Transgressing the Boundaries: An Afterword
James Whitehead
A high-flying researcher has been fired from the prestigious Massachusetts
Institute of Technology in Boston for fabricating data. A New Scientist
investigation can, however, reveal that serious doubts are also being
expressed over the accuracy of data published by the same researcher much
earlier in his career.
Luk Van Parijs, 35, was an associate professor of biology at MIT. On
Wednesday, he was sacked by the institute after admitting to fabricating and
falsifying research data in a published scientific paper and several
manuscripts and grant applications.
in amongst others
The Journal of Experimental Medicine
& Immunity
both Peer-reviewed journals
telicalbook
Some people just don't have any values other than
the bank book. I worry most about fabricating data
done so that a company or cabal can profit.
I wonder if this person's false data was towards this goal?
--
Robert Pearson
ParaMind Brainstorming Software http://www.paramind.net
Creative Virtue Press/Telical Books/Regenerative Music
http://www.rspearson.com/
James Whitehead
removed
- Freud's pleasure principle replaces capital -
Q. isnt Freud simply far more po-mo than Marx
"telicalbook" <telic...@aol.com> wrote in message
news:1133328441.6...@g49g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
telicalbook
James Whitehead
what's left is an attempt at something other which is not religion - AKA
psychoanalysis
"telicalbook" <telic...@aol.com> wrote in message
news:1133712953.2...@g47g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
otium
don't want to say geeky, but... maybe I do want to say it.
Freud is definitely a precursor of postmodernism since he destroyed the
notion of a unified "I" which a lot of postmodern reasoning builts
upon.
G*rd*n
But he replaced it with a rather solid, stolid, three-
storied, bourgeois little structure, didn't he?
Ned Ludd
"G*rd*n" <g...@panix.com> wrote in message
news:dn2h0g$qor$1...@reader2.panix.com...
Fragmentation does seem to be the modus operandi of pomo.
Which seems a little old fashioned.
Ned
rhook...@hotmail.com
"Some people just don't have any values other than
the bank book. I worry most about fabricating data
done so that a company or cabal can profit. "
Data falsification is a central strategy in the science project.
Gregor Mendel's paper, Experiments on Plant Hybridization contains
falsifications of data he collected to make the data confirm more
closely to the theory. At the time random statistically analysis is
less formed and the data he collected, which would now be seen as
supporting or not falsifying his conclusions, would then have not been
seen as adequate.
The are serious questions what experiments Newton of Galileo conducted.
A theory can be constructed on entirely falsified data and be a very
good theory, though it is not good for ones career and in publishing
documents consider non-fiction intentional lies can result in
punishments.
In the game of the the scientific project though lying is stupid.
Since the scientific game is one of creating a sequence of actions and
observations that can be repeated as many times as possible presenting
false data is utterly stupid.
But beyond the realm of very strick experimental data it is hard to say
precisly how much data is made up or not made up. In an observational
approach the data is being "made up" by the individual observing it,
and we see time and time again in science that someone makes up what
they want to see.
But there is a deeper level to this referencing to Popper. Theories
are constructed in such a way that they produce implications which can
only prove themselves. Only a new theory can create observations that
can falsify it. For example all for 100 years people read Newton, came
up with tests and the tests passed. Only in the 20th Century could
people come up with theories to show Newton was wrong.
In a way Newton's theory was making up all the data that was collected
to confirm it, since it established a set game of observation and
consequence which was fixed from the start.
G*rd*n
Newton wasn't making up all the data -- he relied on astronomical
and other physical observations made by others before his theory
had been published.
Ned Ludd
> rhook...@hotmail.com:
>> But there is a deeper level to this referencing to Popper. Theories
>> are constructed in such a way that they produce implications which can
>> only prove themselves. Only a new theory can create observations that
>> can falsify it. For example all for 100 years people read Newton, came
>> up with tests and the tests passed. Only in the 20th Century could
>> people come up with theories to show Newton was wrong.
>> In a way Newton's theory was making up all the data that was collected
>> to confirm it, since it established a set game of observation and
>> consequence which was fixed from the start.
>
> Newton wasn't making up all the data -- he relied on astronomical
> and other physical observations made by others before his theory
> had been published.
>
And from this such small difference of eight minutes [of arc] it
is clear why Ptolemy, since he was working with bisection [of the
linear eccentricity], accepted a fixed equant point. ... For
Ptolemy set out that he actually did not get below ten minutes
[of arc], that is a sixth of a degree, in making observations.
To us, on whom Divine benevolence has bestowed the most diligent
of observers, Tycho Brahe, from whose observations this eight-
minute error of Ptolemy's in regard to Mars is deduced, it is
fitting that we accept with grateful minds this gift from God,
and both acknowledge and build upon it...
For if I thought the eight minutes in [ecliptic] longitude were
unimportant, I could make a sufficient correction (by bisecting
the [linear] eccentricity) to the hypothesis found in Chapter 16.
Now, because they could not be disregarded, these eight minutes
alone will lead us along a path to the reform of the whole of
Astronomy, and they are the matter for a great part of this work."
- Johannes Kepler
rhook...@hotmail.com
and other physical observations made by others before his theory
had been published."
The question is what does it mean to "make up" the data. According to
Popper any theory will create implications that can only fail to
falsify it. Only when a new theory came along was it possible to make
observations that disproved Newton. Observations that failed to fit
Newton would be dismissed for one reason or another before Einstien.
For example the orbit of Mercury does not fit Newtons model, so it was
assumed that another planet existed yet to be discovered.
This is a rather modernist approach and a PoMo approach would raise the
question of what is the social construct is that makes "data" and what
is the social construct that is "making up" data.
For example the New England Journal of Medicine has claimed that Vioxx
test data was fudged. The reason was that 2 hear attacks had while on
the medicine were not reported. I would agree that this constituted a
falsification of data, but would the failure to report 2 heart attacks
have fudging if the test was of a new educational method? No, not
likely. But what about a cosmetic, a new form of relaxation, a new
kind of talking therapy for depression, a new kind of shoes. Soon you
will enter an area where the socially defined boundry of what
constitutes fudging in that context becomes vague.
Therefore it is impossible to construct a universal meta-nerrative of
fudging scientific data. Any rule you construct will break down in
some context. It is impossible to conclude everything that happens in
an experiment or study, if you are giving 300 subjects a pain killer
treatment and during the six weeks 4 get a divorce is that important,
what if subjects have children do you include the number of male and
female children, the rates of child birth, the rates of job changing,
how about tendency to download porn, or music, or complain.
In any study an infinite number of things are ignored. Some of these
things might be significant. Ignoring these significant things might
be fudging, that is hiding an effect of the cause you don't want people
to see or hiding a non-effect (I am going rather lose with what a study
actually finds).
But what constitutes fudging is ultimately socially defined.
It is also possible to conduct science with data collection to a great
deal on theories that can never be proven by any data.
For example no general theory of economics can ever be proven because
they are all tautologies. Classical rational agent theory, Marxist
theory, Keynes theories all make assertions about how the economy work
that can claim to hold true no matter what the outcome.
For example there is no test that can be done to disprove Marxism, or
Classical Economics. But researchers in these fields conduct extensive
studies of economic activity despite the fact that their general
theories are entirely beyond this research.
Well I've ranted on enough.
Anton Vredegoor
rhook...@hotmail.com wrote:
> Well I've ranted on enough.
Actually you've probably been too conservative, but it was stil a great
post and I liked it a lot.
In order to have any perception at all there has to be some kind of
receptacle. In this receptor ('sense organ') there has to be some
device that filters out the stuff that's important from the stuff that
is considered noise.
So we can have no perception at all which is not a reinforcement or
extension of the same thing we started out with, what we wanted to see.
For example a frog's eye is preprogrammed to see flylike objects moving
in a specific pattern across its retina, and a frog is virtually blind
for a lot of other phenomena that also produce images.
I could go on about attention being a crucial transportation device
helping us to focus on what reality we end up being in, but that would
probably be scary magical stuff and I'm not prepared to carry that
torch.
Anton
'someone pick it up from here?'
G*rd*n
> > Well I've ranted on enough.
"Anton Vredegoor" <anton.v...@gmail.com>:
Yes, as Uncle Albert said, "It is the theory that tells us
what we can observe." As does the conformation of our physical
bodies. It's a problem that has been noticed before. However,
to say "Newton's theory was making up all the data that was
collected to confirm it, since it established a set game of
observation and consequence which was fixed from the start"
is incorrect for the usual meaning of those words. Or at
least it does not correspond to my experience.
rhook...@hotmail.com
>>receptacle. In this receptor ('sense organ') there has to be some
>>device that filters out the stuff that's important from the stuff that
>>is considered noise.
My work in researching the mind, presently restarting after years of
making money, has concentrated on my theory that the brain is more a
supression device then a stimulation device.
If you take the possible noun verb subject combinations in english you
have billions and billions of combined sentences like sky smells frog
or wind melts God and endless lists of other strings of words that
humans almost never thing, while Ice Cream tastes good and Jesus save
me come up again and again.
Of the vast array of possible things that can be said only perhaps 1%
are things that are said. Therefore learning to speak is 99% learning
what not to say. Thinking is learning to suppress thought more than to
express it.
Another example I used to bring up is the issue of gender in most
European nouns. One can stop a French class to ask why it would make
sense for a language to say certain non-living objects are men and
others are women, and to go in to the theories of gender purpose, but
then it would not be a French class it would be an linguistic class.
Learning to learn is learning to concentrate, which is the focusing in
one a limited stimulus along conventional lines.
rhook...@hotmail.com
>>what we can observe." As does the conformation of our physical
>>bodies. It's a problem that has been noticed before. However,
>>to say "Newton's theory was making up all the data that was
>>collected to confirm it, since it established a set game of
>>observation and consequence which was fixed from the start"
>>is incorrect for the usual meaning of those words. Or at
>>least it does not correspond to my experience.
Well I would say bring it up with Popper, for this is a pretty clear
statement of the present theory of falsication which grounds current
philosophy of science. The only issue would be that it is an entirely
modernist theory, and post modernist theory starts more with the study
of paradigm and the reject of objective science.
The key problem you have here is what it means to make up. Make up is
not a very clearly defined concept, it generally means to invent. But
there is a context in which it may be taken as to make up inspite of
observation.
The word has a more general meaning as well. We can ask what is the
make up of a group or substance or team. A make up is a set of
elements that create a reality.
That is not what is meant in the context or in Popper's theory.
Newtons theory does not cause one to ignore what one sees. Rather it
creates a set of structures for viewing reality which lead you to look
in directions that will confirm the theory. A theory can only confirm
itself. For decades people new that Mercury did not confirm to Newtons
theory, but this was accounted for by stating that there must exist
some unknown object in the solar system causing it.
Data is a strange thing. Take for example modern physics. The data
has convince a growing body of theorists that there must exist dark
energy and dark matter in the Universe and to construct how dark matter
must form a sphere around the visible galaxies to hold the visible
matter in place. Dark energy is accounting for the increase in the
rate of expansion of the Universe.
Well you have data which gives you a theory about something that is
really nothing. We have no idea at all of what dark matter or dark
energy would be. They have no properies, we don't have a name for the
particles or a mass or an energy level. We don't know if dark matter
is suppose to be made up of several differnt kinds or a single kind.
The data has lead theorists to say that something exists which is
entirely unknown. In the dark matter and dark energy science says
there is something out there that we have no idea of the properties of,
but that it has mass in one case and energy in another, which are
properties of all things that exist.
