http://www.edge.org/q2006/q06_8.html#porco

Where do I sign up?

That is...something I still digesting...

This article is certainly thought-provoking and enthusiasm-raising. But it also arises many remarks, that I quote here without order or special intent:


-Yes certainly science is lacking ceremonial and aleluyah. Not completelly though, as a rocket lauch IS a moving ceremonial. But science may gain much support and relevance with being more humanly warm (what coldest and layman-repelling than a science paper? How frustrating is it to write a science paper on an enthusiasic topic or an hot society topic?)

-On the other hand there are already more than enough evangelists knocking at our doors and predicting us doom if we don't heed them. Science "evangelists" would have to be less invasive...

-Science and spirituality are not the same thing. Yes, they have things in common, and even some purpose and some relevance in common, as quoted in Porco's article. But physical science deals with material facts, when religion and spirituality deal with two topics which are DEFINITIVELY NOT material facts:

-Morals. Although a well understood positive science also leads to some morals, and many high scientists were positive and idealistic people, struggling to foster peace and understanding.

-Survival of the soul after death. If such a thing exists, it is clearly a parapsychology phenomenon, and it is well known that mainstream science is not really keen for that (despites some interesting scientific results, see my link page)

-There is also a well known problem which can happen about religion: bigotry, fanaticism, dogmatism... Approaching science with an attitude of naive belief or angry expectation could contaminate science with such problems, about which it is already not really safe.

Ah, but Richard, science *does* offer us a sense of satisfaction in re the deepest and most important *spiritual* questions -- how does the world around us work, how did we come to be here, and (at least to a certain extent) why are we here?

And as for science *not* attempting to answer questions such as "does a part of us survive after death," I will only say that science, by its very nature, does not speculate about subjective phenomena for which there is no physical evidence. That's not a limitation of science -- it's a lesson we can learn from science. Perhaps if we spent more of our effots and energy on those phenomena that are phsyically observable, modelable and predictable, we would accomplish more -- and actually come closer to resolving those issues which revolve around the insubstantuial universe that exists, not in reality, but merely within our own heads...

-the other Doug

"I have a terrible need of - shall I say the word - religion. Then I go out and paint the stars."

- Vincent Van Gogh

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vincent_van_Gogh


And as Carl Sagan wrote in Pale Blue Dot (1994):

"A religion old or new, that stressed the magnificence of the universe as revealed by modern science, might be able to draw forth reserves of reverence and awe hardly tapped by the conventional faiths. Sooner or later, such a religion will emerge."

http://www.pantheism.net/paul/

Yes truly, it is what I mean when I say that science and spirituality have things in common. I would even say that science discoveries in the universe are a choice food for my spiritual and artistic life.





Why to say that immaterial things are "subjective"? What is subjective is what depends on the person. For instance a dream is subjective, as it exists only in our head and is available for nobody else (although it happened to me to see peoples in dream, and recognize them after in reality).

But it can exist many things which are immaterial, YET objective. The best example is mathematics. Mathematics deals only with immaterial things, so far as refusing any material evidence. It works exactly the same way than spirituality (only on a different topic). But, despites being immaterial, mathematics are rigorous and objective: two persons, or million of persons, doing the same reasoning or performing the same calculus, in the same room or in two distant planets, find EXACTLY the same results. In this meaning mathematics facts are objective. Despites it is dealing with 100% immaterial things: you cannot locate, see or wheight a number.

If you think well, a soul is no more "immaterial" than a number, and a religious paradise is no more "abstract" than the branes or parallel universes postulated by cosmologists and quantum physicists. Abstract for us, but for observers in these universes, they appear concrete, and it is us in turn who look "abstract".

Simply, a science which ACCEPTS ONLY material evidences and a priori refuses any immaterial fact cannot deal with immaterial things, and cannot draw any conclusion about immaterial facts, their properties, their existence or non-existence. That does not make sure than immaterial things don't exist. We even have some empirical hints that such things exist, for instance the NDE. But today science REFUSES to study such phenomena with the proper methods and frame, so that it is studied only by amateurs whom work is not recognized by the mainstream science, even when it is performed according to full science standards.

