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<blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6732237" data-attributes="member: 42582">I disagree with this, for basic methodological reasons.Newton's physics is inaccurate, and is certainly false, yet people using it can send rocket ships to the moon. Ptolemy's astronomy is even more false (assuming degrees of falsehood make sense) but my understanding is that 19th century American nautical almanacs were prepared using Ptolemaic methods of calculation.In the social sphere, most 19th and early 20th century sociology theories are false theories, in the sense that they assert generalities that don't hold and they make particular claims about historical events that aren't true. Some of those theories are nevertheless very powerful and full of useful insight.In the case of mathematical physics, the main reason for the utility of falsehoods is because numbers that are wrong, and that are generated by way of a model that is not at all correct, might nevertheless be approximately equal to the correct numbers.In the case of sociology, a theory whose generalities don't hold and which makes some mistaken historical claims might still be powerful and insightful because some of its generalities and interpretations hold for a more narrow set of cases, or because - while it misunderstands the nature of some phenomenon - it nevertheless has a lot of true and insightful things to say about that phenomenon.What does &quot;seems to be really bad&quot; mean here, other than &quot;I don't like it&quot; or &quot;I don't want to play it?&quot;</blockquote>

[QUOTE="pemerton, post: 6732237, member: 42582"] I disagree with this, for basic methodological reasons. Newton's physics is inaccurate, and is certainly false, yet people using it can send rocket ships to the moon. Ptolemy's astronomy is even more false (assuming degrees of falsehood make sense) but my understanding is that 19th century American nautical almanacs were prepared using Ptolemaic methods of calculation. In the social sphere, most 19th and early 20th century sociology theories are false theories, in the sense that they assert generalities that don't hold and they make particular claims about historical events that aren't true. Some of those theories are nevertheless very powerful and full of useful insight. In the case of mathematical physics, the main reason for the utility of falsehoods is because numbers that are wrong, and that are generated by way of a model that is not at all correct, might nevertheless be approximately equal to the correct numbers. In the case of sociology, a theory whose generalities don't hold and which makes some mistaken historical claims might still be powerful and insightful because some of its generalities and interpretations hold for a more narrow set of cases, or because - while it misunderstands the nature of some phenomenon - it nevertheless has a lot of true and insightful things to say about that phenomenon. What does "seems to be really bad" mean here, other than "I don't like it" or "I don't want to play it?" [/QUOTE]

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