So the assertion is that these things exist, and nothing more. It is
what is. Frankly, though I see the value of the theory for sciecne I
can't see how dark energy or dark matter in its present form is very
different than the idea of a over god.
G*rd*n
> >>receptacle. In this receptor ('sense organ') there has to be some
> >>device that filters out the stuff that's important from the stuff that
> >>is considered noise.
> My work in researching the mind, presently restarting after years of
> making money, has concentrated on my theory that the brain is more a
> supression device then a stimulation device.
>
> If you take the possible noun verb subject combinations in english you
> have billions and billions of combined sentences like sky smells frog
> or wind melts God and endless lists of other strings of words that
> humans almost never thing, while Ice Cream tastes good and Jesus save
> me come up again and again.
>
> Of the vast array of possible things that can be said only perhaps 1%
> are things that are said. Therefore learning to speak is 99% learning
> what not to say. Thinking is learning to suppress thought more than to
> express it.
>
> Another example I used to bring up is the issue of gender in most
> European nouns. One can stop a French class to ask why it would make
> sense for a language to say certain non-living objects are men and
> others are women, and to go in to the theories of gender purpose, but
> then it would not be a French class it would be an linguistic class.
>
> Learning to learn is learning to concentrate, which is the focusing in
> one a limited stimulus along conventional lines.
"The object represses." Necessarily. And then....
rhook...@hotmail.com
Once the mind, or what ever network of neurons is at work, have
suppressed firings from stimuli in to the great network, the remaining
impulses, unless something very unusual happens, are fit in to the
prodimate case model for the situation, with tweaking if needed.
The best way to see this is to remember the impact of taking something
which reduces ones inhabitions and normal rational level of thinking
while promoting creativity and associative thinking, like LSD. A walk
that one has done for a hundred times and has lost any unique value
will suddenly become a strange journay, the mind firing off wild
associations that it becomes hard for the individual to judge the
reality of.
Anton Vredegoor
rhook...@hotmail.com wrote:
> My work in researching the mind, presently restarting after years of
> making money, has concentrated on my theory that the brain is more a
> supression device then a stimulation device.
That seems to depend on whether one categorizes some parts of the sense
organs as parts of the brain or not, which for some sense organs'
neural interfaces is hard to maintain. The sense organs have to
*produce* the data, so to categorize them as suppression devices is
awkward.
Anton
G*rd*n
> Once the mind, or what ever network of neurons is at work, have
> suppressed firings from stimuli in to the great network, the remaining
> impulses, unless something very unusual happens, are fit in to the
> prodimate case model for the situation, with tweaking if needed.
In order to use a mass of information, it's necessary to
destroy most of it. A lot of this work seems to be done
by the physical organization of the nervous system, e.g.
the nerves leading away from the retina reduce innumerable
point stimuli to "diagonal line" or "thing moving left".
One observes this as well in artificial information
systems.
G*rd*n
> > My work in researching the mind, presently restarting after years of
> > making money, has concentrated on my theory that the brain is more a
> > supression device then a stimulation device.
"Anton Vredegoor" <anton.v...@gmail.com>:
> That seems to depend on whether one categorizes some parts of the sense
> organs as parts of the brain or not, which for some sense organs'
> neural interfaces is hard to maintain. The sense organs have to
> *produce* the data, so to categorize them as suppression devices is
> awkward.
They have to suppress all the data available to them which
does not fit their role. Generally, for example, the ear
measures only a certain range of air pressure fluctuations
in its vicinity, and ignores fluctuations whose amplitude or
frequency are outside its range, as well as the amount and
direction of radiation, the chemical composition of the air,
its temperature, barometric pressure, ambient magnetic fields,
gravitation, etc. etc.
Anton Vredegoor
Your have now crossed the boundary between what's inside an organism
and what's outside an organism (although that concept itself becomes
questionable if there would be instantaneous action possible,
disregarding classical theories about distance and the speed of light).
However there's data available that could suggest that even inside the
organisms brain there has to be a careful balance between suppression
and stimulation. The working of the brain is binary with respect to
individual neurons -they either fire or do not fire off an action
potential (a moving chemical imbalance) along their axons- but can be
better described at a higher level with groups of neurons changing the
*frequencies* in which they fire.
So there has to be a certain base level firing frequency that can be
modulated by incoming signals. Maybe these base level firings are
completeley random, or determined like a clock work or reacting to
Penroses microtubular quamtummechanics (that last part was a joke,
son), but it's clear they have to be stimulation devices like the sense
organs outside the organism. In fact it could even be hard to
discriminate between "real world data" and some "inner ear" telling you
whats real.
Suppose the "inner ear" is a kind of "anti-sound", suppressing real
environmental sound, your computers' fan for example, or an "anti
scrolling feature" that got activated because you use that trick with
the middle mouse button a lot. When the real world data "stops to be
interfered with" you see or hear an aftereffect. Now what do you really
see or hear when there is no disturbance? Can there ever be no
disturbance?
Anton
rhook...@hotmail.com
>>organs as parts of the brain or not, which for some sense organs'
>>neural interfaces is hard to maintain. The sense organs have to
>>*produce* the data, so to categorize them as suppression devices is
>>awkward.
>>Anton
Well the concept I am promoting is awkward to our current way of
thinking, but I am saying that the production of data is more a
'non-creation' then creation. Suppression is an okay term from viewed
from the outside, but from a lived experienced it is not suppression as
in an idea that forms and is held done, it is that the vast majority of
what is going on is made non-existent by our neuron network, starting
from the ears which make data mostly by ignoring stimuli.
Anton Vredegoor
> Well the concept I am promoting is awkward to our current way of
> thinking, but I am saying that the production of data is more a
> 'non-creation' then creation. Suppression is an okay term from viewed
> from the outside, but from a lived experienced it is not suppression as
> in an idea that forms and is held done, it is that the vast majority of
> what is going on is made non-existent by our neuron network, starting
> from the ears which make data mostly by ignoring stimuli.
Still, there's information coming in from the outside. I like to view
such things in terms of entropy where maybe a lot of information is
lost during the transformation of noisy data into high level data, just
like one can't make a machine run without dissipating some of the
energy into friction or other unused byproducts. That's different from
the idea that for some data we just don't have the receptors, or very
inefficient receptors.
So we have a transformation of energy or information into higher forms
of order and probably some transcendental process whereby access is
gained to previously unaccesible energy or information sources (via
attention) . This suppression, inhibition, and ignoring kind of
terminology is just not proactive enough to describe the process. It
has a distinct fatalistic or even depressing connotation for me, like
we're some kind of potato sorting machine where everything that comes
out has to be put in first, no creative process anywhere in the system,
and no possibly active choice to focus on another input source.
Anton
rhook...@hotmail.com
Though I find your enthropy analogy interesting I don't think I can
agress with it.
The energy unused by a machine is a byproduct. The aim of making a
better machine is to reduce this wasted enthropy over time.
The mind, on the other hand, thinks by mostly not noticing, not seeing,
and not pattern matching. My point is that thinking is vastly an act
of not thinking, of not following stimuli. I pointed to the case where
you may have taken something that causes reduction in this process.
You will find yourself noticing more becoming confused by more and
more.
Somehow the mind works by generating a coherent consistant reality from
the flood of sense data bombarding us every second. I believe this is
done by the brain spending most of its effort preventing the firing of
possible neuron response to given stimuli.
Anton Vredegoor
> Somehow the mind works by generating a coherent consistant reality from
> the flood of sense data bombarding us every second. I believe this is
> done by the brain spending most of its effort preventing the firing of
> possible neuron response to given stimuli.
It seems to be contradictory to have a perception that depends on
filtering and at the same time allow a creative process to happen. What
is missing is the possibillity to actively *choose* the filtering
process, or adapt it, like turning the frequency tuning knob on a radio
receiver. So we've got to model the filtering but also the choice of
receiving device(s) as well as the tuning of the specific devices and
their coordination.
Suppose I wanted to perceive a specific permutation of the letters
'abcd'. You'd probably try to eliminate the other 23 possibilities. But
what if this specific frame was not given? If it was not known how many
letters, or we would allow for letters to occur more than one time?
What if the problem was to find this representation for the traveling
salesman problem? Now you are not looking for a permutation but for a
way to map the problem to a mathematical representation.
The search space becomes so big that we have to give up on listing all
possible solutions but have to use heuristics. With heuristics we
concern ourselves not with preventing mistakes (there are just too
many) but with finding good hillclimbing directions. There are local
optima, multiple correct solutions and all kinds of other stuff going
on that do not allow one to restrict oneself to eliminating mistakes.
There must be a focussing on the "right direction".
So the neurons that you are describing as being prevented from firing
could just be selecting some other input that would be more to their
liking. If all neurons would fire at once that would probably not be
ok, all neurons firing in sync would probably be like an epileptic
attack, while totally random timed firing would prevent coordination,
so some regulation would seem to be beneficial. However there's more
things possible than these two poles, and maybe the most profitable
configurations lie close to the edge of chaos.
Anton
Mounard le Fougueux
1. It always struck me as odd how the sensation of music and color and
sculture are all apparently different in type, yet are all mediated by
neurons that simply activate and fire all very similarly. yet the
sensations are all different and easily differentialted, When was the
last time you confused a sound for a shape or a color?
This seems to imply that our consciousness is stronger the closer to the
sense organs "one goes" rather then further away. This is more then just
saying that the "story" of consciousness cann't be found at the neural
(or subatomic, for that matter) level.
2. ita clear that most actions aren't mediated by consciousnes. Most
actions are routine , well scripted and don;t require conscious
mediation. In fact it is difficult for the "conscious mind" to interfere
in any meaningfull way with most actions. An example is the difficulty
in breaking habits. Things that are learned consciously become routine
and after learning, no longer require conscious direction, like say
learning to play an instrument.
But consciousness appears necessary when changes to or combinations of
previously unrelated routines occur. Takin skiing, for example - no one
know how to ski at first but eventually everyone know how to stand and
also how to balance on moving surfaces. These two separate activities,
both done unconsciously, can be consciously combined into a single
activity - skiing, which after learning, also becomes unconscious.
Metaphors seem to operate in the same way - previously learned words or
meanings are forced to associate and become combined into a new meaning.
Meanings and behaviour operate without conscious intervention but
consciousness can create new compound associations/constructs, which
after being learned, return "whence they came" to be used in ordinary
unconscious daily life.
3. The present doesn't exist - only the past and the future. We perceive
the present as the immediate past which was chosen amoungt all the
possible future, either by ourselves or our environment. We select our
past from the future(s) much the way we select what time it is by
selecting which point ontne planet's surface to be positioned at (all
times (and seasons) exisit simultaneously somewhere on our planet).
James Whitehead
"Mounard le Fougueux" <Foug...@daeventhorizon.com> wrote in message
news:9pWdndW9Yo0...@adelphia.com...
> 1. It always struck me as odd how the sensation of music and color and
> sculture are all apparently different in type, yet are all mediated by
> neurons that simply activate and fire all very similarly.
neurons play no actual part - music / sculpture depend on context- this is
the great learning of modernity.
rhook...@hotmail.com
"So the neurons that you are describing as being prevented from firing
could just be selecting some other input that would be more to their
liking. If all neurons would fire at once that would probably not be
ok, all neurons firing in sync would probably be like an epileptic
attack, while totally random timed firing would prevent coordination,
so some regulation would seem to be beneficial. However there's more
things possible than these two poles, and maybe the most profitable
configurations lie close to the edge of chaos. ""
I find your points very strong and a good discription of a great deal
of higher learning problem solving. I would only counter that I am
talking about base real-time percetion of the "now", the present
experience of reality which we form instanly from experience.
