topic". It's never used in the sense of "observer". "Object" is never used in the dichotomous Cartesian sense, either, although it is used a few times in the sense of "thing" (Galileo also uses the word "objection" quite a lot in that dialogue...
).
However, I did find this interesting remark:
Quote:
|
SALY. You put the point very sharply, and to answer the objection it is best to have recourse to a philosophical distinction and to say that the human understanding can be taken in two modes, the intensive or the extensive. Extensively, that is, with regard to the multitude of intelligibles, which are infinite, the human understanding is as nothing even if it understands a thousand propositions; for a thousand in relation to infinity is zero. But taking man's understanding intensively, in so far as this term denotes understanding some proposition perfectly, I say that the human intellect does understand some of them perfectly, and thus in these it has as much absolute certainty as Nature itself has. Of such are the mathematical sciences alone; that is, geometry and arithmetic, in which the Divine intellect indeed knows infinitely more proposi-tions, since it knows all. But with regard to those few which the human intellect does understand, I believe that its knowledge equals the Divine in objective certainty, for here it succeeds in understanding necessity, beyond which there can be no greater sureness.
|
Funny how he associated mathematics with objective certainty, innit? (Salviati, slightly misspelled in this passage, was the character who represented Galileo in the dialogue.)
I also took a look at the Wikipedia article on the
scientific method, which Ken dug up in his support. Nowhere is the subject-object dichotomy mentioned, or, in my opinion, even hinted at. On the other hand, regarding the collaborative aspect of science, which is what I alluded to when I spoke of consensus, there is of course the following:
Quote:
|
Other scientists may start their own research and enter the process at any stage. They might adopt the characterization and formulate their own hypothesis, or they might adopt the hypothesis and deduce their own predictions. Often the experiment is not done by the person who made the prediction and the characterization is based on experiments done by someone else. Published results of experiments can also serve as a hypothesis predicting their own reproducibility.
|
The experiments of some imaginary Robinson Crusoe genius, alone in his own island-universe, would hardly be reproducible by other scientists/observers.
And, in the Wikipedia article about the
history of the scientific method, I found the following principles, from Newton:
Quote:
- We are to admit no more causes of natural things than such as are both true and sufficient to explain their appearances.
- Therefore to the same natural effects we must, as far as possible, assign the same causes.
- The qualities of bodies, which admit neither intension nor remission of degrees, and which are found to belong to all bodies within the reach of our experiments, are to be esteemed the universal qualities of all bodies whatsoever.
- In experimental philosophy we are to look upon propositions collected by general induction from phænomena as accurately or very nearly true, notwithstanding any contrary hypotheses that may be imagined, till such time as other phænomena occur, by which they may either be made more accurate, or liable to exceptions.
|
Not only is there no reference to the subject-object dichotomy, but it's interesting how the idea that scientific hypotheses may be superseded by others (the principle of falsification) was already articulated by him (point 4).
At this stage I feel that the discussion has gone far enough. Ken is being dogmatic, as he often becomes when the subject matter is mathematics, and I fear that nothing will change that. After all these pages of back and forth, I think there is already a sufficient sample of the arguments and counterarguments of both sides.
Oh, just one more interesting thing I found:
Is pure mathematics useless? Well,
you just never know... 