The Need to Start From Scratch

[cladking]

You must be reading some different science than I am, brother. Perhaps "most modern people" think they know just about everything, but exceptionally few modern scientists would make that claim.

In my experience, it is almost always the unscientific that have a simplified view of things.

In contrast, it isn't hubris, but humility and wonder, that are more likely to come from a view of things as complex, emergent and adaptive. And isn't that really the modern scientific perspective?

Scientists aren't nearly as bad as the average person in thinking we know everything.

Try getting a doctor to admit that he doesn't know half of what there is to know or 1% or a tiny fraction of 1%. In a couple hundred years modern doctors will be seen as little better than witch doctors. Two hundred years ago surgeons didn't wash their hands or instruments before an operation because it was a waste of precious time.

Look around at the world today where 99% of "scientists" believe that humans are causing global warming and this belief is being used inpolitics to make big money by destroying wealth. We dig resources out of the ground and then rebury them in landfills with hardly an intervening step. These are not the actions of people who don't know what they're doing but the actions of people who know everything. Rather than using common sense to address problems we rush headlong as though we know everything.

Sure, the scientific spirit is alive and well but why is it this scientific spirit can't run basic tests and measurements on the great pyramids to answer such basic questions as how they were built. Where is the outrage that we march in lockstep to the cliff edge and can't employ basic science? It's not really so much that scientific spirit has died or has become irrelevant in an age that only military research is funded so much as those few with a true scientific spirit are specialists and know no more about pyramids than I know about metals needed for efficient electric motors. They merely assume that the "scientists" running Egyptology aren't really mystics and have the same scientific spirit.

The very basis, the foundation of modern thought is on very shaky ground and most people don't know. Some can recognize it because they see the cracks in theory and infrastructure. They see the economic tremblors and the greed that drives the modern world.

There is real danger here and there are more threats in the future. There will be some gut wrenching changes coming and if we aren't prepared there is a danger to the continued existence of the species.

[Blaggard]

Far and away the most striking difference between ancient scientists and modern scientists is that ancient scientists were aware they knew almost nothing at all even after 40,000 years of intensive study. Despite the fact we don't really know any more about gracity than they did most modern people believe we know just about everything.

It is this belief in our own omniscience that is our greatest threat to ourselves.

"There are more questions than answers, and the more I find out the less I know."

Some music guy.

Quite.

I've said it before and I'll say it again I don't think beyond pop science - which sets out to be inflamatory just as the press does in less erudite areas - most people on this forum have ever met many scientists; I having met a few hundred and maybe nearing a thousand, take their views with the sodium chloride it deserves, and only a pinch at that. Not that I am saying you have to have met hundreds, but several dozen would be nice before you judge the entire medium.

[Ginkgo]

Far and away the most striking difference between ancient scientists and modern scientists is that ancient scientists were aware they knew almost nothing at all even after 40,000 years of intensive study. Despite the fact we don't really know any more about gracity than they did most modern people believe we know just about everything.

It is this belief in our own omniscience that is our greatest threat to ourselves.

"There are more questions than answers, and the more I find out the less I know."

Some music guy.

Quite.

I've said it before and I'll say it agin I don't think beyond pop science most people on this forum have ever met many scientists, I therefore having met a few hundred, take their views with the sodium chloride it deserves, and only a pinch at that. Not that I am saying you have to have met hundreds, but several dozen would be nice before you judge the entire medium.

Yes, the ancients new very little about gravity because they didn't have science. There was no ancient science in regard to an explanation of gravity. We know know that Aristotle was wrong about gravity. We now know a lot more about gravity today then the ancients could have possibly imagined

[cladking]

Not that I am saying you have to have met hundreds, but several dozen would be nice before you judge the entire medium.

It's a difficult concept but most of the problem with scientists is caused by modern language.

Modern language is simply confused and we all think in some form of modern language. This isn't a huge problem for individuals because we each know what we ourselves mean and because many scientific terms are strictly defined or well defined in context. But, modern language still provides a template of thought that governs what we see and how we see it. We are taught language and how to see the world around us that is not consistent with how nature works. The vast majority of all statements about nature made by both laymen and scientists are incorrect as stated. This goes far beyond mere colloquialisms like "the sun sets at 8:27 tonight". All human actions are based on beliefs and these beliefs spring from language but ancient people didn't have "beliefs" per se. People whose brain are formatted in modern language look at the world and see what they know. Most of us are specialists so an accountant sees something completely different than an electrician or a ditch digger. We see what we expect and we see what we know. Everything else is mostly invisible to us.

