Prescriptive
jak
something prescribed it?
Could the laws of physics be described as prescriptive?
Cheers, jak
James Hogg
No. Water turns from a liquid to a solid state (ice) below a certain
temperature. This is not because some physicist has said that it should.
--
James
Ian Dalziel
wrote:
>If a law is deemed "prescriptive" does that imply that someone or
>something prescribed it?
Yes
>Could the laws of physics be described as prescriptive?
Depends on your theological perspective...
--
Ian D
John O'Flaherty
wrote:
>If a law is deemed "prescriptive" does that imply that someone or
>something prescribed it?
They're usually proscriptive, even if labeled incorrectly (asbos).
>Could the laws of physics be described as prescriptive?
Oh, so there must be a prescriber... is that where you're going?
--
John
Peter Duncanson (BrE)
wrote:
Indeed.
But the laws of physics, as we know them, are written by humans. They
are based on observation and describe how things work. They are
"descriptive".
--
Peter Duncanson, UK
(in alt.usage.english)
Don Phillipson
news:d1c29431-8618-4ecc...@26g2000yqo.googlegroups.com...
> If a law is deemed "prescriptive" does that imply that someone or
> something prescribed it?
No: it means the law prescribes what you must do (e.g.
carry ID, e.g. keep to the left, e.g. pay for social insurance.)
Proscriptive law proscribes (forbids) what you must not
do, e.g. steal, e.g. marry more than one spouse, e.g. say
offensive things about El Supremo.
> Could the laws of physics be described as prescriptive?
They are usually described as descriptive. They are also
prescriptive in one or both of two senses:
1. They dictate how physical objects must behave. When
two moving objects collide, their vectors after the event are
100 per cent determined by their vectors before the event.
2. Some people also believe God organized the universe
to be as it is: thus either the Creator God also created
the laws of physics or else the Creator God is not omnipotent
(if himself oblliged to obey prior laws of physics.)
--
Don Phillipson
Carlsbad Springs
(Ottawa, Canada)
Roland Hutchinson
There is, of course, a distinction to be made between "the laws...as we
know them" and the actual laws (if there are any).
--
Roland Hutchinson
He calls himself "the Garden State's leading violist da gamba,"
... comparable to being ruler of an exceptionally small duchy.
--Newark (NJ) Star Ledger ( http://tinyurl.com/RolandIsNJ )
Eric Walker
[...]
>> Could the laws of physics be described as prescriptive?
>
> They are usually described as descriptive. They are also prescriptive
> in one or both of two senses: 1. They dictate how physical objects must
> behave. When two moving objects collide, their vectors after the event
> are 100 per cent determined by their vectors before the event. 2. Some
> people also believe God organized the universe to be as it is: thus
> either the Creator God also created the laws of physics or else the
> Creator God is not omnipotent (if himself obliged to obey prior laws of
> physics.)
Just musing: can "prescriptive" be applied to rules other than those that
apply to sentient entities capable of choosing whether or not to abide by
the prescription?
--
Cordially,
Eric Walker, Owlcroft House
http://owlcroft.com/english/
jak
Thanks Eric, and thanks everyone for your responses.
Just for the record, I am an atheist of the Dawkins variety.
I am in a discussion with some fundamentalist Christians.
They are arguing that the laws of physics (nature, the universe) are
NOT prescriptive, and therefore can be broken at will.
Yes, I know that is a strange tack for fundamentalist Christians to
take, I would have guessed that these laws were prescribed by their
god, but no, they think that as prescriptive laws CANNOT be broken,
miracles would then not be possible.
I agree that the laws are NOT prescriptive, simply because that would
necessitate a prescriber for which I see no evidence.
They are adamant that "prescriptive" requires NO prescriber, because
the dictionary does not explicitly state a requirement for one.
I have come here to get a fresh view, as I'm starting to doubt my own
judgement in this matter.
So the crux of my query is, is the accepted meaning of prescriptive
that there must always be a prescriber?
And if there is no prescriber, they are not prescriptive?
Cheers jak
Steve Hayes
>So the crux of my query is, is the accepted meaning of prescriptive
>that there must always be a prescriber?
>And if there is no prescriber, they are not prescriptive?
And then there is this:
prescription n. the method of acquiring an easement upon another's real
property by continued and regular use without permission of the property owner
for a period of years required by the law of the state (commonly five years or
more). Examples: Phillip Packer drives across the corner of Ralph Roundup's
ranch to reach Packer's barn regularly for a period of ten years; for a decade
Ralph Retailer uses the alley back of Marjorie Howard's house to reach his
storeroom. In each case the result is a "prescriptive easement" for that
specific use. It effectively gives the user an easement for use but not
ownership of the property. (See: prescriptive easement)
When I first saw your query, I thought that "prescriptive" had something to do
with a period that could expire, but was too lazy to look it up (my reading
glasses were in another room).
--
Steve Hayes from Tshwane, South Africa
Web: http://hayesfam.bravehost.com/stevesig.htm
Blog: http://methodius.blogspot.com
E-mail - see web page, or parse: shayes at dunelm full stop org full stop uk
Eric Walker
[...]
> Just for the record, I am an atheist of the Dawkins variety. I am in a
> discussion with some fundamentalist Christians.
>
> They are arguing that the laws of physics (nature, the universe) are NOT
> prescriptive, and therefore can be broken at will. . . .
The discussion on these terms is pointless, because whether the laws can
or cannot be broken is unaffected by such word or words as we choose to
apply to them.
jak
> On Mon, 28 Dec 2009 17:24:53 -0800, jak wrote:
>
> [...]
>
> > Just for the record, I am an atheist of the Dawkins variety. I am in a
> > discussion with some fundamentalist Christians.
>
> > They are arguing that the laws of physics (nature, the universe) are NOT
> > prescriptive, and therefore can be broken at will. . . .
>
> The discussion on these terms is pointless, because whether the laws can
> or cannot be broken is unaffected by such word or words as we choose to
> apply to them.
I agree, Eric, but like cryptic crosswords, the thrust and parry of
pointless debate keeps my elderly brain
active and is a pleasant distraction until the opposition descends
into silly arguments like "I call these
things X and the dictionary says X is Y + Z so your observation that
X is Y + Z + 2 must be wrong."
Cheers, jak
Peter Duncanson (BrE)
wrote:
>On Dec 29, 11:28�am, Eric Walker <em...@owlcroft.com> wrote:
For the benefit of your fundamentalist Christian friends try this:
God the Creator has created the universe which operates according to
physical laws. He/She/It has also created a set of moral laws for
humans.
God has prescribed both sets of laws.
The physical laws are simply the way the physical universe works. The
laws are not outside the objects in the universe. The laws simply
determine the nature of the objects in the universe. They are the way
things are. Believers in divine intervention (miracles) say that God can
intervene and change the normal working of things. The universe is a
machine that will run the way in which it was designed to run unless God
sticks a hand in to change the way it works.
The moral laws do not control the way humans behave. They tell humans
how they *ought* to behave. There is then a system of rewards and
penalties for good behaviour and bad behaviour.
We humans can observe and describe the way the universe works and
express this description in what we call the Laws of Physics (and other
scientific disciplines). We cannot prescribe physical laws we can only
describe them.
When it comes to human behaviour humans can prescribe laws to attempt to
control the behaviour of themselves and other humans. Like God we can
apply penalties to those who disobey those laws.
It is unfortunate that the single word "law" is used for two very
different purposes.
I hope you can find some way of shortening the above for the purposes of
your discussions.
Peter Moylan
>> Could the laws of physics be described as prescriptive?
>
> Depends on your theological perspective...
The traditional descriptions leave out a lot of detail. "Let there be
light" was presumably preceded by things like "Let Planck's constant be
...".
(OK, OK, I know. Planck wasn't even born then. But an omniscient being
should have been able to predict his existence.)
(If that argument doesn't convince you, just substitute "Let My constant
be ...").
--
Peter Moylan, Newcastle, NSW, Australia. http://www.pmoylan.org
For an e-mail address, see my web page.
Peter Moylan
Oh my hypothetical being. I hadn't noticed that. Are we back to the tree
in the quad, then?
Peter Moylan
> On Dec 29, 7:21 am, Eric Walker <em...@owlcroft.com> wrote:
>
> Thanks Eric, and thanks everyone for your responses.
>
> Just for the record, I am an atheist of the Dawkins variety.
> I am in a discussion with some fundamentalist Christians.
>
> They are arguing that the laws of physics (nature, the universe) are
> NOT prescriptive, and therefore can be broken at will.
> Yes, I know that is a strange tack for fundamentalist Christians to
> take, I would have guessed that these laws were prescribed by their
> god, but no, they think that as prescriptive laws CANNOT be broken,
> miracles would then not be possible.
For once I agree with Eric: our definition of a word, whether it be by
dictionary or otherwise, does not change reality in the slightest.
Still, I can't help commenting on the topic of miracles. It seems to me
that an all-powerful god, with the ability to set up the laws of
physics, would hardly be so stupid as to build loopholes into the laws.
Miracles, as I understand them, are violations of the laws governing the
universe. Sure, if you're in charge of the laws then it's possible to
allow exceptions, but would any self-respecting god really do this? It
would be shoddy design. [1]
Second-rate stage magicians can do miracles. I would have serious
doubts, though, about the bona fides of a would-be god who is unable to
rise above the temptation to imitate second-rate magicians.
[1] Oops, there's that word. The "intelligent design" community has
already provided adequate evidence that their hypothesised designer is
seriously lacking in intelligence, so perhaps we're talking to the
invincibly ignorant here.
Ian Dalziel
<ma...@peterduncanson.net> wrote:
>It is unfortunate that the single word "law" is used for two very
>different purposes.
I can see a "theory" discussion looming.
--
Ian D
John O'Flaherty
wrote:
>On 29/12/09 02:03, John O'Flaherty wrote:
>> On Mon, 28 Dec 2009 06:38:19 -0800 (PST), jak <johnr...@gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> If a law is deemed "prescriptive" does that imply that someone or
>>> something prescribed it?
>>
>> They're usually proscriptive, even if labeled incorrectly (asbos).
>>
>>> Could the laws of physics be described as prescriptive?
>>
>> Oh, so there must be a prescriber... is that where you're going?
>
>Oh my hypothetical being. I hadn't noticed that. Are we back to the tree
>in the quad, then?
