PatrickHenry wishes you all a Merry Christmas
Posted on 12/19/2003 7:47:15 AM PST by Mr. Silverback
G. K. Chesterton once told a story about "an English yachtsman who slightly miscalculated his course and discovered England under the impression that it was an island in the South Seas."
The yachtsman "landed (armed to the teeth and speaking by signs) to plant the British flag on that barbaric temple which turned out to be the pavilion at Brighton." Expecting to have discovered New South Wales, he realized "that it was really old South Wales."
Chesterton was talking about the way in which we cast off the truths we learned as children, only later, if we are fortunate, to rediscover them as adults. What we dismissed as "simple" often turns out to be far more profound than we ever imagined.
According to Stephen M. Barr, a theoretical particle physicist at the University of Delaware, what's true about people is also true about science. In his new book, MODERN PHYSICS AND ANCIENT FAITH, Barr tells us that after the "twists" and "turns" that science took in the twentieth century, it, like Chesterton's yachtsman, wound up in "very familiar surroundings": a universe that "seems to have had a beginning . . . [and is] governed by laws that have a grandeur and sublimity that bespeak design."
Instead of man being merely the result of a "fortuitous concourse of atoms," we now know that the "universe and its laws seem in some respect to balance on a knife's edge" -- exactly what is needed for the possibility of life. A slight deviation here or there, and we wouldn't exist -- the anthropic principle.
These and other "recent discoveries have begun to confound the materialist's expectations and confirm those of the believer in God," writes Barr.
Notice, he said "materialist's," not "scientist's." As Barr makes clear, sciences like modern physics can and must be separated from materialism. Materialism is the belief that nothing exists besides matter, and it is a philosophical opinion. It may have, as Barr puts it, "[grown] up alongside science," but it's not science. Remember that, a critical point.
The assumption that you have to take a materialist worldview in order to do science is simply wrong. There's nothing about physics, for example, that assumes, much less demands, that view of the universe. In fact, many of the greatest scientists, like Newton, Galileo, and Copernicus, were religious believers.
Despite these facts, philosophical materialism has become so identified with science that scientists, and the general public, often have trouble telling them apart, which is why the discoveries that Barr describes come as a surprise, and their implications are resisted by many within the academy.
These implications aren't inconsistent with science, but rather with their dogmatic materialist worldview. Resisting these implications has required ingenious, almost fanciful, attempts to interpret the evidence in a way consistent with the materialist worldview.
Tomorrow I'll tell you about some of these discoveries and how they have "damaged the credibility of materialism." It's an important story about how science, far from being the enemy of faith, is only at war with those who, against the evidence, insist that England is "Tahiti."
Yes, he did. He departed the world of Psychologism. This was Husserl II. Like many philosophers, he did not come up with one, but two philosophies. The one he is known for, and the good one.
Sorry sucker, but that's an F. Big fat red zero. Other key words: negatory; non; zippo; nope; na; nuh-uh; bummer; crash-and-burn; afu;
What science deals with is the MECHANICS of things. The nuts and bolts. The scaffolding.
A persistent cultural myth holds that the origin of science can be discovered in the activities of alchemists or in the forms of "shamanistic" activities. If you're a "high priest" of whatever persuasion, then the main thing is: You've got to get things "right," and most of the time. (If not, then you're presumably out of the job of foretelling the future....)
Questions: What is such scaffolding for??? What purpose does it serve?
It would perhaps be comforting to imagine that humans can freely intercede with Reality so as to adapt it to human "collective convenience." Then it merely reduces to a problem of:
Who determines what the "collective" is? Who determines what properties of Nature "universally" benefit whatever that "collective" is discovered to be?
These be the problems. JMHO FWIW.
Apparently (in my case), the meaning of is is if.
There weren't supposed to be any determiners. Just value-free leadership seminars.
Admittedly, he doesn't sound like he's much of a PR person for his views.
Good find, etymologically. Is Legos Danish? Anyway from leg- to collect, bind. As also the greek word for word--logos, and its useful relative legein, to discourse or develop by logical argument. Also the root of the word legal, as in law, lex, meaning close to the word logos. And, not the least, logic. All the same root. All in a box of toy wooden blocks, and in the town that box of toy blocks built.
betty boop, I certainly agree with you that much of our scientific observations must be made by indirect observation. This is particularly apparent in astronomy and quantum mechanics where size and force prohibits. For example, black holes and dark energy are predicted by theory and inferred from other observations.