You can think, if you want, that souls and paradises don't exist, as until today I am unable to provide you with a clear and immediate evidence of the countrary. But I REFUSE to anybody the right to say that such thing cannot exist because they a priori REFUSE to examine the proper facts. It is exactly as if somebody was saying that numbers don't exist because we cannot see or weight them.

Ah, but mathematics do *not* exist independently of human thought. That's the first thing you have to realize. Mathematics is simply an organizational system used by human minds to describe and predict the real world. The fact that mathematics can be used to describe the Cosmos merely means that the Cosmos follows certain physical rules -- rules which can be described, modeled and predicted by the words and implicit logic of mathematics. These mathematical terms and formulae are simply "words" and "sentences" of a precise and rigidly defined language -- a human-derived language designed to describe the world around us.

As such, mathematical statements do not actually "exist" in and of themselves -- they only maintain a reference to the observable Cosmos when they *represent* actual, observable physical phenomena.

Period.

I'm not saying that there should be no investigation into what *appears* to be immaterial. I *am* saying that anything that *remains* immaterial and unable to be observed directly and objectively, after *all* attempts at observing, quantifying and characterizing it scientifically have failed, *must* be considered *unreal* phenomena that exist only in the minds of those who perceive it. That has *no* other real existence.

However, if we insisted, dogmatically, that anything we cannot directly perceive doesn't exist, we would have failed to explore many things that seemed immaterial to us throughout history -- such things as air, and light, which are not necessarily in-your-face sensible. We are not well-served in placing brick walls around such things and stating forevermore that these things are immaterial and thus non-researchable.

I *am* saying that everything that was once thought to be immaterial and since found to be an explainable physical-universe phenomenon was discovered by *assuming* that, if such a thing exists, it *must* have objectively observable characteristics that can be described, modeled and have predictable behaviors. I mean, think about it -- the Romans had Mathematics, without them they could not have built the great architectural works they did. But their world-view defined many *real* things as immaterial and not describable by Mathematics, and so they did not develop technologies that *require* an understanding of some of these *apparently* immaterial things.

And the Roman world-view was limited, not by an incomplete understanding of science or mathematics, but by a *perceived* *(and in many cases provably incorrect) understanding of the immaterial "spiritual" world whcih did not allow for its scientific and mathematical analysis.

So -- I am *not* stating that, for example, humans do not have souls which survive physical death. I *am* saying that, *if* we do, then at some point science will be able to characterize *and predict* the physical construction and behaviors of such souls.

At some point.

Eventually.

But not yet.

-the other Doug

hmmmm...

dvandorn,

I think we should first settle the statute of mathematics, as the problems involved are simpler than with spirituality or abstract souls.

You say that mathematics don't exist by themselves like sort of gods, they are a language for our minds. But even if so, they exist, as a language. For instance if I say that I have five fingers, the relation that we call "five" exists. Some natural numbers exist, and other not. For instance the number five exist, the number six exist, and not any other between (if we keep with natural numbers, not fractional of course). It is this which is expressed by the word "abstract" (etymologicaly: extracted of, as historically abstract concepts were generalized from concrete examples).

If mathematics were subjective, we should observe things such as 2+2=4 in french, and 2+2=5 in english, of 2 sheeps + 2 sheeps equal three for the tax payer, and five for the land owner. It is not like that. Right on the countrary, despite the fact that different parts of the mathematic science were developped by different civilizations, they form today a coherent, unanimously accepted and non-self-contradicting structure.
This is a remarkable property of mathematics, that every people did not came with its own maths, as they regularly did in other domains: so many different morals, law systems, grammar, language, philosophies... but only one mathematics. if mathematics were created (by humans) peoples would have created each their own mathematics. Right on the countrary they were DISCOVERED.

To say that 2+2 give the same result for everybody is what I mean to say mathematics are OBJECTIVE. They DON'T NEED to exist as material facts for this.