Not in my hemisphere.
--
John
Eric Walker
[...]
> Still, I can't help commenting on the topic of miracles. It seems to me
> that an all-powerful god, with the ability to set up the laws of
> physics, would hardly be so stupid as to build loopholes into the laws.
> Miracles, as I understand them, are violations of the laws governing the
> universe. Sure, if you're in charge of the laws then it's possible to
> allow exceptions, but would any self-respecting god really do this? It
> would be shoddy design. . . .
Believers who speak of miracles always amaze me, because they seem not to
understand that they are being, in a word, blasphemous, in that they are
attributing to God limitations of a kind that ill-assort with omniscience
and omnipotence. The core of the problem, I think, is an inability on
their part to actually comprehend what all those omni's imply coupled
with an inability to think outside the conventional conceptions of
temporality.
Leaving aside the question of what sort of meta-time an eternal being who
created time and space might be thought to operate in, consider: before
the capital-C Creation an omniscient God would foresee exactly, to the
fall of a sparrow's feather, every event in the entirety of time and
space for every possible set of initial conditions and laws, and would
then, with omnipotence, create the universe (or universes?) within which
those initial conditions and laws are such that all things will (or,
speaking timelessly, do) proceed as wanted, obviating the need for
"miracles"--which did they occur would thus, in effect, say "I couldn't
get it _quite_ right."
(That view does not conflict with free will, but this is a.u.e. not
alt.religion or whatever, so I'll stop here.)
Steve Hayes
wrote:
But aren't those laws of human, rather than divine origin?
They are human perceptions of what makes the universe tick, and those
perceptions change from time to time, if people like Thomas Kuhn are to be
believed. I'll say no more on that to avoid the dreaded p word.
But isn't a "miracle" something that prompts you to say "Wow!" It doesn't
necessarily have much to do with the "laws" of nature.
Eric Walker
[...]
> But aren't those laws of human, rather than divine origin?
Whether they are of divine origin starts Very Big Fights. But I find the
idea of their being of "human origin", um, bizarre.
> They are human perceptions of what makes the universe tick, and those
> perceptions change from time to time, if people like Thomas Kuhn are to
> be believed.
My knowledge of Kuhn's work is limited to a couple of Wikipedia articles,
but it reminds me of what someone once said about another work: "The part
that is good is not original, and the part that is original is not
good." (That is often attributed to Sam'l Johnson, but apparently
without ground.)
As best I can make out, Kuhn appears to feel that because humans are
imperfect, and occasionally let subjective preferences bias their
thinking, science as a tool is forever condemned to be subjective
knowledge. Without entering into extended discussion, I'd sum my
reaction as Nero Wolfe's favorite pejorative: pfui. Human perceptions of
natural law do indeed change from time to time, but in general follow a
path that, while now zigging and now zagging, generally tends toward a
more complete and more precise description of how things work.
Einstein's work, for example, did not "overthrow" Newton's: it only
expanded it. But this is (to use Bancroft Pons's favorite pejorative)
kinderspiel.
> But isn't a "miracle" something that prompts you to say "Wow!" It
> doesn't necessarily have much to do with the "laws" of nature.
A "miracle" as used in the old, original, theological sense means some
occurrence impossible under natural law and thus requiring (and
manifesting) direct supernatural influence in the mundane world; looser
uses, meaning any dramatic but quite unlikely event, are transferred
senses.
Chuck Riggs
Isn't "When a tree falls in the forrest, does it make a sound?",
universal, or are you talking about something else?
--
Regards,
Chuck Riggs,
An American who lives near Dublin, Ireland and usually spells in BrE
Roland Hutchinson
> My knowledge of Kuhn's work is limited to a couple of Wikipedia
> articles, [...]
Clearly.
> As best I can make out, Kuhn appears to feel that because humans are
> imperfect, and occasionally let subjective preferences bias their
> thinking, science as a tool is forever condemned to be subjective
> knowledge.
This was not really Kuhn's view. It might be the view of some who read
(arguably, mis-read) Kuhn and extended his insights to (or beyond) their
logical conclusion/the point of absurdity (depending on your point of
view).
Actually, the Wikipedia article
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Samuel_Kuhn
gives a quite good and dispassionate account of the (somewhat
complicated) question of what views Kuhn held on the realtionship between
scientific knowledge and subjectivity.
Robin Bignall
<em...@owlcroft.com> wrote:
[Miracles]
>A "miracle" as used in the old, original, theological sense means some
>occurrence impossible under natural law and thus requiring (and
>manifesting) direct supernatural influence in the mundane world; looser
>uses, meaning any dramatic but quite unlikely event, are transferred
>senses.
But what would a well-educated person in Caligula's Rome think of
television, the motor car etc? Would he think of them as miracles, or
as extensions of something (we call it technology) that they had
already started to develop. I'm still unsure whether Arthur Clarke's
famous quote about advanced technology seeming miraculous is actually
true to people who are not lost in superstition.
--
Robin
(BrE)
Herts, England
Donna Richoux
> On Dec 29, 7:21 am, Eric Walker <em...@owlcroft.com> wrote:
>
> Thanks Eric, and thanks everyone for your responses.
>
> Just for the record, I am an atheist of the Dawkins variety.
> I am in a discussion with some fundamentalist Christians.
>
> They are arguing that the laws of physics (nature, the universe) are
> NOT prescriptive, and therefore can be broken at will.
> Yes, I know that is a strange tack for fundamentalist Christians to
> take, I would have guessed that these laws were prescribed by their
> god, but no, they think that as prescriptive laws CANNOT be broken,
> miracles would then not be possible.
Sounds to me like either they or you got the words reversed. "Thou shalt
not commit murder" is a prescriptive law, and it is broken all the time.
"A dropped apple [on this earth] falls downward" is descriptive, and I
never heard of an apple that floated away instead.
Prescriptive laws have the element of "should" -- you should do it this
way -- and so there is always the suggestion "you could choose to do
otherwise, but there may be bad consequences."
I can imagine that some descriptive laws are stated with a sort of
"should" element, as in, "based on what we've seen, this should happen
90% of the time -- there is a 90% chance of this happening." That feels
totally different to me than the "should" of prescriptive advice.
Prescriptive: this is what you should do. Descriptive: This is what you
can expect to happen (sometimes stated, "This is what should happen.")
--
Best -- Donna Richoux
Steve Hayes
wrote:
That depends on what you mean by "old" and "original".
That sounds like the kind of definition propounded by 13th-century
Scholasticism and its derivatives -- I'm not sure how "original" it is.
And here's an example of relatively recent usage:
"The year 1989 was a year of miracles, an annus mirabilis. Yet the
explanations about the causes of communism�s demise differ. Americans answer
that it was the result of U.S. policies. A Democrat would say it was the human
rights policies put in place by Jimmy Carter, namely �d�tente with a human
face.� A Republican would credit Ronald Reagan�s policies, which initiated an
arms race that the Soviet economy could not match. "
http://www.ip-global.org/archiv/volumes/2009/reflections-on-1989/annus-mirabilis.html
I'm not sure what "laws of nature" were broken in those events, though some
would certainly see the hand of God in them.
Eric Walker
[...]
> But what would a well-educated person in Caligula's Rome think of
> television, the motor car etc? Would he think of them as miracles, or
> as extensions of something (we call it technology) that they had already
> started to develop. I'm still unsure whether Arthur Clarke's famous
> quote about advanced technology seeming miraculous is actually true to
> people who are not lost in superstition.
Given the proviso "well-educated", I daresay such a person would have the
same reaction we would to an exhibition of some tech way beyond our own:
good work, how do you do it? I have always thought Clarke's remark
demonstrated a sharp misunderstanding of both technology and magic. (I
am well aware that he knew tech stuff, but that's not quite the same
thing.)
Eric Walker
[...]
> And here's an example of relatively recent usage:
>
> "The year 1989 was a year of miracles, an annus mirabilis. Yet the
> explanations about the causes of communism’s demise differ. Americans
> answer that it was the result of U.S. policies. A Democrat would say it
> was the human rights policies put in place by Jimmy Carter, namely
> “détente with a human face.” A Republican would credit Ronald Reagan’s
> policies, which initiated an arms race that the Soviet economy could not
> match. "
>
> http://www.ip-global.org/archiv/volumes/2009/reflections-on-1989/annus-
mirabilis.html
>
> I'm not sure what "laws of nature" were broken in those events, though
> some would certainly see the hand of God in them.
Those are simply, and obviously, metaphorical extensions of the term. I
don't suppose anyone really thinks Thomas Alva Edison was practicing the
black arts at Menlo Park. When people with theological considerations
uppermost in their minds use the word "miracle", they are not speaking of
political agreements, no matter how promising or unexpected.
Steve Hayes
wrote:
>On Thu, 31 Dec 2009 04:59:37 +0200, Steve Hayes wrote:
>
>[...]
>
>> And here's an example of relatively recent usage:
>>
>> "The year 1989 was a year of miracles, an annus mirabilis. Yet the
>> explanations about the causes of communism?s demise differ. Americans
>> answer that it was the result of U.S. policies. A Democrat would say it
>> was the human rights policies put in place by Jimmy Carter, namely
>> ?d�tente with a human face.? A Republican would credit Ronald Reagan?s
>> policies, which initiated an arms race that the Soviet economy could not
>> match. "
>>
>> http://www.ip-global.org/archiv/volumes/2009/reflections-on-1989/annus-
>mirabilis.html
>>
>> I'm not sure what "laws of nature" were broken in those events, though
>> some would certainly see the hand of God in them.
>
>Those are simply, and obviously, metaphorical extensions of the term. I
>don't suppose anyone really thinks Thomas Alva Edison was practicing the
>black arts at Menlo Park. When people with theological considerations
>uppermost in their minds use the word "miracle", they are not speaking of
>political agreements, no matter how promising or unexpected.
So would you say it is what Fowler calls a "popularized technicality"?
What about other metaphorical extensions of theological terms, like Weber's
use of "charismatic"?
Or the popular and metaphorical extention of "iconoclastic"?
R H Draney
Recall how Doc Brown marvelled at the clunky VHS camcorder in the first "Back to
the Future"...the time machine that he would invent thirty years later was
almost dismissed entirely when he got a look at "a portable television
studio"....
