Hmm: Russell’s Teapot

I came across Russell’s teapot the other day, and I thought I had unearthed the source of the “evidence or GTFO” argumentation. But it seems that Russell only throw his skeptic torch on a strawman:

If I were to suggest that between the Earth and Mars there is a china teapot revolving about the sun in an elliptical orbit, nobody would be able to disprove my assertion provided I were careful to add that the teapot is too small to be revealed even by our most powerful telescopes. But if I were to go on to say that, since my assertion cannot be disproved, it is intolerable presumption on the part of human reason to doubt it, I should rightly be thought to be talking nonsense.

Eh. I just don’t understand why he would even bother addressing that kind of “argument” seriously. No philosopher or theologian in academia would get a paper past its initial publishing stages if they ever included an “x is true until it’s proven false”. So I don’t think he’s responding to a peer.

Maybe he was responding to some lay sentiment floating around, but why would he do that? That’s like a topographer correcting a child who thinks his school is “like a hundred” miles away. Just stick it with the argument from ignorance inoculation and call it a day (note that Russell’s photo and teapot reference are at the top of that wikipedia page).

Regardless, the criticism from Eric Reitan mentioned on that wikipedia page comes close to what I’ve mentioned before about the overreach of skeptics who want material data for propositions that cannot be addressed by the scientific method.

Photo by aldoaldoz.