This is where most of our thinking takes place. I think the heuristic
rules you talk about concern more problem solving and AI, though I do
believe that over time humans systems of perception will evolve in the
directions you describe, I think this is more an evolutionary than a
decision process.
rhook...@hotmail.com
Sense organs themselves are only neurons. Also our we experience
reality as an integraton of the senses, art takes them apart but we
live them together. We live bind the integration of sense data that
our brain accomplishes through unification.
Reponse 2 to Mounrad
Consciousness it the ultimate defense mechanism of the human species,
it is there to keep allow us to problem solve in novel situations. We
can figure how to get our foot out a fence when the lamb is so stupid
it keeps pushing the wrong way.
BUT, we only know we are in a novel situation when the normal routine
process determines an anamoly, and raises the excitement level from
interest to terror.
Response to 3
I think our mings construct a kind of present, realy a span of time I
would imagine to be may 1/10 of a second. A faster thinking creation
might be able to have a thousands thoughts between each of our one.
Be we experince life as being present in it, but that present passes
quick.
rhook...@hotmail.com
South Korea a fairly clear cut example of outright fraud, mostly of how
a single scientist can use the media and the public desire to see
certain stories to con a large part of the scientific community.
Hwang Woo-suk claims to produce stem cell were probably more quickly
accepted because they held such promise for curing so many terrible
diseases. What he was presenting is modern snake oil, and for a while
people were buying it up.
But he shows that in the scientific community, in the field where
results can be tested and falsified one can, given the effort,
designate someone as a fraud, which was very re-assuring in its deeply
non-post-modernism.
But I notice in the history of science endless frauds come before the
true announcement. Soon cloning will be a reality, and the South
Korean work was taken for true because it is so certain that such
results are only a matter of time.
It will be interesting to see how this plays out politically,
scientifically it means that someone else in the next couple of years
will do what this fraud claimed to do, but with Bush taking the US, the
world's top scientific centre and thus most able judge of such things,
pretty much out of this critical life saving work (but Bush likes to
murder we all know that) the field of stem cells research is now much
more open to fraud, with the centre of the network cut out.
I also fear that somehow the born again fascists who so dominate
America in this very sorry time for that nation will somehow use this
as an excuse to discridit the work, and thus the issue of fraud will in
a very postmoder way become very political.
Anton Vredegoor
> I find your points very strong and a good discription of a great deal
> of higher learning problem solving. I would only counter that I am
> talking about base real-time percetion of the "now", the present
> experience of reality which we form instanly from experience.
Thanks.
> This is where most of our thinking takes place. I think the heuristic
> rules you talk about concern more problem solving and AI, though I do
> believe that over time humans systems of perception will evolve in the
> directions you describe, I think this is more an evolutionary than a
> decision process.
After rereading my own post, I can understand that one might get the
impression that I was writing about higher level functions. However I
was just trying to give an impression of what requirements perception
in general would need to fullfill (and I was going from easy to more
complex to illustrate the point). I think that *all* neurons have to
solve very complex problems, and use biologically based heuristics to
accomplish it, and they do this *today*, not sometime in the future or
just when we think math problems, and they do this by some unknown
method involving "computations" that could be best explained with
descriptions involving the frequencies of firing of groups of neurons.
Maybe the brain can be described as some device that transforms real
world data -using a kind of fourier transformation- from the time and
space domain into a timeless frequency domain (where ideas and
perceptions live as individual entities) and back again through a
reverse fourier transformation into motor activity (actions).
Anton
'lost in space'
James Whitehead
<rhook...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:1135798870....@g43g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
> Response 1 to Mounrad
>
> Sense organs themselves are only neurons.
Shakespeare is only letters of the alpha bet, Chartres Cathedral only blocks
of stones... etc the idea of reality being described in simple terms - in
mathematical formulae that can be printed on a tee shirt is at the heart of
the modernist programme and assumes a metaphysics of the reduction to ...
only. And yet the universe appears to be moving in quite the opposite
direction...
>Also our we experience
> reality as an integraton of the senses, art takes them apart but we
> live them together. We live bind the integration of sense data that
> our brain accomplishes through unification.
>
> Reponse 2 to Mounrad
>
> Consciousness it the ultimate defense mechanism of the human species,
> it is there to keep allow us to problem solve in novel situations.
Thats a little odd - it implies purpose in evolution as opposed to accident,
so girraffe's necks are there so they can reach leaves high in the trees...
(thats not the traditional notion is it?)
>We
> can figure how to get our foot out a fence when the lamb is so stupid
> it keeps pushing the wrong way.
>
But we cant eat grass - imagine if we could it would make life alot simpler-
> BUT, we only know we are in a novel situation when the normal routine
> process determines an anamoly, and raises the excitement level from
> interest to terror.
>
not sure here - quite a few animals experience terror and interest, probably
consciousness also? But are unable to communicate this?
James Whitehead
"Anton Vredegoor" <anton.v...@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:1135874239.2...@g47g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
I cant see how a brain can use Fourier transformations - (i'm not aware of
them) only that maybe the processes might be describable in these terms. You
seem to have the cart before the horse - Nature doest use Maths or Have
Laws, but Laws can be constructed and mathematical descriptions made... that
is such descriptions are not the thing described. Any more than the real
Mona Lisa was made from linseed oil and pigment....
> Anton
>
> 'lost in space'
>
rhook...@hotmail.com
>Shakespeare is only letters of the alpha bet, Chartres Cathedral only blocks
>of stones... etc the idea of reality being described in simple terms - in
>mathematical formulae that can be printed on a tee shirt is at the heart of
>the modernist programme and assumes a metaphysics of the reduction to ...
>only. And yet the universe appears to be moving in quite the opposite
>direction...
The name Shakespeak is only a group of letters, but no group of letters
has ever been seen to arrange themselves in to plays. Rocks never
group themselves in to Cathedrals, but neurons have been seen repeated
to sense and control complex behaviour in self organizing "Machines"
which have evolved over billions of years to consciousness.
>> Consciousness it the ultimate defense mechanism of the human species,
>>it is there to keep allow us to problem solve in novel situations.
>Thats a little odd - it implies purpose in evolution as opposed to accident,
>so girraffe's necks are there so they can reach leaves high in the trees...
>(thats not the traditional notion is it?)
Evolution is accidents which increase the chances of an individual
producing children. Purpose is there an accident which has had
benefits.
I spend a lot of time in the country side among dumb animals and am
constantly amazed by their rather poor problem solving skills, though
they have survived for millions and billions of years. Human
consciousness, grown from more primitive animal consciousness, is the
ultimate survival machine for dealing with getting your head stuck in a
fense, your foot in ice, your hair in a brush, and the millions of
things that kill animals which humans can step back from, think about,
form a mental picture about and run potential solutions until the
problem is resolved.
And I think that animal terror is the core of human consciousness, but
I don't like to talk ideas like this on chat groups.
James Whitehead
<rhook...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:1135942245....@g43g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
> Response to James
>
> >Shakespeare is only letters of the alpha bet, Chartres Cathedral only
blocks
> >of stones... etc the idea of reality being described in simple terms - in
> >mathematical formulae that can be printed on a tee shirt is at the heart
of
> >the modernist programme and assumes a metaphysics of the reduction to ...
> >only. And yet the universe appears to be moving in quite the opposite
> >direction...
>
> The name Shakespeak is only a group of letters, but no group of letters
> has ever been seen to arrange themselves in to plays.
Or could they ever - surely without a "reader"... whatever the source of
consiousness - nerons or something else it is irrelevent to what it is.. and
trying to discover consiousness by examining nerons becomes a pointless
exercise.
>Rocks never
> group themselves in to Cathedrals, but neurons have been seen repeated
> to sense and control complex behaviour in self organizing "Machines"
> which have evolved over billions of years to consciousness.
>
> >> Consciousness it the ultimate defense mechanism of the human species,
> >>it is there to keep allow us to problem solve in novel situations.
>
> >Thats a little odd - it implies purpose in evolution as opposed to
accident,
> >so girraffe's necks are there so they can reach leaves high in the
trees...
> >(thats not the traditional notion is it?)
>
> Evolution is accidents which increase the chances of an individual
> producing children. Purpose is there an accident which has had
> benefits.
>
In terms of production of offspring humans rate pretty low, if its about
survival and numbers then i would imagine bacteria might have the edge?
> I spend a lot of time in the country side among dumb animals and am
> constantly amazed by their rather poor problem solving skills, though
> they have survived for millions and billions of years. Human
> consciousness, grown from more primitive animal consciousness, is the
> ultimate survival machine for dealing with getting your head stuck in a
> fense, your foot in ice, your hair in a brush, and the millions of
> things that kill animals which humans can step back from, think about,
> form a mental picture about and run potential solutions until the
> problem is resolved.
>
sure consciousness - well intelligence - which is not the same thing has its
advantages- however humanity is a fairly recent species and it could well
end up destroying its environment regardless of its intelligence.
> And I think that animal terror is the core of human consciousness, but
> I don't like to talk ideas like this on chat groups.
>
why not?
rhook...@hotmail.com
>consiousness - nerons or something else it is irrelevent to what it is.. and
>trying to discover consiousness by examining nerons becomes a pointless
>exercise.
Well you can't prove a negative, that one will not find consciousness
in neurons, and since we see nothing else in the brain than somehow
that must be the mind.
We don't understand it now, but maybe in 100,000 years we will have it
down pretty well.
>>In terms of production of offspring humans rate pretty low, if its about
>>survival and numbers then i would imagine bacteria might have the edge?
Evolution is not a scored game of numbers, it is simply a matter of
survival of offspring vs. extinction. Bacteria are in a way the most
successfull products of evolution, but as humans we are interested in
how our oddness evolved because it is us.
>sure consciousness - well intelligence - which is not the same thing has its
>advantages- however humanity is a fairly recent species and it could well
>end up destroying its environment regardless of its intelligence.
Agreed, in the end consciousness may prove to be in the long run a bad
trait. This is normal in evolution, many species develop traits which
benefit in the short run but have long run consequences leading to
their own extinction.
Imagine a massive elephant sized bunny that evolved. No animal could
kill it and it went about eating and eating. It might have tonnes of
defensive features and do very well for itself for a million years,
until it eats away all the plants it needs and dies off. Sometimes I
think humans are the massive bunnies.
>> And I think that animal terror is the core of human consciousness, but
>> I don't like to talk ideas like this on chat groups.
Because that set of my thinking is not well formed enough on my part
and I have enough threads to waste my time.
why not?
James Whitehead
<rhook...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:1136019677.4...@f14g2000cwb.googlegroups.com...
> >Or could they ever - surely without a "reader"... whatever the source of
> >consiousness - nerons or something else it is irrelevent to what it is..
and
> >trying to discover consiousness by examining nerons becomes a pointless
> >exercise.
>
> Well you can't prove a negative, that one will not find consciousness
> in neurons, and since we see nothing else in the brain than somehow
> that must be the mind.