Not long ago I tried to imagine a version in which someone from 2009 would make
a similar unexpected trip to 1969...what everyday item that he might reasonably
expect to be carrying could show a technically-minded contact?...not a
cellphone; it wouldn't function without the tower infrastructure....
(In a few days it'll be 2010...within the next five years we should see the
invention of hoverboards, "Mr Fusion" home nuclear reactors, pizza that can be
"re-hydrated" in seconds, clothing that dries itself when wet and adjusts its
size to the wearer, and holographic sharks to advertise movies)....r
--
A pessimist sees the glass as half empty.
An optometrist asks whether you see the glass
more full like this?...or like this?
Eric Walker
[...]
> (In a few days it'll be 2010...within the next five years we should see
> the invention of hoverboards, "Mr Fusion" home nuclear reactors, pizza
> that can be "re-hydrated" in seconds, clothing that dries itself when
> wet and adjusts its size to the wearer, and holographic sharks to
> advertise movies)....r
How can you overlook the most prominent of all: the personal jet backpack?
Eric Walker
[...]
> So would you say [miracle] is what Fowler calls a "popularized
> technicality"?
No. There is nothing technical about "miracle". If we say the wind was
howling, is that a "popularization" of the "technical term" 'howl'?
> What about other metaphorical extensions of theological terms, like
> Weber's use of "charismatic"?
I know nothing of Weber. Please spare yourself the effort of instructing
me.
> Or the popular and metaphorical extention of "iconoclastic"?
OK, I give up: what about it?
Evan Kirshenbaum
It would be interesting to see an explanation of television, a cell
phone, a remote control, a computer, a web site, or nearly anything
technological we take for granted that was geared at somebody, even a
scientist, from anywhere before, say, the seventeenth or eighteenth
century, who has absolutely no experience with electricity, radio,
etc., that didn't come off as sounding like magic, protestations to
the contrary notwithstanding. I don't think I could do it.
--
Evan Kirshenbaum +------------------------------------
HP Laboratories |Pious Jews have a category of
1501 Page Mill Road, 1U, MS 1141 |questions that can harmlessly be
Palo Alto, CA 94304 |allowed to go without an answer
|until the Messiah comes. I suspect
kirsh...@hpl.hp.com |that this is one of them.
(650)857-7572 | Joseph C. Fineman
Steve Hayes
wrote:
>On Thu, 31 Dec 2009 05:59:36 +0200, Steve Hayes wrote:
>
>[...]
>
>> So would you say [miracle] is what Fowler calls a "popularized
>> technicality"?
>
>No. There is nothing technical about "miracle". If we say the wind was
>howling, is that a "popularization" of the "technical term" 'howl'?
>
>> What about other metaphorical extensions of theological terms, like
>> Weber's use of "charismatic"?
>
>I know nothing of Weber. Please spare yourself the effort of instructing
>me.
>
>> Or the popular and metaphorical extention of "iconoclastic"?
>
>OK, I give up: what about it?
You seemed to be arguing that "miracle" should only be used in the technical
theological sense in which it was used by Scholastic theologians especially in
the 13th century, thus tying their meaning to a certain period, culture, and
intellectual milieu. .
I was wondering if you interpreted other terms in similar ways.
James Hogg
> Eric Walker <em...@owlcroft.com> writes:
>
>> On Wed, 30 Dec 2009 21:28:37 +0000, Robin Bignall wrote:
>>
>> [...]
>>
>>> But what would a well-educated person in Caligula's Rome think of
>>> television, the motor car etc? Would he think of them as miracles,
>>> or as extensions of something (we call it technology) that they had
>>> already started to develop. I'm still unsure whether Arthur
>>> Clarke's famous quote about advanced technology seeming miraculous
>>> is actually true to people who are not lost in superstition.
>> Given the proviso "well-educated", I daresay such a person would
>> have the same reaction we would to an exhibition of some tech way
>> beyond our own: good work, how do you do it? I have always thought
>> Clarke's remark demonstrated a sharp misunderstanding of both
>> technology and magic. (I am well aware that he knew tech stuff, but
>> that's not quite the same thing.)
>
> It would be interesting to see an explanation of television, a cell
> phone, a remote control, a computer, a web site, or nearly anything
> technological we take for granted that was geared at somebody, even a
> scientist, from anywhere before, say, the seventeenth or eighteenth
> century, who has absolutely no experience with electricity, radio,
> etc., that didn't come off as sounding like magic, protestations to
> the contrary notwithstanding. I don't think I could do it.
I don't think anyone could do it.
--
James
R H Draney
>
>On Wed, 30 Dec 2009 20:15:46 -0800, R H Draney wrote:
>
>[...]
>
>> (In a few days it'll be 2010...within the next five years we should see
>> the invention of hoverboards, "Mr Fusion" home nuclear reactors, pizza
>> that can be "re-hydrated" in seconds, clothing that dries itself when
>> wet and adjusts its size to the wearer, and holographic sharks to
>> advertise movies)....r
>
>How can you overlook the most prominent of all: the personal jet backpack?
Funny, we got those in 2000 according to some other primary sources, but BTTF
didn't show anyone using them...safety regulations, probably....
Somewhere I've got a 1939 jokebook that assumes personal flying vehicles (and
police giving them tickets) in 1960....r
Evan Kirshenbaum
> Recall how Doc Brown marvelled at the clunky VHS camcorder in the
> first "Back to the Future"...the time machine that he would invent
> thirty years later was almost dismissed entirely when he got a look
> at "a portable television studio"....
>
> Not long ago I tried to imagine a version in which someone from 2009
> would make a similar unexpected trip to 1969...what everyday item
> that he might reasonably expect to be carrying could show a
> technically-minded contact?...not a cellphone; it wouldn't function
> without the tower infrastructure....
The self-contained parts of it would function. With things like
iPhones, that would include games, most apps (including a calculator),
a camera (including video), photos, a music library, a voice recoder,
phone book, etc. It would function until the battery ran down, and if
you were sufficiently tech-savy, you might even be able to jury-rig a
cable to recharge it (a simply matter of getting the right voltage to
the right pin). If, as in the movie, you had been recording something
for posterity, you would probably have a digital video camera,
possibly part of a digital still camera.
If your time machine is in your car, you probably have a remote
control keyfob that would still function. The LEDs on the display
and, especially, the brakelights (or, even better, a white LED
flashlight) would be fascinating. (LEDs were available, but were
still very low power, extremely expensive, and only available in a few
colors.) While your cell phone wouldn't work without towers, your
car's radio would have no problem with the available signals, and its
ability to search for stations would interesting. You might even have
a CD or two to show him (and demonstrate, using your car's stereo).
If you were wearing modern athletic shoes, they would probably be
something he would recognize as not the sort of thing one would find
in 1969. Your money, credit cards, and driver's licene, with
color-shifting ink and holograms would be a curiosity. Oh, and your
digital watch, by itself, would be of great interest, not to mention
its ability to work as a stopwatch, alarm, timer, etc. And, of
course, if you had a notebook computer with you, you'd have all sorts
of things to show him.
I suspect that my thin and lightweight (for their power)
progressive-bifocal glasses would be interesting. (Although I see
that progressive lenses are actually reasonably old, and were
commercially available by the early '60s. Plastic lenses appear to
have come out in the early '60s, but though they were lighter, they
were as thick as glass ones until the '80s.)
--
Evan Kirshenbaum +------------------------------------
HP Laboratories |Just sit right back
1501 Page Mill Road, 1U, MS 1141 | and you'll hear a tale,
Palo Alto, CA 94304 | a tale of the Stanford red
|That started when a little boy
kirsh...@hpl.hp.com | named Leland did drop dead
(650)857-7572
Evan Kirshenbaum
> Eric Walker filted:
>>How can you overlook the most prominent of all: the personal jet
>>backpack?
>
> Funny, we got those in 2000 according to some other primary sources,
> but BTTF didn't show anyone using them...safety regulations,
> probably....
Long before that. The one in _Thunderball_ (1965) is real
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell_Rocket_Belt
They didn't let you fly for very long, though. There are several
early "personal flying devices" (packs, platforms, and flying cars) on
display (some with demo videos) at the Hiller Aviation Museum near San
Francisco.
--
Evan Kirshenbaum +------------------------------------
HP Laboratories |Reality is that which, when you
1501 Page Mill Road, 1U, MS 1141 |stop believing in it, doesn't go
Palo Alto, CA 94304 |away.
|
kirsh...@hpl.hp.com | Philip K. Dick
(650)857-7572
Cheryl
> It would be interesting to see an explanation of television, a cell
> phone, a remote control, a computer, a web site, or nearly anything
> technological we take for granted that was geared at somebody, even a
> scientist, from anywhere before, say, the seventeenth or eighteenth
> century, who has absolutely no experience with electricity, radio,
> etc., that didn't come off as sounding like magic, protestations to
> the contrary notwithstanding. I don't think I could do it.
I can't explain how any of those work in any but the most general terms
- and I'd probably get the explanations wrong. I was taught a bit about
what electricity is and how you get the picture in the (now almost
archaic) TVs, but a few probing questions would probably get me into a
corner mumbling 'well, no, I don't know exactly, but it's science, not
magic. I KNOW it's science and not magic because that's what everyone
else says' - which would not be terribly convincing to any logical
thinker who was trying to figure out whether he was trying to deal with
developments of natural technology or magic.
--
Cheryl
Steve Hayes
>I can't explain how any of those work in any but the most general terms
>- and I'd probably get the explanations wrong. I was taught a bit about
>what electricity is and how you get the picture in the (now almost
>archaic) TVs, but a few probing questions would probably get me into a
>corner mumbling 'well, no, I don't know exactly, but it's science, not
>magic. I KNOW it's science and not magic because that's what everyone
>else says' - which would not be terribly convincing to any logical
>thinker who was trying to figure out whether he was trying to deal with
> developments of natural technology or magic.
On the Greek island of Naxos in earlier times whirlwinds
were thought to be caused by Nereides and other exotika
dancing. Now there are weather stations all over the country,
and reliance on meteorology is taken as a sign of modernity.
It is regarded as authoritative, though most villagers have
little idea of the principles, and this has become a
substitute for empirical observation on the part of most
villagers. Yet meteorological forecasts are not noted for
their accuracy.
