We always reason through metaphors or mental models. The question is whether a mental model allows one to arrive at the correct conclusion or not. Acquiring "physical intuition" is building new mental models. Mathematical physics is augmenting the mental models with mathematical models but in the end it's still just metaphors.

The problem in this thread is that on the matters that often seem more important or meaningful to us as human beings, not even the evidence or its interpretation is unambiguous and then you can get competing models (including competing logics) which all claim to give the correct answer but are mutually nonsensical. kcurie made a comment to that effect regarding economics in reaction to Jerome's deconstruction of Greenspan.

I just do not get anything... It seesm like Greenspan is saying this stuf because it can.. but one could make another narrative, as the one Jerome is doing.. but there is actually not fundamentals to support one or the other.

Economics is void of any of the scientific fundamentals.. it does not even have a set of standard data features whcih could be analyzed.

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Add to this the contamination of non-enquiring scientific minds with no freaking idea about maths and you get a very awful picture... economic articles keep on sounding as other purely symblic knowledge ... like astrology...being everythign reduce to a competition of naraatives (which is not small featrue but still...).

In these important matters one can see as we have seen here debates on perceived credibility of sources. Is Chopra an authority on a crackpot? Depending on whether you use Ayurvedic Medicine or Quantum Mechanics to answer the question you'll get a different answer.

We also have a basic disagreement on "science". To some it represents methodological scepticism that can be applied everywhere and is more or less successful depending on the subject matter. To others it represents the scientific establishment, or academic "hard science" with little bearing on meaningful issues. Ultimately it is a disagreement on whether to take things on faith.

We have met the enemy, and he is us — Pogo