>
What i'm referring to, though not at all clearly, is the idea that such
things as intelligence and consciousness can be implemented in a variety of
ways, that is the material is arbitrary. If we regard a simple logic gate as
an element in an intelligent machine it can be implemented using a wide
range of materials including "virtual" systems. That the idea of destructive
analysis as a means of understanding misses the point, it always appears as
a "X is nothing other than Y". What does this miss is not the matter - but
the arrangement of the matter- the patterns. One can argue that everything
at its basis is nothing but 000000s and 1111111s.... Knowing such equations
seems to miss the point of what is made by such patterns, that is the
constructed - not deconstructed world. i.e. The Mind is not a collection of
neurons - but a particular arrangement of functioning entities... That
"understanding" is counter to what the mind does which is to create itself.
> We don't understand it now, but maybe in 100,000 years we will have it
> down pretty well.
>
The amount of knowledge appears proportional to ignorance
> >>In terms of production of offspring humans rate pretty low, if its about
> >>survival and numbers then i would imagine bacteria might have the edge?
>
> Evolution is not a scored game of numbers, it is simply a matter of
> survival of offspring vs. extinction. Bacteria are in a way the most
> successfull products of evolution, but as humans we are interested in
> how our oddness evolved because it is us.
>
The desire for knowledge appars an accident which might be useful, but might
be harmful.
> >sure consciousness - well intelligence - which is not the same thing has
its
> >advantages- however humanity is a fairly recent species and it could well
> >end up destroying its environment regardless of its intelligence.
>
> Agreed, in the end consciousness may prove to be in the long run a bad
> trait. This is normal in evolution, many species develop traits which
> benefit in the short run but have long run consequences leading to
> their own extinction.
>
> Imagine a massive elephant sized bunny that evolved. No animal could
> kill it and it went about eating and eating. It might have tonnes of
> defensive features and do very well for itself for a million years,
> until it eats away all the plants it needs and dies off. Sometimes I
> think humans are the massive bunnies.
I like the story about the Easter Islanders (if its true or not) who died
out when they nolonger had wood left to make boats, what did they think as
they cut down the last tree?
Mounard le Fougueux
> Response 1 to Mounrad
>
> Sense organs themselves are only neurons. Also our we experience
> reality as an integraton of the senses, art takes them apart but we
> live them together. We live bind the integration of sense data that
> our brain accomplishes through unification.
When given a music box, some people simply enjoy listening to it, while
others cann't help but to take it apart to see how it works and
perhaps create one own. Some even believe that to successfully dismantle
the music box one must also dismantle the auditory system as well as the
brain.
while still others do neither and see no value in either.
>
> Reponse 2 to Mounrad
>
> Consciousness it the ultimate defense mechanism of the human species,
> it is there to keep allow us to problem solve in novel situations. We
> can figure how to get our foot out a fence when the lamb is so stupid
> it keeps pushing the wrong way.
We can do so because we can percieve various possible futures that
depend on different foot motions, and select the one with the best
outcome: escaping the fence.
>
> BUT, we only know we are in a novel situation when the normal routine
> process determines an anamoly, and raises the excitement level from
> interest to terror.
My observation is that strong emotion, rather then hightening conscious
decision making, supresses it and forces immediate, unthinking, action
as a survival mechanism.
For instance, the heat of a flame will cause a person to immediately
withdraw their hand without conscious thought. Similarly fear or rage
will cause an immediate reaction without rational decisions being made -
usually with much regret after rational faculties return.
This emotional response reflex has been taken advantage of by rational
agents to achieve a response in masses of people without their rational
faculties finding better solutions: All agressive wars have been started
through the propaganda of victimhood - which taps into the instinctive
fear and rage response of individuals.
It seems that what the lamb lacks is not instinctive fear at being
caught in a fence, but the ability to set aside instinctive emotion and
allow rational decision maling to take place.
Mounard le Fougueux
> <rhook...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
> news:1135798870....@g43g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
>
>>Response 1 to Mounrad
>>
>>Sense organs themselves are only neurons.
>
>
> Shakespeare is only letters of the alpha bet, Chartres Cathedral only blocks
> of stones... etc the idea of reality being described in simple terms - in
> mathematical formulae that can be printed on a tee shirt is at the heart of
> the modernist programme and assumes a metaphysics of the reduction to ...
> only.
You seem to be implying that:
a. reductionism is at the heart of the modernist program
b. mathematical descriptions of reality is a reductionist description
c. postmodernism isn't reductionist
Nothing in language prevents incorrect or improper conflations of terms.
The fact that a metaphor can be made does not necessitate that the
metaphore is correct - even though nothing in natural language provides
a guage of metaphoric veracity.
Mathematics is a language, different from natural language. Its main
difference is that it DOES provide an inherent guage of veracity:
numbers and relations.
For example, Newton's inverse square law of gravity. How well objects
adhere to this law can be easily plotted and the error from the equation
easily determined and the error determined - as well as judged to be
within or without reasonable bounds. when dealing with either very
massive objects or objects traveling close to the speed of light, it can
be seen that the error become larger and an enhanced version of the same
equations (now with a factor of Gamma cubed) now reduces the error as
well as being "just as good" as the original newtonian equations for
slow or non very masssive objects.
A mathematical descrition of a system isn't reductionist beyond the
inherent initial reductionism of reducing ones sphere of attention to a
specific system from "all that is the case". A mathematical description
of gravity doesn't try to describe where gravity comes from, or why
there is gravity or what the constituent components of gravity are, it
just provides an inherently empirical (i.e. measureable) description of
the behaviour of the system - its trajectory in some system state space.
The cooridnates of the system state space are not components of the
system, just simultaneous observables - more of a description of the
observation then the observed.
Mathematics is also necessary in the construction of large and complex
systems - ad hoc verbal descriptions are insufficent. In fact, languages
are designed to facilite the construction of engineerimg structures:
examples are XML (or HTML) for implementing web pages, VHDL (or Verilog
or SystemC) for designing integrated circuites, biomolecular languages
are being design to enable genetic engineering, etc...
Is construction and design inherently reductionist?
Saying things like "the modernist program is nothing more then
reductionism.." seem awfully reductionist to me, but then what do I know?
The modernist program (at least among the more Modern modernists)
doesn't "privledge the small scale over the large", which was part of
what you were implying. Mathematical description is used for systems at
all scales, and it is understood that all scales have their own inherent
integrity and stability (and rules). Mathematics is "scale neutral"
If we must choose a scale to priviledge, it probably should be the
brain, due to its intervention (explicit or not) in all human knowledge.
The brain matters, unless you believe (as did the egyptians) that the
only function the brain serves is in the production of snot...
What is inherently reductionist is the murder and insult. When we kill
we reduce a complex life forms into its simpler constituents. When we
insult someone, we do reduce them as well. How many marriages have ended
with the words.. "you're nothimg but a [...]".
> And yet the universe appears to be moving in quite the opposite
> direction...
Actually the universe (when viewed from any point (or "center")) is
moving in all directions at once (cosmic expansion). This includes the
processes of birth AND death, evolution and extinction, learning and
forgetting, the emergence of complexity and its evaporation,..... all
the the expense of the temperature of the universe.
>
>
>>Also our we experience
>>reality as an integraton of the senses, art takes them apart but we
>>live them together. We live bind the integration of sense data that
>>our brain accomplishes through unification.
>>
>>Reponse 2 to Mounrad
>>
>>Consciousness it the ultimate defense mechanism of the human species,
>>it is there to keep allow us to problem solve in novel situations.
>
>
> Thats a little odd - it implies purpose in evolution as opposed to accident,
> so girraffe's necks are there so they can reach leaves high in the trees...
> (thats not the traditional notion is it?)
I believe the traditional notion is that the giraffes that cann't eat,
die...
Mounard le Fougueux
My person opinion is that the best service that can be done to science
is NOT focusing on frauds that the scientific processes itself has
uncovered (such as cold fusion, Korean clones, Piltdown man,...) but on
frauds that science refuses to debunk. The stature of Einstein being
formost.
An example is the Dec 2005 issue of the IEEE Xplore Magazine which
honored the 100th year aniversary of the invention of the concept of
"noise" by Albert Einstein. The claim is that Einstein discovered Noise
and "proved" the atomic theory of matter using it. The prior work by
Brown (Brownian motion) is "given" to Einstein (much as prior work by
Lorentz and Riemann was "given" to Einstein).
http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/freeabs_all.jsp?arnumber=1550188
Now, electrical engineers will begin learning how EInstein disovered
atomic theory and "noise", all evidence of prior work or the derivitory
nature of EInsteins work not withstanding.
G*rd*n
> My person opinion is that the best service that can be done to science
> is NOT focusing on frauds that the scientific processes itself has
> uncovered (such as cold fusion, Korean clones, Piltdown man,...) but on
> frauds that science refuses to debunk. The stature of Einstein being
> formost.
From the point of view of the practice of science the stature of
Einstein is inconsequential. What difference would it make if it
were shown that he was a complete fraud?
rhook...@hotmail.com
science.
Einstein was the father of special and general relativity, and he had a
fundemental role in the creation of quantum theory, but he was wrong on
a large number of issues, including the possibility of black holes and
the ultimate implications of quantum theory. Today the silliness of
his Universal Theory of Nothing is all but forgotten.
Einstein was perhaps the greatest scientists of the early 20th Century,
perhaps not, but by 1930 he was making no real contribution at all and
he certainly was no Newton. There are probably 5 or 6 theorist of
about that time who are his equals.
But Einstein just so looks the part of the scientist, and his
personality just fit the part so perfectly that he got press, and with
press he is remember and given perhaps a bit more credit than he should
get, and his mistakes are forgotten.
In the same way today Hawkings who is just one of many top level
theorists. Almost everything Hawkings has done has been with another
theorists, and he himself said his most fundemental work is based on
the mathematics of Penrose.
But there he is in his wheelchair with his robot voice, he is a new
image of the man of science, the brain in the box almost.
Its so much theory, so much pop culture and public relations. Bohr was
right and Einstein was wrong on more issues, but Bohr is boring, even
on the Simpsons they had the Boring work of Bohr. Einstein is the guy
with his tounge sticking out saying imagination is the most important
feature, the guy every nerd wants to be. The fact he could not accept
QM and ignored the fact his own theory predicted black holes is not
important, look how cute he is.
Science is 80% showbiz, but everything else is 100% so that makes
science a little diifferent.
James Whitehead
> James Whitehead wrote:
>
> > <rhook...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
> > news:1135798870....@g43g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
> >
> >>Response 1 to Mounrad
> >>
> >>Sense organs themselves are only neurons.
> >
> >
> > Shakespeare is only letters of the alpha bet, Chartres Cathedral only
blocks
> > of stones... etc the idea of reality being described in simple terms -
in
> > mathematical formulae that can be printed on a tee shirt is at the heart
of
> > the modernist programme and assumes a metaphysics of the reduction to
...
> > only.
>
>
> You seem to be implying that:
> a. reductionism is at the heart of the modernist program
Whether its the heart of modernity or a central idea
(intellectual/cognitive) is interesting. If the modernist program is about
"understanding" then that must in someways be a reduced set of possible
approaches to reality. If this understanding is further qualified by being
logical (as opposed to intuitive / mystical) it is further reduced.
> b. mathematical descriptions of reality is a reductionist description
Isnt any "description" reductionist- limiting the chaos.
> c. postmodernism isn't reductionist
If we are to describe post modernity such a description would expose both
something of post-modernity and our immediate self-contradiction in doing
so- so the "description" - "postmodernism isn't reductionist" might be
useful if we can recognise its nature of being both true and self
contradictory at the same time.
