h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

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Well, not that I can claim to be the ultimate authority, but if you have an idea that seems right, but that other people think is strange, it is nice to discover someone else thinking along the same lines - it's a kind of validation. Can be galling too, in a way. I developed a refutation of dualism which no one else seemed to have used - and then discovered effectively the same argument dating to the seventeenth century - beaten to it by over three hundred years

Me, I have Maths envy. Really wish my understanding was more thn superficial.

Noggin

I think everyone has Maths envy. I certainly do. I was talking to a friend, complaining that I needed to learn more physics. He said everyone feels that way. I think once you've gotten the urge to learn it, you don't lose it. It forces you into the harder territory.

I'm lucky in that experimental science is pretty well cataloged, so I can look up what's been done pretty easily. It still happens though where people re-invent the wheel all the time...

For me, one of the "great shames" is that modern philosophers (with a few honourable exceptions) don't really engage with science in the way the great philosophers of the past did (albeit science was a lot simpler then). Fortunately, a few scientists still philosophise, even though they don't always realise they're doing it. A few years ago I read book by Stephen Weinberg (title escapes me for the moment), which contined a chapter "The unreasonable ineffectiveness of philosophy", but as far as I was concerned the whole book was essentially a philosophical work. But there you go...

Noggin