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Aug. 25, 2023 - Jim Fetzer
48:19
Tom Cowan - Inductive vs Inventive Reasoning - Webinar from Aug 23, 2023
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Okay, welcome everybody.
Today's another Wednesday webinar.
Well, thanks for joining me today.
Looks like August 23rd.
That's it.
Got it.
August 23rd.
There it is.
2023.
August 23rd.
There it is.
2023.
And again, thanks everybody for joining me.
I don't have many announcements.
I want to just thank everybody who's expressed interest in working with our new biology clinic.
As I said, I think last time we've had an overwhelming response, which I must say I was not really prepared for.
Some 12 to 15 medical doctors, all different specialties, nephrologist, neurologist, one plastic surgeon, And these are people actually from all over the world who would love to join what we're doing here.
So that's really gratifying.
Plus a whole lot of other types of practitioners besides medical doctors.
So we're still sifting through all that and we'll get back to you.
The other thing is I will do a short Not rebuttal, but comment on the rebuttal from that guy you've probably heard of, that Thomas Baldwin, who wrote a response to my five challenges to virologists.
I will comment on that next week.
It won't take very long, so if you're interested in that, tune in next week.
And I think that's it.
So today I'm going to tackle a subject which, frankly, I don't think I ever really heard of until about a week ago.
And in one of the comments in the last webinar, one of the people said, oh, you should check out this talk by Dewey Lawson, I think his name is.
I never heard of that guy.
And I usually don't do that because I don't really do a whole lot of Like videos or talks on YouTube or on the web.
But something intrigued me about the title, deductive reasoning versus inventive reasoning.
And again, I'm not sure I could have even told you what those two things meant two weeks ago.
But having watched his talk, It struck me that to a large extent what he's talking about in this lecture is pretty much exactly what I've been talking about for a lot of my career, and certainly a lot of what I've been talking about for these last three and a half years.
And that is, how do we think?
And it turns out that if We're not aware of how we think, then we run the risk of thinking in ways and in patterns that essentially we're told to think in that we think are correct, but that seriously lead you astray.
And not only in how you conceive of the world, which is a huge deal, But in what you do with your life and it leads to very specific actions.
And that essentially what he's saying is because we have gone down the path of an error in the way we think.
And we actually believe in this error.
We believe this error is the correct way to think and we'll get into what I mean by that and what he means by that.
So, we fundamentally believe in the error of our ways.
And that's a problem.
Because if you fundamentally believe in the error of how you think and how you conceive of the world, you're going to end up constructing a world that one of my former favorite books, a guy named Derek Jensen, who I knew a little bit,
I wrote a book called The Culture of Make-Believe, and that's essentially what I've been trying to convey, particularly in science, but actually in every aspect of modern life.
And so this is a talk, and I would admit it's a bit of a dry and maybe even boring to some people, it wasn't to me, subject, but I think I will stop along the way and make some comments.
It's a full 15 minute clip that I want to play, but I will stop along the way and make some comments.
I also just want to say that just because he says something doesn't mean I agree with him or all his points.
I particularly don't think I agree with what he says about the history of this.
I don't think he's got that right.
But I don't think that actually matters because what matters is the difference between deductive and inventive reasoning.
That is the point I want to make here.
So with that, let me share my screen.
And I have to share the sound.
And there we go.
So this is Dewey Lawson on inductive versus inventive reasoning.
And you can find this on YouTube if you want.
And here we go.
So I'm starting sort of in the middle.
This is the part that I think is the most And the comments that he made about the theory that he invented to account for that propagation have a considerable bearing on what we're talking about now.
In one of his books, he goes on at considerable length about what a difficult problem this is.
And he concludes with this statement.
Our only way out seems to be to take for granted the fact that space has the physical property of transmitting electromagnetic waves, and not to bother too much about the meaning of this statement.
The point of all this is that all invented theories share this same defect.
They are all mathematically correct, but they are all conceptually wrong, not because of any errors in the construction, but because of their inherent characteristics.
