Hi Marco:
Indeed a pleasure to have you back.
> The problem is another one. Hey man, I think you are rejecting the whole
> scientific building. Take care, it's solid. No one has gone to the sun to
> take a bit of hydrogen to demonstrate that the heat comes from a nuclear
> fusion transforming H into He. No one has gone to alpha-centauri running at
> the speed of light with a chronograph to see if it's true that it's four
> light-years from Hearth. Scientists use instruments, designed for that.
> They use guinea pigs to test drugs for humans.... As Jonathan writes in his
> essay:
>
> " .... the laboratory is science's recording studio. It is isolated to
> block out disturbances so we can clearly hear and see the patterns of
> nature. Once the patterns are clear, we are better equipped to identify
> them and enjoy them outside. "
It may seem sometimes as if I reject the whole scientific building. But
that would be wrong. On the contrary I'm indebted to science and
the capitalistic free enterprise system for so many of the wonders of life
I enjoy on a daily basis that I couldn't even begin to count the blessings
bestowed on me. But, the philosophy of science? Ah, that's another matter.
I have no problem at all in questioning scientific assumptions about how
the world works, especially when they admittedly can't even begin to
deal with huge chunks of experience like values. It also bothers me that
many scientists who claim to be so open-minded about everything and
publicly express a willingness to change given sufficient evidence often
behave like Vatican protectors of the True Faith. In this regard, a quote
from Robert Jahn, the scientist who founded The Princeton Engineering
Anomalies Research (PEAR) and who I referred to in another post about
experiments in the ability of mind to alter matter, is relevant:
"Thus, at the dawn of the 21st century, we again find an elite, smugly
contented scientific establishment, but one now endowed with far more
public authority and respect that that of the prior version. A veritable
priesthood of high science controls major segments of public and private
policy and expenditure for research, development, construction,
production, education and publication through the world, and enjoys a
cultural trust and reverence that extends far beyond its true merit. It is
an establishment that is largely consumed with refinements and
deployments of mid-20th century science, rather than with the creative
advancement of fundamental understanding of the most profound and
seminal aspects of its trade. Even more seriously, it is an
establishment that persist in frenetically sweeping legitimate genres of
new anomalous phenomena under its intellectual carpet, thereby
denying its own well-documented heritage that anomalies are the most
precious raw material from which future science if formed."
So questioning some of the pillars on which the edifice of science rests
is in the best tradition of science itself. I feel I'm in good company when
I point out in Jonathan's "isolated laboratory" there is no stated
recognition that the scientists making the observations are themselves
"patterns of nature" and may, in the act of observing, affect their
"objective" results. Nor have I ever seen anyone in science respond to
physicist Eugen Wigner's statement: "The miracle of the
appropriateness of the language of mathematics for the formulations of
the laws of physics is a wonderful gift we neither understand nor
deserve." Miracles? Science? Perish the thought!
So yes, I do indeed believe there are more things in heaven and earth
than are dreamt of in the philosophy and practice of science. One look
at the statue of David in Florence was enough "scientific evidence" to
convince me of that, an "experiment" by the way repeated by millions
over centuries and thus not to be casually dismissed.
To sum up my position. I love science. It's scientism that gets me
agitated.
> About the power of luck, let me offer a quote from old P.:
>
> "The term Manito primarily referred to the Supreme Being but also had many
> other usages. It was applied to manifestations of skill, fortune, blessing,
> luck, to any wondrous occurrence. It connoted any phenomenon that
> transcended the run of everyday experience. In other words, Dynamic
> Quality"
>
> [let me add that the Greeks had the exact translation of Manito: FATE. Un
> undefined entity which was superior even to all the powers and
> intelligences of all their "defined" gods]
Wonderful. Those old Greeks knew a thing or two. Purposeful chance
perhaps?
> More about teleology in a next post.
> never said universe has no purpose.
I eagerly await your view of teleology and whether you think the MOQ
endorses it.
Platt
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