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Jan
Mountain climber
Okinawa, Japan
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Speaking of exciting finds, the July issue of National Geographic has a great article on Ardi and all the other great fossil finds of the last 50 years from Ethiopia.
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Jan
Mountain climber
Okinawa, Japan
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Which is why my earlier post alluded to "believing in" evolution in one sense (as factual) and not believing in it in another sense (as a life-empowering strategy for living). -Which no one really addressed
I think no one commented because we couldn't figure out what exactly you're getting at here?
Care to elaborate?
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jstan
climber
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Jan:
I was on that one right away. Look upthread.
Werner has just indicated he is an experimentalist at heart. That discussion arises among physical scientists also. There it appears as,
The only person who thinks a theory to be the correct one, is the theorist who conceived it.
The only person who thinks experimental data is incorrect is the person who took the data.
Ignorance
I once told an engineer just out of college her problem was simply that she was ignorant. i got a reaction, which was exactly what I was after.
I said," It's a word. Look it up in the dictionary. Ignorance is the state of not knowing. Do you know everything?" She allowed as she did not.
I said, "Now you are getting it. Ignorance is our stock in trade. We have always to keep in mind we are ignorant. getting out of some of the ignorance is our goal."
I might have said, "If we do not keep upper most in our mind that we are ignorant
we will act stupidly."
I did not dare go that far but..............it's true.
It is also true that far too few people realize this.
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Jan
Mountain climber
Okinawa, Japan
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The only person who thinks a theory to be the correct one, is the theorist who conceived it.
The only person who thinks experimental data is incorrect is the person who took the data.
jstan-
So true! When I worked as an applied anthropologist for a Swiss aid project in Nepal, they always felt my statistics were fact and my case histories were opinion. Of course the numbers came out of interviews and questionaires, themselves subjective.
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jstan
climber
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jan:
Check again. That was a placeholder you saw.
More.
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WBraun
climber
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Werner has just indicated he is an experimentalist at heart.
Trying to paint a picture that's completely false will be your own undoing.
Trying to put your thoughts into someone else will be your own undoing.
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pa
climber
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A question for the scientists:
What IS matter?
A definition , please.
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
Full Silos of Iowa
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Pa wrote-
"What IS matter?" It is structured energy. In the human experience, it is "structured energy" rendered sensable (e.g., touchable, visible, even colored) by the brain-mind's sensory systems.
In different terms, What are atoms? ANS Structured energy (at a micro-size relative to sizes humans are most familiarized with).
Jan wrote-
I think no one commented because we couldn't figure out what exactly you're getting at here?
Care to elaborate?
0kay, I have a family member, for example, who believes in evolution (according to science, as the way the world truly unfolded) but rejects it because the worldview it creates is so disempowering (e.g., leading to existential depression) relative to the traditional account.
So we have in him at once (a) an evolutionist (believer in evolution as a fact) and (b) an anti-evolutionist (a non-believer in evolution who doesn't want it taught since it's not as appealing and motivating as a comprehensive worldview as. for eg, the Abrahamic narrative).
In different terms, he thinks evolution is a fact (an accurate description of "what is") but thinks it's a dispiriting if not an ultimately dangerous fact.
He'd say, Sure, some people like Carl Sagan and Richard Dawkins adapt to the "evolutionary model" for how the world works just fine, but they aren't the majority of humans. The majority of humans, in other words, ordinary people like Grandma, won't ever be so compelled (either by science or nature investigation) as Dawkins or Sagan so they need a more simplified model (myth or narrative) to get on in life, esp day to day.
So a related issue: How do we deal with these guys? Do we join em? Do we argue with them? What? Do we declare we should support the truth (in regard to how the world works) no matter how hard or sharp its edges in all circumstances? What if the truth of evolution disillusions Grandma? what if it hurts Grandma? Are there not sometimes "bigger concerns" in the course of living than "just" the truth?
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jstan
climber
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HFCS:
Evolution has nothing to do with the problem. It is just one symptom of something larger. Work on the problem. Not the symptom.
Edit.
A question for the scientists:
What IS matter?
A definition , please.
Can't you come up with an easier question? This is actually hard. Indeed at the most fundamental level we don't yet know. That's the answer. But we do know quite a bit.
In Isaac Newton's day matter's primary characteristic was thought to be that of occupying space. You try to push one piece of matter into another piece and it gets really difficult. The pieces resist.
Then we found something you hold in your hand actually consists of an immense number of very little pieces of something that sit there and wiggle. The amount of wiggling depends upon the temperature. That's about where Einstein first got into the fray. (He has been back a number of times.)
