rebellionkid comments on Archimedes's Chronophone - Less Wrong

20 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 23 March 2007 05:43PM

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Comment author: rebellionkid 09 January 2012 05:35:51PM 2 points [-]

My understanding is not that he "didn't think to" run experiments, rather he actively rejected the doing of experiments. The idea is that one can study nature, study things as they naturally are, because that is them acting in accordance with their inherent properties. But it makes no sense to study things in a lab, in an artificial environment. If I launch something out of a cannon then I disturb it from how it inherently acts. Of course something acting against how it inherently acts is pointless to study. Likewise doing any kind of experiment will only tell you about your experiment (at best) and tell you nothing of the natural state of things.