Posted on 01/15/2002 7:02:17 AM PST by PatrickHenry
To many religious people, "respect for mystery" means not asking about it at all. The scientist's natural reaction to any mystery is to want to investigate it and figure it out, so that it will be a mystery no longer. It's no virtue to "respect" mysteries to the point where they aren't questioned. In fact, it strikes me more as a form of disrespect. To learn about something is to cherish it.
Hardcore materialists, as I define them, believe that "intelligent" people have solved the problem of existence, and that there are no unknown unknowns.
Obviously, anyone who thinks there is nothing more to be discovered would not be interested in scientific research. What would be the point? We hardcore materialists believe that there are no unknowable unknowns worth considering.
Ah, there's the rub.
I wish they had described the physical implications of a "flat" rotation curve. Evidently I had quite the wrong picture of how galaxies rotate, one corresponding to the non-flat rotation curve of a disk.
I assume the positive slope of that line in that example comes from the increasing linear velocity--the angular being constant. If the line height at a given radius is linear velocity, that would mean that the outer parts of a galaxy (with its flat rotation curve) are indeed rotating much slower (angular velocity) than the inner parts after all, which doesn't sound like the problem befuddling astronomers at all.
That's right. The speed of the stars is constant throughout much of the galaxy, unlike a record album, in which the outer edge moves at a faster speed than the innermost groove.
which doesn't sound like the problem befuddling astronomers at all.
It's a huge problem, as according to Kepler's laws, the speed should be inversely proportional to the square root of the radius. It's not.
So name an unknowable unknown that's worth my time to ponder.
OTOH, I know you would not pursue any unknowable unknown worth considering. I presume you wouldn't even know that you didn't know.
The change is actually quite instructive, because it says something about my understanding of man as a limited, contingent agent, and your apparent understanding of him as capable of rendering everything "worth considering" knowable.
I concur. Thanks, Herr Physiker, it is wise to get out of the way of the pros so I can add nothing. I also found another paper on the calculation of galactic angular velocity. The Disk Rotation of the Milky Way Galaxy
Aye, but the religious are in that boat, too. The key difference lies in our treatment of the knowable unknown: how did the physical universe develop, how does the machinery of life work, how does the brain perform the act of consciousness, how do particles come to have the masses they do...
The rotation of the disk of the Milky Way Galaxy is analyzed. It rotates neither as a solid disk, nor in accordance with individual keplerian orbits. Rather the disk executes a form of differential rotation which suggests that a considerable fraction of its mass resides in the outer portions of the Galaxy.
Turntable needs oil. The Intelligent Maintainance Man is asleep on the job.
...no miracle there; that happens naturally in any refractive medium...
and even stop it cold, and then re-start its' motion on command.
It "stops" light in exactly the same sense that a tape recorder "stops" sound. It's a technological breakthrough, don't get me wrong, but it's no challenge to our understanding of nature.
... And to what purpose.
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