MAN MUST ACT? Well, sure, but to act one must PLAN at least one step: envision a

MAN MUST ACT?

Well, sure, but to act one must PLAN at least one step: envision an alternative and choose it. If that is not the case, one cannot claim to have acted. So action is a two sided coin: we must both plan and act, or acting has no meaning. Man must act, sure, but to act he must perceive and plan (choose) action. Even non sentient beings can react, but only a creature that can forecast the future can ‘act’. Like the golden vs the silver rule, or like liberty and property, both planning and acting are necessary for the consideration of either. As such I don’t find it very useful to rely on the requirement that man MUST act, without also taking into consideration that man must plan in order to act. All plans are theories and all actions are tests. This is an immutable property of reality. It is this relationship between planning (theories) and acting (testing) that leads us all the way to the scientific method, as complexity of that which we seek to act upon exceeds our perceptions. So while action and testimony must be reduced to personal perception, where we are capable of making judgements, we must rely upon empiricism and instrumentalist to reduce that which we cannot sense, perceive, and judge. And we must use operations to test internal consistency and external correspondence where possible. Only if we can reduce operations to the perceptible can we possibly make judgments, and only then can we say we possess the knowledge necessary to levy a truth claim.

(sketch) (something of that order)