For a long time we also took conservation of energy, angular momentum, and momentum as important things predicting what matter will do. Left alone matter will tend to go in a "straight" line. Apply a force and both momentum and energy will change in a calculatible way. But the truth is since two pieces of matter feel a mutual force of attraction coming from who knows what source, not too many things travel in perfectly straight lines.
Then Einstein( once more) came along and said you get too much matter and straight lines aren't even what you think they are because space itself gets bent. I won't even bring up the fact that you can completely convert matter into energy, in a flash under the right conditions. So I did not tell you about that.
Now we have people working under a mountain in Switzerland accelerating protons around a circular track( operated very close to zero absolute temperature) and 27 kilometers in circumference up to energies of many teraelectron volts. i won't quote the number because hit men will come for me if I get it wrong. And....And mind you they even have two protons traveling in opposite directions colliding. That's how they get the center of mass energy up.
(So that you might know a little more. Frank Sacherer who is prominently featured in climbing guides to Yosemite did a large chunk of the work permitting this accelerator actually to hit that at which it is aimed.)
Here's a photo of a device they use to see what happens after a collision.
Look at the human sized equipment way down at the bottom. This is just the detector!
What's it all for? Calculations have led people to hope we will see a piece of matter
never before seen.
So there's your answer.
We know a lot.
We don't know everything.
But it surely is exciting!
HFCS
is a wiseass.
I'll fix his wagon.( Some day ask me for the history on this saying.)
I'll give HFCS the answer I once got after doing a system install on a computer while leaving off the help files; and then asking for help.
"No help is available."
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
Full Silos of Iowa
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What does that mean, tho? I don't understand. More input please.
EDIT This post was in response to your first couple of sentences responding to my post. Then you added a lot more. Oh, well.
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pa
climber
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(Matter) is structured energy rendered sensable (eg. visible, touchable) by the brain-mind sensory systems.
So, whether it is matter or not-matter, depends on whether it is sensable?
On how sensitive the sensory system is?
Does it imply that, in the energy-matter continuum, what we call material and what we call insubstantial, depend on the receiver, the ability to sense?
In Chinese medicine, Qi is defined as:
"Matter on the verge of becoming energy,
or
Energy at the point of materializing".
"The Web That Has No Weaver" is a delicate introduction to the premises of acupuncture. Worth a look. The title itself beckons.
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Karl Baba
Trad climber
Yosemite, Ca
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Locker wrote:
A couple nights back I was trying to sleep and couldn't get the idea of DEATH to leave my mind...
I KNOW it LOOMS somewhere NEAR...
I got in a slight PANIC over the thought and FEAR set in causing me to fall into a short state of situational depression...
I CAN understand WHY so many people WISH there was SOMETHING ELSE out there...
What I CAN'T understand is WHY anyone here would WANT to TAKE that DREAM away from people...
I WISH I could find some COMFORT in such a thought...
"WUD"n't it be NICE to ACTUALLY...
BELIEVE...
Sort of BEATS the idea of ROTTING...
Funny thing is, in Asian countries, where they believe in reincarnation, that idea scares them too. Having to learn language all over again, be a helpless kid and go through the whole stressful life process and then die again....They don't like that idea so much.
Great definition of Qi above. Energy and matter is a spectrum. The inbetween places are where "Magic" happens. (sort of like why meditators focus on the breath, this is the function that bridges our voluntary and autonomous consciousness)
Peace
Karl
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Jstan wrote:
Right now no one has a solid model addessing your question, "Where does everything come from."
You are looking for something that does not yet exist. Don't be frustrated. There has never in history been a better time to be excited and interested.
--
The entire Zen tradition exists on the axiom that they Do know and experientially have realized from where all forms arise. They call it emptiness. Being an unquantifiable non-thing, and a non-it, words are only pointers.
I think what you are referring to is an explanation from the physical sciences that "proves" where all the shite comes from. Not being a physical scientist, I can't at all help out in that most fascinating investigation; but my sense of it is that a strict materialist explanation will never, ever pan out, that the opposite of material - however that might be posited I do not know - will have to be embraced for any of this to really make sense. I suspect that this opposite-of-material will be associated with infinite qualities. You hear people saying there is no such thing as infinity, that the universe is finite, that is was not sourced from "anything," it just happened, that something came from nothing.
What's more, you also hear about mathematical singularities, material theories that predict the rate of change of some quantity becoming infinite or increasing sans limit.
Then you hear people saying that we don't really understand what the two things mean (finite and infinite) - but they do.
I'm all ears...