>
> Nothing in language prevents incorrect or improper conflations of terms.
> The fact that a metaphor can be made does not necessitate that the
> metaphore is correct - even though nothing in natural language provides
> a guage of metaphoric veracity.
maybe that is because all language in metaphor?
>
> Mathematics is a language, different from natural language. Its main
> difference is that it DOES provide an inherent guage of veracity:
> numbers and relations.
Only internally - and then as i understand not completely. But any language
can internal guarantee veracity- as Lewis Carol points out - a word means
what i want it to mean.... As was pointed out to Russell the game of
mathematics can only be played if one first unquestioningly accept its
rules. Such unquestioning acceptance is the source of such veracity... and
its a very reduced language in certain philosophical views - i.e. the price
of veracity is meaninglessness.
>
> For example, Newton's inverse square law of gravity. How well objects
> adhere to this law can be easily plotted and the error from the equation
> easily determined and the error determined -
You probably wont get this but you see objects adhering to the law when it
should be the other way around.
>as well as judged to be
> within or without reasonable bounds. when dealing with either very
> massive objects or objects traveling close to the speed of light, it can
> be seen that the error become larger and an enhanced version of the same
> equations (now with a factor of Gamma cubed) now reduces the error as
> well as being "just as good" as the original newtonian equations for
> slow or non very masssive objects.
>
> A mathematical descrition of a system isn't reductionist beyond the
> inherent initial reductionism of reducing ones sphere of attention to a
> specific system from "all that is the case".
Its massively reductionist because it ends in what is abstract - and
therfore never the case. Its a question of where the error occurs - you
seem to locate it in the "object" under description and not the act of
description.
>A mathematical description
> of gravity doesn't try to describe where gravity comes from, or why
> there is gravity or what the constituent components of gravity are, it
> just provides an inherently empirical (i.e. measureable) description of
> the behaviour of the system - its trajectory in some system state space.
> The cooridnates of the system state space are not components of the
> system, just simultaneous observables - more of a description of the
> observation then the observed.
Already the gravity of the situation is lost...(the gravity of gravity is
lost). it becomes weightless... a terrible form of nihilism.
>
> Mathematics is also necessary in the construction of large and complex
> systems -
Human brains are large complex systems which were developed without any
math...
>ad hoc verbal descriptions are insufficent. In fact, languages
> are designed to facilite the construction of engineerimg structures:
> examples are XML (or HTML) for implementing web pages, VHDL (or Verilog
> or SystemC) for designing integrated circuites, biomolecular languages
> are being design to enable genetic engineering, etc...
What such systems (well they dont - but as you describe them) lack is "On
error resume next"
IMO XML et al. could be described as yet another attempt at a universal
language- by allowing almost anarchistic freedom
>
> Is construction and design inherently reductionist?
Construction No.
Design Yes.
The universe is - so one assumes is constructed - but that its designed is
altogether another step. (Can you have un-intelligent design?)
>
> Saying things like "the modernist program is nothing more then
> reductionism.." seem awfully reductionist to me, but then what do I know?
>
I think i've addressed that point - though i'm not sure if i said "nothing
more". If i did - am i bound to such a statement as describing my view? Am
i bound to it forever? I think (here & now) that modernism has all kind of
things associated with it, and we can argue just what is modernism? If the
modernist programme is to locate a/the truth (and thats all) doesnt this
reduce all alternatives?
> The modernist program (at least among the more Modern modernists)
> doesn't "privledge the small scale over the large", which was part of
> what you were implying. Mathematical description is used for systems at
> all scales, and it is understood that all scales have their own inherent
> integrity and stability (and rules). Mathematics is "scale neutral"
>
I'm not sure it is scale neutral- how would you propose to show this?
> If we must choose a scale to priviledge, it probably should be the
> brain, due to its intervention (explicit or not) in all human knowledge.
> The brain matters, unless you believe (as did the egyptians) that the
> only function the brain serves is in the production of snot...
>
The brains intervention is only hypothetical and not neccesary to the
argument.
>
> What is inherently reductionist is the murder and insult. When we kill
> we reduce a complex life forms into its simpler constituents. When we
> insult someone, we do reduce them as well. How many marriages have ended
> with the words.. "you're nothimg but a [...]".
>
An insult is a description - thats the reductionism move...
> > And yet the universe appears to be moving in quite the opposite
> > direction...
>
> Actually the universe (when viewed from any point (or "center")) is
> moving in all directions at once (cosmic expansion). This includes the
> processes of birth AND death, evolution and extinction, learning and
> forgetting, the emergence of complexity and its evaporation,..... all
> the the expense of the temperature of the universe.
>
When i view the universe i am not aware of any expansion or movement - i'm
aware of scientific theories which offer this theory- and they may well have
some truth to them.. what am aware of its the increasing complexity of which
post-modernity is a form.
James Whitehead
"G*rd*n" <g...@panix.com> wrote in message
news:dp9469$iek$1...@reader2.panix.com...
What difference would the archaeological remains of Jesus make to
Christianity? I think we face the same problem - and my feeling is it would
make a significant difference.
G*rd*n
> > > My person opinion is that the best service that can be done to science
> > > is NOT focusing on frauds that the scientific processes itself has
> > > uncovered (such as cold fusion, Korean clones, Piltdown man,...) but on
> > > frauds that science refuses to debunk. The stature of Einstein being
> > > formost.
> > > ...
"G*rd*n" <g...@panix.com>:
> > From the point of view of the practice of science the stature of
> > Einstein is inconsequential. What difference would it make if it
> > were shown that he was a complete fraud?
"James Whitehead" <Abx4...@jjh76g7856gh.com>:
> What difference would the archaeological remains of Jesus make to
> Christianity? I think we face the same problem - and my feeling is it would
> make a significant difference.
It would make a difference to Christianity because of Christian
beliefs about the person of Jesus, whereas science is mostly
not very interested in the person of Einstein, even as a
politically useful poster child. There would be endless
middle-brow eye-rolling and tongue-wagging in the media, but
Relativity would remain unscathed because it doesn't rest on
Einstein's person but its conformance with observed phenomena,
and science in general would remain unscathed because it
would still be able to get hired to blow up cities and breed
monsters, as desired.
rhook...@hotmail.com
>It would make a difference to Christianity because of Christian
>beliefs about the person of Jesus, whereas science is mostly
>not very interested in the person of Einstein, even as a
>politically useful poster child. There would be endless
>middle-brow eye-rolling and tongue-wagging in the media, but
>Relativity would remain unscathed because it doesn't rest on
>Einstein's person but its conformance with observed phenomena,
>and science in general would remain unscathed because it
>would still be able to get hired to blow up cities and breed
>monsters, as desired.
The personality of Einstien has been established in a cult of the
scientist today in much the same way as the personality of Jesus for
Christians. Both systems created by their founders are immune and
fairly independent of the cult of thier identity. Most "christians"
have no notion at all of the history, meaning, or teachings of their
religion. jesus is just a figure and name they justify what ever they
care to under.
In a not entire dissimiliar way Einstein has established a cult of
science that impacts our culture as much as christianity. In Einstein
we are presented with the image of the man of science as a moral man, a
man who has the clearest understanding of the dangers facing man and
the nature of human happiness and creativity.
In fact Einsteins impact is more as the poster boy for other scientists
to present their profession as somehow above the rest of human activity
and independent of the consequences of their own findings. So purified
is Einsteins imagine, his white hair making a kind of modernist halo,
that he is not even touched by the nuclear bomb and people still
telling (and even make up) stories about what a wonderfull humanbeing
he was.
Almsot nobody has any understand at all of Relativity. And if you are
interested in GR these days you would not read Einstein, who was only
partially complete, but Penrose or Hawkings. Relativity has matured so
far beyond Einstein that his work now is little more than an
introduction to the field, and his later work is utterly worthless.
But Einstein name is known by all, while Bohr (just as important),
Schrodenger, Hiedegger, Plank, and others whoese names I can hardly
spell are unknown.
In the same way of the many current theorists of GR and Quantum theory
Hawkings is remembered, because he is the image of the mind triumphet
over the body.
The image of these people in popular mythology impacts science, how it
is popularly percieved and how policy is impacted. They impact how
funding is spent. The fact that physics has Einstein and psychology or
post-modernist studies has no one like it has a major impact on how
money is spent.
For example much more government money is spent of space observations
related to GR than Post-Modernist studies. This can't be said because
of cost benefit, in fact GR issues relating to the nature of the
Universe have no practicle application where post-modernist thinkers
may have massive social theory impacts that can radically change the
way business and government is conducted.
I hold that the myth of Einstein and Hawkings, modern Jesuses, make it
easier for governments to spend billions to look in to deep space to
see things that have no benefit to a world full of problems.
Really CurGor+1, you are getting a bit conservative in your later
years. This is not the CurGor+1 I remember, or maybe I am just
reversing the trend growing more radical as I grow more gray. I can
also walk further than I did 15 years ago.
James Whitehead
your remark was "What difference would it make if it were shown that he was
a complete fraud..." that is that both the three papers of 1907 and the
work on G.M. were fraudulent? We would i think be left with the pragmatic
approach to say - well the theories tosh and lies but it allows us to blow
up cities... could equally be seen in terms of the actuality of JC being
irrelevant to the morality/mysticism of the sermon on the mount et al.
Certainly there have been and are Christians who remain Christian and yet
are not unhappy to accept the myth of god incarnate as being just that.
As a postscript historically Christians are faced with a very problematic
and seemingly unresolveable debate/s about just what you say - the person
of Jesus. This has been regarded by Christians historically in a number of
ways... and still is undergoing such questioning.
G*rd*n
> > > > > My person opinion is that the best service that can be done to
> science
> > > > > is NOT focusing on frauds that the scientific processes itself has
> > > > > uncovered (such as cold fusion, Korean clones, Piltdown man,...) but
> on
> > > > > frauds that science refuses to debunk. The stature of Einstein being
> > > > > formost.
> > > > > ...
"G*rd*n" <g...@panix.com>:
> > > > From the point of view of the practice of science the stature of
> > > > Einstein is inconsequential. What difference would it make if it
> > > > were shown that he was a complete fraud?
"James Whitehead" <Abx4...@jjh76g7856gh.com>:
> > > What difference would the archaeological remains of Jesus make to
> > > Christianity? I think we face the same problem - and my feeling is it
> would
> > > make a significant difference.
"G*rd*n" <g...@panix.com>:
> > It would make a difference to Christianity because of Christian
> > beliefs about the person of Jesus, whereas science is mostly
> > not very interested in the person of Einstein, even as a
> > politically useful poster child. There would be endless
> > middle-brow eye-rolling and tongue-wagging in the media, but
> > Relativity would remain unscathed because it doesn't rest on
> > Einstein's person but its conformance with observed phenomena,
> > and science in general would remain unscathed because it
> > would still be able to get hired to blow up cities and breed
> > monsters, as desired.
"James Whitehead" <Abx4...@jjh76g7856gh.com>:
> your remark was "What difference would it make if it were shown that he was
> a complete fraud..." that is that both the three papers of 1907 and the
> work on G.M. were fraudulent? ...
