Dim
Aditya
I wondered if anyone on this list has had the misfortune of reading either the DIM hpothesis or The Logical Leap?
Reason: I have and can provide a comprehensive review but would be interested to know what others have concluded.
PS: I hasten to add - Please do not mistake this post as a recommendation for the two books - in fact I most vehemently discommend them
GP
Adit
Aditya
I could go on and on about the methodological errors with the DIM hypothesis but in the interest of time and brevity I will first point out the glaring inaccuracies and factual errors in the book. Since these are easily verifiable I will presently confine myself to Leonard Peikoff's (deludingly) ‘encyclopaedic’ treatment of Physics by giving just a tiny sample of errors.
1. LP’s main justification (he fails to validate – in fact he does not even consider it necessary) for the induction hypothesis rests on the example of Newton. In doing so he feeds on several myths and cooks some. Newton did not arrive at any of his conclusions by pure induction. His actual methods were more flexible – as is always the case with true scientists. Most of the hypotheses were widely prevalent a priori at the time – the inverse square law, and celestial orbits, for example. In fact the most accurate description of his scientific method would be that it was hypothetico-deductive – his pendulum experiments are a classic example. His brilliant conclusion about the equivalence of centripetal and gravitational forces was a matter of pure thought. The process of induction was applied by Newton in Principia on one sole occasion – it was when he provided justification for his universal law of gravitation. Copernicus’ opposition to Ptolemaic theory was purely mathematical. It had to be – there were no telescopes then. Telescopes for that matter were invented and used much before the laws of optics were formulated.
2. He mentions Einstein but omits to note the fact that many pillars of Newtonian universe were toppled by his deductions.
3. He champions Aristotle but fails to note that Aristotle was a champion of the deductive method, which he described in Prior Analytics.
4. He misquotes Newton by misunderstanding the context in which Newton said – I feign no hypothesis
5. His claim that Newton was not serious about God is wildly off the mark and very dishonest (the quote he uses to make his point is taken completely out of context.)
6. It is quite clear from his section on Heisenberg that he does not fully grasp the uncertainty principle.
7. He also misquotes Bohr in a way that can only be interpreted as dishonest or lazy plagiarism. Bohr is in my opinion the greatest scientist we have known and a most remarkable human being.
8. In disparaging chemists like Kekule and Berthelot for their putative psycho-epistemology, he is being hostile and intrinsicist. In the context it is unpardonably remiss of him not to mention the invaluable contributions they have made by means of deduction and abduction.
9. And as I indicated in a previous post he did not even consider it necessary to mention pre-eminent scientific minds of the late nineteenth century in his 'encyclopaedic' 'thesis'.
It is very clear indeed that he has relied heavily on scant secondary sources and frequently resorted to intrinsicism. His bibliography for what he considers an encyclopaedic text is rather parsimonious.
Inviting, and falling into the trap of an unnecessary Manichean dualism of rationality and empiricism, Peikoff has resorted to egregious retrospective re-engineering of history and ended up with a fatal circular fallacy of bad conclusions drawn from bad premises. Locke’s madman had a slightly redeeming feature of being able to reason correctly from faulty premises. I wonder what epithet Locke would have reserved for someone who reasons incorrectly from faulty premises.
Good Premises
Adit
Poonam Kapoor Vasudeva
this is remarkable!
I am not a science background. Do you think I will understand the book if I read it? I do want to read it after your critique to get the full context of your comments.
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