Peter Moylan
> On Tue, 29 Dec 2009 11:09:04 -0600, John O'Flaherty
> <quia...@yeeha.com> wrote:
>
>> On Tue, 29 Dec 2009 23:40:23 +1100, Peter Moylan <gro.nalyomp@retep>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> On 29/12/09 02:03, John O'Flaherty wrote:
>>>> On Mon, 28 Dec 2009 06:38:19 -0800 (PST), jak <johnr...@gmail.com>
>>>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> If a law is deemed "prescriptive" does that imply that someone or
>>>>> something prescribed it?
>>>>
>>>> They're usually proscriptive, even if labeled incorrectly (asbos).
>>>>
>>>>> Could the laws of physics be described as prescriptive?
>>>>
>>>> Oh, so there must be a prescriber... is that where you're going?
>>>
>>> Oh my hypothetical being. I hadn't noticed that. Are we back to the tree
>>> in the quad, then?
>>
>> Not in my hemisphere.
>
> Isn't "When a tree falls in the forrest, does it make a sound?",
> universal, or are you talking about something else?
I think Berkeley's "tree in the quad" argument is a bit older than that
question, although they're related. Bishop Berkeley's argument, if I
recall it correctly, runs something like this.
1. Obviously a tree cannot exist unless there is someone there
to observe it.
2. On the other hand, it is absurd to suppose that the tree goes
away whenever I look the other way, and returns when I look
back again.
3. Therefore the tree must have some sort of continuity.
4. Therefore someone must be watching it all the time. (Some
people these days would call this "intelligent observation" [*],
in order to get it into the science curriculum.)
5. Therefore a god exists.
6. Besides, a god who sees every sparrow fall would certainly
notice the abrupt disappearance of a tree, because lots of
sparrows would suddenly lose their footing.
It's years since I read the original wording, so I might be
misremembering some details.
[*] As distinct from unintelligent observation. Berkeley never stated
this explicitly, but I suspect that he believed that a sparrow's visual
cortex was too small to keep an entire tree in existence.
Very many years later, physics was to face a similar question: is a cat
sufficiently self-aware to collapse a wave function?
John O'Flaherty
wrote:
>On Tue, 29 Dec 2009 11:09:04 -0600, John O'Flaherty
><quia...@yeeha.com> wrote:
>
>>On Tue, 29 Dec 2009 23:40:23 +1100, Peter Moylan <gro.nalyomp@retep>
>>wrote:
>>
>>>On 29/12/09 02:03, John O'Flaherty wrote:
>>>> On Mon, 28 Dec 2009 06:38:19 -0800 (PST), jak <johnr...@gmail.com>
>>>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> If a law is deemed "prescriptive" does that imply that someone or
>>>>> something prescribed it?
>>>>
>>>> They're usually proscriptive, even if labeled incorrectly (asbos).
>>>>
>>>>> Could the laws of physics be described as prescriptive?
>>>>
>>>> Oh, so there must be a prescriber... is that where you're going?
>>>
>>>Oh my hypothetical being. I hadn't noticed that. Are we back to the tree
>>>in the quad, then?
>>
>>Not in my hemisphere.
>
>Isn't "When a tree falls in the forrest, does it make a sound?",
>universal, or are you talking about something else?
The trees are all bare
a whiteness blankets the quad
chatter on indoors.
--
John
Evan Kirshenbaum
That's what I meant about "protestations to the contrary
notwithstanding". I think that at some point any of us would get to
"energy flowing along wires from a distant source of power" into a box
that "receives images sent as invisible waves of energy (that can pass
through walls) from a far-off place" and anthropomorphically "causes
them to appear on the screen".
--
Evan Kirshenbaum +------------------------------------
HP Laboratories |It is error alone which needs the
1501 Page Mill Road, 1U, MS 1141 |support of government. Truth can
Palo Alto, CA 94304 |stand by itself.
| Thomas Jefferson
kirsh...@hpl.hp.com
(650)857-7572
Roland Hutchinson
> On Tue, 29 Dec 2009 11:09:04 -0600, John O'Flaherty <quia...@yeeha.com>
> wrote:
>
>>On Tue, 29 Dec 2009 23:40:23 +1100, Peter Moylan <gro.nalyomp@retep>
>>wrote:
>>
>>>On 29/12/09 02:03, John O'Flaherty wrote:
>>>> On Mon, 28 Dec 2009 06:38:19 -0800 (PST), jak <johnr...@gmail.com>
>>>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> If a law is deemed "prescriptive" does that imply that someone or
>>>>> something prescribed it?
>>>>
>>>> They're usually proscriptive, even if labeled incorrectly (asbos).
>>>>
>>>>> Could the laws of physics be described as prescriptive?
>>>>
>>>> Oh, so there must be a prescriber... is that where you're going?
>>>
>>>Oh my hypothetical being. I hadn't noticed that. Are we back to the
>>>tree in the quad, then?
>>
>>Not in my hemisphere.
>
> Isn't "When a tree falls in the forrest, does it make a sound?",
> universal, or are you talking about something else?
Something close to it: it's a bit of venerable[1] collegiate humor with a
Berkeleyan flavor (as in the Rt. Rev. George, not as in University of
California at):
There was a young man who said "God
Must find it exceedingly odd
When he finds that this tree
Just ceases to be
When there's no-one about on the Quad."
Which is supposed to have provoked the reply:
"Dear sir your confusion is odd
I am always about on the Quad
So you see that this tree
Continues to be
Since observed by yours truly", signed, God
[1] Earliest citation at Google Books appears to be 1943.
Eric Walker
[...]
> You seemed to be arguing that "miracle" should only be used in the
> technical theological sense in which it was used by Scholastic
> theologians especially in the 13th century, thus tying their meaning to
> a certain period, culture, and intellectual milieu. .
That is probably the root of the difficulty: I am not so arguing. I am
saying that in discussions focussed on theological matters, words,
barring clear evidence to the contrary, need to be taken as having been
used in their theological sense when such a one exists and differs from
other senses, especially more modern or metaphorical ones.
As a reminder, the source quotation at issue here is:
But isn't a "miracle" something that prompts you to say "Wow!" It
doesn't necessarily have much to do with the "laws" of nature.
So no, _in this context_ a miracle is not *merely* that which excites awe
or surprise: it is something impossible within natural law. In other
contexts, it need not be literal: it's a miracle that such a simple
matter is so hard to understand.
Jerry Friedman
> On Wed, 30 Dec 2009 08:23:09 +0200, Steve Hayes wrote:
>
> [...]
>
> > But aren't those laws of human, rather than divine origin?
>
> Whether they are of divine origin starts Very Big Fights. But I find the
> idea of their being of "human origin", um, bizarre.
The laws of nature that we know are undeniably of human origin. Many
such laws have been invented, some work better than others, some work
so well that people have believed them, but they're all human
inventions. Possibly some of the best laws now known match parts of
the true laws of nature, assuming such things exist.
> > But isn't a "miracle" something that prompts you to say "Wow!" It
> > doesn't necessarily have much to do with the "laws" of nature.
>
> A "miracle" as used in the old, original, theological sense means some
> occurrence impossible under natural law and thus requiring (and
> manifesting) direct supernatural influence in the mundane world; looser
> uses, meaning any dramatic but quite unlikely event, are transferred
> senses.
The word is from Latin /miraculum/, whose meanings include "a
wonder" (ultimately from Latin /mirus/, "wonderful"). Lewis and Short
cite Suetonius's phrase "miracula septem", the seven wonders of the
world. So the original sense was indeed "something that prompts you
to say 'Wow!'" (I wonder how you say that in Latin.)
Eric Walker
[...]
> That's what I meant about "protestations to the contrary
> notwithstanding". I think that at some point any of us would get to
> "energy flowing along wires from a distant source of power" into a box
> that "receives images sent as invisible waves of energy (that can pass
> through walls) from a far-off place" and anthropomorphically "causes
> them to appear on the screen".
I suspect you are overestimating the difficulties, given a couple of
assumptions: one (as originally given) is that one is addressing a well-
educated person; two is that both of you have some time; three is that
you make clear that this is going to require quite a bit of explaining,
going right back to basics. From there, I think one reasonably familiar
with modern science without himself or herself being a scientist (or
engineer) and tolerably eloquent could proceed satisfactorily.
In fact, that is roughly speaking what we do when we school children,
save that the "some time" expands into years; but for an intelligent but
merely ignorant adult not seeking highly detailed understandings, that
should be highly compressible.
Robin Bignall
wrote:
But do you have to? How much does the average well-educated person
know about quantum mechanics or how a TV actually works? Discounting
trickery or sleight of hand, there are only two explanations for
things that apparently break the laws of physics: they are either
magic or we simply do not know enough about the laws of physics yet to
explain them. "Magic" is a loaded word. To believe that it's at all
possible is, to me, to be superstitious, to believe in the
supernatural. They had machines in the 19th century; Newton was
around at that time and scientific thinking was quite advanced. They
even had machines of sorts in Roman times. The ancient Greeks
speculated about atoms. I think that Clarke's remark treats humanity
as some sort of cargo cult that will always view high enough
technology as supernatural. but I think he's underestimating us. In
every age there must have been people who said "There must be a
natural explanation for X", where X is something out of mankind's
experience. If not, science would never have got off the ground.
Peter Duncanson (BrE)
We think of Newton as a scientist. His science was a small part of what
he did. He was also active in theology and in studies of the occult.
I have read only a little on his non-scientific activities but this
chimes with what I have read:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Newton%27s_occult_studies
> They
>even had machines of sorts in Roman times. The ancient Greeks
>speculated about atoms. I think that Clarke's remark treats humanity
>as some sort of cargo cult that will always view high enough
>technology as supernatural. but I think he's underestimating us. In
>every age there must have been people who said "There must be a
>natural explanation for X", where X is something out of mankind's
>experience. If not, science would never have got off the ground.
--
Peter Duncanson, UK
(in alt.usage.english)
Jerry Friedman
wrote:
> On Mon, 28 Dec 2009 21:19:09 -0800 (PST), jak <johnrile...@gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>
>
> >On Dec 29, 11:28 am, Eric Walker <em...@owlcroft.com> wrote:
> >> On Mon, 28 Dec 2009 17:24:53 -0800, jak wrote:
>
> >> [...]
>
> >> > Just for the record, I am an atheist of the Dawkins variety. I am in a
> >> > discussion with some fundamentalist Christians.
