The Need to Start From Scratch

[Blaggard]

For example there is an inscription using mathematical terms carved near a pyramid that shows you how to use force and mass and the slope in question to move an object as related to the amount of men used, given they have a mean strength over all. This is of course the origin of a force diagram in physics, one doesn't need to know the ins and outs of gravity, a lope the friction coefficient, etc, to know how many men it takes to drag a large mass up a slope, one only needs to know the basic parameters and use common sense. That euqation btw is exactly the same as the modern equation of forces in triangularion or force diagrams, it only differs in that the human coefficient is unknown.

Yes, when I was a kid I made a bow and arrow without any knowledge of Newtonian physics. In exactly the same way ancient peoples threw spears great distances by using a woomera. They invented the woomera without any knowledge of the physics that explained leavers. Ancient engineering is not science.

Yeah it is, it's not modern science true, but using experiment to find out how the world works is science, just because no one had a word for it then doesn't mean it somehow is not science, it's ancient or even prehistoric science, it has all the hall marks of science. You're I am afraid talking arse.

Some guy banged two rocks together and it created a spark, that guy might of put it down to something magical, but some guy who was watching might of tried to bang several hundred of those rocks together to see why it produced a spark, and he might of also hence then made a good way of creating fire efficiently. That is science, in a nut shell. People did this long before the word for it came into common use, to say it is not science is dim witted, patronising and just plain wrong, yes as said it is not modern science, but it still has all the principals involved in the process of discovering new and more practical ways of doing things. The dumb semantics in this thread are kinda odd. The definition of science is what?


science
  Use Science in a sentence
science
[sahy-uhns]
noun
1.
a branch of knowledge or study dealing with a body of facts or truths systematically arranged and showing the operation of general laws: the mathematical sciences.
2.
systematic knowledge of the physical or material world gained through observation and experimentation.
3.
any of the branches of natural or physical science.
4.
systematized knowledge in general.
5.
knowledge, as of facts or principles; knowledge gained by systematic study.

Seems like they were doing something the semantics involved seem irrelevant to me. In fact they seem pointless and are merely basically wanking about for the sake of it. Which is fine, but I personally think it seems like a really shit idea to do so, it is meaningless, arbitrary and talking around in circles.

Was there no history before someone coined the word history?

[Ginkgo]

For example there is an inscription using mathematical terms carved near a pyramid that shows you how to use force and mass and the slope in question to move an object as related to the amount of men used, given they have a mean strength over all. This is of course the origin of a force diagram in physics, one doesn't need to know the ins and outs of gravity, a lope the friction coefficient, etc, to know how many men it takes to drag a large mass up a slope, one only needs to know the basic parameters and use common sense. That euqation btw is exactly the same as the modern equation of forces in triangularion or force diagrams, it only differs in that the human coefficient is unknown.

Yes, when I was a kid I made a bow and arrow without any knowledge of Newtonian physics. In exactly the same way ancient peoples threw spears great distances by using a woomera. They invented the woomera without any knowledge of the physics that explained leavers. Ancient engineering is not science.

Yeah it is, it's not modern science true, but using experiment to find out how the world works is science, just because no one had a word for it then doesn't mean it somehow is not science, it's ancient or even prehistoric science, it has all the hall marks of science. You're I am afraid talking arse.

Some guy banged two rocks together and it created a spark, that guy might of put it down to something magical, but some guy who was watching might of tried to bang several hundred of those rocks together to see why it produced a spark, and he might of also hence then made a good way of creating fire efficiently. That is science, in a nut shell. People did this long before the word for it came into common use, to say it is not science is dim witted, patronising and just plain wrong, yes as said it is not modern science, but it still has all the principals involved in the process of discovering new and more practical ways of doing things. The dumb semantics in this thread are kinda odd. The definition of science is what?


science
  Use Science in a sentence
science
[sahy-uhns]
noun
1.
a branch of knowledge or study dealing with a body of facts or truths systematically arranged and showing the operation of general laws: the mathematical sciences.
2.
systematic knowledge of the physical or material world gained through observation and experimentation.
3.
any of the branches of natural or physical science.
4.
systematized knowledge in general.
5.
knowledge, as of facts or principles; knowledge gained by systematic study.