Now, this statement may seem to be in direct conflict with a great many of the confident assertions that we find in present-day scientific literature, which tell us that the validity of present-day theories has been established beyond any reasonable doubt.
But if you look at the evidence in support of those assertions, you will find that it is all mathematical.
What has been done is to establish that those theories are mathematically correct, just as I have said here all along that they are, because of the way they were constructed.
But those theories that are mathematically correct are not unique.
None of them is.
In every case there are other theories that are also mathematically correct.
And as Richard Feynman tells us, we can't distinguish between any two of them on any mathematical basis, on any scientific basis, and say which is correct.
Because, as Feynman says, They both agree with experiment to the same extent.
So two theories, although they may have deeply different ideas behind them, may be mathematically identical, and then there is no scientific way to distinguish them.
Now Feynman goes on to say this.
Every theoretical physicist who is any good knows six or seven theoretical representations for exactly the same kind of physics.
What Feynman does not say is that those statements apply only to the present day and other day inventive theories.
They do not apply to inductive theories, that is, theories that have been derived by induction from factual premises.
For example, the kinetic theory of gases is a theory that relates The gas laws to the motions of the particles that compose the gas.
Now no one tells us that he has a half a dozen equally valid representations for what the kinetic theory tells us.
In fact, there's not another one alternative.
Because the kinetic theory is an inductive theory That's tied into the facts, both mathematically and physically.
So that it's both conceptually and mathematically correct.
Whereas the inventive theories are correct mathematically only.
Now that raises an interesting philosophical question.
As to whether there's actually any net gain by using these inventive theories.
Let me stop for a minute just to explain a little bit, and I've got the name of the first theories incorrect.
It's inductive, not deductive reasoning.
Inductive theories versus inventive theories.
I think he'll go into this a little bit more, but an inductive theory comes from an observation in nature, and then the process of science is to do experiments to try to understand, to attempt to understand the reasons behind what you are seeing.
So, you see a frog eat a fly, and then you try to do an experiment to understand how it is, or why it is, that the frog eats the fly.
So then you observe it, watch the tongue, and whatever else you're going to do, and that's the process of inductive reasoning.
Whereas the process of inventive reasoning comes about because the practitioner, the person involved, invents a theory to explain something and then goes out and looks for facts to support that theory.
And as you'll see, and maybe I can just let him go on and explain how this came about.
Through many parts of what he thinks of as human history, the process of inductive reasoning was paramount, that that was understood as to how we understand nature.
We have observations from the real world, from the world out there, and then we try to do experiments to understand the origin, the cause, how that observation came about.
And then there have been other periods where we have done the opposite, this inventive reasoning, which is to make up theories and then look for evidence to support those theories.
And interestingly, one of the times that the inventive reasoning has become in the forefront, as I think he will explain, was through from the work of Albert Einstein.
And the reason for this, and the reason why we believe that inventive reasoning is actually correct, is that
There is the theory, the thinking, that because of the way that our minds and our physical bodies are oriented, when we observe something in nature, we're not actually observing the thing as it is, but that phenomena, whatever it is that we're seeing, for instance, or hearing,
Has to go through our eyes, it has to go through our brain, presumably, and then it has to get interpreted by our mind.
And so there are many steps in between the process of empirical observation and coming out with an explanation or a theory as to why that is.
And since all of those are inherently subjective, we are told the process itself is unreliable and that a better way to do it is to understand that that is what's happening and start simply with the process of inventing theories without connection to any observation out in the world.
Because if they say, the practitioners of this way of reasoning, if essentially you're going to do that anyways, in other words, they're inherent in anything we do, there's processes of changing what we're seeing in the outside, you might as well just get on with it and start with that.
And that's the way to do actual science and the way to understand things.
And if you that isn't clear what I'm talking about, what we're talking about is the difference between observation of what is out there as best we can, versus what I would call making shit up.
And so those are the two possibilities.
Do we start by observing what's out there and try to understand it?
Or do we just make shit up and go from there?
So let's play some more of what Dewey Lawson has to say.
During a period when we would otherwise have no theories at all to account for some important physical phenomena.
