"...[W]e're odd little creatures, like some cosmic nanobacteria — diminishingly small to the point that it makes us seem utterly irrelevant. Yet collectively we have the tools and conceptual ability to gain an astonishingly clear picture of what this vast universe looks like on a scale more immense than the most astronomers of just a half century ago would have imagined." The Republican, Skywatch: 2012's discoveries in astronomy overwhelming (Jan 2, 2013).
Evidence marshaling software MarshalPlan
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The grand inferences of astronomers, astrophysicists, and the like serve as a reminder of several important facets of almost all human inference:
1. There are few if any "direct" or "immediate" factual inferences. (Think of the elaborate machinery and reasoning and calculations astronomers perform to be able to tell us they have "seen" this or that, e.g., an exoplanet, a black hole, etc.)
2. There is something almost magical -- mysterious, in any case -- about the ability of human beings to reach beyond themselves, seemingly far beyond the seemingly-paltry evidence available to them to draw conclusions about parts of the world, even about very far-removed parts of the world. This imaginative activity, abductive activity, is not easily explained -- or not explained at all -- by a theory that views inferences as being merely the result of concatenations or associations of sense impressions or events.
3. In astronomy -- and, I think, also in more mundane matters -- models of the world matter (for factual inference). What, for example, could an astrophysicist achieve or infer without special relativity and the like? (Almost nothing.) The same is true when ordinary mortals attempt to infer what some other mortal might have done or will do in some situation. We need to have some (whether tacit or explicit or both) model in our heads (even if a fuzzy one) of the person who is the subject of our guessing and inferring.
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