[WikiEN-l] Wikipedia:Fringe noticeboards/Theory

[Ray Saintonge]

Charlotte Webb wrote:

>On 7/6/07, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
>  
>
>>These are facts. Presenting them as anything else would be misleading.
>>    
>>
>I'm not talking about facts. I'm talking about unprovable and mutually
>conflicting theories.
>
>Nobody's seriously dismissing Einstein as a nutter, but he himself
>admitted "No amount of experimentation can ever prove me right; a
>single experiment can prove me wrong."
>
>Such is the beauty of theories.
>
One who does not appreciate the role of theories ends up with the 
factual notion that God created the world in six days.

We don't now consider Einstein a nutter, but that wasn't always the 
case.  One also needs to allow for the possibility that mutually 
conflicting theories may both be right..  We are not in a position to do 
the original research necessary to prove that premise.  We can cite the 
proofs that others have given.  If it results in antinomy, I'm prepared 
to live with that.

Perhaps the one big failing of our Aristotelian tradition is the belief 
that there must be a right answer that logically excludes all others.

Ec