Science
The theoretical posits of one era's scientific theories may be demoted to mere objects of the mind by subsequent discoveries: some standard examples include phlogiston and ptolemaic epicycles.
This raises questions, in the debate between scientific realism and instrumentalism about the status of current posits, such as black holes and quarks. Are they still merely intentional, even if the theory is correct?
The situation is further complicated by the existence in scientific practice of entities which are explicitly held not to be real, but which nonetheless serve a purpose—convenient fictions. Examples include lines of force, centers of gravity, and electron holes in semiconductor theory.
Read more about this topic: Object Of The Mind
Famous quotes containing the word science:
“Man lives for science as well as bread.”
—William James (1842–1910)
“Whilst Marx turned the Hegelian dialectic outwards, making it an instrument with which he could interpret the facts of history and so arrive at an objective science which insists on the translation of theory into action, Kierkegaard, on the other hand, turned the same instruments inwards, for the examination of his own soul or psychology, arriving at a subjective philosophy which involved him in the deepest pessimism and despair of action.”
—Sir Herbert Read (1893–1968)
“Nor has science sufficient humanity, so long as the naturalist overlooks the wonderful congruity which subsists between man and the world; of which he is lord, not because he is the most subtile inhabitant, but because he is its head and heart, and finds something of himself in every great and small thing, in every mountain stratum, in every new law of color, fact of astronomy, or atmospheric influence which observation or analysis lay open.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)