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Message: <blockquote data-quote="fusangite" data-source="post: 2422961" data-attributes="member: 7240">People would take whatever empirical data they did have and construct, intellectually, a theory, a pattern of patterns that united all the data based on patterns apparently common. Just like they always do. The theory would not be "true," just as Newtonian physics is not "true." But it would, to use history of science language, "save the appearances" -- in other words, the theory would cohere because it simultaneously explained multiple pieces of empirical data. Just like the Ptolmaic cosmos with all the epicycles. You can construct predictive, explanatory, unified models with just these little scraps of data. These models may not be "true" in some meta sense of true but they would be physics. People don't make models of physics by going down a layer because they new technologies or strategies of observation that permit them to do this. People make systems of physics to explain the data they already have. For people to develop a system of physics in D&D, no further investigation would be necessary beyond what the rules already say. Things not described in the rules would logical entailments of the theory used to unite the empirical data. No. I'm having no difficulty comprehending your argument. I'm disagreeing with it. Comprehension is always partial and relative. The mere observation of a pattern indicates partial comprehension; you cannot assign the attribute of incomprehensibility to something that is already comprehended to some degree. People comprehend that doing Y always causes X; that is something they know from empirical data. The functioning of physics is always comrehended in this partial way.No. There isn't. What is happening is that in the Aristotelian scheme, you are talking about one kind of cause and I am talking about another. Neither of us is discussing the final cause. I didn't really see the point of Aristotle coming up with all these wacky classes of cause until now.</blockquote>

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