Seems like they were doing something the semantics involved seem irrelevant to me. In fact they seem pointless and are merely basically wanking about for the sake of it. Whic is fine, but I personally think it seems like a really shit idea to do so, it is meaningless, arbitrary and talking around in circles.

I should have continued to put in the proviso "modern" . I did this earlier on, but neglected to do so ever since. I will be careful in the future to avoid semantic confusion.

A clear way of explaining this in terms of your dictionary would be to say that the ancient world prescribed to definition number 2 and 4, but lacked any idea of definition 1 and 2 combined. Is this better?

[Blaggard]

Duly noted but I would take issue with the fact that they did not use all 5 combined, but according to what they knew. But that's by the by suffice to say the Egyptians had a very sophisticated mathematical understanding, for their time, the prehistoric people a less sophisticated one but it's still maths whichever way you want to coat that numerical soldier, 2 eggs and 2 eggs makes four eggs and if you crush all four you have no eggs just a mess, still maths if a little unsophisticated, still bread and butter to the scientist.

Yeah I know, pedantic, but nonetheless true.

[Ginkgo]

Duly noted but I would take issue with the fact that they did not use all 5. But that's by the by suffice to say the Egyptians had a very sophisticated mathematical understanding, for their time, the prehistoric people a less sophisticated one but it's still maths whichever way you want to coat that numerical soldier, 2 eggs and 2 eggs makes four eggs and if you crush all four you have no eggs just a mess, still maths if a little unsophisticated, still bread and butter to the scientist.

Thanks for that correction.

[cladking]

A pre-requisite for "ancient science" would be a means of recording a methodology that explains the science.

Indeed.

From the ancient perspective human knowledge had no feminine progeniture. "Thot" represented this human knowledge. We can think of "thot" as knowledge but the definition to the ancients was pobably somewhat more complex; "he" was the anthropomorphisation of the "phenomenon of the natural advancement in human knowlege" and as seen from the perspective of that advancement. Thot was usually the perspective for things said in the third person. Thot's consort was "seshat" who was the "phenomenon of writing".

Here's the best perspective of human advancement from the ancient perspective;

1271a. If Thot comes in this his evil coming;
1271b. do not open to him thine arms; that which is said to him is his name of "thou hast no mother."

Thot had no mother because they couldn't see their metaphysics from the inside. Their natural language was the mother of thot but this was invisible to them because they couldn't think outside their metaphysics. They may have realized they were a creation of language but they didn't realize that their language was the basis of their science. To them it probably seemed all God's creatures advanced and humans were in the lead. We were winning the race. It was only "natural". Logic and human advancement were as "natural" as math.

[Blaggard]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EoihKUbmM38

A light interlude, yeah don't hate me too much, I was looking for the origin of metal use over flint, by Armstrong and Miller was kinda modern slant on how some new thing comes in replaces the old but meh, but they don't have it- alcohol will do it's after all kept many philosophers sane over the years.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aOtqnc8 ... aIVAcg-l-h

Why fire never really got started for a long time, and why the wheel never really got moving.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XTLyXam ... aIVAcg-l-h

Ah it was Mitchell and Webb got it. Bronze, horrid shiny stuff.



Yeah I know should of put it in the Knight's Tipler thread but meh.

[cladking]

Yes, when I was a kid I made a bow and arrow without any knowledge of Newtonian physics. In exactly the same way ancient peoples threw spears great distances by using a woomera. They invented the woomera without any knowledge of the physics that explained leavers. Ancient engineering is not science.

Yeah it is, it's not modern science true, but using experiment to find out how the world works is science, just because no one had a word for it then doesn't mean it somehow is not science, it's ancient or even prehistoric science, it has all the hall marks of science. You're I am afraid talking arse.
[/quote]

I believe a distinction must be made between knowledge and science. True knowledge is visceral and usually the result of experience and Roman engineers used this sort of knowledge in a void of science to accomplish remarkable feats.

