Footnote Physicist

          “Why?”           “Well, because some things are, and some things are not.”           “Why?”           “Well because things that are not can't be! ”           “Why?”           “Because then nothing wouldn't be!   You can't have fucking nothing isn't!   Everything is!”           “Why?”           “'Cause if nothing wasn't, there'd be fucking all kinds of shit that we don't—like giant ants with           top-hats, dancing around. There's no room for all that shit.”           – Louis C.K. I           At the base of epistemology is logic.  These are the most basic laws of reality that cannot be broken—things like 'you cannot both be and not be something'; that is, that contradiction is not allowed.   In logic, we sometimes label propositions with letters like A and B (generally, this is known as naming a variable ).   We then use the exclamation point to mean NOT: so !A means NOT A. II   To denote that som

          “Imagination will often carry us to worlds that never were. But without it, we go nowhere.”           – Carl Sagan I           Articulated reason is the use of conscious thought processes to think things through, rationally.  Thinkers such as Nobel prize winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman and his colleagues argue that to a first approximation, the human brain has two systems of thought.   System-one are our base instincts, intuitions, biases, and knee-jerk responses.  These aren't all bad and do form a foundation for articulated reason to work from—evolution by natural selection selected system-one so as to help us survive and reproduce, which often meant getting things right in a particular context, that which our ancestors faced in their pre-historic environment (the flip side is that much of reality was unimportant to our ancestors' genes, and sometimes ignorance, getting things wrong, or self-deception II , would have served their genes better tha

          “The Cosmos is all that is or ever was or ever will be.”           – Carl Sagan I           “What follow are arguments directed at people who care about arguments.”           – Steven Pinker II           Before one can even attempt a productive philosophy, they have to believe, no, understand, that there is a world out there to know, and a valid way of knowing it.  This is of course evident.  Any honest person recognizes regularities in the world: in the seasons, in people's behaviors and in their reactions to similar situations, and in the very fact that dropped things fall down.  Only a madman could deny that there exists something to know and understand.  (And beware: there do indeed exist madmen, see “Appendix I: Psuedo-Science And Anti-Science”).  Otherwise, such a person must be suspected of dishonesty in the pursuit of some ulterior motive.  Such an individual (or group) is not engaged in science, but they may be engaged in social engineerin

                                                            From the finch's beaks                         to the dawn of the Greeks                         They waited for Wallace                         to get their first peek                         Being built to feel                         they knew not what was real                         If it weren't for Darwin                         it's with the Devil they'd deal                         For blunt tools such as claws                         can't decide what is false                         In the absence of Newton                         could they reckon a world made from laws? Footnotes: 0.  The Philosophy Of Science  table of contents can be found, here ( footnotephysicist.blogspot.com/2022/04/table-of-contents-philosophy-of-science.html ). I. I originally wrote and published this poem on Instagram on March 14th, 2019 ( https://www.instagram.com/p/Bu-l40tlcuZ/?utm_medium=copy_link ).

        “Long ago, when an early galaxy began to pour light out into the surrounding darkness, no witness           could have known that billions of years later, some remote clumps of rock and metal, ice and organic           molecules would fall together to make a place called Earth.  Or that life would arise, and thinking           beings evolve, who would one day capture a little of that galactic light and try to puzzle out what had           sent it on its way.”           – Carl Sagan I           “Philosophy of science is philosophy enough.”           – Willard Van Orman Quine II           Cogito ergo sum : I think, therefore I am. III   René Descartes' famous words are as much a declaration that he is a philosopher as they are a starting point for all of thought.  Is this statement chiefly one of epistemology , or ontology ?  All philosophies consist of a two-sided coin: epistemology is the way of generating and vetting ideas, whereas ontology is the world those ideas are a

           It is often said that, “art is never finished, only abandoned.” I   In that spirit, I am attempting to be less precious in life so that I can actually produce output, rather than merely collect reams of data on hard drives.  I originally wanted to write, edit, and self-publish this book all in one lump sum like today's normal trade book, but this no longer seems to be in the best interest of the actual release of this work.  For one, I do not necessarily want to have to wait until the work is entirely tied up with a bow to start pitching the material as a college course.  There are some issues with this choice—namely that for the past year (and until some time in the middle of this coming summer), a good chunk of my library has been divided between two faraway houses, making the task of producing specific references location-dependent.  I have decided on the following compromise: I will begin by serially publishing a “zeroth edition” of the book's chapters, with c

Please consider a pay-what-you-want donation (to my  CashApp , Venmo , or PayPal ), or the purchase of a physical copy ( Barnes & Noble ) to support my independent research, only if you are financially able.  Either way: please enjoy, share, and discuss. Table Of Contents Volume I: Epistemology Cover Art (coming soon) Dedication Preface To The Zeroth Edition Beaks And Claws Introduction Chapter I: Cosmos And Chaos Chapter II: Reason Chapter III: Logic Chapter IV: Mathematics Chapter V: Computation Chapter VI: Information Chapter VII: Objectivity Chapter VIII: Dispassionate Chapter IX: Natural Philosophy Chapter X: Empiricism Chapter XI: Knowledge As Provisional Chapter XII: Reductionism And Emergence Chapter XIII: Consilience Chapter XIV: Determinism Chapter XV: Mechanical Philosophy Chapter XVI: Laws And Facts, Theories And Data Chapter XVII: Descriptive And Normative Theory Chapter XVIII: In-Principle And In-Practice Chapter XIX: Elegance And Complexity Chapter XX: Conservat