Talk:435: Purity

See Comte's hierarchy of the sciences from his law of three stages: Mathematics; Astronomy; Physics; Chemistry; Biology; Psychology; Sociology. --24.85.241.128 07:20, 3 December 2012 (UTC)

Shame it leaves out Engineering running parellel to all of them - maybe Engineering is just too busy getting shit done? -- 2.121.172.39 (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

- What can we learn from this? - Actually as an Engineer I have a different view point to 2.121.172.39. We are implementers of original ideas and a few of us are lucky to be original idea generators. As a successful full time Engineer I still find time to be a philosopher and aspiring teacher (who simply didn't want to be poor, which is hard to do when specializing in the other two professions). How ever I do keep asking myself often who wrote the laws that mathematicians and theoretical scientists keep re-discovering for us... - E-inspired (talk) 17:04, 28 February 2013 (UTC)

"More is Different", written by Nobel laureate P.W. Anderson, is an insightful critique of constructivism. Quote:

But this hierarchy does not imply that science X is "just applied Y." At each stage entirely new laws, concepts, and generalizations are necessary, requiring inspiration and creativity to just as great a degree as in the previous one.

Allenz (talk) 02:20, 7 August 2013 (UTC)

This one resonated around the Internet quite a bit more than average, and deservedly so. I'd think it'd be almost as far-reaching as the grownups one. I did wonder, after I saw this, how one would take into account things like linguistics, logic, and philosophy. Then I read Gödel, Escher, Bach and returned to normal. --Quicksilver (talk) 03:58, 21 August 2013 (UTC)