The problem with language can be largely overcome by merely recognizing it. We can't see the problem because it doesn't fit in the formatting of our knowledge. We each read the story of babel and assume it is either a fairy tale or that the confusion went away. It's not a fairy tale and the confusion persists. Improvements in language have greatly mitigated the confusion in communication but it still persists. History doesn't start until 1200 years after the invention of writing because the language changed and 40,000 years of science and history were lost almost overnight.

[Blaggard]

You're talking about a subject that by it's nature is esoteric, difficult to grasp and hence tends to be iconoclastic.

There are some people setting out to bring science to the people using language well to explore difficult concepts that often require a lifetime to really get to grips with in any adroit way. Brian Cox, Michio Kaku, Dawkins, Stephen Hawking, there are many but more than those who first spring to mind, but it's translating an obscure often complex language into an easy to understand one that becomes hard. That is the key though, to bring science to people who haven't studied it in depth, it's starting to happen, but there are of course many Luddites who seem to think the endevour is meaningless. Which is of course not a bad thing, that which does not kill science can only make it stronger, and even it if it does, it is but one death after another anyway. And Scientist worth his salt knows that you support a theory you might get funding you might not, you destroy one you get a Nobel prize, or at least tenure...

A lot of pop science though seeks to sensationalise it, which is by no means a bad thing, there is no such thing as bad publicity, but people do tend to take the sensationalism a little more to heart than they perhaps would if they knew the subject at least to a degree level.

[Ginkgo]

Scientists aren't nearly as bad as the average person in thinking we know everything.

But isn't your, "absolute truth" another way of promoting a theory of everything?

[cladking]

Yes, the ancients new very little about gravity because they didn't have science. There was no ancient science in regard to an explanation of gravity. We know know that Aristotle was wrong about gravity. We now know a lot more about gravity today then the ancients could have possibly imagined

Of course they knew about gravity. There's simply no doubt that they did and the average Egyptian employed this knowledge in his speech and his thinking. The proof is weverywhere even if you can't accept the simple fact that they lifted 6 1/2 million tons an average of 150' to build the Great Pyramid. They invented the balance scale which employs gravity in order to determine weights and densities. There was an "Weigher Reckoner" buried right on the Giza Plateau. We simply mistranslate their word for "scientist" as "priest". Their specialists were known as a word we mistranslate as "prophet" because these people used scientific knowledge to predict systems and invent improvements.

It is our mystical understanding of the ancient language which has misled us. Everywhere there is ample evidence of their knowledge and how it was learned. Their closest equivalent to what we call "gravity" was "tefnut" but this concept is a little closer to "weight" than gravity. "Shu" was inertia. They used their understanding of tefnut to develop the vector equations needed to lift the stones to build pyramids. There's not only ample evidence for all this but there was even a standard weight found in one of the air shafts of G1.

Most people now even have trouble conceptualizing a pyramid much less understanding one built by people who think in a wholly alien way to the way we think.

[cladking]

You're talking about a subject that by it's nature is esoteric, difficult to grasp and hence tends to be iconoclastic.

There are some people setting out to bring science to the people using language well to explore difficult concepts that often require a lifetime to really get to grips with in any adroit way. Brian Cox, Michio Kaku, Dawkins, Stephen Hawking, there are many but more than those who first spring to mind, but it's translating an obscure often complex language into an easy to understand one that becomes hard. That is the key though, to bring science to people who haven't studied it in depth, it's starting to happen, but there are of course many Luddites who seem to think the endevour is meaningless. Which is of course not a bad thing, that which does not kill science can only make it stronger, and even it if it does, it is but one death after another anyway. And Scientist worth his salt knows that you support a theory you might get funding you might not, you destroy one you get a Nobel prize, or at least tenure...

A lot of pop science though seeks to sensationalise it, which is by no means a bad thing, there is no such thing as bad publicity, but people do tend to take the sensationalism a little more to heart than they perhaps would if they knew the subject at least to a degree level.

I think we're mostly in agreement but seeing it from different perspectives.

I'm much less of a fan of pop science because I believe it tends to be destructive and reduces faith in the scientific process. My doubts about the scientific process are a different issue and largely outside the scope of this discussion probably.

[Ginkgo]

The problem with language can be largely overcome by merely recognizing it. We can't see the problem because it doesn't fit in the formatting of our knowledge. We each read the story of babel and assume it is either a fairy tale or that the confusion went away. It's not a fairy tale and the confusion persists. Improvements in language have greatly mitigated the confusion in communication but it still persists. History doesn't start until 1200 years after the invention of writing because the language changed and 40,000 years of science and history were lost almost overnight.

