Re: Max Perutz and Meitnerium

Max More (maxmore@primenet.com)
Fri, 25 Apr 1997 10:59:09 -0700


At 11:39 PM 4/23/97 +0000, Kathryn wrote:
>
>Lise Meitner [snip]
>attended Max Planck's memorable debates with the logical positivists
>who declared that atoms simply couldn't exist because they couldn't
>be seen.

Philosophical nit-pick: The logical positivists would not say this. They
would say that the question of the existence of atoms is meaningless *if*
they cannot be observed. Any statement that cannot be broken down into
directly observable entities is meaningless to the logical positivists.

Interesting bit of scientific history Kathryn.

Max

Max More, Ph.D.
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http://www.primenet.com/~maxmore
President, Extropy Institute, Editor, Extropy
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