>
> >> > They are arguing that the laws of physics (nature, the universe) are NOT
At whose will? (As Cormac McCarthy might say.) I've never had much
luck--though some of my physics students seem capable of breaking the
laws of physics without even wanting to.
To me a prescriptive law would be one that tells you something you
have to do, such as the American law that male citizens turning 18
have to register for the draft. Whether the law can be broken at will
(like that law or the one forbidding murder) or can't (like the laws
of physics, I strongly suspect) doesn't have anything to do with what
I mean by "prescriptive".
> For the benefit of your fundamentalist Christian friends try this:
>
> God the Creator has created the universe which operates according to
> physical laws.
This is one religious view, but not the only one. There are also
supernaturalist (?) views that everything that happens in the material
world is the result of sentience--either material things are sentient,
or angels make everything happen. Either way, you could say that the
laws of nature are prescriptive, but much more generally obeyed than
human laws.
> He/She/It has also created a set of moral laws for
> humans.
>
> God has prescribed both sets of laws.
>
> The physical laws are simply the way the physical universe works. The
> laws are not outside the objects in the universe. The laws simply
> determine the nature of the objects in the universe. They are the way
> things are. Believers in divine intervention (miracles) say that God can
> intervene and change the normal working of things. The universe is a
> machine that will run the way in which it was designed to run unless God
> sticks a hand in to change the way it works.
...
As I said above, this is not necessarily the only religious view. In
fact, I suspect it was uncommon till Kepler and Newton (but I don't
know).
> It is unfortunate that the single word "law" is used for two very
> different purposes.
Yep.
--
Jerry Friedman
Eric Walker
[...]
> We think of Newton as a scientist. His science was a small part of what
> he did. He was also active in theology and in studies of the occult.
>
> I have read only a little on his non-scientific activities but this
> chimes with what I have read:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Newton%27s_occult_studies
Definitely true, but needing qualification. Despite Keynes's calling
Newton "the last of the magicians", the "occult" involved was not so much
"magic" as we today understand the word as the older sense of "hidden"
knowledge. In short, he is better described--as he often is--by the
phrase "the last alchemist".
I have somewhere, though I cannot lay my hand on it at the moment, a
little book titled (as best I remember) just that--"Newton: The Last
Alchemist". (Curiously, I find sources outside the Wikipedia article on
Newton, including others on Wikipedia, that state that that also was
Keynes' actual phrase for Newton.)
Evan Kirshenbaum
While I have no doubt that given a sufficient amount of time, probably
a good fraction of the years it takes people nowadays[1], you could
start at the beginning and (assuming you had the appropriate books and
materials) bring them up to the level at which they could understand
the explanation, I think you underestimate the difficulties[2] ... and
perhaps are reframing the task. I've always assumed that the scenario
is "What's that?" "What does it do?" "Oh, really? How does it
work?" Is there a five-minute answer that you could give that would
be materially different from what someone at the time would give as a
"magic" way to do the same thing? A two-hour answer? A two-day
answer? If so, could you do it for a well-educated person from 1300?
1000? 400?
[1] By positing well-educated people, you save some time. By positing
people who haven't grown up around technology and who have grown
up in a society that takes magic and mytsticism for granted and
therefore will have to unlearn certain reflex reactions, you
probably have to spend some extra.
[2] Remember that you're talking to somebody who has probably never
seen a machine more complicated than a clock or windmill or a
chemical reaction more complicated than a gunpowder explosion.
Who has never seen action at a distance that doesn't involve a
human agent.
--
Evan Kirshenbaum +------------------------------------
HP Laboratories |If only some crazy scientist
1501 Page Mill Road, 1U, MS 1141 |somewhere would develop a device
Palo Alto, CA 94304 |that would allow us to change the
|channel on our televisions......
kirsh...@hpl.hp.com | --"lazarus"
(650)857-7572
Evan Kirshenbaum
> I think that Clarke's remark treats humanity as some sort of cargo
> cult that will always view high enough technology as
> supernatural. but I think he's underestimating us. In every age
> there must have been people who said "There must be a natural
> explanation for X", where X is something out of mankind's
> experience. If not, science would never have got off the ground.
Clarke didn't say that people will view high enough technology as
magic. He said that sufficiently advanced technology is
*indistinguishable from* magic. There's a difference. Pick anything
you like and imagine the sort of explanation someone would give for a
magical way to do it. Then imagine that somebody gives essentially
the same explanation (because that's as close as he can come using
terms you can understand) and follows it up with "But of course,
there's nothing magical about it. It's all the sort of science one
learns in high school in the 27th century."
No magic involved. You just wave this stick and say these three words
and a being from the seventh dimension is summoned into the circle,
and it will answer one question about something that will happen in
the future. Simple science.
--
Evan Kirshenbaum +------------------------------------
HP Laboratories |The skinny models whose main job is
1501 Page Mill Road, 1U, MS 1141 |to display clothes aren't hired for
Palo Alto, CA 94304 |their sex appeal. They're hired
|for their resemblance to a
kirsh...@hpl.hp.com |coat-hanger.
(650)857-7572 | Peter Moylan
R H Draney
>
>While I have no doubt that given a sufficient amount of time, probably
>a good fraction of the years it takes people nowadays[1], you could
>start at the beginning and (assuming you had the appropriate books and
>materials) bring them up to the level at which they could understand
>the explanation, I think you underestimate the difficulties[2] ... and
>perhaps are reframing the task. I've always assumed that the scenario
>is "What's that?" "What does it do?" "Oh, really? How does it
>work?" Is there a five-minute answer that you could give that would
>be materially different from what someone at the time would give as a
>"magic" way to do the same thing? A two-hour answer? A two-day
>answer? If so, could you do it for a well-educated person from 1300?
>1000? 400?
>
>[1] By positing well-educated people, you save some time. By positing
> people who haven't grown up around technology and who have grown
> up in a society that takes magic and mytsticism for granted and
> therefore will have to unlearn certain reflex reactions, you
> probably have to spend some extra.
>
>[2] Remember that you're talking to somebody who has probably never
> seen a machine more complicated than a clock or windmill or a
> chemical reaction more complicated than a gunpowder explosion.
> Who has never seen action at a distance that doesn't involve a
> human agent.
If anyone could do it, it would be David Macaulay, author of "The Way Things
Work"...so what if he has to bring in woolly mammoths to help with the
illustrations?...r
Steve Hayes
Since observed by, yours faithfully, God.
Scans better.
Steve Hayes
wrote:
>On Thu, 31 Dec 2009 10:26:44 +0200, Steve Hayes wrote:
But that is precisely the point that I disagree with. *One* theological
system, the scholastic one, defined miracles in terms of breaking laws of
nature, but that does not mean that all theological systems do so, nor do they
insist that something cannot be a miracle unless it broke some natural law.
Chuck Riggs
wrote:
Good old Schrodinger, but I must say I liked his equation
substantially better than his cat, which annoys me whenever I read
about her.
--
Regards,
Chuck Riggs,
An American who lives near Dublin, Ireland and usually spells in BrE
Donna Richoux
> On Thu, 31 Dec 2009 19:44:35 +0000 (UTC), Roland Hutchinson
> <my.sp...@verizon.net> wrote:
>
> >"Dear sir your confusion is odd
> >I am always about on the Quad
> >So you see that this tree
> >Continues to be
> >Since observed by yours truly", signed, God
>
> Since observed by, yours faithfully, God.
>
> Scans better.
What about this rule we've been told about, on when to say "faithfully"
-- does it fit?
Cheryl
But surely science in the modern sense, all nicely sorted out into
chemistry and physics and so on, didn't exist then? It was quite in
order for a natural philosopher to study alchemy as well as falling
objects.
I think theology was considered a separate branch of knowledge than
natural philosophy, and I believe he was quite an original - or at least
unorthodox - theologian, too. I keep meaning to read more about him;
he seems to have been a much more complex character than is shown by the
two or three line biographies accompanying Newton's Laws in introductory
physics texts.
Cheryl
Nick
Yes, you've got "Sir" and "faithfully" which is fine. As would be "Dear
reader" and "sincerely". You just shouldn't have the two 'S's
--
Online waterways route planner | http://canalplan.eu
Plan trips, see photos, check facilities | http://canalplan.org.uk
Eric Walker
[...]
> While I have no doubt that given a sufficient amount of time, probably a
> good fraction of the years it takes people nowadays[1], you could start
> at the beginning and (assuming you had the appropriate books and
> materials) bring them up to the level at which they could understand the
> explanation, I think you underestimate the difficulties[2] ... and
> perhaps are reframing the task. I've always assumed that the scenario
> is "What's that?" "What does it do?" "Oh, really? How does it work?"
> Is there a five-minute answer that you could give that would be
> materially different from what someone at the time would give as a
> "magic" way to do the same thing? A two-hour answer? A two-day answer?
> If so, could you do it for a well-educated person from 1300? 1000?
> 400?
I am supposing something in the two-hour region, though less--perhaps
much less--might do, depending on the depth of understanding the
hypothetical ancient might want. I don't think the era much matters once
it is well before the industrial revolution.
The very first step, which requires no technological knowledge at all,
just common sense, an open mind, and perhaps five minutes, is to
establish the fundamental difference between magic and technology.
Though participants in science-fiction/fantasy fan forums can manage to
keep their knickers in a twist for days or weeks over the question, it
really is not complicated in concept, and I doubt any even moderately
sophisticated ancient would have any problem grasping that difference.
Once that is established, the rest is merely a question of level of
detail. I suppose the next step would be to make the ancient appreciate
that there are phenomena that take place on scales too small and too
large for ready perception by the unaided human senses. Then it's a
matter of choice: perhaps some simplistic, '50s-high-school-level atomic
physics to open with (depending, I suppose, on the particular gadget
being discussed).
> [1] By positing well-educated people, you save some time. By positing
> people who haven't grown up around technology and who have grown up
> in a society that takes magic and mysticism for granted and
> therefore will have to unlearn certain reflex reactions, you
> probably have to spend some extra.
The positing was done upthread, and not by me. But I think it's fair
dinkum, because explaining how things work, or even the basic ideas of
science, is difficult even dealing with a distressingly large fraction of
the contemporary population.
> [2] Remember that you're talking to somebody who has probably never
> seen a machine more complicated than a clock or windmill or a
> chemical reaction more complicated than a gunpowder explosion. Who
> has never seen action at a distance that doesn't involve a human
> agent.