Phaedrus, I’m so glad you brought all of the Barr quotes to the thread. He is one of my favorites because of his focus on dimensionality. His publications along with Cumrun Vafa’s are often used as references in new publications on the subject!
His research has spanned many areas of theoretical particle physics, but with special emphasis on grand unified theories, theories of CP violation, the problem of the origin of quark and lepton masses, theories with extra space-time dimensions (such as Kaluza-Klein and superstring theories), and the interface between particle physics and cosmology. He has made significant contributions in all these areas, perhaps the most notable being the development of classes of models that solve the important "strong CP problem" (the problem of why the strong interactions unlike the weak are symmetric under CP), the development of the idea that the pattern of quark and lepton masses is due to effects at the unification scale, the co-discovery of the important "flipped SU(5)" grand unification scheme, work on theories of baryogenesis (the origin of matter at the time of the big bang), the discovery of large contributions to the electric and magnetic dipole moments of elementary particles in theories with an extended Higgs structure, contributions to the development of realistic SO(10) grand unified models, and a mechanism for explaining the large mixing observed in atmospheric data between muon and tau neutrinos.
2. I have twice felt the spirit of a loved one lapsing into a coma before death going through me with a clear communication of good will, joy, reassurance and peace – once with my mother and again with my sister. After having experienced it with my mother, I could have predicted it with my sister. And should another loved one pass this way, I predict it will happen once again.
3. When in deep worship and meditation on the person of Christ and the Father I am uplifted spiritually and am able to move, view and experience beyond time and proportion. I call these “night travels” though I can now also experience them in the daylight. This is a highly predictable result for me and others. Such experiences are the subject of scientific research.
4. I have not personally had a near death experience (though I wonder sometimes if that is the essence of the night travels). However, NDEs occur with sufficient regularity and predictability that they too are the subject of scientific research.
And one might consider this Voegelin thought experiment on the moving soul. Or the meaning of language, thought and consciousness.
Just some food for thought in response to your challenge, js1138!
djf, thank you so much for the lego example. As betty boop said, ”What is such scaffolding for??? What purpose does it serve?” I understand why you believe it is not a valid question but I disagree. You said:
The Plato/Aristotle debate will never be won, but it is helpful for Freepers and Lurkers to know what the debate is all about so that we can appreciate one another’s views.
According to the Aristotelian paradigm, physical reality is fundamental and mathematical language is merely a useful approximation. According to the Platonic paradigm, the mathematical structure is the true reality and observers perceive it imperfectly. In other words, the two paradigms disagree on which is more basic, the frog perspective of the observer or the bird perspective of the physical laws. The Aristotelian paradigm prefers the frog perspective, whereas the Platonic paradigm prefers the bird perspective....
A mathematical structure is an abstract, immutable entity existing outside of space and time. If history were a movie, the structure would correspond not to a single frame of it but to the entire videotape. Consider, for example, a world made up of pointlike particles moving around in three-dimensional space. In four-dimensional spacetime--the bird perspective--these particle trajectories resemble a tangle of spaghetti. If the frog sees a particle moving with constant velocity, the bird sees a straight strand of uncooked spaghetti. If the frog sees a pair of orbiting particles, the bird sees two spaghetti strands intertwined like a double helix. To the frog, the world is described by Newton's laws of motion and gravitation. To the bird, it is described by the geometry of the pasta--a mathematical structure. The frog itself is merely a thick bundle of pasta, whose highly complex intertwining corresponds to a cluster of particles that store and process information. Our universe is far more complicated than this example, and scientists do not yet know to what, if any, mathematical structure it corresponds.
The Platonic paradigm raises the question of why the universe is the way it is. To an Aristotelian, this is a meaningless question: the universe just is. But a Platonist cannot help but wonder why it could not have been different. If the universe is inherently mathematical, then why was only one of the many mathematical structures singled out to describe a universe? A fundamental asymmetry appears to be built into the very heart of reality.
As a way out of this conundrum, I have suggested that complete mathematical symmetry holds: that all mathematical structures exist physically as well. Every mathematical structure corresponds to a parallel universe. The elements of this multiverse do not reside in the same space but exist outside of space and time. Most of them are probably devoid of observers. This hypothesis can be viewed as a form of radical Platonism, asserting that the mathematical structures in Plato's realm of ideas or the "mindscape" of mathematician Rudy Rucker of San Jose State University exist in a physical sense. It is akin to what cosmologist John D. Barrow of the University of Cambridge refers to as "pi in the sky," what the late Harvard University philosopher Robert Nozick called the principle of fecundity and what the late Princeton philosopher David K. Lewis called modal realism. Level IV brings closure to the hierarchy of multiverses, because any self-consistent fundamental physical theory can be phrased as some kind of mathematical structure.