Objective means: what appears in the same way for everybody. Subjective means: what appears for only one person (or set of persons). This has nothing to do with being material or immaterial.

(edited later, but before other replies:) Even the statement that mathematics would be only a construction of our minds is not shared by all the mathematicians, right on the countrary most mathematicians think that logics and maths exist by themselves, and when they tell us about a new theorem, they say that they "discovered" it, not "created" it. Only politicians can say that they "create" a law. (This remark is not pejorative or hinting for anything in any way, it is just a basic fact).



I think you could accept that, if there exist other physical spaces like ours, and that there is some complex evolution taking place in them, this evolution can also lead to the formation of brains, and the folks bearing these brains will sense their own universe as existing physically and ours being untestable (damn I hope they will not use the Occam razor or Popper refutability principle, otherwise they will make us disappear!!)

But what happens if such a brain structure appears in a mathematical simulation? I clearly tell: not a simulation running on a computer, but an EQUATION or something which solution behaves like a complex physical space. I let you think about it by yourself.

Perhaps I shall not reply this evening (here on my part of the planet it is time to go to bed) but if so I let you time to think.

Ah, but it's NOT objective. It depends on your assumptions.

Let's simplify it even further -- 1+1. 1+1=2, right? But your computer thinks 1+1=11. Other parts of your computer think that 9+9=12.

Mathematics is like *any* language -- the words and sentence forms themselves *represent* both real and abstract things. But they have no actual reality in and of themselves. And just because you have a word for something, doesn't mean that that something actually exists. It just means you have a word for it.

And -- here is the important distinction -- just because you do *not* have a word for something doesn't mean that it does *not* exist. (Let's all take a moment to sort out all of those double-negatives, shall we?)

Here's a little something for *you* to think about -- let's take one of the most universally recognized things in this world. Dirt. Soil. The ground.

You can call it dirt. Or soil. Or terre. Or terra. Or any number of other names. But, even if there was *never* a name for it, the stuff exists. It has the same range of characteristics, whether or not they have ever been named, categorized or studied.

A word does not have any existence beyond what it describes, and making a word for something that does not exist does not lend that thing any actual existence it does not already possess intrinsically. That goes for descriptive, conversational languages, and it goes for mathematics.

That, IMNSHO, is a universal truth.

-the other Doug

Oh, and FYI, the statement that all cultures have found and described the *same* Mathematics is not true. All human Mathematics consisted of means of counting things for many, many generations, and as such they did not use placement notation or have any symbol (i.e., "word") for the value *zero*. If you had nothing, you had no need for a symbol to denote it. That was a very basic assumption of Mathematics in almost all human civilizations -- up until the Arabs.

The Arabs stumbled upon the concept of using a Mathematical term for "nothing" and found that it allowed them to *vastly* extend the ability of Mathematics to describe the world around them.

Also, many early European civilizations used base 12 and not base 10 counting systems -- the usefulness of counting by dozens outweighed the usefulness of being able to count up any number of things on your fingers.

So, you see, not all civilizations have come to the same conclusions and used the same assumptions when it comes to the language of Mathematics. They have used different assumptions and had culturally colored views of the usefulness and extent of the language of Mathematics, as varied as the cultures themselves.

-the other Doug

2+2=4 in decimal, 10+10=100 in binary, two plus two makes four in english, deux plus deux font quatre in french, etc. different languages, one concept. I was speaking of concepts.





obvious.



dvandorn, You just dodged the question and replied the same thing in a different way.

Good night.




edited later:
anybody wanting to know what I have to say on the topic of mind and reality is invited to look at my page on epistemology, read my book (sorry I wrote everything except the price tag) and discuss seriously of this here on Unmanned Space Flight, or on my own forum (where I am -still- more selective than Doug Ellison).

It was actually the Indians who invented the zero. So did the maya quite independently.