These are exciting times indeed.
JL
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Jan
Mountain climber
Okinawa, Japan
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Fructose-
Arguing about something is unlikely to get anyone to change their mind, particularly older folks. Your cousin sounds more hopeful. I run into similar issues when I teach freshman physical anthropology.
I address the evolution vs creation debate the first hour of the first 2 1/2 hour class and say its a completely unnecessary battle and that you don't even have to be very open minded to reconcile science and religion. Also I don't care what they believe as long as they get the class facts down on their exams.
I add that the two hangups that believers generally have with evolution concern time and meaning (yes that word again!). The time is easy to resolve when you point out that 7 days and nights is just assumed to be earth revolutions but given the size of the universe, it seems unlikely, if not blasphemous, to say that any God capable of creating it had to do so according to the rotations of our planet, especially since the book of Isaiah says that a thousand days for man is one day for God, recognizing that time depends on the viewer.
The issue of meaning and purpose is harder. I tell them that when we get to the peppered moths to see how natural selection actually works we will see that one color of moths was not nicer or more moral than the other; both got lucky and unlucky at different times, through no fault of their own. Likewise, if you want to discuss human meaning then you need to talk to philosophers and religious people, even psychologists, not biologists and for sure, when you face death, Charles Darwin is not going to be the guy on your mind.
Evolution simply means change over time with the assumption that time generally improves things. We will consider humanity's physical, cultural, social, psychological, and yes spiritual development in the class although we do it by focusing on the physical, including the physical evidence for various religious beliefs over time.When we see how different we live from how our hunting and gathering ancestors have for 99.9% of their time on earth, then we can only wonder that any of us are healthy and sane.
Later on I have a 2 1/2 hour lecture starting with the usual biological principles of natural selection and how humans have altered this process through selective mating over time. We then look at the unity of stratigraphy, embryology (I have lots of large photos of human embryos with gill slits and tails) and DNA. I talk about creating amino acids in the laboratory under the right conditions, and finding amino acids on debris from space. We look at where we are in the solar system and on one arm of our crab nebulus galaxy, how many galaxies there are, how we don't know where we are in space assuming the big bang, and how given all this, the proper attitude should simply be awe and wonder that we're here at all and humility in the face of what we don't know.
I never get anti-evolution arguments in my class and I think it's fair to say that I convert most of them to an evolutionary view. I'm also sure they still go to church afterward, though some have told me they've changed denominations to something more liberal.
Anyway, I'll bet that this would work with your cousin if you engage in a low key talk about it and don't argue. Also don't expect change after one conversation. It takes time for a person to readjust their world view.
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jstan
climber
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John:
People have the capability for saying anything. We say things all the time. But what we DO depends upon the exercise of our judgment. What things should a prudent person allow to guide their judgment? Things that work. Things that are supported by widely separated sources. Things that seem consistent with our daily experience. I have already discussed how any one of these may lead us astray. They don't all agree. Which is the ultimate challenge. It is our decision. We have to own it.
Many years ago when I was already working on a thesis renormalizable field theories were the rage. Mind you I was just an experimentalist and was not into such things. This was also before the standard model. People were making transformations of their equations so as to get rid of the most inconvenient infinities. The day is long gone when we have access to perfectly well behaved closed form expressions. And in the process of transfoming your equations you ultimately end up asking your self what the heck that means is happening in the physical world the equations are supposed to represent. This and other things are what force people to stretch their minds to try and understand how things can be understood. The results are seldom if ever like what we see everyday around us.
Now I was an experimentalist so i have not explained the process well. But it is agonizing and all our assumptions and experience are questioned and torn apart on a daily basis. The end result? Does the calculation work? Or does it not? What we do has to stand not just one test. It has to withstand every conceivable test. Many times and by any observer who cares to question.
When someone talks about dark energy or dark matter no one should go away certain. In this process there is always blood on the tracks. People are struggling to find words adequate to describe things that seem completely implausible, beyond all hope of understanding in an experiential sense, but which keep forcing themselves upon one.
We are talking about ultimate athletics. And it's a floor exercise that has gone on for sixty to eighty years.
But it moves. and it is getting stronger. Day by day.
But who am I? I was an experimentalist. But I was very lucky and got to watch the most exciting era since the day Euclid figured out how actually to prove something. Euclid was able to do what he did only because people decided to pay taxes and keep a storehouse full of grain just down the street.
And just to bring us also down to earth. That it was possible to do what we did was due in substantial measure to the petroleum reserves we found under this continent.
Where ever I am incorrect I expect to be set right.
