n o i s e i s a r t

Wow. Woken up this morning by a phone call asking for a counterexample to the claim ‘Knowledge is Justified belief’.

Seriously – when you’re an undergraduate philosophy major, they never really tell you that you may actually need to know this stuff.

I think I mentioned Gettier, but didn’t really explain what he did, since my friend was talking about I guess a prior stage of epistemology. Instead I think I had some weird ramble about unjustified true beliefs – thinking all black people are robots, and all robots are good cooks, then inadvertently pointing to a chef and saying ‘that guy’s a good cook’. (I did just wake up, remember).

But then I remembered what seemed like the perfect counterexample. The Titus-Bode Law was an astronomical law in the 1700s that governed the placement of the planets in orbit around the sun.

It correctly predicted the existence of the asteroid belt, and of Uranus. But then it turned out to have just been a coincidence, as the remaining planets aren’t even close to their predicted positions.

So the example works for the asteroid belt & for uranus (I know there is a planet orbiting the sun at whatever AUs distance – Hey, look! A new planet. I knew it!) – since the new planets were correctly predicted via an incorrect assumption.

And now I have this strange drive to read about Twin Earth, H2X, and ‘Twater’…

3.

twelve-six potential, van der waals

attraction is the root of repulsion means

at a distance, particles are pulled

in proximity repulsed.

A few parameters approximate equilibrium

and things look simple and harmonic

where the energy is lowest

we find a comfortable orbit

but heat them up and they escape

evaporating into infinity and disappearing.

we spend more time in attraction

because repulsion is stronger.

Molecules can attract each other at moderate distances and repel each other at close range. … Van der Waals forces are… feeble; but without them, life as we know it would be impossible. Water would not condense from vapor into solid or liquid forms if its molecules didn’t attract each other. Intermolecular forces are responsible for many properties of molecular compounds, including crystal structures (e. g. the shapes of snowflakes), melting points, boiling points, heats of fusion and vaporization, surface tension, and densities. Intermolecular forces pin gigantic molecules like enzymes, proteins, and DNA into the shapes required for biological activity."(*,*)