Facts and Opinions

HB Smith

John,

Thought I would take the liberty to answer your post:

The world is flat
- I looked around all over Dallas today and based on my empirical data the world is beyond a shadow of a doubt flat.

The world is the center of the universe
- Based upon the Big Bang theory (the first day of Creation of course), the universe is expanding. If you measure the rate of objects moving away from Earth all around us, you will have to come to the conclusion that the Earth is indeed the center of the universe.

The world is composed of earth, water, sky and phlogiston (sp, it has been a long time since I took the GRE)
- Makes sense to me cause I think I read in a BT thread that phlogiston is the stuff released when Walter Pall burns his jins with a blow torch.

The world was created in seven days
- You are trying to trick me here. It was created in six - one day for the Big Bang (see above) and then the five weekdays. The seventh day is for bonsai work.

Bonsai must have a first, second and back branch with the first branch appearing at approximately 1/3 the height of the tree
- Correct again. Sometimes the first branch 1/3 up has been cut off so that the little birds can fly through.

Bonsai must have open (aka negative?) spaces (for the little birds to fly through)
- See above.

Americans can't really make meaningful bonsai....
- If you Google "meaningful bonsai", the very top item in the google list, is the home page of Andy's web book on bonsai design. Need I say more?

Just having some fun when I should really be asleep.

__________________
Sincerely,
Howard

www.BonsaiSmiths.net

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Vonsgardens

Howard,
I am relieved to know that all in the universe is in good order. John

mrcasey

Another way “fact” could be interpreted is in an axiomatic sense. Suppose that classically trained artists hold as true a handful of statements about aesthetics. They then reason from them just as mathematicians reason to theorems from unproven axioms. The theorems aren’t “true” in some unqualified sense. They’re true statements within a given system. True theorems aren’t what I believe most people would call universal empirical facts. But they certainly aren’t “just opinions” either. Imagine saying that plane geometry is a collection of “just” opinions because the axioms can’t be shown to be true.

I’m just stating this to suggest that there might exist propositions about aesthetics having "hard" truth values that can be inferred and demonstrated in a systematic fashion.

Casey