Greetings!
Hope all goes well for yourself, Betty, and all the others. It has been a trying time, what with the events in Indonesia and last weekend.
As is usual for this type of thread, I will post, then go back and read.
My interest in heuristics and epistemology is boiling now! Lots of hours, thousands, in the semi lucid state right before I go to sleep.
It is a question that's easy to state, but very hard to get foot on. I spent years trying to decide if there was so much as one single statement that could unarguably be universally agreed as "true".
I finally found one, but won't state it here, as it might prompt some disagreement, which is not really the point.
There are hundreds, if not thousands, of type of "knowledge". We could spend years listing them, think we are complete, only to discover we have missed some. Some of the ones we missed would be true head slappers, real groaners, totally obvious things that we didn't even notice. (we can't see the forest for the trees types of things. Right in front of us all along).
So we can't really discuss it until we get a better handle on it. That's where psych and computers enter the picture. In trying to discuss and quantify knowledge, the trend is to look at the human mind as a bunch of switches. The act of communication is when one mind that has certain switches set, does or says something that causes the same(or very similar) switches to be set in another mind.
So I could say "RED", then say "TRUCK", and some people would conclude I was talking about a fire truck.
The swutch thesis is very handy. It helps us quantize knowledge, but has another somewhat unexpected benefit. It helps us see what is really going on with communication and language. The fact that words have meaning is only because those meanings (and actions and effects on our switches) is an agreed upon thing between you and I and others.
We begin to conclude there is no inherent meaning or value to a random string of characters, somewhat pointing us at a sterile universe devoid of purpose.
This is where it gets exciting. Let's imagine I kidnap some scientists. I then have them sit down in my kitchen. I fill a clear plastic quart jar with water and set it on the counter. I tell the scientist type to watch the wter and report to me if he sees anything unusual.
He protests, then he watches for awhile. (btw, I put the cap back on the bottle). He watches for a while longer, then gets really restless.
He concludes, after a bit, it's a waste of time. Nothing will ever happen.
He may be right. But it is poor judgement and science on his part. The number of molecules in the jar probably is a few more decimal placements than Avogadro's number. And the number of possible statistical states of those molecules (just counting position, linear and angular momentum) is a one followed by a couple hundred zeros.
He could sit and watch the bottle for what amounts to many times the current age of the universe and see only the smallest, almost insignificant fraction of the possible states of the molecules in the bottle.
This complements the switch theory. We are forced to conclude we don't have enough switches in our head to describe the bottle. There aren't enough switches in the known universe.
But that doesn't mean our heads are imperfect. Or erroneous. Only incomplete.
Anyways, I find it exciting. And it gives a small hint to the actual meaning and size of the divine. I have lamented in the past that it seems we too often try to create God in our image rather than the other way around. I tend to think his purpose and motivations are simply not knowable by us.
Like our kidnapped scientist, we can only glimpse the tiniest part.
Perhaps I will write more later. But I don't want to launch into a diatribe about modern "science" and it's limitations, even though, perhaps I should! Limitations that most scientists adamantly deny, but even a bad poet could describe.
I would highly recommend any of the works by A.S. Eddington
As a scientist, he was able to describe and understand the roles and ideas of scientific thought and reasoning. And he did it in a way that did not at all decry or deny other disciplines. Truly a brilliant mind.
I love the kidnapped scientist metaphor! It does a great job in capturing our inability to be know-it-alls. LOLOL!
And I agree, too, that language (and communication) are the driving force of our body of knowledge. Sadly though, it cuts both ways - language can clarify or obfuscate and for so many things, there just are no words (e.g. pain/pleasure).
Thank you so much for your post!
Yah sure you betcha.
Avogadro's number = number of units in a mole.
1 mole of water ~ about 18 grams of water.
1 liter of water ~ 1000 cc of water ~ 1000 g of water (temperature and density...)
there are more or less 55 moles of water in a liter.
Cheers!
Full Disclosure: Forgive any math mistakes, it's past my bedtime :-)