Actually, we don't need them.
We could equally well use the mathematical relations that we have without any theoretical explanation.
So the whole thing boils down to a question as to whether there is any... was any better to have a wrong theory than no theory at all.
Now there's a very widespread belief that that's true, that it is better to have a wrong theory.
It dates back at least to Francis Bacon.
The idea behind it is that a plausible theory, even if it's wrong, may suggest some lines of inquiry that in the end will be productive.
On the other hand, we know that continued adherence to the Greek inventive theories, particularly during the last few years of the Greek ascendancy, was a very serious roadblock in the way of scientific progress.
And we have pretty good reason for believing that much the same is going on now.
In any event, the fact that...
So let me maybe stop and give an example from our work about what an inventive theory is.
And he deals with the question of, is it better, which is something I actually hear a lot, is it better to have a wrong theory than no theory at all?
And he's suggesting that it isn't, and I would wholeheartedly agree with him.
So You know, virology is probably the best example I can think of, but this again, it happens in politics, it happens in economics, it certainly happens in physics and cosmology and history and just about every other field there is.
But if you think of the history of virology, it's pure inventive reasoning.
And one of the things that I hear is, well, it may not be correct, but it's the best theory, the best explanation we have.
And what he's going to suggest here is a every single inventive theory is incorrect because somebody just made it up and they are inherently We'll be wrong.
And second of all, that it actually impedes progress.
And just as we've been saying all along, it would be far better to just admit that we don't know the explanation for certain things and leave it at that, because then there will be fruitful paths of exploration.
So with virology, what happened is people saw, and we're talking late 1800s or early 1900s, people saw other people, animals, getting sick.
And they looked for an explanation of why they got sick.
They often got sick with similar symptoms at the same time in the same place.
And so they invented a theory that a there was something being passed between them.
And that this something was too small to see, even smaller than a bacteria.
And even they postulated that it would likely never be able to be seen, that it was essentially invisible.
So this was a pure invention.
Based on the belief in this process of inventive reasoning, or inventive theories, in other words, making shit up.
So then they do experiments, and we've gone over these, demonstrating that in the cases where there's the same symptoms, same place, same time, that in fact nothing is being passed, that it's a common exposure.
And when you actually do rigorous scientific studies of the phenomena of contagion, you end up disproving it.
Not proving it.
So then you have to make up a second inventive theory to explain this.
Well, there's an immune system that keeps some people or some animals from getting sick from that contagion.
And so it goes.
You keep building up more and more theories to explain the further disproving observations that begin to be collected over the years.
So, there's an invisible thing that's making you sick and being passed from one thing to another.
That's pure inventive reasoning.
It's a pure theory.
And then, to their surprise, somebody invents a microscope so you can see things of the size that they were describing.
And then you say, Oh, look, we see it.
So that confirms our theory.
This is called the electron microscope.
They saw little particles of that size.
And then people come along and say, but wait a minute, if you actually look under the electron microscope, you never see uniform, same size, same shape particles from the same chickenpox lesion that would represent a single species of this particle.
You just see all different shapes and sizes of these particles.
And so you end up proving that all these particles that you then claimed were exogenous viruses are actually just breakdown products of the tissue.
So, then you've disproven that theory again, and so then you make up a new theory that, well, these particles, the reason you can't find them is they're too small and they're hiding in the cell.
We've heard that before.
Why can't you find these uniform particles in any fluid or any lesion of any sick person?
So we hear the people who criticize us say, well, there's not enough of those particles to find.
So they've made up a new reason, inventive theory of the number of particles.
How do you know it's an invention?
Because if you ask them, well, how many particles are there?
We don't know.
Well, how many particles do you have to have there of the same size in order to see them in an electron microscope?
We don't know.
So where are the particles?
They're hiding in the cells.
Like this.
So, they've chosen, apparently, to hide in the cells.
Now, that's not an observation from nature.
Nobody has observed that.
Nobody has counted the particles.
They just make up some explanation to explain the disproven previous explanation that says you should be able to see them.
So now they're hiding in the cell.