Einstein's _theories_ have been verified experimentally (e.g.
you can blow up cities). Therefore, the only way he could be
shown to be a fraud would be by taking credit for others'
work. The work is valid because it blows up cities, but who
should get credit for the work is another issue. The point
is, the work does not rest on Einstein's person the way the
Christian religion rests on Jesus's person.
G*rd*n
> >beliefs about the person of Jesus, whereas science is mostly
> >not very interested in the person of Einstein, even as a
> >politically useful poster child. There would be endless
> >middle-brow eye-rolling and tongue-wagging in the media, but
> >Relativity would remain unscathed because it doesn't rest on
> >Einstein's person but its conformance with observed phenomena,
> >and science in general would remain unscathed because it
> >would still be able to get hired to blow up cities and breed
> >monsters, as desired.
> The personality of Einstien has been established in a cult of the
> scientist today in much the same way as the personality of Jesus for
> Christians. Both systems created by their founders are immune and
> fairly independent of the cult of thier identity. Most "christians"
> have no notion at all of the history, meaning, or teachings of their
> religion. jesus is just a figure and name they justify what ever they
> care to under.
>
> In a not entire dissimiliar way Einstein has established a cult of
> science that impacts our culture as much as christianity. In Einstein
> we are presented with the image of the man of science as a moral man, a
> man who has the clearest understanding of the dangers facing man and
> the nature of human happiness and creativity.
I disagree. I think there is obviously a great, fundamental
difference between the way scientists think of Einstein, and
the way Christians think of Jesus. I find it difficult to
believe anyone wants to argue with that.
Could be. As the Net gets dumber a certain kind of playfulness
becomes less rewarding. In one of the newsgroups I read, maybe
two-thirds of the messages are from serious creationists these
days. Science can still build bombs and monsters, but in politics
it is going back to being the work of a persecuted minority as it
was in the days of Galileo. Who would want to bait the poor
refugee?
Ned Ludd
>
> Einstein's _theories_ have been verified experimentally (e.g.
> you can blow up cities). Therefore, the only way he could be
> shown to be a fraud would be by taking credit for others'
> work. The work is valid because it blows up cities, but who
> should get credit for the work is another issue. The point
> is, the work does not rest on Einstein's person the way the
> Christian religion rests on Jesus's person.
>
Actually, the precession of the orbit of the planet Mercury
was probably his finest hour, theoretical physics-wise.
Special Relatively explained that little thorn in the side
of the astrophysicists very nicely.
Ned
rhook...@hotmail.com
>difference between the way scientists think of Einstein, and
>the way Christians think of Jesus. I find it difficult to
>believe anyone wants to argue with that.
You miss a key point as to roles. Scientist is a profession, with few
members. I have a great interest in GR and cosmology and science, but
I am not a scientist.
But there are lots and lots of Christians. Most westerners are
Christians. Scientist is not like Christian, Scientist is like
Theologian.
Most people are to some extent materialists in that they accept that
science is to some extent valid. Even creationism does not say science
is invalid to account for the Universe, it simply says that some junk
is science.
So most people believe in some extent in Science as they believe in
some extent in God without any clear understanding of either.
The key point is that Einstein is to the general belief in Science what
Jesus is to the general belief in God in say the United States. In
reality some of Einstein's theory have been proven and some disproven
(grant me simple terms free of Popper) but he plays a different role in
the general public.
I do not believe in God, but I study religion. I went recently to a
Christmas mass in an ancient town in England where the children played
out the birth of Jesus. Now I was a bit stoned and was doing a great
dealing of thinking about what the story might mean, and recently
reading more on the politics in the time of Harod I have some other
ideas. But for the MASS of people in the mass these ideas would be
strange and beyond understanding, Jesus is the Lord and Son of God.
The three wise men are three wise men who follow a star, Mary is just
the Mother. Links to Magi religious ideas coming to the Jews in the
form of Christian cults, Jewish preference for a Magi appointed King
over Roman Harod, and my other wonderings meant nothing to most of the
people present.
Just as the issues concerning the initial singularity at the Big Bang
meaning nothing to most people when they see a picture of Einstein.
rhook...@hotmail.com
deals also with objects moving and fields of gravity.
I think Poppers comments on Mercury were brilliant. Most scientists
new Newton's theory was wrong on Mercury, but only a little and they
were prepared to look for another planet. It was only when Einstein
had a theory that accounted for Mercury did Mercury disprove Newton,
before that it was only an issue to be resolved.
James Whitehead
> "James Whitehead" <Abx4...@jjh76g7856gh.com>:
> > your remark was "What difference would it make if it were shown that he
was
> > a complete fraud..." that is that both the three papers of 1907 and the
> > work on G.M. were fraudulent? ...
>
>
> Einstein's _theories_ have been verified experimentally (e.g.
> you can blow up cities). Therefore, the only way he could be
> shown to be a fraud would be by taking credit for others'
> work. The work is valid because it blows up cities, but who
> should get credit for the work is another issue. The point
> is, the work does not rest on Einstein's person the way the
> Christian religion rests on Jesus's person.
>
Verification is no good, there is plenty of verification in religion. And
within the scientific community such verification is not as simple as it
appears above, there are groups and schisms just as in any religion and they
normally focus on doctrine and more importantly the personality and power
groups around them. Exposing Einstein's equations as wrong would effect the
dynamics of these groups, and anyone who denies the orthodox view in science
is given a hard time and expelled from the community, there are plenty of
examples.
If we just measure your theory scientifically we would expect to see an
average scattering of "personalities" across universities - and not the
clusters of big names in the more "famous" faculties. If the scientific
community was interested in new stuff AKA truth.. it would not elevate to
key positions the big names on the backs of their old work - which once was
revolutionary, but employ lesser paid younger workers who would be more
likely to produce original work and not just buttress their old victories-
e.g. just what Einstein did in the USA... and is still the norm. (Depts of
Physics resemble the Catholic Church ...)
I think Popper argues that good science should propose experiments which in
principle could dis-prove the theory - and not endless ones which prove
it... Are there physical phenomenon which Einstein's work fails to explain
correctly or closely? And why are they not widely published?
James Whitehead
"Ned Ludd" <ned...@ix.netcom.com> wrote in message
news:sQBuf.2147$%W1....@newsread2.news.atl.earthlink.net...
"We mentioned previously that the small eccentricities of Venus and Earth
make it difficult to determine their lines of apsides with precision, but
modern measurement techniques (including the use of interplanetary space
probes and radar ranging) and computerized analysis of the data have enabled
the fitting of the entire solar system to a parameterized post-Newtonian
(PPN) model that encompasses a fairly wide range of theories (including
general relativity). "
"essential areas of general relativity have never been checked
experimentally. "
G*rd*n
I think I understand what you're getting at, but I don't agree
that even in the public relations of the respective "churches",
Einstein plays the same role for Science-with-a-capital-S as
Jesus does for Christianity. Jesus is many things, including
a sort of magic spirit doll or kachina you can conjure your
salvation with. Einstein is one of the heroes, not a magic
doll. Even the dumb folk know Einstein does not make things
happen, whereas (for Christians) Jesus does.
G*rd*n
> > > you can blow up cities). Therefore, the only way he could be
> > > shown to be a fraud would be by taking credit for others'
> > > work. The work is valid because it blows up cities, but who
> > > should get credit for the work is another issue. The point
> > > is, the work does not rest on Einstein's person the way the
> > > Christian religion rests on Jesus's person.
"Ned Ludd" <ned...@ix.netcom.com>:
> > Actually, the precession of the orbit of the planet Mercury
> > was probably his finest hour, theoretical physics-wise.
> > Special Relatively explained that little thorn in the side
> > of the astrophysicists very nicely.
"James Whitehead" <Abx4...@jjh76g7856gh.com>:
> "We mentioned previously that the small eccentricities of Venus and Earth
> make it difficult to determine their lines of apsides with precision, but
> modern measurement techniques (including the use of interplanetary space
> probes and radar ranging) and computerized analysis of the data have enabled
> the fitting of the entire solar system to a parameterized post-Newtonian
> (PPN) model that encompasses a fairly wide range of theories (including
> general relativity). "
>
> "essential areas of general relativity have never been checked
> experimentally. "
Any finite set of phenomena can be fully explained by an
infinite number of theories. The theories need not resemble
each other very much. For instance, the motions of the
classical planets (absent certain minor perturbations) can be
predicted as accurately as you want by some version of the
Ptolmaic theory _or_ Newton's theories of motion, momentum,
gravity, etc.
Ned Ludd
>
> Any finite set of phenomena can be fully explained by an
> infinite number of theories. The theories need not resemble
> each other very much. For instance, the motions of the
> classical planets (absent certain minor perturbations) can be
> predicted as accurately as you want by some version of the
> Ptolmaic theory _or_ Newton's theories of motion, momentum,
> gravity, etc.
>
Ah but it's the 'minor perturbations' that are always the
front lines of science. In the Ptolemaic system, Mars (and
other planets) had a retrograde motion that made no sense.
But they did in the Copernican system. The Copernican and
Galilean systems, which assumed circular orbits, had errors
which Kepler's elliptical orbits solved. And Mercury's orbit
precessed around the sun, and it Mr. E's Special Relativity
(because Mercury WEIGHS more as it careens toward the sun in
its elliptical orbit) that explained the precession.
This doesn't mean that any of these theories are right. Or
real, or are specifying reality. They simply predict certain
measurable events better than their antecedents.
Ned
rhook...@hotmail.com
I think Einstein is the poster boy of "hard science", that through the
example of his cute personality and kindly manners the
industrial/science/military complex especially in the United States has
tried to counter public concerns about the dangers of massive science.
Don't think Einstein has no implications in current policy, he does and
THEY ARE ALL NEGATIVE. The fullest implications of his theories are
nuclear power and the atom bomb, both are in most people's opinions
grave negatives. These are the only two ways in which Einstein
actually touches people's lives and an examination of the massive
funding for hard sciences would raise questions as to why governments
are funding research in to areas that civilization is not ready to
wisely use.
But look at Einstein, with his hair out like a halo, his tounge
sticking out, he's so cute. I admit I even have his picture next to my
Mac/Windows development area. I learned .NET with Albert looking on.
I just took a course in modern physics and philosophy and Einstein
"quotes" (many only legends) were always very popular with the
philosophy side of the room.
But the dangerious moral ambiguity of science is smothed over in the
image of Einstein as a kind of magic man who despite the negatives will
help humanity.
G*rd*n
> Well that depends on what you mean by magic and doll.
Most Christians, at least in theory, believe that Jesus is
God, a living person who does something magical to save
them from eternal damnation, requiring them only to believe
in him. Ask one if you don't believe me. It's right in the
Nicene Creed.
> I think Einstein is the poster boy of "hard science", that through the
> example of his cute personality and kindly manners the
> industrial/science/military complex especially in the United States has
> tried to counter public concerns about the dangers of massive science.
>
> Don't think Einstein has no implications in current policy, he does and
> THEY ARE ALL NEGATIVE. The fullest implications of his theories are
> nuclear power and the atom bomb, both are in most people's opinions
> grave negatives. These are the only two ways in which Einstein
> actually touches people's lives and an examination of the massive
> funding for hard sciences would raise questions as to why governments
> are funding research in to areas that civilization is not ready to
> wisely use.
Why should they break with tradition? Are you saying that
science is used to do bad things, but that using Einstein
makes it more palatable so that the politics of funding can
be furthered? The fact that science can be used to do evil
is precisely what encourages the funding. The power to do
evil, and the actual doing of it, is not at all a political
impediment but an attraction. If anything, the figure of
kindly old Uncle Albert must put off those who want to get
down with nuclear weapons, nerve gas, intercontinental
missiles, and robot spies.
