Has any one read these anti-mathematics ant-iscience boks?

Question

Has any one read these anti-mathematics anti-science books. I found them on a yahoo answers . I downloaded some-they are free- THey argue that all mathematics and science is meaningless becuase they collapse into self contradiction and are full of paradozx that makes them meaningless. The mystery is how they work when logically they are meaninlngless/self-contradicto...

http://gamahucherpress.yellowgum.com/gamahucher_press_catalogue.htm

Answer 1

The real humour in those who would claim that rationality is impossible lies in their not appreciating the irony of their objectives. Here's a good example:

"This case study is to demonstrate... that all our concepts, all our categories, all our ideas, all theses, all antitheses, all epistemologies, all ethics, all ontologies, and all metaphysics, and other words all our views are meaningless."

Let's just stop right there. The view that everything is meaningless is a VIEW. The only way this can be valid is if it has a meaning. The author has immediately constructed an impossible situation. How can someone deprived of any ability to derive meaning nonetheless do so?

I'll stick with Locke on this one. He once said about people who choose believe that their life is but a dream: "...if our dreamer pleases to try whether the glowing heat of a glass furnace be barely a wandering imagination in a drowsy man's fancy, by putting his hand into it, he may perhaps be wakened into a certainty greater than he could wish, that it is something more than bare imagination."

You, of course, may still choose to believe that all of science is an accident or a miracle. I say test that theory out and see how well it works. Try making up rules at random (if there's no true reason, this should work just as well). I think you will find it doesn't work at all. Have fun spooning ice cream into your car's gas tank in the mean time!