Posted on 07/19/2004 11:35:57 AM PDT by betty boop
A little food for thought....
Interesting. Thanks for the ping.
Not only does the conclusion not follow, the search for a propagation medium has turned up negative in all experiments. The Michelson-Morley being one of the first.
Um, I don't know Jean dear. This is a very short post. I don't want to say I'm disappointed, but... I'll ask Mr. Science if he thinks the article is at an appropriate level for my right-brained mind. (An old college buddy gave me a copy of A Clockwork Orange, but I still haven't read it. Is it like that? ;-)
Would it make any difference to you if I were to say that the medium of propagation need not be physical, "material"?
LOL, unspun! Just a meditation on Newton's theology, and trying to connect the dots between it and quantum field theory. Of course, it's quite speculative! :^)
I have a working scientist friend who has developed quite an interesting model of consciousness, which he sees as facilitated by energy exchanges with the appropriate fields .... That's pretty speculative, too; but I think he makes a good case. Thanks for writing, Brother A!
Moreover, Newton believed that his laws of motion implied the generation of conditions of increasing disorder in the world, such that God would have to intervene periodically to rectify it in order to save it and keep it going:Isaac Newton:
Every body continues in its state of rest, or of uniform motion in a right line, unless it is compelled to change that state by forces impressed upon it.One other quote from Newton (his public position, regardless of his private views):
-- Principia Mathematica (1687) Laws of Motion I
I have not been able to discover the cause of those properties of gravity from phenomena, and I frame no hypotheses; for whatever is not deduced from the phenomena is to be called a hypothesis, and hypotheses, whether metaphysical or physical, whether of occult qualities or mechanical, have no place in experimental philosophy.
-- Letter to Robert Hooke (February 5, 1675)
Agreed, PH -- Newton's "official position." Yet it is also a fact that he wrote the Scolium Generale to clarify theological points in his major mathematical work, and put God into his Opticks all the same.
Go figure! :^)
IMO, all metaphysical statements ought to be colored purple in order to be in harmony with their immanence.
I would say that the notion of perfect does as much harm as good to our understanding. "Perfect" as a static state is merely a mental construct. It doesn't exist. Any state of "perfect" only sets the stage for the next stage of "perfect", and so it goes, a moving target receding at the speed of... light? At the speed of thought. Perfect can only be dynamic, it is a continuous process.
Such a mental construct can't have any effect on whether God is or isn't continuously present in his creation. But a dynamic "perfect" is consistent with a God who is present in the here and now. "Perfect" as a moving target doesn't bother me, in my understanding at least, that is what creation looks like, a moving, living, changing, growing thing.
There is a beautiful order to creation, implying to me a well designed formula at the heart of it all, but there is also a kind of beautiful messiness about it, suggesting a creation that responds to damage and overcomes it. Which is to say, a creation that responds to the expected unexpected.
sensorium Dei could well refer to an infinite, universal creative field, “originally empty” of all content, designed to be the matrix and carrier of all possibilities for our universe...
The blank canvas where God will paint his masterpiece, with his perfect formulas, and his little human agents of messiness who fit themselves into any available space, respond to local anomalies and bridge them with their bodies and their lives. With God's help.
Sorry, that's a little on the red side!
Besides, nothing earthly can quite capture the exact shade of perfervid purple necessary for the harmonic convergance of form and substance that our hearts so desire.
;^)
I guess from now on, I suppose, I'll have to write in purple prose. If purple doesn't suit your mood, then I won't be peer reviewed.
Is 'peer review' anything like urinalysis?
That would be a little harsh!
Wow! I'm leaving out whole syllables now!
Note to self: Cut back Coke and coffee consumption.
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