The view [Platonism] as pointed out earlier is this: Mathematics exists. It transcends the human creative process, and is out there to be discovered. Pi as the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter is just as true and real here on Earth as it is on the other side of the galaxy. Hence the book's title Pi in the Sky. This is why it is thought that mathematics is the universal language of intelligent creatures everywhere....
Barrow goes on to discuss Platonic views in detail. The most interesting idea is what Platonist mathematics has to say about Artificial Intelligence (it does not think it is really possible). The final conclusion of Platonism is one of near mysticism. Barrow writes:
Do there exist mathematical theorems that our brains could never comprehend? If so, then Platonic mathematical realms may exist, if not then math is a human invention. We may as well ask, "Is there a God?" The answer for or against does not change our relationship to mathematics. Mathematics is something that we as humans can understand as far as we need.
Cannot help but wonder, indeed! So much to wonder about: Why is the Universe the way it is and not some other way? Why is it "there" at all? What is it for? (i.e., does it have goals, purpose? If so, whose or what's?)
I never did get back to js1138 with an example of an existent of the "spiritual" type -- Christmas was hugely busy for me, too, this year!
I will just say this out loud, and let the gaffaws begin!!!: the collective consciousness field is a "spiritual entity" and it is very real. It is manipulatable, too: Hitler played on the collective nationalist consciousness of the German people like a violin. And just look what happened!
How do you think Svengali Clinton manages to be such a big star, still -- in spite of everything that is objectively known about his depredations in office and his pathological mania for lying? He's "massaging the consciousness" of the like-minded: He is making of them a "single mind," so to speak -- a collective mind -- that adores Bill and would even sacrifice for him. All to feed his boundless narcissism. (Which is itself a "spiritual existent" in the present sense.)
In short, he is working in the field of collective consciousness, and he's very, very good at it. Hitlery is less good at this, by far. But as long as Bill is there, working the shadows for her, she doesn't need to be all that good.
In short, the collective consciousness is the field for which "spin" is designed and in which it is intended to work. "Spin" is itself a "spiritual existent," for that matter.
You'll get no guffaws from me about collective consciousness. Clinton and Hitler's ability to manipulate the masses like so many bees or ants was a great example.
There's also that sense we get when we walk into a roomful of ideological hostiles or friendlies when there is no visible or logical cause for such a reaction. Or am I just "weird" in picking up on the attitude of a group?
No, you are not weird, A-G!!! You are perceptive. We can "read" a whole lot from dynamics propagating through a group, and I believe most people are capable of doing so. It's just they may not trust it, because it "can't be real" (based on a pre-analytical notion of what qualifies as "real" -- e.g., if one is bogged down in a mind set that requires real things to be material things. But all kinds of things are empirically real without being material.)
Speaking of Clinton (Bill), I have read a number of different accounts from people who have met him personally who report that his effect on them was visceral, physical -- one reported a spontaneous, and very alarming "cold shiver" that ran down her spine when he greeted her in a reception line. They didn't even physically touch -- except perhaps at the level of their respective EM fields.... In a nutshell, she found him "really scary."
Of course, other people find him enormously charming. Maybe you get pretty much only what you expect to get.... (I.e., perhaps people who buy into his spin are less able to "protect themselves.")
It is widely believed that very young children are exceptionally sensitive to this sort of thing, to the point where children in groups will "emotionally infect" each other: One child will start acting out in a certain way, and soon the entire group of children are all doing the same thing. But that as soon as parents start noticing this is going on, typically they will try to stop this behavior in their children.
Your friend's reaction to Clinton reminded me of a chat I had back in 1998 on the forum with Freeper Z2. He and I had the same reaction the first time we saw Clinton (and that was on TV). We both described it as the dark foreboding one feels the first time he sees a rattlesnake in the wild, i.e. he doesn't need to know what it is to know something is dreadfully wrong.
I'm very interested in this awareness phenomenon in small children and will see what more I can find on the subject.
Truly I believe children have much to tell us about the nature of our mind and spirit, possibly because they are not otherwise corrupted by life. IMHO, the most fascinating NDEs are those experienced by children.
Anyway, ladies, I wish you both a happy and blessed New Year! May the Force be with you.
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