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Originally Posted by jayh  I think this is just another example of how belief are just lenses. It still applies to gravity if you think about it. I don't know details, but I think I've read somewhere that gravity behaves differently or has no meaning at all at a quantum level. And of course gravity behaves very differently at a larger scale too - like black holes. So just because you "believe" in gravity, doesn't mean you completely understand the entire truth of gravity. But it's certainly useful to look at life through the lens of not falling off a building... |
I think the point made about beliefs being useful when they are predictive factors in here. Gravity is useful as a "law" because it allows us to predict. I know the apple will fall down from the tree, I know the Earth will circle the Sun, I know that if I walk off the edge of the top of my tall, tall apartment building I will fall down and go Splat!, so I don't do that, I shake the tree for my apple, and I count the days in a year. The only way gravity is meaningful to me is in what it can tell me about the Universe. Perhaps science seeks to explain phenomena in a way that is true through as many lenses as possible. Even then, it doesn't claim to be absolute. The Law of Gravity is not absolute, but we treat it as such for certain predictions because it makes sense to do so. So perhaps it's all about what works.