Well, how do they get out of the cell and infect the next person?
Well, they get out of the cell.
But I thought you said they were only hiding.
That's why you can't see them.
Well, yeah, but that's because they're hiding only when the immune system...
So now we make up another make-believe concept called an immune system that explains, and so it goes on, and as he will explain, until there's so many epicycles, there's so many of these inventive theories, on inventive theories, on inventive theories, that at some point somebody says, you know, the whole thing is baloney.
Let's give it up and start over again.
And it's all because with these inventive theories, they're forced into looking for something to support this theory because they're unable to say, you know what, that original inventive theory was you know what, that original inventive theory was incorrect.
And that's a totally opposite process to this inductive reasoning where you start with observation.
And then as time goes on, you refine, add more observations.
You get a microscope so you can see things, then a better microscope, and then you continually refine what you're seeing, being able to essentially try to control every step so you know you're not bamboozled along the way.
So let's go back and hear a little bit more.
What needs to be recognized at the moment is that we have again arrived at the kind of a situation that existed in the Middle Ages.
The present day inventive theories have accumulated too many epicycles.
And at the same time, inductive theory has caught up with observation and experiment So that as we enter the 21st century shortly, we are in a position to go back from the inventive theory to a solidly based inductive theory again.
Now the imminence of such a change could be deduced simply from an examination of the times involved in the cycle of reversals that I've been talking about.
The first inductive theories lasted for thousands of years before they were overthrown by the Greek inventive science.
Now that, the first of the inventive sciences, endured for 2,500 years before it met its fate at the hands of Newtonian inductive science.
The accelerating pace of science is shown by the fact that in spite of its greatly superior character, the science that's normally associated with the name of Newton only lasted for 400 years before it in turn succumbed to the second inventive science.
Now if we consider the same rate of acceleration we can see that since another hundred years have passed that we are about due for another reversal will take us back into an inductive theory.
But we don't have to depend entirely on inferences of that kind because there's plenty of direct evidence to show that we are again in the same kind of a situation In which Greek science found itself during the Middle Ages.
In the first place, the accumulation of epicycles has reached the point of absurdity in a great many cases.
The quantum theories, for instance, have a long history of one ad hoc modification and interpretation after another.
Until it's very questionable now if the theory is even intelligible.
In fact, Richard Feynman, who I've already quoted a couple of times, says it isn't.
Feynman says this, "I think I can safely say that nobody understands quantum mechanics." The situation in the field of Atomic structure is much the same.
The favorite pastime there these days is inventing properties for the elusive particles called quarks.
Now nobody has seen or otherwise observed a quark or anything that could be a quark.
In fact, the most urgent problem for the theorists right now is to invent some theory By which it can be said that the quarks are inherently unobservable.
I just want to point out that this is exactly the same with DNA and viruses.
Nobody has observed them or been able to prove that that's what they're looking at.
So they're actually coming up with theories now to say why they're unobservable.
Same with DNA.
They didn't start by saying, as I've talked about, that DNA exists as a double helix.
They invented that theory, and if you go to Watson and Crick's paper, you can see there's nothing, there's not a single measurement in the whole paper.
They simply invent that if you assume, they say, that the rotational angles of this molecule are such and such, then it has the shape of a double helix.
Which is of course obvious, because if you assume a rotation that is a double helix, then it becomes the double helix.
There's no measurement of that angle, there's no measurement of that rotation.
And so then you end up with a pure make-believe conception, which then becomes the entire basis of genome studies and speciation, evolution, and all the other things, all the other inventive theories that are laid on top of that, until, as he points out, there's so many of these theories, and that's where we're coming to right now, and that's what I'm hoping to be part of.
Nevertheless, we are told just what kind of quarks can exist and what their properties are.
at the beginning because they were all based on inventive thinking.
But nevertheless, we are told just what kind of quarks can exist and what their properties are.
Such interesting properties as color, charm, and so on.
Again, just like viruses.
So, they have certain characteristics, they have spikes, they enter the cell, they take over the machinery, they hide in the cell, they provoke the immune system.
