Philosophy Now Forum

Walker wrote: ↑Mon Jan 29, 2024 11:59 pm
You sound sympatico with Jiddu Krishnamurti on some of the bigger topics. I'll post a link where there might be an interest.

I don't think I know him, but I don't usually have much in common with people who have names like that. Please post the link.

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Tue Jan 30, 2024 12:36 am Give him tangible guidance on the Meaning of the Frog,

In wasn't planning on getting into anything too heavy, actually.

Frog-meaning is pretty light. Now salamander-meaning — that’s another kettle of amphibians (especially the species believed in Medieval times to live in fire )

Harbal wrote: ↑Tue Jan 30, 2024 12:42 am

Walker wrote: ↑Mon Jan 29, 2024 11:59 pm
You sound sympatico with Jiddu Krishnamurti on some of the bigger topics. I'll post a link where there might be an interest.

I don't think I know him, but I don't usually have much in common with people who have names like that. Please post the link.

Does God exist? | J. Krishnamurti
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tYjYL448-yY

His point is subtle, and follows after his direct answer.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Wed Jan 24, 2024 5:02 pm

Will Bouwman wrote: ↑Wed Jan 24, 2024 10:52 amThere have always been thinkers who have understood that science is putting the world into a human context.

Well, that manifestly isn't really possible, since science, understood as the scientific method, didn't exist until Bacon.

It’s just a name but okie dokie: There have always been thinkers who have understood that methodical study of phenomena is putting the world into a human context.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Wed Jan 24, 2024 5:02 pmIt was only with the rise of science that people even began to conceive of a methodology that might be purified of the human element. Before that, it was just understood that all methods were human methods.

It was only with the rise of Bacon that anyone bothered to write it down. You would have to be a complete idiot to think that nobody was studying the world methodically before Bacon. Perhaps you haven’t heard of Archimedes, Eratosthenes, Hippocrates to name a few, but you have certainly heard of Ibn al-Haytham, because I have brought him up several times recently. Perhaps you don’t realise that even Christians use Arabic numerals, which are originally Indian. Perhaps you haven’t heard that algebra, algorithms, and alcohol; in fact pretty much every ‘scientific’ term we use that begins with al and many that don’t, is Arabic in origin. Perhaps you don’t know that most names of stars are also Arabic in origin. It is possible that you didn’t know any of the above; well now you do.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Mon Jan 22, 2024 4:07 pmPolanyi's point is that you never really do "escape" your role as a human investigator. You always bring, along with your methods, your own disposition and interests. Along with that, things like bias can come, to be sure, especially if the investigator is not humble and alert to their possibility.

I'm sure you are humble and alert, so how do you incorporate the above information into your belief that science is an offshoot of Christianity?

And another thing:

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Sat Jan 27, 2024 11:44 pm

Harbal wrote: ↑Sat Jan 27, 2024 11:11 pmWe both know there is a theory that I find infinitely more acceptable than yours,...

Great. What is it? How did it work, since you doubt the existence of any original mating pair?

Was there an original mating pair of palominos?

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Mon Jan 22, 2024 4:07 pmA good definition will include precisely the characteristics that make a palomino a palomino, and eliminate all the other possible confusions with other types of horse.

Will Bouwman wrote: ↑Tue Jan 30, 2024 11:45 am And another thing:

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Sat Jan 27, 2024 11:44 pm

Harbal wrote: ↑Sat Jan 27, 2024 11:11 pmWe both know there is a theory that I find infinitely more acceptable than yours,...

Great. What is it? How did it work, since you doubt the existence of any original mating pair?

Was there an original mating pair of palominos?

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Mon Jan 22, 2024 4:07 pmA good definition will include precisely the characteristics that make a palomino a palomino, and eliminate all the other possible confusions with other types of horse.

What there an original mating pair of LUCA(s) - last universal common ancestor(s) ?

Will Bouwman wrote: ↑Tue Jan 30, 2024 11:37 am It’s just a name but okie dokie: There have always been thinkers who have understood that methodical study of phenomena is putting the world into a human context.

Talk about banal trivialities.

Can you point me to any thinkers who have attempted to move the discourse beyond human context?

Skepdick wrote: ↑Tue Jan 30, 2024 12:10 pmWhat there an original mating pair of LUCA(s) - last universal common ancestor(s) ?

Dunno Skepdick; whaddya reckon?

Skepdick wrote: ↑Tue Jan 30, 2024 12:14 pm

Will Bouwman wrote: ↑Tue Jan 30, 2024 11:37 am It’s just a name but okie dokie: There have always been thinkers who have understood that methodical study of phenomena is putting the world into a human context.

Talk about banal trivialities.

That's what we do here.

Skepdick wrote: ↑Tue Jan 30, 2024 12:14 pmCan you point me to any thinkers who have attempted to move the discourse beyond human context?

Immanuel Can.

Will Bouwman wrote: ↑Tue Jan 30, 2024 2:08 pm

Skepdick wrote: ↑Tue Jan 30, 2024 12:14 pm

Will Bouwman wrote: ↑Tue Jan 30, 2024 11:37 am It’s just a name but okie dokie: There have always been thinkers who have understood that methodical study of phenomena is putting the world into a human context.

Talk about banal trivialities.

That's what we do here.

Skepdick wrote: ↑Tue Jan 30, 2024 12:14 pmCan you point me to any thinkers who have attempted to move the discourse beyond human context?

Immanuel Can.

From where I'm looking he's moving the discourse towards a deity.

Most humans can relate to deities in their own image much better than they can relate to physics equations.