> But look at Einstein, with his hair out like a halo, his tounge
> sticking out, he's so cute. I admit I even have his picture next to my
> Mac/Windows development area. I learned .NET with Albert looking on.
.NET? No wonder you have dubious feelings about Uncle Albert.
> I just took a course in modern physics and philosophy and Einstein
> "quotes" (many only legends) were always very popular with the
> philosophy side of the room.
>
> But the dangerious moral ambiguity of science is smothed over in the
> image of Einstein as a kind of magic man who despite the negatives will
> help humanity.
Sure, he's a poster boy, but no more than that, and one
that's fading into the past as well. No one says Einstein
saves.
G*rd*n
> > infinite number of theories. The theories need not resemble
> > each other very much. For instance, the motions of the
> > classical planets (absent certain minor perturbations) can be
> > predicted as accurately as you want by some version of the
> > Ptolmaic theory _or_ Newton's theories of motion, momentum,
> > gravity, etc.
"Ned Ludd" <ned...@ix.netcom.com>:
> Ah but it's the 'minor perturbations' that are always the
> front lines of science. In the Ptolemaic system, Mars (and
> other planets) had a retrograde motion that made no sense.
> But they did in the Copernican system. The Copernican and
> Galilean systems, which assumed circular orbits, had errors
> which Kepler's elliptical orbits solved. And Mercury's orbit
> precessed around the sun, and it Mr. E's Special Relativity
> (because Mercury WEIGHS more as it careens toward the sun in
> its elliptical orbit) that explained the precession.
>
> This doesn't mean that any of these theories are right. Or
> real, or are specifying reality. They simply predict certain
> measurable events better than their antecedents.
The Ptolmaic System is simply a version of Fourier Analysis.
It can be made as accurate as you like, depending on how far
you want to carry out the calculations. What it can't account
for are objects from outside the system, tidal friction, and
the like. Still, it was a prodigious intellectual accomplishment.
And as a physical model, completely "wrong".
Ned Ludd
>
>> which Kepler's elliptical orbits solved. And Mercury's orbit
>> (because Mercury WEIGHS more as it careens toward the sun in
>> its elliptical orbit) that explained the precession.
>> This doesn't mean that any of these theories are right. Or
>> real, or are specifying reality. They simply predict certain
>> measurable events better than their antecedents.
>
> The Ptolmaic System is simply a version of Fourier Analysis.
> It can be made as accurate as you like, depending on how far
> you want to carry out the calculations. What it can't account
> for are objects from outside the system, tidal friction, and
> the like. Still, it was a prodigious intellectual accomplishment.
> And as a physical model, completely "wrong".
>
No argument here. I think they're all "wrong". (The 'Twenty
Blackboards' argument - where we take the best scholars every 200
years starting 200 years ago for the prior 4000 years, and have
them all write the things that they know are "right" or "true"
about the universe on their blackboard. Twenty blackboards: All
with junk that is 99% wrong, and laughably wrong. How can our
blackboard be right?)
Ned
James Whitehead
You seem to imply a tautological relationship between theory and
measurement... which is probably true
G*rd*n
>>>>> Einstein's _theories_ have been verified experimentally (e.g.
>>>>> you can blow up cities). Therefore, the only way he could be
>>>>> shown to be a fraud would be by taking credit for others'
>>>>> work. The work is valid because it blows up cities, but who
>>>>> should get credit for the work is another issue. The point
>>>>> is, the work does not rest on Einstein's person the way the
>>>>> Christian religion rests on Jesus's person.
"Ned Ludd" <ned...@ix.netcom.com>:
>>>> Actually, the precession of the orbit of the planet Mercury
>>>> was probably his finest hour, theoretical physics-wise.
>>>> Special Relatively explained that little thorn in the side
>>>> of the astrophysicists very nicely.
"James Whitehead" <Abx4...@jjh76g7856gh.com>:
>>> "We mentioned previously that the small eccentricities of Venus and Earth
>>> make it difficult to determine their lines of apsides with precision, but
>>> modern measurement techniques (including the use of interplanetary space
>>> probes and radar ranging) and computerized analysis of the data have enabled
>>> the fitting of the entire solar system to a parameterized post-Newtonian
>>> (PPN) model that encompasses a fairly wide range of theories (including
>>> general relativity). "
>>>
>>> "essential areas of general relativity have never been checked
>>> experimentally. "
"G*rd*n" <g...@panix.com> wrote in message
>> Any finite set of phenomena can be fully explained by an
>> infinite number of theories. The theories need not resemble
>> each other very much. For instance, the motions of the
>> classical planets (absent certain minor perturbations) can be
>> predicted as accurately as you want by some version of the
>> Ptolmaic theory _or_ Newton's theories of motion, momentum,
>> gravity, etc.
"James Whitehead" <Abx4...@jjh76g7856gh.com>:
> You seem to imply a tautological relationship between theory and
> measurement... which is probably true
"It is the theory which tells us what we can observe." said
bad old Uncle Albert. However, once you've got some measurements
with one theory I guess you have to come up with some accounting
for them with the others. Plus, the new theories have to be
at least as aesthetically attractive as the older ones they
are to replace. The great deficit of the Ptolmaic system
was that it seemed ungainly to the Renaissance mind compared
with the Copernican system.
Mounard le Fougueux
I'm a little disappointed that the original point that Einstein was
clearly a plagarist never got any traction. I repeat the original link here:
http://canonicalscience.blogspot.com/2005/08/what-is-history-of-relativity-theory.html
In 2005, credit was also given to Einstein (who plagarized relativity)
with the invention of noise and the atomic theory of matter.
I found the plagarism of Einstein to be locally relevant, because in my
location onthe planet earth, a local College president has to resign
because he plagarised a couple of sentences in a public speach he gave
(i.e. used a small fragment of someone elses writting in a speach
without attribution) - not even in a paper. Einstein was able to clearly
plagarize relativity without a peep of protest, and no one in the
"pomo" community much less the press or acedemia finds this worth of
comment or thought, especially in the Einstein year of 2005. Oh well, on
to 2006.
James Whitehead
Fashion and personality rather than theory experiment and objectivity then
in science like elsewhere...
James Whitehead
[...]
> I'm a little disappointed that the original point that Einstein was
> clearly a plagarist never got any traction. I repeat the original link
here:
>
>
http://canonicalscience.blogspot.com/2005/08/what-is-history-of-relativity-theory.html
>
Well from my view its no big deal, we seem to need names and personalities
and Einstein became the focus for Science - he looked and acted the part.
Anyone looking closely at history will see the same thing over and over, in
my own field Picasso is the inventor of cubism when any non-superficial
study will see this is not true- but he lived and acted like an ideal artist
should.
> In 2005, credit was also given to Einstein (who plagarized relativity)
> with the invention of noise and the atomic theory of matter.
>
> I found the plagarism of Einstein to be locally relevant, because in my
> location onthe planet earth, a local College president has to resign
> because he plagarised a couple of sentences in a public speach he gave
> (i.e. used a small fragment of someone elses writting in a speach
> without attribution) - not even in a paper. Einstein was able to clearly
> plagarize relativity without a peep of protest, and no one in the
> "pomo" community much less the press or acedemia finds this worth of
> comment or thought, especially in the Einstein year of 2005. Oh well, on
> to 2006.
>
Plagiarism was rampant in the Blair dodgy document but he got away with it,
i suspect your college president had enemies who merely used the incident to
get their own way... I know that universities say that plagiarism is a
serious offence and know its tolerated when pragmatic to do so. From a
modernist standpoint this looks like hypocrisy- something to be exposed in
modernity's striving for the truth, however in po-mo there is only the
surface. My fav quote of 2005 was not GW but an Ofsted (Office for
Standards in Education) "Satisfactory is not satisfactory.." and i could
continue... the forced teaching of Literacy and Numercay - though any
literate person might want to point out to HM Gov that there is no such word
as numeracy.
From a po-mo standpoint (!) there is no hypocrisy hiding some deeper truth -
we are aware of the hollowmen..... et al.
G*rd*n
> > >> Any finite set of phenomena can be fully explained by an
> > >> infinite number of theories. The theories need not resemble
> > >> each other very much. For instance, the motions of the
> > >> classical planets (absent certain minor perturbations) can be
> > >> predicted as accurately as you want by some version of the
> > >> Ptolmaic theory _or_ Newton's theories of motion, momentum,
> > >> gravity, etc.
"James Whitehead" <Abx4...@jjh76g7856gh.com>:
> > > You seem to imply a tautological relationship between theory and
> > > measurement... which is probably true
"G*rd*n" <g...@panix.com> wrote in message
> > "It is the theory which tells us what we can observe." said
> > bad old Uncle Albert. However, once you've got some measurements
> > with one theory I guess you have to come up with some accounting
> > for them with the others. Plus, the new theories have to be
> > at least as aesthetically attractive as the older ones they
> > are to replace. The great deficit of the Ptolmaic system
> > was that it seemed ungainly to the Renaissance mind compared
> > with the Copernican system.
"James Whitehead" <Abx4...@jjh76g7856gh.com>:
> Fashion and personality rather than theory experiment and objectivity then
> in science like elsewhere...
No, along with.
rhook...@hotmail.com
science, its core virtue as a spiritual good for mankind despite the
results of it.
Frankly I can not think of one good concrete implication of Einsteins
work. We better understand the orbit of Mercury and in time his work
laid the ground work for theories of the Big Bang, which are really
cool, but for the world around us Einstein is big sciecne in service of
big government to make big mistakes.
I don't see a religion as a belief in God, I see a religon as a set of
practices and beliefs which serve the political interests of a state.
Before you had the State you did not have religion, you had cults.
When the State emerged it created religion and that which is held as a
absolute good and moral practice yet is really only a servent of the
state is religion.
Jesus, Buddha, Einstein, Marx, all of these men have become icons of
power.
G*rd*n
> He is much more than a poster boy, he is a figure of the magic power of
> science, its core virtue as a spiritual good for mankind despite the
> results of it.
Not as I see the world. Although there is usually one of anything,
I think you will find very, very few people who try to conjure
by the power of Einstein.
> Frankly I can not think of one good concrete implication of Einsteins
> work. We better understand the orbit of Mercury and in time his work
> laid the ground work for theories of the Big Bang, which are really
> cool, but for the world around us Einstein is big sciecne in service of
> big government to make big mistakes.
Relativity points the way toward the use of nuclear energy,
most particularly the sort which appears very suddenly in
large quantities, better known as bombs. Einstein and other
physicists were well aware of this in the '20s and the '30s,
and Einstein wrote to Roosevelt in 1939 (I think) to tell
him that the Nazis were probably working on a bomb based
on this principle and so the U.S. should, too. I think
that's the big deal thus far.
> I don't see a religion as a belief in God, I see a religon as a set of
> practices and beliefs which serve the political interests of a state.
> Before you had the State you did not have religion, you had cults.
> When the State emerged it created religion and that which is held as a
> absolute good and moral practice yet is really only a servent of the
> state is religion.
>
> Jesus, Buddha, Einstein, Marx, all of these men have become icons of
> power.
They are similar is some ways and very different in others.
G*rd*n
> >> precessed around the sun, and in Mr. E's Special Relativity
> >> (because Mercury WEIGHS more as it careens toward the sun in
> >> its elliptical orbit) that explained the precession.
