Post #134,438
1/9/04 1:30:19 AM
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Umm *cough* - I thought this had been "done": piecemeal
from IW --> Ez --> zIWE, in at least 3 installments.
First, while Ben is probably least likely of all, to need any assistance in clarifying his positions, I'm not sure you grok the essence of this particular contretemps (?)
Never mind your capital-T thingie, especially if it is meant to signify something like, "the final, complete and logically explicable map of (say) Reality".
(capital-T Truth is often taken to suggest such. Silly, that.)
I believe this moderate-scale argument was solely about a here & now actual National, Social and Political problem: the various whingings and manipulations and assorted orchestrated faux-logic spews - intended patently! to insert pure-distilled Christian Dogma\ufffd into the pabulum fed innocent young kiddies.
And to do so baldfaced, within a science curriculum!
Yes: here in the USA, courtesy of the same folk as brought us [fill in the faith-based blank].
This thread, I deem - a rather small subset of the HUGE Scale, Reality; is not about *any* cockamamie notions that 'we' are apt to eventually create The Spreadsheet and go into the material- Universe Building bizness. Via 'science' or any other little 'process'.
Please, let's not intermix practical questions about disingenuous propagandizing / evangelism with.. YAN try for parsing the ineffable, via our Western stone knives and bearskins. English hasn't the vocabulary even to try for beginner level. 'Ineffable' is about the sole entry within that 'vocabulary'.
HTH,
Ashton
(Surely the ineffable deserves its very own thread? however doomed to futility in most expected wordage.)
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Post #134,460
1/9/04 6:31:28 AM
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"Silly that"?
Hardly. The capital T thingie is what man has sought since the ape was first capable of thought. Surely you'd grant that "why are we here?" has been asked for at least several generations, no?
I haven't been in a serious religious discussion, at least I don't recall having been in one, in quite some time. It is "silly" to discuss religion imo. Too personal, entirely subjective, etc.
As an aside to this longish debate about whether mythology and science belong in the same classroom, I thought I'd point out the idiocy of believing that the two can ever cross paths to Scott (as I'm sure Ben would agree, but not necessarily for the same reasons). In past discussions in other forums, my interpretation of Ben's remarks is that he believes there is a true, reliable relationship between the laws of mathematics and reality.
If science were ever to "come close enough" to modeling T so that the "models were consistent with religious convictions" as has been suggested by both parties in this thread, at best that would make science a subset of religious convictions. At worst, that would mean that science was fundamentally flawed. But science simply cannot ever get close to T because of the ambiguity of the relationship between the laws of mathematics and reality. Is that relationship close? Yeah, well, kinda. We tend to ignore things that bother us too much, like yeah, we kind of cheat in physics (1/n = 0 for sufficiently large n, and such) Is that relationship certain? No.
If T is ever to be achieved, and contrary to what you might think it will continue to be sought for as long as there are humans, it will not come from science, but from religion. That, in a nutshell, is the statement I think Ben would argue with.
Science and mathematics are very interesting games, and nothing more. It may well be argued that T is the only thing worth using our brains for.
bcnu,
Mikem
I don't do third world languages. So no, I don't do Java.
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Post #134,462
1/9/04 6:38:40 AM
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Re: "Silly that"?
Science is most definitely something more than a "game". There nesting of theories has very little arbitrariness. The symbolic representation of reality in math is a remarkable TRUE thing about existence. Anyone who has ever struggled through it will understand.
-drl
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Post #134,480
1/9/04 9:34:24 AM
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Unless they look too deep.
Throw out the Choice Axiom, contemplate Goedel's Theorems and much of it is a game. A truly outstanding game, rigorous, absolutely. An excellent way to explain and predict human observations of reality. But a good approximation of "true" reality? Who knows? And why is that even important? That's religion's domain.
bcnu,
Mikem
I don't do third world languages. So no, I don't do Java.
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Post #134,500
1/9/04 11:24:57 AM
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? It's right on the surface
Even the Ptolemaic system of epicycles has a certain beauty. The very act of looking for patterns seems to be a survival instinct. What I originally meant by "reasonable" is that the patterns are there and they are permanent. They are part of the real world, as much as a tree is.
-drl
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Post #134,565
1/9/04 3:10:51 PM
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Concur.
bcnu,
Mikem
I don't do third world languages. So no, I don't do Java.
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Post #134,503
1/9/04 11:26:54 AM
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You have to know what is relevant
The pieces of mathematics that you are focussing on (Choice, Goedel, etc) are of little importance in the practice of science, and are highly arbitrary.
For instance there is no absolute truth upon which one can say that the Axiom of Choice should be included in our math, and it has been proven that any result that you can prove about integers using ZFC can be proven without choice as well. Since integers can model computing which can model all of our scientific results, right there is a proof that Choice doesn't matter to science.
Math is a fun game. The application of mathematical techniques to science is not a game, and as Ross says, Anyone who as struggled through understanding it will understand (that).
Cheers,
Ben
"good ideas and bad code build communities, the other three combinations do not"
- [link|http://archives.real-time.com/pipermail/cocoon-devel/2000-October/003023.html|Stefano Mazzocchi]
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Post #134,684
1/10/04 6:35:37 AM
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Re: "Silly that"?
Inherent language problems aside (in any other than Sanskrit) - the word 'reality' is simply unuseable! in any serious, persistent effort towards that seeming impossibility: [somehow] viewing from a higher Scale, the totality of "this" scale (the physical universe | 'self' as self-aware creature). Yet that word gets tossed about -- as if we had more than an inkling of what it might connote.. Especially in 'the West'.
That said, most fantasy essays, extrapolating from recent techno- feats (such as have placed a significant part of the population into jobs of dreary paper-shuffling within horrifying pens called 'offices', and called that Progress) -- postulate that, "more of the same" might? Shall! "reveal the Process of Processes" (or whatever words you like). In time.
Then too, the idea that "religion" such as we see - is somehow a necessary (if not sufficient) entr\ufffde to such an imagined Process -?- fails equally to convince / or demonstrate.
If there is a universal theme to the (recorded) utterances of the handful of folk who have somehow 'Realized' what it is 'they are' - and what that signifies about the prospects for approaching reality (better, Reality - in this context):
These Sages (and a handful of 'Avatars') do the best with language as perhaps Can be done with language [?] in the way of giving hints, pointers to those sincerely desirous of knowing. Yet all say that, there is no process by which this realization may be induced.
In brief, the idea that a further quantity of new knowledge about the workings of the cosmos (ie physics - formerly termed 'Natural Philosophy') - shall lead to awareness of the Whole: does not appear any more likely than - an idea that intricate study of music composition might lead to one's achieving Mozartean abilities.
I'd call 'believing' otherwise: faith-based faith. Language (nor math) just isn't up to such a Task.
[Of course, many will settle for just a nice metaphor - which appears to be the assembly-language of our jelloware. WTF: it's a start..]
A.
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