I think you mean that recorded history didn't start until 1200years ago. There was no science prior and after recorded history. Science starts in the modern era.

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

[cladking]

Scientists aren't nearly as bad as the average person in thinking we know everything.

But isn't your, "absolute truth" another way of promoting a theory of everything?

Yes and no.

My theory really is a theory of "everything" except it doesn't really break any new ground in any field other than metaphysics/ epistemology and even this is tangental and relatively unimportant. I believe it is critically important because it can provide a better more human perspective to modern people. It can provide a more realistic understanding of nature and science while answering fundamental questions about human nature. It might be able to create a hybrid science that can get us out of the current scientific malaise, or rut, caused by the failure to expand theory the last 80 years. Perhaps trying to teach computers to use modern language is a dead end and they would be more adept at using a metaphysical language. Perhaps we could even communicate with nature (animals).

I believe that if and when this is proven that there will be countless positive effects on beliefs and people and these will automatically translate into positives across the board.

My theory is very much merely a rediscovery and it will take us long time to appreciate just exactly what has been rediscovered. My perspective is just one person's perspective and my understanding will probably prove to have flaws and errors. This is far too big for one person if I'm right.

[Blaggard]

@ Cladking: yeah I think perhaps you might start a new thread where you go into whatever it is you find troubling with science, and as with any subject it's far from perfect but as you say this is not about that so, you would probably just end up muddying the threads original remit.

I know what you mean about language though, it's sometimes a matter of language that defines science, and that language is even amongst the educated, so badly defined and so much of a mish mash that you sometimes think it's all a matter of which particular language you are speaking at any one time, even if that language happens to be English, there's a lot of confusion in terms in science, but I wont digress likewise it would be beyond the remit of this thread.

[Ginkgo]

Yes, the ancients new very little about gravity because they didn't have science. There was no ancient science in regard to an explanation of gravity. We know know that Aristotle was wrong about gravity. We now know a lot more about gravity today then the ancients could have possibly imagined

Of course they knew about gravity. There's simply no doubt that they did and the average Egyptian employed this knowledge in his speech and his thinking. The proof is weverywhere even if you can't accept the simple fact that they lifted 6 1/2 million tons an average of 150' to build the Great Pyramid. They invented the balance scale which employs gravity in order to determine weights and densities. There was an "Weigher Reckoner" buried right on the Giza Plateau. We simply mistranslate their word for "scientist" as "priest". Their specialists were known as a word we mistranslate as "prophet" because these people used scientific knowledge to predict systems and invent improvements.

It is our mystical understanding of the ancient language which has misled us. Everywhere there is ample evidence of their knowledge and how it was learned. Their closest equivalent to what we call "gravity" was "tefnut" but this concept is a little closer to "weight" than gravity. "Shu" was inertia. They used their understanding of tefnut to develop the vector equations needed to lift the stones to build pyramids. There's not only ample evidence for all this but there was even a standard weight found in one of the air shafts of G1.

Most people now even have trouble conceptualizing a pyramid much less understanding one built by people who think in a wholly alien way to the way we think.

I didn't say they didn't know about gravity, I said they didn't have a scientific understanding of gravity. The ancients such as Aristotle had a metaphysical theory of gravity, but that's not a scientific understanding of gravity.

You don't need a scientific understanding of gravity to implement feats of engineering. An engineer in the ancient world was not a scientist.

[cladking]

I think you mean that recorded history didn't start until 1200years ago. There was no science prior and after recorded history. Science starts in the modern era.

We have some idea of what was going on in many places going back to 2000 BC. There are comprehensible written records going back that far. To my knowledge there are no comprehensible writings before this. The largest extent corpus is by far the Pyramid Texts.

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

Indeed.

This is why we never found the science that invented agriculture, cities, and brain surgery. We misunderstood not only the language but the nature of science. Modern science is based on observation and experiment and its metaphysics is exceedingly simple. Ancient science was based on observation and logic and its metaphysics was exceedingly complex; its metaphysics was language itself.

It was complex language that gave birth to the species not intelligence.

[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 or at least the progenitor of a force diagram in physics, one doesn't need to know the ins and outs of gravity, a slope or the maths of trigonometry, sin cos, and tan for example, or 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 equation 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, and the modern equation has the advantage of trigonometry or at least trigonometry as it relates to modern maths. We have to understand that some people built the pyramids, some people did so over time, and they did it using the knowledge they had then, and that knowledge is pretty much simillar in that simple exegesis as it is now.

I'd include the whipping the slaves coefficient, but that would be wrong, as those who built the pyramids were not slaves but paid men.

[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 levers. Ancient engineering is not science.