Fair enough. And I suppose my last question was rather disingenuous, since I do understand this problem and had already reached the same diagnosis. In some ways email is a terrible way to communicate.
Just for a moment try relaxing and seeing this from my point of view. I ask a simple question about gravity and next thing I know I'm receiving insults from moderators. I'm not trying to develop a new theory of gravity, I'm interested in symmetry. I had a follow up question about symmetry but...
Why would I bother reinventing something that doesn't need reinventing? Wouldn't that be waste of time?
At any rate, what you say suggests that although your observation about Hamiltonians is interesting it does not answer my question.
I'll abandon this discussion because my question has...
Why should I have a problem with this? It's the best answer I've been given.
Is this a secure proof that gravity is attractive, or could it be an artefact of the way the mathematics is set up?
You don't need me to point out that the fact that apples fall to the ground doesn't settle the question here. They might have been pushed.
Other than the idea that science 'won in the field of natural philosophy', which I don't understand, let's take all this for granted. What follows for...
I expect you're right. The meaning is the same either way, but I'm sure I've read it with the other wording, and it seems to scan better. Doesn't really matter though.
Thanks for the link. Very interesting and useful. I wish I was a better mathematician.
I now have some idea what you mean by vagueness, but I'm still not sure that it's a necessary idea. There is nothing vague about Brown's 'unmarked state', which he has likened to a blank piece of paper...
What Ivan Seeking says makes a lot of sense to me. It seems the only sensible approach. We can't hold a definite opinion on the basis of heresay evidence, we would have to verify it empirically. This means running an experiment and obtaining statistically significant and reproducible results...
I'm with you all the way on this. I'd cite Kant and Hegel rather than go back to the Greeks, and what you call 'stepping back to see the symmetry' I'd call sublation, but it's all the same idea. Still don't see the relevance of vagueness though. You seem to say that when a contradiction is...
Okay. But I was not supporting Le Sage's theory, and assume it would be a hotter topic if it worked. I still have the impression (with MGrandin) that there is nothing that finally rules out the possibility of a repulsive theory which would account for the data equally well as an attractive one...
Perhaps I don't understand exactly what is meant by vagueness here. What I meant was I'm against ambiguity in the final outcome, or the idea that we must settle for it. I see a distinction between ambiguity and vagueness, but perhaps that's just an idiosyncracy.
Do you think Stenger's...
Well, I'm a Peircean enthusiast insofar as I know what he says about almost anything, but I don't know what he says about vagueness. Generally I'm against vagueness in any context. I do happen to have some quotes from him stashed away. On the topic of the original phenomenon he wrote this...