Obviously, lacking a time machine with which to make field tests we
cannot be sure. But I really think it would not be that hard. (And is
not the warmth of sunlight action at a distance?)
The ancients' ability to deal in complexity is easy to under-estimate:
consider the Antikythera computing device (recently written up again in
_Scientific American_). That's one whacking great load of both immense
mechanical ingenuity and understanding of practical astronomy. Or see--
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antikythera_mechanism
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Greek_technology
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_technology
Eric Walker
[...]
> Clarke didn't say that people will view high enough technology as magic.
> He said that sufficiently advanced technology is *indistinguishable
> from* magic. There's a difference.
Indistinguishable by whom? The person--or persons--operating it knows
perfectly well that it is tech, whether or not he or she really grasps
how it works. So if someone is having trouble distinguishing, that is
because that someone is being, in a word, fooled. If we stuck David
Letterman's old pal KayMar the Discount Magician in a time machine and
ran him back a few centuries, his ordinary stage conjuror's stuff would
probably convince not a few--maybe most--that he was doing magic. Is the
fact--presumed fact--that a few very low-tech mechanical toys (if any:
I'm not expert on stage magic) coupled with training in deception and
rapid hand movements are "indistinguishable from magic" some deep insight
worth memorializing in an apothegm?
The proposition also is silly because it depends on the victims--there is
no better word--being _conceptually_ unable to distinguish tech and magic
(that is, phenomena that are regular from those that flow purely from
will).
[...]
> No magic involved. You just wave this stick and say these three words
> and a being from the seventh dimension is summoned into the circle, and
> it will answer one question about something that will happen in the
> future. Simple science.
In fact, did it work, it would be. That's another one that fans on
science-fiction/fantasy forums get entangled over: but any phenomena that
are literally regular are part of science. Magic is, by definition, that
which is not regular, which is purely _ad hoc_ imposition of will on
reality; anything that _is_ regular--that always works the same way, that
can be discovered by diligent application of the scientific method--is
science.
Science has not (yet) found any indications that there are sticks with
the property that waving them while saying certain particular words will
invoke a being from another continuum (nor any definite assurance that
there are such places), or that any such beings could see into our
future. But if it did, well, that would indeed be a revolution in
science--but not magic.
Eric Walker
[...]
> But that is precisely the point that I disagree with. *One* theological
> system, the scholastic one, defined miracles in terms of breaking laws
> of nature, but that does not mean that all theological systems do so,
> nor do they insist that something cannot be a miracle unless it broke
> some natural law.
OK, List for us some theological systems within which the concept of
"miracle", if it exists as a component of the theology, means "Gee, I
would never have expected that."
Robin Bignall
I've just read Eric's response to this and agree pretty much with
that. I think that in all ages of mankind there have been people who,
in response to something quite beyond belief, would react by thinking
"That's neat; I wonder how it works" rather than "&deity help us", and
putting it down to supernatural forces that we can know nothing about.
I believe that superstition will always be with us while we remain
human, and while what we call intelligence is distributed on a
Gaussian curve. There will always be people who believe in good and
bad luck, destiny, and everything that derives from &deities. But as
I've said before, the universe's kimono is open, and cleverness and
ingenuity will eventually allow us to model in our language how it
works. Would we expect everyone to understand it? No; you don't have
to understand how a car works in order to drive.
As to how to explain atomic physics to an Ancient Greek, it isn't
likely to be necessary. I thought that time travel had been proved
impossible by Hawking et al.
As to superior technology meeting inferior on earth, the record isn't
good. American Indian meets white man, for example, or the Europeans
invading south America. The Europeans were not interested in teaching
the Aztecs how to make ocean-going vessels, or in preserving their way
of life. But we know better than that now, some will say. I don't
think so. While we countenance war as a problem-solving mechanism,
particularly between peoples who disagree about how to worship any
particular version of &deity, we cannot call ourselves civilised.
The "explanation" situation might come about if some other race that
has discovered FTL travel visits us. Leaving aside all of the reasons
why they might do that, some possibly malevolent, if the secret of FTL
is well beyond our grasp as we know physics today, their best solution
might simply be to tell us to concentrate our research on areas a, b,
c etc. and we'll eventually get there.
Steve Hayes
Which rule is that?
All the versions of the limerick I've seen until this thread have used "yours
faithfully".
Steve Hayes
>On Dec 29, 7:21�am, Eric Walker <em...@owlcroft.com> wrote:
>
>Thanks Eric, and thanks everyone for your responses.
>
>Just for the record, I am an atheist of the Dawkins variety.
>I am in a discussion with some fundamentalist Christians.
>
>They are arguing that the laws of physics (nature, the universe) are
>NOT prescriptive, and therefore can be broken at will.
>Yes, I know that is a strange tack for fundamentalist Christians to
>take, I would have guessed that these laws were prescribed by their
>god, but no, they think that as prescriptive laws CANNOT be broken,
>miracles would then not be possible.
>
>I agree that the laws are NOT prescriptive, simply because that would
>necessitate a prescriber for which I see no evidence.
>They are adamant that "prescriptive" requires NO prescriber, because
>the dictionary does not explicitly state a requirement for one.
>
>I have come here to get a fresh view, as I'm starting to doubt my own
>judgement in this matter.
>
>So the crux of my query is, is the accepted meaning of prescriptive
>that there must always be a prescriber?
>And if there is no prescriber, they are not prescriptive?
Since this thread started I've become curious about some aspects of this.
As others have pointed out, the "laws of nature" are not prescriptive but
descriptive. I won't go into the question whether prescriptive laws need a
prescriber, but I'm pretty certain that descriptive laws need a describer. In
other words, the "laws of nature" are human constructs, based on human
observation, experience and description. As our knowledge of how the universe
works increases, so the "laws of nature" change, to take into account this
broadened understanding.
I don't follow the reasoning of your fundamentalist interlocutors, especially
the notion that prescriptive laws cannot be broken. If that were the case,
there would surely be no need for the criminal justice system, or am I missing
something?
The discussion has provoked me into trying to learn more about the history of
the concepts of "laws of nature" and "miracles". It seems that some assume
that there is a necessary connection between them, which I doubt. Fopr the
most part I don't think it is merely a usage question, though of course it
does affect the way in which one uses such terms.
Jerry Friedman
> On Thu, 31 Dec 2009 19:44:35 +0000 (UTC), Roland Hutchinson
>
>
>
> <my.spamt...@verizon.net> wrote:
> >On Wed, 30 Dec 2009 12:26:06 +0000, Chuck Riggs wrote:
>
> >> wrote:
>
> >>>On Tue, 29 Dec 2009 23:40:23 +1100, Peter Moylan <gro.nalyomp@retep>
> >>>wrote:
>
> >>>>On 29/12/09 02:03, John O'Flaherty wrote:
And is in /The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations/ that way (p. 4):
Dear Sir, Your astonishment's odd:
/I/ am always about in the Quad,
And that's why the tree
Will continue to be,
Since observed by Yours faithfully, God.
(Anonymous. The original is credited to Mgr. Ronald Knox.)
--
Jerry Friedman
Jerry Friedman
> On Thu, 31 Dec 2009 22:57:27 -0800, Evan Kirshenbaum wrote:
>
> [...]
>
> > Clarke didn't say that people will view high enough technology as magic.
> > He said that sufficiently advanced technology is *indistinguishable
> > from* magic. There's a difference.
>
> Indistinguishable by whom? The person--or persons--operating it knows
> perfectly well that it is tech, whether or not he or she really grasps
> how it works. So if someone is having trouble distinguishing, that is
> because that someone is being, in a word, fooled.
Does that assume someone is doing the fooling? I'm sure you don't
need me to list sf stories in which the writer's contemporaries or
others come across incomprehensible artifacts of a more advanced
civilization. As far as the characters are concerned, the artifacts
might as well be magic, though the makers aren't engaged in any
deception. Then there's the sf where what appears to be magic turns
out to be technological. Your favorite example (I think) and mine is
Gene Wolfe's "Sun" books, where the distinction is often problematic.
> If we stuck David
> Letterman's old pal KayMar the Discount Magician in a time machine and
> ran him back a few centuries, his ordinary stage conjuror's stuff would
> probably convince not a few--maybe most--that he was doing magic. Is the
> fact--presumed fact--that a few very low-tech mechanical toys (if any:
> I'm not expert on stage magic) coupled with training in deception and
> rapid hand movements are "indistinguishable from magic" some deep insight
> worth memorializing in an apothegm?
The only thing I could find on the context of Clarke's Third Law was a
Usenet post by none other than Mark Brader (whose style when
correcting mistakes hasn't changed since 1991). He said Clarke stated
it in a footnote about his other two laws.
http://groups.google.com.au/group/rec.arts.sf.misc/msg/e4185210a85826fc
You can see the footnote here:
So it's not clear what Clarke had in mind. I suspect he was saying
that in writing sf or supposed non-fiction about the very distant
future, one can imagine technology as being so advanced that we
wouldn't be able to see its limitations; a science-fiction writer is
as free as a fantasy writer to invent anything he or she wants.
> The proposition also is silly because it depends on the victims--there is
> no better word--being _conceptually_ unable to distinguish tech and magic
> (that is, phenomena that are regular from those that flow purely from
> will).
But that's not the distinction. Magic has often been imagined as
involving regular phenomena--for instance, alchemy was presented that
way, and astrology books still tell you that if you were born under
this sign, you'll have these qualities. Or in sf, I think you like
Jack Vance's /Dying Earth/ books, which present magic that way. The
distinction is that technology works better than magic--not that magic
doesn't work, since it can work as a placebo. And if you're imagining
explaining the conceptual difference to somebody who's sharp with
concepts, you might have trouble convincing the person that the
placebo effect is on the side of science, not magic.
> [...]
>
> > No magic involved. You just wave this stick and say these three words
> > and a being from the seventh dimension is summoned into the circle, and
> > it will answer one question about something that will happen in the
> > future. Simple science.
>
> In fact, did it work, it would be.
Here I agree with you.
> That's another one that fans on
> science-fiction/fantasy forums get entangled over: but any phenomena that
> are literally regular are part of science. Magic is, by definition, that
> which is not regular, which is purely _ad hoc_ imposition of will on
> reality;
Is that definition in some dictionary?
> anything that _is_ regular--that always works the same way, that
> can be discovered by diligent application of the scientific method--is
> science.
