Epistemology of Design (The limitations of science)

by dhw, Sunday, December 13, 2009, 12:31 (5458 days ago) @ Matt

Matt: However improbable life may seem, it was a predestined artifact based purely on permutations and combinations of matter.-Well, folks, I've just submitted my application for a grant of 100,000,000 euros to build COOL. The purpose of COOL is to prove my theory of TIKL. Let me explain. -COOL is a giant machine, designed by myself, to create a random distribution of letters. As you've probably guessed, COOL is an acronym which stands for Chance Organization Of Letters. This machine will operate at an astonishing speed, juggling letters at a rate that would normally take millions of years, and it will discharge billions of permutations and combinations. Each of these will automatically be measured against the Master Model to see if it matches, and if it does, my theory will be proved once and for all, and the Nobel Prize*** will be mine, ha ha! The Master Model, as the more astute among you will also have guessed, is King Lear. I don't care about Hamlet, or Macbeth, or All's Well That End's Well (though the latter does provide an apt commentary on the expected outcome of my project). King Lear is the benchmark. -Once COOL has produced KL, we shall know for a fact that KL was predestined, or inevitable ... which is why my theory is called TIKL (The Inevitability of King Lear). If it was inevitable, or predestined, we can at last jettison two theories that have plagued mankind for centuries, as we shall have proved beyond reasonable doubt that: 1) King Lear was not the product of Intelligent Design; 2) there was no such person as William Shakespeare.-
*** I shall, of course, invite you all to the celebration in Stockholm, where I would like David to say grace, Mark to pronounce the blessing, Matt to read the lesson from Nietzsche's Die Geburt der Tragödie, Frank to process the food, Spotti-crow TO TEST IT FOR WORMS, and George and BBella to perform the following dialogue between Lear and Cordelia, which sparked the whole thing off:
CORDELIA: Nothing, my lord.
LEAR: Nothing?
CORDELIA: Nothing.
LEAR: Nothing will come of nothing...