(1) Can't cite a source as such. It's an impression that's grown in my mind over the course of decades, finding confirmation in multiple souces of info. Already pretty well formed i my youth , when I was taking a big interest in Mathematics and Physics, in a quest to understand the Universe on a fundamental level. Later I drifted towards Psychology, because I felt (and still fel) that the processes of perception and cognition are more fundamental to our understanding of tbe Universe than "objective reality" is. I'm also attracted by the notion that matter may be the creation of mind, rather than vice-versa (though that would be to see "mind" as a sort of universal substance, in accordance with Buddhism, not to suppose that out indivdual minds have much impact on the whole) In any case , our perceptions of the material world (and other people especially ) are certainly a creation of our individual minds, and subject all to kinds of bias and intersting errors.
The scientific method is IMO still, by far, the best way we have of understanding the universe. Of peeling back the layers of reality.
'...
I'm not inclined to disagree with that...
much, especially not in the light of the examples you gave, which displayed a much better understanding of the scientific method than most people have. (At the other extreme, I am heartily sick of people uncritically accepting the conclusions of badly -designed experiments, supported by dubious logic and unfounded assumptions, because that's scientific innit? The really scary thing is that many of those people call themselves "scientists " and have bits of paper to prove it)
I have every respect for proper science, conducted by intelligent and more-ir-less open -minded people. The increasing volume of empirical evidence for all these increasingly "woo" theoies is to our credit as a species, methinks. It shows that we can not only think outside the box (on occasion) but , little-by-little, expand the box . That said, even Einstein found quantum therory too counter-intuitive for his tastes. "God does not play dice" he declared. An interesting declation. Not only does it show that he reached his personal limit as regards expanding the box (no shame on him. We
all have our limits, and out prejudices) ; it also demonstates that the supposed incompatibliity betwen religion and Science is a fiction., founded on low-grade reasoming and bias. Yeah, yeah, I know thaty's just one little bit of anecdotal evidence, but you can find a load more if you look for it. An awful lot of the ground-breaking scientists do profess a belief in God. And why not? A rigourous proof of the non-existence of God so elusive as to be unimaginable...if we honestly apply our reason to the issue.
You're certainly not alone , btw. I read somewhere (I forget where) that no physicist really feels that they "understand" Relativity, not on a gut level . They just can't argue with maths, and the growing weight of empical evidence. I do recall that observation came from a theoretical Physicist , mind, so I should think he had access to the opinions of fair number of the same.
Me, I think that what we accept as "common -sense" is bound to be profoundly influenced by the inconvenient fact that we're three-dimenionsal (or four , if you count time) massive objects (compared to say an electron) living at the bottom of a gravitational well. Even Newton's laws of Motion seem counter-intuitive from that perspective. I should think your average man would find them laughable, if not for the fact that the media have effectively made outer space into a part of our everyday consciousness. Accepting that those Laws are merely an approximation of something (Relativity) that drags even futher outside our everyday experience is , naturally enough , extremely difficult. But that's already to analyse the theory from a
psychological perspective isn't it? which is something I've found myself increasingly fasinated by.
Part of my dissatisfaction with text-book physics was that it indulges in circular definitions and doesn't trouble to define it's axioms, doesn't even seem to notice that it has any axioms , as such. If that's supposed to make sense to the student (and it usually
does make sense to student, much to my consternation ) then, heck, we're training people up to embrace a really shoddy way of thinking. IMO: a way of thinking that could easily allow all kinds of groundless bias to slop through as undisputed facts. That wouldn't happen in Pure Maths, (but then Pure Maths has no need to trouble itself with the nature of "reality") Oh! hang on, that actually
does happen in Pure Maths, at School level, because most syllabi leave the fundamental stuff like Axiomatics to degree level. I was lucky enough to get a bit of sneak preview at 13-14, on account of rhe weirdy syllabus my school had adopted . However, 14-14 is still a biyt too old, IMO, cos most of my peers had lost their mental flexcibilty by then, and found all those new concepts pretty damned daunting, even though the maths wasn pretty simple) and expanded on that preview with private study, with the help of my wonderful Maths Mistress (who actually lent me some of her Uni. texbooks, and didn't care if they totally distracted me from logs) .
