Author’s note: I don’t have a bias in this domain or associated arguments. I am Socratic in that I believe you follow evidence and then decide what makes sense. This Socratic principle is absent in science, hence ‘Scientism’. Exactly, agreed. For humble me, all human knowledge is contingent and heuristic and we should always be ready to to update it in the light of new evidence or experience. I can think of very few examples of anything I think is actually true. Given this state of affairs it is surely best to see knowledge as a form of "best practice'' and base its value upon its utility. And all this is why I prefer philosophy to science as no good philosopher will be so presumptuous as to claim absolute truth. I liked your account of the trial of Galileo where you stressed that the court had an excellent point and that he was stubborn and intransigent. Durant makes similar points in his essay on Galileo (on YT). All Galileo had to do - according to Durant - was accept his view was hypothetical. So who here was actually claiming infallibility? And in addition to the above - perhaps a simple review of what we think is true and why and what we have been told but have no experimental evidence for. Do we think the earth revolves? Do we think the moon orbits the earth? Do we think the earth and sun move around each other? Do we think the earth and sun and planets move through the universe? Just what exactly do we think we know?
Totally agree and these are all very good questions. I honestly don't know the answers. I just accepted heliocentricity. One day after a run outside I sat and thought, 'can I really prove to myself that I just ran on a spinning, moving sphere?' It didn't make a lot of sense, that I just had a canter on a spinning ball moving at 30 km/sec, a speed that I can't comprehend. But I knew it was true, I was told it true. But I can't find the mechanical proofs. This was Einstein's whole charade - he admitted we can never mechanically prove heliocentricity. It was a thought experiment, but if I look at Brahe and Ptolemy, I don't see why 'they are wrong'. They save the phenomena just as well and explain the actual measurements much better. In general I don't think we know that much about our universe, though the establishment confidently delcares that we know everything.
I was thinking about this today - what do I really know to be true about anything? - well..............I know that I know virtually nothing and what I do know or think I know is only contingent and more or less useful in the moment in the context of a certain time or place. If I were sitting on an asteroid in space light years from any star what could I possibly know? What is called these days "science" is a lot of arrogant bumkum in the main and what it is used to justified is crime and fraud in the main. I have tried to steer our children away from science and I myself am not a fan - I liked it better when it was called "natural philosophy". I would like to see universities get rid of science departments and spend more on arts, languages, philosophy, history, law. I repeat that I dream of living in a society entirely free from science and its horrible technological progeny. Science has done far more harm than good.
Yes, science as depicted by many great writers - Orwell, Huxley, C.S Lewis - becomes all too easily the 'lights of perverted science' to quote Churchill. The history of science is littered with wrong turns. To the modern mind, trained in science propaganda, it is inconceivable that the abstraction called 'science' could ever be wrong, or take a wrong turn. The expectation is that 'science' is always right, benign and positive if not perfect. Historically there is no proof of this and in the modern world, we can see where the perversion of reality can be used to completely contradict reality and common sense - all in the name of 'science'. As you said, much of it is now arrogant bunkum, built on hocus pocus, maths and models. Money and power, not truth or curiousity, seems to be the mainspring of 'science'.
Thanks David. The more you dive into this topic, the more interesting and convoluted it gets. As Einstein admitted, 'I consider myself more of a philosopher, than a scientist'. Indeed.
He makes a good point. I always thought his gloomy reaction to super star status was a function of that. I studied philosophy as a young man and not "hard" science as even by then I did not think that science led to truth. As I mentioned earlier, for me, science can be a useful heuristic in a very limited domain most often associated with numerical or mechanical or geometric systems but it is hopeless at explaining the complexity of life and death. As a philosopher I am inclined to think that nothing is necessarily "true" and all human knowledge is contingent and only ever approximate. This was well understood by the best thinkers of classical civilization and many others and still is by many but the propaganda machine behind so called established science has led us into a worse situation now than obtained in the time of the dominance of the infallible Catholic church. The recent covid 19 mass poisoning lunacy might stand as the best example not of the infallibility of science but in fact the exact and particular opposite. Thanks for the post. I was not aware of the lack of experimental verification of the earth's actual movement but I am not one bit surprised - great examples and quotes.
