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Parts of the universe are known. Parts are unknown. And some of the unknown is knowable. But some of the unknown, we can NEVER know. No matter what we do or believe.

I should have underscored this point in my last.

I not only believe this is true, but — judging from my own capabilities at least — I know it to be true.

Thank you, dear djf, for your splendid insight!

p.s.: I apologize for misspelling execrable.

Here is a good discussion of the subject. An excerpt:

Global Warming: The Campus Non-Debate

I do not want us to shut down economic drive to support false science, and on the other hand, I do not want to leave behind a scorched earth. …. Let's get the science right! A better debate and research is needed by honest and believable scientists who study climate professionally.

Richard Lindzen, Professor of Meteorology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

By Russell K. Nieli

Is the earth in a global warming phase? If it is, how severe is this trend? Is the warming primarily a product of natural causes or do man-made factors play a dominant role? If man-made factors are important, is the main culprit the carbon dioxide (CO2) produced from the burning of fossil fuels or are other factors more salient? What is the evidence for and against the anthropogenic and CO2 theories of global warming? If we really are in a period of sustained global warming, will this trend prove a net benefit or a net loss to human welfare? Who would benefit and who would be harmed by an increase in atmospheric CO2, the greater plant growth this facilitates, and a general increase in global temperatures? If the burning of fossil fuels is a major contributor to global warming, and if such warming harms many more people than it helps, is the radical curtailment of fossil-fuel dependence a politically and economically feasible response to the problem? Is it feasible not only in the developed world but in developing regions like India, China, Indonesia, and Brazil? If the radical curtailment of CO2 emissions cannot be obtained on a worldwide scale either for political or economic reasons, and if global warming proves to be the serious threat to human welfare that some contend, are there economically and scientifically feasible geo-engineering alternatives that could stop the warming or cool the planet down? What might some of these geo-engineering alternatives be and how could they be implemented?

These are just some of the questions that need to be asked and debated in the ongoing controversy about global climate change. Alas, they are rarely asked today on college campuses due to what can only be described as the stifling dominance of a smug orthodoxy that is so cocksure of itself -- and of the general ignorance and malevolence of its critics -- that genuine debate and interchange between divergent viewpoints rarely takes place. So dominant is this orthodoxy that many college students today have never heard the case made by a responsible scientist against what we might call the dominant Gore-Hansen Model of anthropogenic global warming -- the model so effectively propagated by former Vice-President Al Gore in his 2006 movie, An Inconvenient Truth, and by physicist and global warming activist James Hansen, the head of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies. While many critics of the Gore-Hansen Model would love to debate its defenders on college campuses, they are almost never asked, and the science on the issue is simply considered settled and incontrovertible. Critics of the reigning orthodoxy are arrogantly dismissed as crackpots, tools of the oil industry, or the climatological equivalent of Holocaust deniers.

http://www.mindingthecampus.com/originals/2011/09/global_warming_the_campus_non-.html

Please don’t get me wrong about Albert, his book “Quantum Mechanics and Experience” is very, very interesting, and I suggest getting it if you can.

Not that his conclusions are any different from the standard model.

But his methods and examples are very refreshing. I have always been quite a student of heuristics, partly because of course it helps us learn about the outside world, but also because it gives us insight into our own thought processes and leads us a little bit closer to answering the question “What is knowledge??”

In my mind, the biggest question of all.

I am currently chewing on “Beyond Einsteins Unified Field: Gravity and Electromagnetism Redefined” By John Brandenburg.

Apparently, if the shorts and premise of the book is correct, we now have a complete unification theory of gravity and electromagnetism.

Which might be telling us a little bit about why they retired the shuttle...

;-)