None of these are observable phenomena, because the particle itself has never been observed, just like the quark has never been observed.
And so you ascribe principles, properties, characteristics to this that explain further phenomena, but none of them are real because the premise in the beginning wasn't real.
You know, this happens in so many other fields, too, that you think about this from Like, in politics, you start with the premise of that, say, the United States is a good and moral country and only serves to spread freedom and democracy all over the world.
So that is an inventive reasoning, an inventive theory, which we are told is true, but turns out to be just something that somebody or some group made up.
And so then, as time goes on, and you present evidence, well, how come you bombed these people who never did anything to you?
And how come you did this?
And how come You know, so many things that seem not moral and not healthy and not even so-called democratic.
And so then you have to make up reasons.
Well, we bombed them in Vietnam because they were going to become communist or they were going to do something else.
So you start inventing more and more You know, inventive theories to explain the inevitable discrepancies in every inventive theory.
You know, another one that you can talk about is the whole phenomena of climate change.
So the climate is changing because people are burning fossil fuels and that burning is putting more CO2 into the air.
That's what we're told.
That is an invented theory based on inventive reasoning.
Because when you actually run the numbers, you say, well, but turns out the CO2 from burning could amount to no more than, say, 1 or 2% of the total CO2.
And there's no real evidence that even increasing the CO2 is the cause of any change in the climate.
So that eventually gets acknowledged because it's a fact.
And then you need another invented theory.
Well, the CO2 from burning fossil fuels is different than the CO2 that comes about naturally through other processes that happen on the Earth.
So that CO2 made by burning stuff from humans is different than the usual CO2.
And so that becomes the new invented theory to explain the discrepancy of the previous findings.
But then you do studies and find out there is no difference in that CO2.
All CO2 is the same.
And not only that, but these so-called fossil fuels like oil and gas, you can actually find them in levels deeper Then the so-called biotic line, which I think is something like 30,000 feet.
So there was no organic life below 30,000 feet, yet you can find these so-called fossil fuels levels deeper than that.
Which means they're not coming from fossils.
They're not originating from anything that was once living.
They are the equivalent of what I've talked about as primary water made either through us or in the earth.
There's something happening deep below the surface of the Earth which is able to produce de novo water and apparently oil and gas.
So this invented theory upon invented theory eventually all comes to nothing because it's all eventually disproven when you actually study what you can see in the real world around us.
So maybe now let's finish with Dewey.
In order to fit this situation into the proper perspective, let's bear in mind that not only are the quarks themselves unobservable, but the particles that are supposed to be constructed out of quarks have never been observed either.
Now it's true that those particles are given some familiar names, such as electron for instance.
But the hypothetical electron constituent of the atom has a totally different set of properties from the observed electron.
And there's actually no adequate justification for calling them by the same name.
The same is true of the other hypothetical constituents.
The hypothetical neutron constituent of the atom, for instance, has to be stable.
Whereas the observed neutron is very much unstable.
Again, the correlations are, to me, astonishing, between this observation and theory.
So this neutron, in theory, has to be stable, like the DNA has to be stable, has to be the same in every cell, it has to be unique to that individual, has to be the A rock-solid, stable, unchanging foundation of life in order for it to be the blueprint of life.
But then, as he says for the neutron, if you actually do experiments and show what it does, it turns out to be unstable, just like if you actually do experiments on the DNA in a living organism, you find that it's unstable, different from every cell, and continually changing.
And so that disproves the invented theory that it is the cornerstone, the keystone, the foundation of our organism.
And unfortunately, the proponents of inventive theories, who like to construct a world of make-believe, never go back, seemingly, at least on their own, and say, this observation, this fact, whether it's virology or DNA or many of the other things I'm talking about, actually disproves the original premise
Therefore, we need to discard this original premise and start over again and use an entirely different process to understand the world around us.
And I have a suspicion that it's because inventive reasoning and inventive theory becomes a perfect fodder and tool for tyrants and centralizers and central control and powerful interests.
who know they need to use this kind of thinking, and they need to indoctrinate the masses of people into thinking like this, thinking they can base their reality on make-believe concepts.
