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"Sean" <relaxing@earth> wrote
> I don;t agree with princeton
Try Copi's textbook, _Introduction to Logic_
<quote>
Famous in the history of science is the argument _ad ignorantiam_ given in
criticism of Galileo, when he showed leading astronomers of his time the
mountains and valleys on the moon that could be seen through his telescope.
Some scholars of that age, absolutely convinced that the moon was a perfect
sphere, as theology and Aristotelian science had long taught, argued against
Galileo that, although we see what appear to be mountains and valleys, the
moon is in fact a perfect sphere, because all its apparent irregularities
are filled in by an invisible crystalline substance. And this hypothesis,
which saves the perfection of the heavenly bodies, Galileo could not prove
false!
Galileo, to expose the argument _ad ignorantium_, offered another of the
same kind as a caricature. Unable to prove the nonexistence of the
transparent crystal supposedly filling the valleys, he put forward the
equally probable hypothesis that there were, rearing up from the invisible
crystalline envelope on the moon, even greater mountain peaks -- but made
of crystal and thus invisible! And this hypothesis his critics could not
prove false.
</quote>
(Copi and Cohen, _Introduction to Logic_)
[In this case the term, 'hypothesis' means conjecture, a speculative, 'might
be' imagining with no basis in fact.]
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