Will Bouwman wrote: ↑Tue Jan 30, 2024 1:59 pm

Skepdick wrote: ↑Tue Jan 30, 2024 12:10 pmWhat there an original mating pair of LUCA(s) - last universal common ancestor(s) ?

Dunno Skepdick; whaddya reckon?

I recon a single-ancestor Evolution is rather incestuous.

Will Bouwman wrote: ↑Tue Jan 30, 2024 11:37 am

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Wed Jan 24, 2024 5:02 pm

Will Bouwman wrote: ↑Wed Jan 24, 2024 10:52 amThere have always been thinkers who have understood that science is putting the world into a human context.

Well, that manifestly isn't really possible, since science, understood as the scientific method, didn't exist until Bacon.

It’s just a name but okie dokie: There have always been thinkers who have understood that methodical study of phenomena is putting the world into a human context.

But not in any systematic or disciplined way.

Ancient China, for example, had plenty of 'technologies,' and inventions, but no science. The same could be said of the Greeks and Romans: they invented plenty of things, but not as a result of a coherent commitment to the rationality of reality, or under the discipline of the scientific method; they worked things out on a practical or an ad hoc basis, and often were very successful in a limited way. But they had no scientific worldview, and no way of connecting success in one technology to further principles and possiblities in others in such a way as to eliminate superstition, tradition, guess-making, quackery, and so on... of which they also had plenty.

You would have to be a complete idiot to think that nobody was studying the world methodically before Bacon.

It depends what one means by "studying the world." Of course people thought about the world, and tried to work things out in the world. But there was no systematization or discipline to it. Whatever worked, worked. Whatever seemed to work, also was assumed to work. Whatever had been apparently done in the past also was thought to work...and so on.

Science isn't just "studying the world," in that sense. It's the systematization of the study of the world, under the assumption (which is not given beforehand, of course) that the world is a rational place governed by laws; and this assumption derives from Theism: a singular, law-like God would have a rationally-understandable creation, one would suppose. And this is why polytheistic cultures never developed science: when you have multiple, idiosyncratic "gods," there's never any telling what they're going to do, and because there is no single creator of the world or ruler of it, there's no reason to anticipate there would be any laws to find or rules to follow.

(That, by the way, as an explanation is not original with me. It's called "Whitehead's Hypothesis," after A.N. Whitehead, the philosopher of science of the early part of the last century. I just happen to think he was correct.)

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Mon Jan 22, 2024 4:07 pmPolanyi's point is that you never really do "escape" your role as a human investigator. You always bring, along with your methods, your own disposition and interests. Along with that, things like bias can come, to be sure, especially if the investigator is not humble and alert to their possibility.

I'm sure you are humble and alert, so how do you incorporate the above information into your belief that science is an offshoot of Christianity?

Well, I know the history. Verifiably, it is. Not just Bacon, who was a Christian working from Christian suppositions, and invented the very method itself, but many major scientists -- even today -- have been Christians, working under the same sorts of assumptions. To go back to Archemedes et al. is to go back too early: they neither understood "science" as referring to a systematic discipline, nor did they use any such methodology. What successes they had were purely technical...and good on them, for that...but it wasn't until the emergence of real science, in the Christian West, that things like the Technological Revolution really took off. And it's not coincidence, says Whitehead.

In fact, if you know the history of pre-science or technology, particularly prior to the 19th Century, you will know that practically every single person working in the pre-scientific kinds of areas was also a clergyman. It was only people like them who even had sufficient education to do anything "scientific." So science and Christianity have some common history...there can be no reasonable doubt of that.

Will Bouwman wrote: ↑Tue Jan 30, 2024 11:45 am Was there an original mating pair of palominos?

There would have had to have been an original mating pair of horses. "Palamino" is really a colour, more than a special genus of being. Intra-species variation is very common: consider, for example, that all canines are interfertile. They're all the same species, despite their variations in colour, size, shape, bone structure, and so on.

And that's an interesting thing: Darwin's title promises us "The Origin of Species." Not "The Origin of Variations Within a Species." What "species" means is not merely variations within a set group of the same kind of individuals, but rather an actually-different type of individuals. So, for example, intra-species variation means only black dogs and white dogs; but inter-species transformation means dogs becoming cats, or goldfish, or human beings...different types, not genetically compatible already.

And yet, all Darwin really observed was the intra-species, and none of the inter-secies variation. His famous finches, for example, were one species, but with beak-variations. He didn't see a Galapagos tortoise or a myna bird become a finch. He didn't even see a short-beaked finch become a longer-beaked one. He never saw any "species" change at all. And yet, he promises to explain to us "the origin" of "species" itself.

But theologically, all this is moot anyway. It would make no theological hay if horses had "evolved" to be what they are, and wouldn't make any Biblical problems if God had chosen to do things that way. The only important case is the origin of human beings, theologically speaking.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Tue Jan 30, 2024 3:50 pm
Well, I know the history. Verifiably, it is. Not just Bacon, who was a Christian working from Christian suppositions, and invented the very method itself, but many major scientists -- even today -- have been Christians, working under the same sorts of assumptions. To go back to Archemedes et al. is to go back too early: they neither understood "science" as referring to a systematic discipline, nor did they use any such methodology. What successes they had were purely technical...and good on them, for that...but it wasn't until the emergence of real science, in the Christian West, that things like the Technological Revolution really took off. And it's not coincidence, says Whitehead.

In fact, if you know the history of pre-science or technology, particularly prior to the 19th Century, you will know that practically every single person working in the pre-scientific kinds of areas was also a clergyman. It was only people like them who even had sufficient education to do anything "scientific." So science and Christianity have some common history...there can be no reasonable doubt of that.

So what relevance does Christianity have to the way science is conducted now?