And once you do that, you will have a population that is more easily dominated, controlled, and manipulated.
The truth is that there is no definite evidence that the atom is constructed of particles at all.
Now that may seem to be rank heresy, but a great many of our foremost scientists have said the same thing in different words.
For instance, here's Erwin Schrodinger.
Once we have become aware of this state of affairs, the epistemological question, do the electrons really exist in these orbits within the atom, is to be answered with a decisive no, unless we prefer to say that the putting of the question itself has absolutely no meaning.
Here we have a good example of the difference between Induction and invention in the construction of a theory.
And since I'm making this my principal point, I want to elaborate on it a little.
Such men as Newton and Einstein were very much aware of that difference.
Newton insisted time and time again that he did not resort to invention.
Einstein, on the contrary, criticized Newton for trying to get his theories inductively.
But I'm afraid that a great many people do not recognize the difference because they both start in the same way.
They both start with a hypothesis.
That's the only way we're going to arrive at Something more general than what we already have.
We have to start with a hypothesis.
But the newtons look upon that hypothesis as something to be tested.
They test the hypothesis, and if it doesn't fit the facts, they throw it out and try a new hypothesis, or at least a greatly modified hypothesis.
They test that, and if that doesn't work, they try another one.
On the other hand, the Einsteins take that hypothesis and test it, and if it doesn't work, they invent something to make it work.
And if that doesn't work quite right, they invent something to help the first invention make it work.
Well, you may think I'm being funny on this, but Reid Einstein himself, and he tells you exactly that same thing in different words.
As he said, it has to be pure invention.
But that's the difference between induction and invention.
In the one case, it's hypothesis, test, discard.
Hypothesis, test, discard, until we finally don't have to discard.
In the other case, it's hypothesis, test, invent.
Test, invent until we get something we don't have to invent anymore.
When it was first discovered that atoms disintegrate under certain appropriate conditions, Okay, I think I'm going to stop there and everybody who's interested can watch the rest.
I just want to point out that I am not convinced that Newton was only doing inductive reasoning.
In fact, I think just the opposite, that he was engaged in his own, maybe unbeknownst to him, inventive reasoning.
But we'll leave that for another time, but his point about Einstein and what the few that was a essentially a hallmark.
for the change in science as exactly what he said.
We invent, we look for, we do experiments.
We then, if we find something that contradicts our original hypothesis, we don't discard the hypothesis.
We invent a theory to explain why the hypothesis was correct.
And we keep doing that and doing that until we have so many of these Theories upon theories that the whole thing becomes fundamentally nonsense.
And then we end up having to discard it, having done a huge amount of damage in the meantime because of the years of sticking with that original make-believe theory.
And that is exactly what's happening in the field of virology and genetics and climate change and politics.
It's invented theory upon invented theory, all with practitioners who, as he said with Einstein, fundamentally believe that that represents the actual structure of how human beings must think.
And that is the key point.
They believe in this process.
They believe that if they came up with something, that it must be true, and one is not able or possible to actually question that original hypothesis.
Many times you don't even know what the original hypothesis was.
It just became a fundamental part of how we see the world.
And that's when it becomes very dangerous because now all of the people in the world, practically, are walking around with a fundamental misconception of the way the world is because they don't realize it was based on inventive, theorizing reasoning.
In other words, they made that shit up in the beginning and they just kept looking for excuses and reasons And the more things they could add on it to justify that theory and eventually it all comes to nothing with a lot of carnage in in between.
So, I know that I am going to be particularly interested in when I'm doing inventive reasoning and inventive theorizing, and I hope everybody joins me in looking at yourself.
When are you saying things?
When are you believing things?
When are you basing your decisions on things that were arrived at simply through this inventive reasoning process?
Which, as he pretty eloquently points out in this lecture, every single one of them turned out to be flawed because of the way they were arrived at.
So, with that, I hope everybody checks this out and takes a thought as to is this something that can help you actually go about living a better life so that our lives are based on reality and not make-believe.
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