Greg succeeds as an asshole...was... Kane poses as a philosopher
Greegor wrote:
Toward clarity on Truth and Facts
0:- wrote:
In a recent exchange here (I hesitate to call the contributions of one
of the posters, "debate") an analogy to show that truth and fact is the
same thing was given.
It referred to the Periodic Table of Elements as 'truth' because 'atomic
weights are facts.'
The truth about this is somewhat different.
The facts do change from one era to another, and there was a day when
the old fact was overthrown and the new fact replaced it.
We cannot be sure that in fact, the facts of today won't be replaced in
the future.
I'll get to my point on the Periodic Table claim in a bit.
But if you apply the thinking I'm going to share about that to the
issues of social science research and more specifically to the spanking
of children as a tactic used to "teach" the "facts" and "truth" begin to
appear to not be as one poster claimed...immutable.
There's curious little story that Bill Bryson, in his interesting book,
"A Short History of Nearly Everything," where he relates the creation of
the periodic table, the very first person doing so, and how it turned out.
Here is a passage from page 136:
... Neither the idea of atoms nor the term itself was exactly news. Both
had been developed by the ancient Greeks. Dalton's (the creator of the
first Table of Atomic weights. ed.) contribution was to consider the
relative sizes and characters of these atoms and how they fit together.
He knew, for instance, that hydrogen was the lightest element, so he
gave it an atomic weight of one. He believed that water contained seven
parts of oxygen to one of hydrogen, and so he gave oxygen an atomic
weight of seven. ...
Now in those times, Dalton was considered the absolute authority in this
matter of atomic weights.
It was accepted by most all scientist, and physicists in particular,
that in fact, and I emphasis FACT, that indeed oxygen had an atomic
weight of seven.
Of course we know today that what was FACT, hence 'the truth' then
turned out to be incorrect. Oxygen, it turns out, has an atomic weight
of sixteen.
Now we hope that further experiments don't change that, or other atomic
weights, but things have changed so that we have elements now with their
own atomic weights that did not, and do not exist in nature, but are man
made.
Hence, truth changed, because facts change. Our ability to examine the
universe and it parts changed.
Which brings me back to spanking as a system of discipline. And the
Embry study, and Embry's remarks here.
If I read him correctly and recall correctly, what Embry stated was that
he believed, previously, it was a fact that spanking generally worked to
teach children behaviors.
What he later found out, inspired by the work of others -- something
I've read in other writings of Embry -- to do more research on how
learning in children actually occurs is this.
Learning from spanking can work for some children, though they too learn
from non CP instruction, but the very ones that are the most difficult
to teach not only don't learn what it is they are being taught, but in
fact resist and increase the undesirable behavior when spanking is used.
And this is most important -- they DO respond to non-spanking methods
with more compliance, and less side effects of undesirable behaviors
rather like the other children that don't come with behavior problems of
the magnitude of these more difficult children.
Thus, the Truth, base on Fact, changed for Embry, and I presume for
anyone objectively examining his findings while holding a belief
themselves in the efficacy of spanking.
Doubtless their belief, their Truth, would change.
Of course the hope is that they were rational objective observers and
open to change based on the current facts.
Facts are not immutable. Nor then, is the truth.
We continue to learn. And we continue to learn about spanking, and about
children's process of learning.
Kane
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