Most education is a form of philosophy and in science, very much dogma. Not a single teacher or prof promoting STR for eg. understands it. If you raised your hand and asked, 'can you show me physical proof', you will be met with more maths and angry hand-waving that everyone knows it is proven. Whether or not heliocentricity as a philosophy makes sense is dependent on the data. The Science, as they do with everything, twist the failures which cannot confirm the Earth's motion, to somehow supporting the same. It is rather incredible but that is how bold they are. Anything to save the phenomena. In the next post we will look at the dozens of experiments after 1905 which again show no movement. And how many people know this? Einstein said many times, if Michelson-Morley's negative result is valid, STR is dead and heliocentricity would be unproven.
Fascinating. I have never been able to make any sense of STR and always put that down to my own ignorance. But I always recall a day in the library years ago at Sussex when I asked myself weather I did not understand what I was reading because I was ignorant or because it was meaningless (Derrida I think). At the time I used to fix my friend's old motor cars and noticed that in this domain there was meaning, there was cause and effect, there was understanding. A simple mechanical system. Looking forward to the post 1905 experiments.
If you have read any of STR you are ahead of 95% of the population. As Einstein quipped maybe '12 people on the planet' understood STR. That was the whole point to 'save the phenomena'. Blind them with maths. If you can fix a car you are more intelligent than the rest of us including Einstein. That is something real and practical, STR is not. Kant heavily inlfuenced Mach who was maybe the greatest 'teacher' of Einstein and Kant's philosophy is bascially there is no reality. This leads to STR and to women are now men. Sussex - same county as ourselves - a blessed place, some sanity still reigns here. Unlike London.
Author’s note: I don’t have a bias in this domain or associated arguments. I am Socratic in that I believe you follow evidence and then decide what makes sense. This Socratic principle is absent in science, hence ‘Scientism’. Exactly, agreed. For humble me, all human knowledge is contingent and heuristic and we should always be ready to to update it in the light of new evidence or experience. I can think of very few examples of anything I think is actually true. Given this state of affairs it is surely best to see knowledge as a form of "best practice'' and base its value upon its utility. And all this is why I prefer philosophy to science as no good philosopher will be so presumptuous as to claim absolute truth. I liked your account of the trial of Galileo where you stressed that the court had an excellent point and that he was stubborn and intransigent. Durant makes similar points in his essay on Galileo (on YT). All Galileo had to do - according to Durant - was accept his view was hypothetical. So who here was actually claiming infallibility? And in addition to the above - perhaps a simple review of what we think is true and why and what we have been told but have no experimental evidence for. Do we think the earth revolves? Do we think the moon orbits the earth? Do we think the earth and sun move around each other? Do we think the earth and sun and planets move through the universe? Just what exactly do we think we know?
Totally agree and these are all very good questions. I honestly don't know the answers. I just accepted heliocentricity. One day after a run outside I sat and thought, 'can I really prove to myself that I just ran on a spinning, moving sphere?' It didn't make a lot of sense, that I just had a canter on a spinning ball moving at 30 km/sec, a speed that I can't comprehend. But I knew it was true, I was told it true. But I can't find the mechanical proofs. This was Einstein's whole charade - he admitted we can never mechanically prove heliocentricity. It was a thought experiment, but if I look at Brahe and Ptolemy, I don't see why 'they are wrong'. They save the phenomena just as well and explain the actual measurements much better. In general I don't think we know that much about our universe, though the establishment confidently delcares that we know everything.