What example do you have of a culture that has used base twelve?

tty

No -- I didn't dodge the question so much as I tried to indicate that the *concept* of the existence of an elegant Mathematical equation that could, in some way we cannot comprehend, cause an intelligence to come into being and become aware of itself -- is a lot of words given to an abstract concept that has no basis in actuality.

And describing such an absurdity by giving words to it does not make it any more real, or any less absurd.

However, if you can't tell how much I enjoy these discussions with you, Richard, let me assure you that this is the most fun I've had all week...

Good night to you, and sweet (debatably real and definitely subjective) dreams to you!



-the other Doug

Old German and English counting systems were mostly in base 12 -- at least, most of the inventory records we see from those cultures were counting things in dozens, bushels, pecks, etc., etc.

Oh, and thanks for the comment in re the Indians. Zero was, however, a concept that completely eluded both the Greeks and the Romans.

-the other Doug

Both Old English, Old High German, Old Norse and Gothic counts base ten.

It is true that the romans never used a symbol for zero, but it is not quite true for the Greeks. The babylonians did have a separate symbol for zero and this was apparently adopted by at least some greek astronomers who were influenced by babylonian astronomy. For details read O. Neugebauer: The exact sciences in antiquity.

tty

I grew up using old UK currency -

4 Farthings = 1 Penny - 1d (I was *very* young when they stopped using them!)
2 Halfpennies = 1 Penny - 1d
3 Pennies = 1 Threepenny - 3d
6 Pennies = 1 Sixpence - 6d
12 Pennies = 1 Shilling - 1/-
2 Shillings = 1 Florin - 2/-
2 Shillings and Sixpence = 1 Half Crown - 2/6d
120 Pence = 10 Shillings - 10/-
20 Shillings = 1 Pound - £1

There were also 'special issue' Crowns nominally worth 5/-, and the 'Guinea' was (and still is, actually) also in use, especially for fees, gambling etc - 21 Shillings.

The opportunities for mental arithmetic were enormous. A little bit of 'internal slide-rule' work gave you all sorts of tools to manipulate currency, all of which are lost. I don't want to sound like an old git who bangs on about educational standards, but it drives me nuts to see people in shops using a calculator to try to work out how much four items at 25p each might cost, and then get surprised when I'm standing there with a pound coin. And as for VAT at 17.5%, it's just a joke. I can generally work VAT out in my head faster than the twerps with calculators, and all by doing tricks similar to those I learned as a kid. I reckon that people used to be far more numerate, and at least in the UK, that it was all due to a non-decimal currency (and weights and measures). What the hell can you do with decimal measurements except move the point about? And if you depend wholly on calculators, and can't comprehend that four quarters of a Pound might make, er, a Pound, what do you do when your finger slips? Pah!

This has been a plea for mercy on behalf of the XVII Chapter (as reformed) of the Bring Back Base 32 Campaign.

Bob Shaw

In my novels The world of Dumria the guies live on a planet where they have four fingers, and for this reason they use a base eight counting. (It is a general hypothesis that nearby everybody on Earth use a base ten because we have ten fingers)
The hell comes when the dumrians try to connect their internet network with ours. Because our computers are based on octets (eight digits, for obscure reasons probably contingently linked to the first teletype systems) when theirs are based on nonets (nine bits, which in their octal system, make three digits). When transmitting up to Dumria, no problem, but when transmitting down, eight nonets have to be translated in a set of nine octets.

Also for obscure reason linked to molecular evolution, our genes are coded in hexets. (specialists suppose that this is the result of an evolution of a former system based on only four bits). I found on this page tyhe description of a code using DNA (or equivalent) to code texts in the unicode UTF6 format! (caution: although this page deals with standard science, it is not really in the style of a science paper)

But these numerical considerations lead us a bit far of the original topic of seing science like a new religion!!!

How about this combination of religion and cosmonautics?


New church in once-atheist Baikonur readies for Orthodox Christmas

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10729300/

By James Oberg, NBC News space analyst // Special to MSNBC

Updated: 9:18 a.m. ET Jan. 6, 2006