CYMM wrote:
> Hi extropians,
>
> A lot of "scientific" sorts base their outlook on a nineteenth century
> conceptual Universe.
>
> By the late '20s, of this century, Quantum Theory had introduced serious
> grounds for the legitimization of mysticism in physics - and by the time Von
> Neumann & Wigner finished with it, even frank spirituality.
>
Early in the century experiments showed that events at a sufficiently small
scale could not be modeled by classical Newtonian mechanics. Quantum Theory was
developed to present a predictive model of these repeatable, but seemingly
strange results. There is no grounds for mysticism here, although throughout
history, lack of knowledge has been used to justify belief in the supernatural.
Lack of knowledge provides neither support nor refutation. Thomas Jefferson
wrote, "Ignorance is preferable to error, and he is closer to the truth who
believes nothing than he who believes what is wrong."
>
> Parallel with that, Church; Godel; Post & Turing certainly formulated
> rigorous ideas on computability that allowed (...even encouraged, some
> say...) mysticism in our logic & epistemology.
They showed that non provable truths exist *outside* our logic & epistemology,
not inside. The fact that some non provable proposition *could* be true, does
you no good in trying to break the symmetry among all non-falsifiable beliefs.
(A symmetry which is generally broken simply by the existing beliefs of the
family one is born into.)
>
> It is perhaps unscientific (...in a 21st century sense...) to dismiss all
> mystics as Know Nothings.
Certainly some of these folks know a great deal about their beliefs, and it is
scientific to try to use our reasoning to discover why they have these beliefs.
I read the following two paragraphs from _The Meme Machine_ by Susan Blackmore,
to a group discussing this topic at the last Foresight Senior Associates
gathering:
- Like it or not, we are surrounded by religions. The 'Great Faiths' of the
- world have lasted thousands of years and affect our calendars and
- holidays, our education and upbringing, our beliefs and our morality.
- All over the world people spend vast amounts of time and money
- worshipping their gods and building glorious monuments in which to
- do it. We cannot get away from religions, but using memetics we can
- understand how and why they have such power.
- All the great religions of the world began as small-scale cults, usually
- with a charismatic leader, and over the years a few of them spread to take
- in billions of people all across the planet. Imagine just how many small
- cults there must have been in the history of the world. The question is
- why did these few survive to become the great faiths, while the vast
- majority simply died out with the death of their leader or the dispersal of
- their few adherents?
>
> I've known of mystical rabbis with Ph. Ds in theoretical physics and I've
> met vedantic philosophers whose grasp of modern physics was breathtaking.
Good!!
>
> There's a lot of "feel-good" non-reasoning behind some New Age stuff - but
> you can't dismiss the lot unless you've read them or engaged them in
> meaningful dialogue.
>
> I have. Not enough, I'm sure.
Bring it on, we will dialogue meaningfully.
>
> But there's a hell of a lot of orthodox scientific bigotry going on here.
> Natural, to be sure, in a Kuhnian sense... but to be kept in rein - if we
> want to be good extropians.
Scientific skepticism can look like bigotry to those not used to it. That is
not to deny any exists. The way you find out is to present your ideas and
counter the objections with facts and reason.
-Ken
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Mon Oct 02 2000 - 17:36:52 MDT