> Science has not (yet) found any indications that there are sticks with
> the property that waving them while saying certain particular words will
> invoke a being from another continuum (nor any definite assurance that
> there are such places), or that any such beings could see into our
> future. But if it did, well, that would indeed be a revolution in
> science--but not magic.
What if it worked, but not regularly?
I must admit I'm inclined to define magic in a way that may not be in
any dictionaries. I'd say it's methods that don't work (or at best
work as placebos) and are part of or resemble folklore and the beliefs
of pre-tech societies.
--
Jerry Friedman
Evan Kirshenbaum
> I've just read Eric's response to this and agree pretty much with
> that. I think that in all ages of mankind there have been people
> who, in response to something quite beyond belief, would react by
> thinking "That's neat; I wonder how it works" rather than "&deity
> help us", and putting it down to supernatural forces that we can
> know nothing about.
So these people ask and get an answer and the local shaman says "See,
that's just what I've been telling you". And at the level the
explanation comes through, he's probably right. Something in the box
listens to three invisible entities up in the sky who tell it where it
is and it figures out how get wherever you want to go and tells you,
in a woman's voice, which way to go and when to turn? My old master
told me that he knew someone who had imprisoned just such a demon.
Unless you're going to fall back on "If it demonstrably works, it's
technology; if not, it's purported magic, however equivalent the
explanations are", I don't see how you're going to get around it.
And I'd say that while in all ages there may well have been such
people, in most ages before the last couple of centuries, you'd have
been hard pressed to encounter one. Or, rather, most intelligent
people didn't assume that "supernatural forces" implied "that we can
know nothing about". Magic *was* the explanation, and people tried
hard to understand how it worked.
--
Evan Kirshenbaum +------------------------------------
HP Laboratories |If to "man" a phone implies handing
1501 Page Mill Road, 1U, MS 1141 |it over to a person of the male
Palo Alto, CA 94304 |gender, then to "monitor" it
|suggests handing it over to a
kirsh...@hpl.hp.com |lizard.
(650)857-7572 | Rohan Oberoi
Evan Kirshenbaum
This could be interesting. I'm willing to play Clarke's advocate
here. Explain it to me. Bear in mind, though, that being well-
educated, I've been taught that magic is something that can be learned
and mastered and that there are principles behind it and that prayer
works.
> Once that is established, the rest is merely a question of level of
> detail. I suppose the next step would be to make the ancient
> appreciate that there are phenomena that take place on scales too
> small and too large for ready perception by the unaided human
> senses.
Ah, so you're going to describe something that I conveniently can't
see and can't test. Priests are like that everywhere.
> Then it's a matter of choice: perhaps some simplistic,
> '50s-high-school-level atomic physics to open with (depending, I
> suppose, on the particular gadget being discussed).
>
>> [1] By positing well-educated people, you save some time. By
>> positing people who haven't grown up around technology and who
>> have grown up in a society that takes magic and mysticism for
>> granted and therefore will have to unlearn certain reflex
>> reactions, you probably have to spend some extra.
>
> The positing was done upthread, and not by me. But I think it's
> fair dinkum, because explaining how things work, or even the basic
> ideas of science, is difficult even dealing with a distressingly
> large fraction of the contemporary population.
Agreed.
>> [2] Remember that you're talking to somebody who has probably never
>> seen a machine more complicated than a clock or windmill or a
>> chemical reaction more complicated than a gunpowder explosion. Who
>> has never seen action at a distance that doesn't involve a human
>> agent.
>
> Obviously, lacking a time machine with which to make field tests we
> cannot be sure. But I really think it would not be that hard. (And
> is not the warmth of sunlight action at a distance?)
Okay, dosen't involve a human agent or a deity or some other being.
But that's not really what I meant by "action at a distance". I was
thinking of doing something *here* in order to get something to happen
*there* without it being clear that something is moving from here to
there. Building a fire to heat a room is probably the only such
example an ancient would have encountered, as it wouldn't have been
clear how the heat got across the empty space.
> The ancients' ability to deal in complexity is easy to
> under-estimate: consider the Antikythera computing device (recently
> written up again in _Scientific American_). That's one whacking
> great load of both immense mechanical ingenuity and understanding of
> practical astronomy. Or see--
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antikythera_mechanism
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Greek_technology
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_technology
Yeah. Some of them apparently had a good understanding of gears. I'm
not sure how you're going to leverage that to explain a hydrogen bomb.
--
Evan Kirshenbaum +------------------------------------
HP Laboratories |Specifically, I'd like to debate
1501 Page Mill Road, 1U, MS 1141 |whether cannibalism ought to be
Palo Alto, CA 94304 |grounds for leniency in murder,
|since it's less wasteful.
kirsh...@hpl.hp.com | Calvin
(650)857-7572
Eric Walker
[...]
> Magic has often been imagined as involving regular phenomena--for
> instance, alchemy was presented that way, and astrology books still
> tell you that if you were born under this sign, you'll have these
> qualities.
But that is exactly the point: practitioners in those fields fully
believed that they _were_ investigating sciences, not magic (though
"science" would not then have been their terminology). That their
science turned out to be grossly wrong doesn't mean it wasn't science:
other (apparently) dead-wrong but once-believed-in principles include
phlogiston and the luminiferous aether.
[...]
>> Magic is, by definition, that which is not regular, which is purely
> _ad hoc_ imposition of will on reality;
>
> Is that definition in some dictionary?
Interesting question. What the OED has is a mess, qualified and re-
qualified. The AHD is briefer and clearer: "The art that purports to
control or forecast natural events, effects, or forces by invoking the
supernatural." I think we can take it as read that "supernatural" means
that which is not natural; that means, of course, that--as with the OED--
the "definition" is no such thing, merely a tautology (magic is unnatural
control of the natural by that which is not natural).
But it does show clearly that magic is power or force that is "not
natural". (The OED's muddle includes notes to the effect that "magic" as
defined in the Middle Ages, which is chiefly when the term was operative
for anything other than sleight-of-hand entertainment, was held to be
divided into two sorts, one of which was termed "natural magic", which--
still per the OED--pretty much corresponds to today's "science".)
The conceptual problem is that any sort of "magic" that follows laws yet
corresponds in general form--spells, enchanted artifacts, or the like--to
the classic conception of magic is something that can only--we are today
awfully sure--exist in fantastic literature. (Then again, we are awfully
sure that the aether doesn't exist, but no one has ever actually
disproved its existence: it was shaved off the face of science with
Occam's razor after Einstein's work made it needless.)
Thus, moderns have great difficulty conceiving natural laws that are in
their operation "magic-like"--which is fine for dealing with the universe
but not so fine for dealing with certain flavors of fantastic
literature. Indeed, a high percentage of speculative-fiction readers
have great difficulty grasping the concept of "regular magic" as simply
an alternative, fictional science.
As to dealing with a reasonably sophisticated person from before the
flowering of science (say, prior to 1800, to take an artificial and hazy
divider) about what is or isn't magic, that's in a reply elsethread and
would be tedious to duplicate.
Eric Walker
[...]
> This could be interesting. I'm willing to play Clarke's advocate here.
> Explain it to me. Bear in mind, though, that being well-educated, I've
> been taught that magic is something that can be learned and mastered and
> that there are principles behind it and that prayer works.
That is terminology (the explanation has not yet begun: this is till post
reply). If an ancient comprehends "magic" as including both natural and
supernatural phenomena, one cannot--by sheer definition--persuade him or
her that a modern tech device is not magical, because by his language's
uses, it is. But that is not the crux--the crux is that the device
operates by means of impersonal principles that can indeed be learned and
mastered.
Without trying to set down verbatim such words as I might use (which in
any event would depend in part on running feedback, whether verbal or by
body language), I would begin by developing the theme that all things
that occur must be in one of two classes: those that reflect the
operation of impersonal natural laws and those that represent the express
particular intervention of some mind with the power to supersede natural
law; any phenomena in the latter class, being by definition
"supernatural", must ultimately flow from divine authority, and so are
subject to no comment from me (save that it seems clear from the
progression of affairs in the world that any such supernatural
interventions must be relatively few). The issue is simply to decide
whether some particular artifact achieves its results by natural or
supernatural means.
But to go any further--or, really, even that far--with our hypothetical
ancient, I need to know the terms of the discourse. Am I presenting to
him as a time traveller from the future? (Which point I would have to
demonstrate, though were I to be in such a position it may be assumed
that I would have prepared myself with some details of then-current near-
future history as I apparently did with his or her language.) Or am I
merely a traveller from a far but contemporaneous land? It matters to
such things as making analogies, such as comparing his or her culture
with other, much more primitive ones known to that culture.
>> Once that is established, the rest is merely a question of level of
>> detail. I suppose the next step would be to make the ancient
>> appreciate that there are phenomena that take place on scales too small
>> and too large for ready perception by the unaided human senses.
>
> Ah, so you're going to describe something that I conveniently can't see
> and can't test. Priests are like that everywhere.
I daresay you can't make a horseshoe either, unless you have a forge and
some blacksmithing skills. So horseshoes are magic, QED. One reasons
from first principles, and most or all phenomena known to an ancient can
be explained within a consistent framework of natural law. As well have
a blind man say that color doesn't exist because your explanations of it
conveniently can't be seen or tested by him. But I think you're mixing
your metaphors: a priest is exactly what I *don't* claim to be.
[...]
>> Obviously, lacking a time machine with which to make field tests we
>> cannot be sure. But I really think it would not be that hard. (And is
>> not the warmth of sunlight action at a distance?)
>
> Okay, dosen't involve a human agent or a deity or some other being. But
> that's not really what I meant by "action at a distance". I was
> thinking of doing something *here* in order to get something to happen
> *there* without it being clear that something is moving from here to
> there. Building a fire to heat a room is probably the only such example
> an ancient would have encountered, as it wouldn't have been clear how
> the heat got across the empty space.
First, I didn't know quantity counted, and assumed one example would do.
And fires and the sun are not quite the same, anyway. But just to pile
it on, Thales wrote a treatise on magnetism, which was also known in the
fourth century B.C. in China; and "electricity" is a word deriving from
the Greek word for amber, owing to its long-known (to the Greeks and, I'd
wager, most early cultures) association with electrostatic fields. So
even if the weak and strong nuclear forces are pretty modern, the rest of
the action-at-a-distance fields were scarcely occult knowledge--in any
sense of the word--to most or all of the ancients.