> >> This doesn't mean that any of these theories are right. Or
> >> real, or are specifying reality. They simply predict certain
> >> measurable events better than their antecedents.
> >
> > The Ptolmaic System is simply a version of Fourier Analysis.
> > It can be made as accurate as you like, depending on how far
> > you want to carry out the calculations. What it can't account
> > for are objects from outside the system, tidal friction, and
> > the like. Still, it was a prodigious intellectual accomplishment.
> > And as a physical model, completely "wrong".
"Ned Ludd" <ned...@ix.netcom.com>:
> No argument here. I think they're all "wrong". (The 'Twenty
> Blackboards' argument - where we take the best scholars every 200
> years starting 200 years ago for the prior 4000 years, and have
> them all write the things that they know are "right" or "true"
> about the universe on their blackboard. Twenty blackboards: All
> with junk that is 99% wrong, and laughably wrong. How can our
> blackboard be right?)
But it really isn't wrong. The work is just a better or worse
approximation of the patterns found in phenomena. What's wrong
is the conviction that _now_ one has found the ultimate, the
really real. But that isn't science, it's a religious idea.
Ned Ludd
>
>>> This doesn't mean that any of these theories are right. Or
>>> real, or are specifying reality. They simply predict certain
>>> measurable events better than their antecedents.
>
>> The Ptolmaic System is simply a version of Fourier Analysis.
>> It can be made as accurate as you like, depending on how far
>> you want to carry out the calculations. What it can't account
>> for are objects from outside the system, tidal friction, and
>> the like. Still, it was a prodigious intellectual accomplishment.
>> And as a physical model, completely "wrong".
"Ned Ludd" <ned...@ix.netcom.com>:
> No argument here. I think they're all "wrong". (The 'Twenty
> Blackboards' argument - where we take the best scholars every 200
> years starting 200 years ago for the prior 4000 years, and have
> them all write the things that they know are "right" or "true"
> about the universe on their blackboard. Twenty blackboards: All
> with junk that is 99% wrong, and laughably wrong. How can our
> blackboard be right?)
G:
> But it really isn't wrong. The work is just a better or worse
> approximation of the patterns found in phenomena. What's wrong
> is the conviction that _now_ one has found the ultimate, the
> really real. But that isn't science, it's a religious idea.
>
The probability that WE have the truth, that we have the best
approximations, that we are even aware of the patterns that fully
account for phenomena, when the other 20 blackboards are chock
full of crap, superstition, and provable error, is, imo, damn
near zero.
Just look at how physicists look at the structure of sub-atomic
particles now, compared to when you and I were children. And the
way astrophysicists talk now... 'dark' matter and 'dark' energy
composing 95% of the universe, and CAN'T BE MEASURED! Shades of
phlogiston!
Ned
James Whitehead
G*rd*n
> >>> real, or are specifying reality. They simply predict certain
> >>> measurable events better than their antecedents.
G:
> >> The Ptolmaic System is simply a version of Fourier Analysis.
> >> It can be made as accurate as you like, depending on how far
> >> you want to carry out the calculations. What it can't account
> >> for are objects from outside the system, tidal friction, and
> >> the like. Still, it was a prodigious intellectual accomplishment.
> >> And as a physical model, completely "wrong".
"Ned Ludd" <ned...@ix.netcom.com>:
> > No argument here. I think they're all "wrong". (The 'Twenty
> > Blackboards' argument - where we take the best scholars every 200
> > years starting 200 years ago for the prior 4000 years, and have
> > them all write the things that they know are "right" or "true"
> > about the universe on their blackboard. Twenty blackboards: All
> > with junk that is 99% wrong, and laughably wrong. How can our
> > blackboard be right?)
G:
> > But it really isn't wrong. The work is just a better or worse
> > approximation of the patterns found in phenomena. What's wrong
> > is the conviction that _now_ one has found the ultimate, the
> > really real. But that isn't science, it's a religious idea.
"Ned Ludd" <ned...@ix.netcom.com>:
> The probability that WE have the truth, that we have the best
> approximations, that we are even aware of the patterns that fully
> account for phenomena, when the other 20 blackboards are chock
> full of crap, superstition, and provable error, is, imo, damn
> near zero.
>
> Just look at how physicists look at the structure of sub-atomic
> particles now, compared to when you and I were children. And the
> way astrophysicists talk now... 'dark' matter and 'dark' energy
> composing 95% of the universe, and CAN'T BE MEASURED! Shades of
> phlogiston!
I don't know who you're arguing with here. I don't think anyone
thinks "we" have the final truth -- certainly not anyone familiar
with the works of modern science. There are lots of interesting
problems to solve, and the solutions will probably enable people
to blow up even larger pieces of the world. Maybe they'll find
a way to get rid of the whole planet.
Ned Ludd
>
> G:
>>> But it really isn't wrong. The work is just a better or worse
>>> approximation of the patterns found in phenomena. What's wrong
>>> is the conviction that _now_ one has found the ultimate, the
>>> really real. But that isn't science, it's a religious idea.
>
> "Ned Ludd" <ned...@ix.netcom.com>:
>> The probability that WE have the truth, that we have the best
>> approximations, that we are even aware of the patterns that fully
>> account for phenomena, when the other 20 blackboards are chock
>> full of crap, superstition, and provable error, is, imo, damn
>> near zero.
>> Just look at how physicists look at the structure of sub-atomic
>> particles now, compared to when you and I were children. And the
>> way astrophysicists talk now... 'dark' matter and 'dark' energy
>> composing 95% of the universe, and CAN'T BE MEASURED! Shades of
>> phlogiston!
>
> I don't know who you're arguing with here. I don't think anyone
> thinks "we" have the final truth -- certainly not anyone familiar
> with the works of modern science. There are lots of interesting
> problems to solve, and the solutions will probably enable people
> to blow up even larger pieces of the world. Maybe they'll find
> a way to get rid of the whole planet.
>
A bullet barely weighs an ounce,
mere fraction of a pound,
scarce the size and scale of man -
that scourge of the ground.
And man is mere and impotent,
within an army's tread,
a breath within a tempest sent
to render all things dead.
And armies wither down to dust,
beneath the a-bomb's blast,
archaic organs, once robust,
now lost to graying past.
And that which dwarfs the a-bomb's glare,
I lack the lights to see,
And only hope that I'm not there
to learn what it will be.
- Ned
rhook...@hotmail.com
>thinks "we" have the final truth -- certainly not anyone familiar
>with the works of modern science. There are lots of interesting
>problems to solve, and the solutions will probably enable people
>to blow up even larger pieces of the world. Maybe they'll find
>a way to get rid of the whole planet.
They already have, its called consumer driven Capitalism and its moving
pretty well towards its intended goal: the end of the world, which is
what every right wing Chrisitan is just creaming for every day.
But seriously, I profoundly doubt that we solve much of anything. I am
fairly certain that if we survive in 10,000 years all our theories will
seem odd, perhaps they will be respected as first stabs at what ever
they have, but they will read as strange as Greek or Hindu texts on the
nature of reality.
rhook...@hotmail.com
Well I am concerned in how they are similiar, because their supporters
will tell you how they are different.
James Whitehead
The burning of coal in Chinese and Indian power stations..... quite a
simple process...
Post modernity marks a movement back before modernities hegemony, so
processes are accounted for in numerous ways, and once science expands into
what is not measurable it can be as creative as the medieval scholastics or
any metaphysical poet.
Mounard le Fougueux
-------------
is good numbers—
the length of a furrow,
the count of years,
the depth of a broken heart,
the cost of camouflage,
the volume of tears.
-----------------------------------------------
Kismet by Diane Ackerman
( “What can’t be said can’t be said, and can’t be whistled either.”
—Wittgenstein)
Wittgenstein was wrong: when lovers kiss
they whistle into each other's mouth
a truth old and sayable as the sun,
for flesh is palace, aurora borealis,
and the world is all subtraction in the end.
The world is all subtraction in the end,
yet, in a small vaulted room at the azimuth
of desire, even our awkward numbers sum.
Love*s syllogism only love can test.
But who would quarrel with its sprawling proof?
The daftest logic brings such sweet unrest.
Love speaks in tongues, its natural idiom.
Tingling, your lips drift down the xylophone
of my ribs, and I close my eyes and chime.
=====================================================
An Equation for My Children by Wilmer Mills
It may be esoteric and perverse
That I consult Pythagoras to hear
A music tuning in the universe.
My interest in his math of star and sphere
Has triggered theorems too far-fetched to solve.
They don’t add up. But if I rack and toil
More in ether than a mortal coil,
It is to comprehend how you revolve,
By formulas of orbit, ellipse, and ring.
Dear son and daughter, if I seem to range
It is to chart the numbers spiraling
Between my life and yours until the strange
And seamless beauty of equations click
Solutions for the heart's arithmetic.
QEDQEDQEDQEDQEDQEDQEDQEDQEDQEDQEDQEDQEDQEDQEDQEDQEDQEDQED
Mounard le Fougueux
> rhook...@hotmail.com:
>
>>He is much more than a poster boy, he is a figure of the magic power of
>>science, its core virtue as a spiritual good for mankind despite the
>>results of it.
>
>
>
> Not as I see the world. Although there is usually one of anything,
> I think you will find very, very few people who try to conjure
> by the power of Einstein.
>
G*rd*n
> >>He is much more than a poster boy, he is a figure of the magic power of
> >>science, its core virtue as a spiritual good for mankind despite the
> >>results of it.
G*rd*n:
> > Not as I see the world. Although there is usually one of anything,
> > I think you will find very, very few people who try to conjure
> > by the power of Einstein.
Mounard le Fougueux <Foug...@daeventhorizon.com>:
> http://www.einstein.edu/
I didn't see any conjuration there. I'm wasn't talking
about giving an institution a feel-good name.
rhook...@hotmail.com
in our society as they did in say Druid Europe. I was dragged in to
mass every Sunday for 14 years by my saddly deluded parents (they
somehow imagined I was gaining anything beyond a deep hatred of the
Catholic Church). I don't recall any real conjuring going on. We all
knew that the bread and wine remained bread and wine.
Jesus is not a part of many conjuring tricks as Einstein is not, simply
because magic tricks have been so marginalised across social class
levels.
Science does not concern itself much with the powerless. Science is
the religion of the massive state and like the massive state it is not
afraid of the little nobody in Kansas or Siberia or the Jew in Berlin.
The Super State of the 20th Century pays lip service to democracy, but
in the end of the day it is a elite entity concerned only with the
ruling classes. Democracy as a myth emerged just as the modern state
took what little power the poor had (to riot, to run away in to the
country, to vanish or become a Vagabound).
So science is in the same class with Church of England, the Ivy League
club, the local chapter of Greenpeace, and the various other
organisations where the elite classes whoes conflicts form society
collect and share ideas. These people don't conjure.
Conjuring is left to hippies in New Age shops, TV preachers, Voodoo
shops, and other outlets who target the marginal, poor, immigrants;
all the people who are the wrong race, the wrong language, the wrong
clothing. Conjuring is a hold over of the pre-super state and the
people who still go to magic men are like hunter gather communities
living in the remote areas.
The churches that the Fortune 500 CEOs go to don't have speaking in
tounges of healing of the sick, they are magic free zones, just as the
"worship" of Einstein is not magic, but only service to Big Science,
the religion of State Power.