I was thinking about this today - what do I really know to be true about anything? - well..............I know that I know virtually nothing and what I do know or think I know is only contingent and more or less useful in the moment in the context of a certain time or place. If I were sitting on an asteroid in space light years from any star what could I possibly know? What is called these days "science" is a lot of arrogant bumkum in the main and what it is used to justified is crime and fraud in the main. I have tried to steer our children away from science and I myself am not a fan - I liked it better when it was called "natural philosophy". I would like to see universities get rid of science departments and spend more on arts, languages, philosophy, history, law. I repeat that I dream of living in a society entirely free from science and its horrible technological progeny. Science has done far more harm than good.
Yes, science as depicted by many great writers - Orwell, Huxley, C.S Lewis - becomes all too easily the 'lights of perverted science' to quote Churchill. The history of science is littered with wrong turns. To the modern mind, trained in science propaganda, it is inconceivable that the abstraction called 'science' could ever be wrong, or take a wrong turn. The expectation is that 'science' is always right, benign and positive if not perfect. Historically there is no proof of this and in the modern world, we can see where the perversion of reality can be used to completely contradict reality and common sense - all in the name of 'science'. As you said, much of it is now arrogant bunkum, built on hocus pocus, maths and models. Money and power, not truth or curiousity, seems to be the mainspring of 'science'.
Excellent - one of your best so far and looking forward to part two.
Thanks David. The more you dive into this topic, the more interesting and convoluted it gets. As Einstein admitted, 'I consider myself more of a philosopher, than a scientist'. Indeed.
He makes a good point. I always thought his gloomy reaction to super star status was a function of that. I studied philosophy as a young man and not "hard" science as even by then I did not think that science led to truth. As I mentioned earlier, for me, science can be a useful heuristic in a very limited domain most often associated with numerical or mechanical or geometric systems but it is hopeless at explaining the complexity of life and death. As a philosopher I am inclined to think that nothing is necessarily "true" and all human knowledge is contingent and only ever approximate. This was well understood by the best thinkers of classical civilization and many others and still is by many but the propaganda machine behind so called established science has led us into a worse situation now than obtained in the time of the dominance of the infallible Catholic church. The recent covid 19 mass poisoning lunacy might stand as the best example not of the infallibility of science but in fact the exact and particular opposite. Thanks for the post. I was not aware of the lack of experimental verification of the earth's actual movement but I am not one bit surprised - great examples and quotes.
Most education is a form of philosophy and in science, very much dogma. Not a single teacher or prof promoting STR for eg. understands it. If you raised your hand and asked, 'can you show me physical proof', you will be met with more maths and angry hand-waving that everyone knows it is proven. Whether or not heliocentricity as a philosophy makes sense is dependent on the data. The Science, as they do with everything, twist the failures which cannot confirm the Earth's motion, to somehow supporting the same. It is rather incredible but that is how bold they are. Anything to save the phenomena. In the next post we will look at the dozens of experiments after 1905 which again show no movement. And how many people know this? Einstein said many times, if Michelson-Morley's negative result is valid, STR is dead and heliocentricity would be unproven.
Fascinating. I have never been able to make any sense of STR and always put that down to my own ignorance. But I always recall a day in the library years ago at Sussex when I asked myself weather I did not understand what I was reading because I was ignorant or because it was meaningless (Derrida I think). At the time I used to fix my friend's old motor cars and noticed that in this domain there was meaning, there was cause and effect, there was understanding. A simple mechanical system. Looking forward to the post 1905 experiments.
If you have read any of STR you are ahead of 95% of the population. As Einstein quipped maybe '12 people on the planet' understood STR. That was the whole point to 'save the phenomena'. Blind them with maths. If you can fix a car you are more intelligent than the rest of us including Einstein. That is something real and practical, STR is not. Kant heavily inlfuenced Mach who was maybe the greatest 'teacher' of Einstein and Kant's philosophy is bascially there is no reality. This leads to STR and to women are now men. Sussex - same county as ourselves - a blessed place, some sanity still reigns here. Unlike London.