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Ignorance, Doubt and Assumption

Ignorance, Doubt and Assumption. The 1840 RAT test .

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Ignorance, Doubt and Assumption

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  1. Ignorance, Doubt and Assumption

  2. The 1840 RAT test • By the end of Chapter 2 we had made it to 1840 with the discovery of stellar parallax and correspondingly ridiculously large distances to the stars.. At this point, it is useful to introduce a device, similar to the Evil Genius device of Descartes, known as the Random Alien Test (or RAT). Under the RAT device, an alien spontaneously appears and asks random planetary inhabitants basic knowledge questions about the Universe that any "intelligent civilization" would know. So, in 1840 the RAT question would be: What is the energy source of the stars? • and no one on Earth knows the answer thus distinguishing ourselves as a not very intelligent civilization.

  3. The 1860 RAT Test Now if the RAT were introduced again in 1860, two more questions could be added to the exam: What is the mechanism that actually drives Darwinian evolution? How come Mercury is disobeying Newton's Laws? And for those of you wondering about the Evil Genius device, its really quite clever and comes into play when Descartes considers how reality can be best measured. In other words, at any given time, how do you know that there is not an Evil Genius running around doing arbitrary things to the Universe?

  4. Descartes Method of Doubt • If you can't rule out the presence of the Evil Genius in some experiment or observation, then you must doubt the results from that experiment or observation. Hence doubt is a necessary part of the scientific process. As semi-articulated by Descartes:  • The first precept was never to accept a thing as true until I knew it as such without a single doubt • If you would be a real seeker after truth, it is necessary that at least once in your life you doubt, as far as possible, all things.

  5. The Cosmological Principle • An important assumption in making a Cosmological model is The Cosmological Principle which asserts that the Universe must be homogeneous and isotropic. Put another way, the Cosmological Principle holds that the Universe is not arbitrary and, hence, any local physics that is observed must also exist on larger scales. • Thus, Newton's formulation of gravity should be universal in its application. Herschel's’ observations of the motions of double stars provide a direct confirmation of this universality. Gravity should not behave differently on the Earth or in the Solar System as it would at any other location in the Universe. This cosmological principle, that the Universe is "everywhere the same", is clearly strongly implied in the writings of Cusa as well.

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