We believe this is similar to how ancient people had their success but I don't believe this is accurate. In point of fact ancient people has a different science. It is the same science that termites used to invent agriculture and air conditioned cities and bees used to invent hives and locate nectar. It is natural science based on natural language. When it was lost the world entered a 3500 year dark ages which was only dispelled when modern science was invented.

[Blaggard]

Yeah you're making a sort of false dichotomy here though, sure we need visceral knowledge and sure it exists, but that's what scientists do too, it's not mutually exclusive, there's no need to divorce science modern from science old in that way. visceral processing skills are alive as much as they were 10000, or 2000 years ago, it's only the information that has changed. These are all the way things can be done, with or without calculus or computers. It's all much of a muchness. The skills involved in creative science are all still there, always have been, and haven't changed over the years. The only thing that has changed is the speed of development, the surfeit of knowledge and thus our ability to keep up with it.

[cladking]

Yeah you're making a sort of false dichotomy here though, sure we need visceral knowledge and sure it exists, but that's what scientists do too, it's not mutually exclusive, there's no need to divorce science modern from science old in that way. visceral processing skills are alive as much as they were 10000, or 2000 years ago, it's only the information that has changed. These are all the way things can be done, with or without calculus or computers. It's all much of a muchness. The skills involved in creative science are all still there, always have been, and haven't changed over the years. The only thing that has changed is the speed of development, the surfeit of knowledge and thus our ability to keep up with it.

I don't disagree but my point is that engineering is possible outside of science. But just because we can't see the science that a beaver used to invent dams or an Egyptian used to invent pyramids doesn't mean they aren't both a product of science; one a product of very simple sience and one a product of very complex science.

[cladking]

Yeah you're making a sort of false dichotomy here though, sure we need visceral knowledge and sure it exists, but that's what scientists do too, it's not mutually exclusive, there's no need to divorce science modern from science old in that way. visceral processing skills are alive as much as they were 10000, or 2000 years ago, it's only the information that has changed. These are all the way things can be done, with or without calculus or computers. It's all much of a muchness. The skills involved in creative science are all still there, always have been, and haven't changed over the years. The only thing that has changed is the speed of development, the surfeit of knowledge and thus our ability to keep up with it.

Engineering without science is usually based largely on visceral knowledge, math, and common sense in some combination. One can use knowledge to create systems and structures without a formalized means of acquiring knowledge; science. This is hardly uncommon even today.

But there appears to exist a natural science that is inate to every species. This science is based primarily on how the brain is hardwired and reflects and incorporates any language the species has. The natural human science collapsed at the tower of babel because language became overly complex.

[Blaggard]

Yeah you're making a sort of false dichotomy here though, sure we need visceral knowledge and sure it exists, but that's what scientists do too, it's not mutually exclusive, there's no need to divorce science modern from science old in that way. visceral processing skills are alive as much as they were 10000, or 2000 years ago, it's only the information that has changed. These are all the way things can be done, with or without calculus or computers. It's all much of a muchness. The skills involved in creative science are all still there, always have been, and haven't changed over the years. The only thing that has changed is the speed of development, the surfeit of knowledge and thus our ability to keep up with it.

I don't disagree but my point is that engineering is possible outside of science. But just because we can't see the science that a beaver used to invent dams or an Egyptian used to invent pyramids doesn't mean they aren't both a product of science; one a product of very simple sience and one a product of very complex science.

That seems fairly obvious so ok I agree. Animals using science well that would take more convincing but I take your point.

[cladking]

That seems fairly obvious so ok I agree. Animals using science well that would take more convincing but I take your point.

Right now I have no real evidence outside of logic and the simplicity of the explanation.

