Re: Empiry, Quacks & Charlatans.

[twayburn@juno.com (Thomas L Wayburn)]

Hi Bri,  My ex-wife and former best friend were getting on my case while
I was driving my used Corvair on an errand in Brooklyn traffic while
stoned as in 1969 stoned.  The indictment was *empiricality*.  Yep, I was
too empirical.  Since I didn't know what the word meant, I defended
myself against everything I thought I was doing wrong by reminding them
that it was bad luck to get the stoned driver of a car that was unsafe at
any speed pissed-off in Brooklyn traffic even if he were a Republican,
which I have never - not once - been accused of, even during the McCarthy
era.  

  While I was at Michigan as a chemical engineering student dreaming of a
career in the NFL, which I imagined by this time would be paying up to
$100 a week, which was what doctors earned as far as I knew, I didn't
learn many interesting things.   My dog knows that if a continuous and
continuously differentiable function has zeroes at A and B, it has a zero
derivative in [A,B].  But, the Buckingham-Pi Theorem got my attention. 
The idea that, if I wished to compute a physical quantity like the
pressure drop of a known fluid through a known pipe, I could (i) write
down every characteristic of the fluid, the pipe, and the environment
that could possibly affect the pressure drop, (ii) form dimensionless
numbers in such and such a way, and (iii) , thereby reduce an infinity of
possibilities to a handful of coefficients and exponents that (iv) I
could determine in a straightforward manner -- that idea, I say, "blew my
mind".
"I would never have thought of that on my own."

    This was my introduction to the empirical method, the most powerful
tool in the engineer's toolbox (until I think of something better for
that designation).  I did not understand how anyone could be too
empirical inasmuch as correct theories are not all that plentiful and
Nature is multifold, presenting the engineer with too many complicationns
for the poor struggling physicist who can figure out billiard balls but
not rolling coins  (nonholonomic constraints).   "This looks like a case
for epiricalman."

 Now from the Random House Dictionary* under empirical:

1. derived from or guided by experience or experiment,

2. depending upon experience or observation alone, without using science
or theory, as formerly in medicine,

3. verifiable by experience or experiment.

Please note that (2) might be obsolete, as implied by the word
'formerly'. Why not use a current example?   Perhaps none exists.   So,
we are in good shape.  After we have availed ourselves of divine
inspiration, our (nearly) infallible intuition and artistic taste, we are
left with
(i) mathematics, which has the great advantage that one need know nothing
as everything can be derived (nothing could be easier than that), (ii)
the empirical method, which we no longer demean by calling it
*empiricism* with its connotations of quackery, which is straightforward,
and which always works eventually unless an impossible barrier exists -
in which case we must be satisfied with a great impossibility proof and
the Nobel Prize (which we haughtily refuse because of its elitist taint;
we are an egalitarian snob and ve are not amused), and (iii)
craftsmanship, which is the only part of this holy trinity that is not a
constituent of science, and which is the most honorable, and which is
where there is no substitute for thought.

   So, empiricism has 'come about' - from the enemy and alternative to
science to its most impressive part, despite the abstract music of the
mathematician's magic and the honor and courage of the noble craftsman,
who wins the heart of every maiden fair, for what he does can be seen,
and, therefore, attaches to himself, and he is loved for his creation,
which is a visible extension of himself.  Thus, he who would woo would
craft his own part true whether abstract singer of invisible hue or
wonder worker of what to Nature is her due, the observer of her dance and
the dancer to her clue.

   This was written not for the many but for the few.   I hate to change
the address to exclude those who do not write but read for they are
worthy too.

   I've got to close because, before I go to bed, I have some parts of a
model I must make and need to find the glue.

Regards and Go Blue



*The Random House Dictionary of the English Language, Lawrence Urdang,
Editor in Chief, Random House, New York (1968).

************************************************************************ 

On Fri, 09 Jan 1998 18:16:29 -0600 brian whatcott <inet@intellisys.net>
writes:
> At 15:04 1/9/98 EST, Tom wrote:
> > ... I love that word.  Let me say it.  Empiry.   Empiry, empiry,
> > empiry.  Now, it's part of me.  (I must use it in a conversation 
> sometime
> > today....
>
>
> Perhaps it would be as well to refer to a U.S. source (The Century
> is an excellent etymological reference) rather than slavishly 
> defer to Oxford:
>
> "Empirical method or practice; esp., undue reliance on experience;
> unscientific practice; quackery
> (for empirical) ...without regard to science or theory, esp. in 
> medical
> practice; hence, unscientific; charlatanic."
>
> New Century, Emery & Brewster eds., Appleton-Century-Crofts pub.
>
> Beware Greeks bearing gifts   :-)
>
>
> brian whatcott <inet@intellisys.net>
> Altus OK