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Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
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People believe in god because it gives them comfort to do so.
I see it in my mom all the time.
She is 94 and bedridden in a Catholic nursing home.
She has the Mass on TV being replaying in a continuous loop constantly.
She goes to Mass in her wheel chair every day, as she has for the past
75 years.
I love my mom so much, and I am really happy that she does get personal
comfort and a sense of life purpose from her religion.
People who believe do so because it gives their lives meaning, comfort,
and the belief that they will spend eternity with their loved ones.
Nothing wrong with that.
I however, have been an atheist since age five, much to my mom's chagrin.
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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Jul 10, 2010 - 12:18am PT
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John, from my perspective you have such a black / white view built on logic which seems quite a claustrophobic, binding, and exclusive perspective to me.
I'm hoping, though, we can at least agree that somehow meat can express art - and art which is identifiably unique to a particualr piece of meat. If so, and on making an assumption that both universal stuff and independent meat exists, I would suggest it's likely to be more fruitful to talk about the linkage between the two than the origin of either because it's in the linkage that some sort of 'magic' has to occur.
The question again for me is does the new meat find the stuff or does the stuff somehow find new meat? And how, or by what mechanism, can the two work in concert as a symbiotic unit - i.e. how is it that meat can 'host' stuff?
From your strict logic around and definition of materialism I should think you would be arguing rather stridently that meat simply isn't capable of interacting with stuff at all. That you are claiming otherwise seems a bit awkward at best.
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Jul 10, 2010 - 01:11am PT
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Healyje wrote: "From your strict interpretations of materialism I should think you would be arguing rather strongly that meat simply isn't capable of interacting with stuff at all."
I wrote out what I considered to be the deal breakers for materialism: a) all is matter; b) matter sources reality - no exceptions, and anything real can be measured or (in theory) fit into a reliable numerical model; c) all consciousness and spiritual "content" is the direct product of the evolved brain; d) consciousness is a mechanically produced phenomenon with material antecedents; e) the process by which consciousness is "produced" by the brain is temporally, a linear, interconnected chain of events, starting with electro chemical stirring in the "meat" brain and ending with consciousness.
Now I keep hearing the word "strict" and "black and white" and so forth about this definition, but no one has come forth and said where they beg to differ with the above. What materialist is saying that all is NOT matter? What materialist is saying reality is not sourced by material antecendents? What materialist is saying that future events can physically influence the present, in the present? What materialist says that God and all the other baggage is not entirely generated by the meat brain?
Again, I'm all ears. If "it's not so cut and dry as all that," kindly explain where the above definitions are usurped, in what manner they are usurped, and by what process, in material terms, are we talking about.
JL
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Jul 10, 2010 - 01:16am PT
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Dr. F wrote: "They just forgot to tell us what emptiness means, what a "not thing" means"
How many times do I have to write it out for you. You're missing the dual nature of consciousness and of life and existence. There is no yin sans yang. There is no emptiness without form, and no form without emptiness.
In Zen we say: Emptiness is form and form is emptiness - exactly. The two are inseparable.
Materialists say this in not so, matter has no opposite and there there in no emptiness, there in merely form, matter, stuff.
JL
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paul roehl
Boulder climber
california
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Jul 10, 2010 - 01:27am PT
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Ex Nihilo
From nothing comes something, but how?
What is the nothing and how can material generate from it?
Isn't the nothing the venue of magic and miracle and God?
This seems to be the base contention with regard to materialism vs. non materialism.
But let's imagine in the next few weeks an unnamed european super machine smashes particular matter to the point of producing a particle that can both be and not be and that particle by its very nature insists on becoming something when it is nothing and the force for becoming is inherent in the particle itself the nothing that is both something and is not and we call it the God particle.
So what? Really, so what!?
Does such a discovery validate Christianity, Catholicism, Protestantism, Islam, Jainism, Zoroastrianism or any "ity" or "ism" you can name. No, because each of these is only a dogma based on metaphors of human experience as a means of lessening our sense of the pain of existence.
The real mystery may very well be beyond our possible comprehension and so we have two choices: we can choose obedience to religious or mythological instincts that inform us that life is corrupt as a result of human sin, that something is wrong in our world and it needs to be corrected through repentance and denial and proper behavior as dictated by some dogmatic orthodoxy or we can grab hold of the E ticket ride we call life and celebrate every aspect of its joy and horror and realize what we are: nothing less than the very creators of God.
No one wants to destroy somebody else's comfort of belief but neither do they want to become the victim of somebody's belief.
Better a nation lose the comfort of Islam than any woman be stoned for adultery.
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