Other than scale there's really little difference between a beaver dam and the Hoover Dam. It seems unlikely, possible but unlikely, that beavers used trial and error or successive approximations to build their first dam. It just seems more plausible that beavers were an aquatic animal and one observed that debris in a waterway would obstruct warter flow and create a lake conducive to beavers. He simply extrapolated this and utilized his ability to fell trees to create it on his own. This worked well so it spread among the species. It has become so inate that it is for practical purposes, instinctive. But, how could the original behavior have been instinctive? The egg must precede the chicken and a beaver like animal that doesn't build dams must precede the beaver.

[the Hessian]

That seems fairly obvious so ok I agree. Animals using science well that would take more convincing but I take your point.

Right now I have no real evidence outside of logic and the simplicity of the explanation.

Other than scale there's really little difference between a beaver dam and the Hoover Dam. It seems unlikely, possible but unlikely, that beavers used trial and error or successive approximations to build their first dam. It just seems more plausible that beavers were an aquatic animal and one observed that debris in a waterway would obstruct warter flow and create a lake conducive to beavers. He simply extrapolated this and utilized his ability to fell trees to create it on his own. This worked well so it spread among the species. It has become so inate that it is for practical purposes, instinctive. But, how could the original behavior have been instinctive? The egg must precede the chicken and a beaver like animal that doesn't build dams must precede the beaver.

Beavers are curious creatures, for sure. Weird, though, that in your conception, the ability to fell trees developed in an aquatic animal before such a skill had any conceivable purpose. And that what got passed down the evolutionary chain was not Beaver 1's ability to extrapolate, but rather a single, specific, real-world application of that ability in the form of dam-building. I doubt that the builders of the Hoover Dam desceneded from a long lineage of dam builders....

[Blaggard]

That seems fairly obvious so ok I agree. Animals using science well that would take more convincing but I take your point.

Right now I have no real evidence outside of logic and the simplicity of the explanation.

Other than scale there's really little difference between a beaver dam and the Hoover Dam. It seems unlikely, possible but unlikely, that beavers used trial and error or successive approximations to build their first dam. It just seems more plausible that beavers were an aquatic animal and one observed that debris in a waterway would obstruct warter flow and create a lake conducive to beavers. He simply extrapolated this and utilized his ability to fell trees to create it on his own. This worked well so it spread among the species. It has become so inate that it is for practical purposes, instinctive. But, how could the original behavior have been instinctive? The egg must precede the chicken and a beaver like animal that doesn't build dams must precede the beaver.

Beavers are curious creatures, for sure. Weird, though, that in your conception, the ability to fell trees developed in an aquatic animal before such a skill had any conceivable purpose. And that what got passed down the evolutionary chain was not Beaver 1's ability to extrapolate, but rather a single, specific, real-world application of that ability in the form of dam-building. I doubt that the builders of the Hoover Dam desceneded from a long lineage of dam builders....

hmm you are both muddying Beaver evolution with human evolution, always a tricky thing to do and something Darwin was reiticent to do absolutely, although he did try and do so in later works; and I know we're all animals but one has to take account of humans ability to relate information in non genetic terms. You can't just use evolution amongst animals and societal evolution aside each other like that, they are contingent on more variables so you have to be more precise about how you use your terminology in human evolution: you certainly can't compare the two with a broad brush, without some caveats.

The Engineer who built the Hoover Dam grew up learned engineering, and then applied it, the same cannot be said for Beavers in whatever time period, although they may have had some instinctual basis for their skill in constructing dams.

[the Hessian]

The Engineer who built the Hoover Dam grew up learned engineering, and then applied it, the same cannot be said for Beavers in whatever time period, although they may have had some instinctual basis for their skill in constructing dams.

I think we are saying the same thing? I was just being a bit too facetious?

For whatever reason, I was having trouble digesting the claim that beavers "use" science. Seems to me that if the beaver building a dam becomes an exampel of using science, then the term pretty much loses all meaning. A bird uses science when it flies, a cow uses science when it digests its cud, a worm uses science when it burrows through the ground. We can use science to explain how those things work, but is doing those things actually using science?