billwald

Science deals with repeatable events and experiments . . . data which can be falsified. People think that any subject which utilizes expensive technical toys is "science." For example, the authentication of paintings uses high tech equipment but art is not science. Neither is history is not science. If history is not science then neither is pre-history. For example, the classification of long dead bones is an art, not a science. The confusion probably arises because in these days, for most people, science pays better than the arts. "Under this definition "abstract science" is a contradiction, however "abstract sciences" can be considered an oxymoronic in-between of science and philosophy (mathematics and logic would be one such field)." Before Newton, theology was called "the queen of the sciences." When the division of universities into colleges of arts and colleges of science began, mathematics was taught as as an art, not a science. Chemistry was an art but chemical engineering was a science. The division is better described as theoretical information and applied information?

The concept seems silly. Do I lose entropy when I learn something and gain entropy when I forget it? Does something exist if it can't be measured, counted, weighed, timed . . . ? Isn't it a problem of systems and system boundaries? Only someone/some thing outside the system can make the measurement? To say a system has an increase or decrease of entropy one must be outside the system in question. So If I say, "I learned something . . ." am I confusing information and knowledge? Logically, do we consider our minds as some THING existing outside the observable universe? There is an old saying that you don't know something unless you can teach it to someone else. If you can't extract information from me . . . compare with the concept black holes subtracting information from the universe when they consume organized material. Is this not like comparing apples and oranges? When Shannon wrote about information wasn't it information as data and not information as ideas?