Later on , in Physics classes (which i did as a mature student, cos I'd flunked out of Physics pretty early on at school, through stuggling too hard to make sense of all the unsupported assertons. It gets a whole lot easier to understand those concepts at more advanced levels, because the theory is more thoroughly presented) I used to spot all the silly mistakes (and over-simplifications to the point of absurdity) in the textbooks, and not because I'm awsomely intelligent, but just because I was thinking everything through from first principles (as near as was feasible) and not blindlyttaking anybody's word for anything (Well, the exact same reasdon why I flunked out earlier, indeed
But it proved a considerabl;e advantage here). That nobody else, not even the tutor ever spotted said silly mistakes, but just wrote them down as if they were gospel really troubled me.
Yep, I have a bitch with the way kids are educated, you might have noticed? I think it's pretty anazing that somebody can get through all that without losing the requisite flexibility of mind tjhat it takes to be an Einstein. But oh! wait! wasn't Einstein thought to be retarded? Isn't Einstein though t to dave been autisic ? Didn't Einstein stuggle to keop up, like most of us spazzes.? So he had to learn to think for himself. That's what's missing in modern Western Education, by and large. We're mostly educuted to absorb information uncrutically, with a view to getting good grades in the exams. That question "what the fuck are we doing to our children's minds?" eventually became a damn sight more intersting and relevant to me that pondering the Theory of Everything. Well. that's one way to socialise a spazz
Undfortunately, psychological theory is not , oir the most part, amenable to empirical investigation. A lot of it
is, but more of it isn't . We cam't just discard the stuff that isn't , and patiently wait for Science to catch up. We can't because we're social animals, and we;re highly conscious animals; and we're actually applying our own half-baked theories all the time ,as we move about the world inteacting with each other. What's more, we're also applying a bunch of unconscious biases to our inderstanding of scientific research. We can't afford to wait for Science to catch up. And Science is not even gonna have a fair chance to catch up, at that rate
Your average human being is so far deficient in understanding that he thinks it's man's innate intelligence that's responsible for all this "sientific progress" and likes basks in the resplected glory . Ofc it isn't, It;s communication and social organisation, together with occasional flashes of unusual intelligence that's responsible. Nobody needs to re-invent the wheel. or else we'd all be stuck in the stone age.
Another thing that disillusioned me withl Physics (much though it's concepts turned me on) is our utterly stupid misuse of every advance. The first thing the human race thought to do with the equivalence of matter and energy was to ba really terrifying weapon of Mass Destruction., wasn't it? And we've no way of stopping that kind of stupidiy taking overl. If the requisite infrastructure is there, then blind socio-econimic forces will see the job to compltrion, never mind how horror-struck most of us are. I simply don;t beieve that Modern Civilisation can survive unless we somehow develop sufficient psychologiical maturity to enable us predict and prevent such oucomes.
Well, I think it's probably to late to save Modern Civilisation, But at least we can improve our own minds, and improve our relationships with others by shifting the emhasis to psychological development, rather than technological development. That's worth doing. And the best place to start, IMO, is by getting some kind of handle on our own , personal subjective reality. Of
course that won't have much in common with objective reality. The thing is to notice that fact (there are clues all over the place), accept ione's own limitations , and move on , undunted by one's own stupidity, towards an ever-closer approximation to the Truth. Well, actuality that's much the same as the Scientific Method, in spitit, isn't it? The big difference is that the most useful pychological theories (i.e, those that yield satisfactorty results) can't be rigotously "proved" . Psychology is more of an art than a science, but an art that's desperatel;y needed. IMO.
Oh ! and I just
loved the apparent paradox of the double-slit experiment . To my mind, it shows how inadequate our concepts "wave" and "particle" are . I t shows that there's a much more fundamental underlying reality that we are failing to grasp. And now it seems that the underlying "substance" is no substance at all (as we think of it) , just the the endless interplay of a bunch of abtruse mathematical properties. Nothing there at all, in actuality, but a probability wave. Woo! I mean woot! I find that kind of thinking fun (and hey! we might as well have fun )
Well, hope it's evident from the above , that I'm far from being anti-science. More like over-sincere about this "understanding" lark . And pretty damned convinced that turning the lens of our intellects back on ourselves is the only realistic way forward. And that logic is not the only tool, nor even an especially reliable tool, at least not in the hands of our infinirely slippery human brains.
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edit: please excuse all the really gross typos. Am actually trying to fix 'em all, but spotting them in the first place is the trick :S]