>> The ancients' ability to deal in complexity is easy to under-estimate:
>> consider the Antikythera computing device (recently written up again in
>> _Scientific American_). That's one whacking great load of both immense
>> mechanical ingenuity and understanding of practical astronomy. Or
>> see--
>>
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antikythera_mechanism
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Greek_technology
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_technology
>
> Yeah. Some of them apparently had a good understanding of gears. I'm
> not sure how you're going to leverage that to explain a hydrogen bomb.
Give me a wit long enough and I'll move its possessor's mental world.
People who can think clearly and cleverly can usually be made to
understand things, even complex things, explained clearly enough. (And a
hydrogen bomb is not, save in engineering details, that hard to describe;
15-year-olds of my youthful acquaintance could and did describe their
workings.) And "clever with gears" is pretty dismissive of the knowledge
of that the Antikythera_mechanism simply acted as a tool to reference.
HVS
To a mediaeval thinker, however, I believe that you wouldn't get
past your starting position of separating occurrences into your two
classes: to ancient scholars, the premise is fundamentally flawed.
In a world view which ascribes all physical manifestations to the
supernatural operation of a deity, any dividing line between
natural and supernatural initiation of occurrences is nonsensical
(not to mention heretical).
> But to go any further--or, really, even that far--with our
> hypothetical ancient, I need to know the terms of the discourse.
> Am I presenting to him as a time traveller from the future?
> (Which point I would have to demonstrate, though were I to be in
> such a position it may be assumed that I would have prepared
> myself with some details of then-current near- future history as
> I apparently did with his or her language.) Or am I merely a
> traveller from a far but contemporaneous land? It matters to
> such things as making analogies, such as comparing his or her
> culture with other, much more primitive ones known to that
> culture.
>
>
>>> Once that is established, the rest is merely a question of
>>> level of detail. I suppose the next step would be to make the
>>> ancient appreciate that there are phenomena that take place on
>>> scales too small and too large for ready perception by the
>>> unaided human senses.
>>
>> Ah, so you're going to describe something that I conveniently
>> can't see and can't test. Priests are like that everywhere.
>
> I daresay you can't make a horseshoe either, unless you have a
> forge and some blacksmithing skills. So horseshoes are magic,
> QED. One reasons from first principles, and most or all
> phenomena known to an ancient can be explained within a
> consistent framework of natural law.
But in a unified and theistic world view, the "first principle" is
that all laws have one source: natural law and supernatural law
are indivisible, and no natural laws exist independently of the
super-natural force of the deity.
--
Cheers, Harvey
CanEng and BrEng, indiscriminately mixed
Eric Walker
[...]
> To a mediaeval thinker, however, I believe that you wouldn't get past
> your starting position of separating occurrences into your two classes:
> to ancient scholars, the premise is fundamentally flawed.
>
> In a world view which ascribes all physical manifestations to the
> supernatural operation of a deity, any dividing line between natural and
> supernatural initiation of occurrences is nonsensical (not to mention
> heretical).
First, it was already posited that we are dealing with a sophisticated
representative. We also did not specify a particular era, save that it
be "pre-scientific", which could mean anything from 1800 or possible 1700
back, so mediaeval and ancient are not synonyms. But even at the height
of religious fervor in the middle ages, I doubt a relatively
sophisticated mind, even by the standards of the time, would take
supernatural as the axiomatic source of all phenomena.
Second, a firm belief that all things flow from God is no barrier to a
belief in natural law. I daresay even a middle-ages Pope would
acknowledge that his God had set up natural laws for the world, else the
term "miracle" has no referent, as the falling of a stone from the hand
would be a miracle if there were no natural law, making sainthood a wee
taddie hard to recognize.
[...]
> But in a unified and theistic world view, the "first principle" is that
> all laws have one source: natural law and supernatural law are
> indivisible, and no natural laws exist independently of the
> super-natural force of the deity.
Well, we just did that one. "Natural law" need not be thought
independent of the deity's making: it's merely a convenience he set up
for humans, so that we aren't continually getting rain up our noses from
its falling up from the ground.
The point, remember, is supposed to be to persuade our hypothetical
ancient that some techie device we're supposedly showing off to him is
not powered by "magic". The argument that everything whatsoever occurs
solely at God's instant-to-instant whim in fact says that there cannot be
any such thing as "magic", so everything must be 100% Heaven-approved,
solving the problem at a blow. Of course, there could then be no such
thing as free will or evil, either, so that one might need to spend a
night in the shop.
Peter Duncanson (BrE)
wrote:
>
>As others have pointed out, the "laws of nature" are not prescriptive but
>descriptive. I won't go into the question whether prescriptive laws need a
>prescriber, but I'm pretty certain that descriptive laws need a describer. In
>other words, the "laws of nature" are human constructs, based on human
>observation, experience and description. As our knowledge of how the universe
>works increases, so the "laws of nature" change, to take into account this
>broadened understanding.
The phrase "the laws of nature" can be used in two distinct ways.
Science assumes that nature, the universe, works according to certain
principles. These are sometimes called the Laws of Nature. They exist
regardless of whether or not they are known by humans or any other
species. The principles are the way things are. They are about the
inherent nature of things, the "Nature of Nature".
An underlying assumption of science is that these principles apply
uniformly throughout the universe. Given a particular arrangement of
matter and energy certain things will happen regardless of where this
arrangement is in the universe.
Science is a process of exploration and discovery. Part of the process
is an attempt to understand "why things are the way they are", that is,
what are the Laws of Nature.
Our human statements of our discoveries about "why things are the way
they are" are descriptive of the Nature of Nature as recognised by us --
so far.
Science uses the word "law" in a limited sense, in a way that is more
superficial than fundamental. For instance, Newton's Laws of Motion
describe the relationships between forces and motion. They are a
statement of observations, but do not attempt to explain "why".
Following more observational and theoretical work by a number of
scientists Newton's Laws were refined by Einstein as Special Relativity.
Scientists speak more of theories and hypotheses rather than laws.
A drawback with the use of the word "law" in relation to the workings of
the universe is that it tends to imply a law-giver. Our experience with
human laws and law-givers is one of change, arbitrariness and sometimes
stupidity. We also have the concept of law-breaking.
The experience of scientists is that the underlying principles of the
universe, the nature of nature, are/is constant. The principles are
inherent in the energy and matter of the universe. They are intrinsic,
unlike human laws (statutes, ordinances, rules, regulations, etc.) which
are external to the people whose behaviour they attempt to control. Any
given instance of energy or matter behaves and interacts with other
things the way it does simply because that is what it is and does. It is
not "obeying" some external diktat.
There are some scientists who are Christians believing in a Creator God
who believe that following the act of creation God upholds and maintains
the universe. In practical terms this upholding and maintaining keeps
the underlying principles, the nature of nature, constant. They do not
believe in physical interventions by God that would alter those
principles.
If we accept (even if just for the purposes of discussion) the existence
of a creator of the universe, that creator can be said to have
prescribed the existence of the universe ("Let there be light", etc.).
We humans as part of that universe can only describe it. We are not able
to prescribe changes to the underlying principles of it.
That mysterious human attribute we call "free will" allows humans to
prescribe laws to attempt to control human behaviour. It also allows
humans to break such laws.
The most successful acts of prescribing by humans are things that we
don't normally think of as prescribing: the design and construction of
things, for instance fences, houses, and machines of various types.
--
Peter Duncanson, UK
(in alt.usage.english)
HVS
> On Sat, 02 Jan 2010 11:19:00 +0000, HVS wrote:
>
> [...]
>
>> To a mediaeval thinker, however, I believe that you wouldn't
>> get past your starting position of separating occurrences into
>> your two classes: to ancient scholars, the premise is
>> fundamentally flawed.
>>
>> In a world view which ascribes all physical manifestations to
>> the supernatural operation of a deity, any dividing line
>> between natural and supernatural initiation of occurrences is
>> nonsensical (not to mention heretical).
>
> First, it was already posited that we are dealing with a
> sophisticated representative. We also did not specify a
> particular era, save that it be "pre-scientific", which could
> mean anything from 1800 or possible 1700 back, so mediaeval and
> ancient are not synonyms. But even at the height of religious
> fervor in the middle ages, I doubt a relatively sophisticated
> mind, even by the standards of the time, would take supernatural
> as the axiomatic source of all phenomena.
I'm afraid your doubt is insufficient evidence, as I still think
that your understanding of the nature of pre-modern scientific
thought is weak.
> Second, a firm belief that all things flow from God is no
> barrier to a belief in natural law.
It was, however, a fundamental barrier to dividing natural and
super-natural laws into two separate and distinct categories.
> I daresay even a
> middle-ages Pope would acknowledge that his God had set up
> natural laws for the world, else the term "miracle" has no
> referent, as the falling of a stone from the hand would be a
> miracle if there were no natural law, making sainthood a wee
> taddie hard to recognize.
It's not that a mediaeval Pope would reject the idea of natural
laws; what would be rejected is the separation of the mechanisms
behind natural and super-natural occurrences into two categories.
> [...]
>
>> But in a unified and theistic world view, the "first principle"
>> is that all laws have one source: natural law and supernatural
>> law are indivisible, and no natural laws exist independently of
>> the super-natural force of the deity.
>
> Well, we just did that one.
Well, no, I don't think we did: your rationale (which I've left
below) remains a post-Renaissance (or even a post-Enlightenment)
one.
As I read it, you proposed starting your explanation by stating
that there are two classes of occurrence: natural (explainable)
occurrences, and super-natural (unexplainable) occurrences.
I suspect that an educated and sophisticated mediaeval audience
would stop you at that point, and say that the mechanisms behind
super-natural occurrences may have been unknowable, but that didn't
mean they were unexplainable: they were precisely the same
mechanisms as those behind the natural occurrences, the only
difference being that we were not privy to them.
> "Natural law" need not be thought
> independent of the deity's making: it's merely a convenience he
> set up for humans, so that we aren't continually getting rain up
> our noses from its falling up from the ground.
>
> The point, remember, is supposed to be to persuade our
> hypothetical ancient that some techie device we're supposedly
> showing off to him is not powered by "magic". The argument that
> everything whatsoever occurs solely at God's instant-to-instant
> whim in fact says that there cannot be any such thing as
> "magic", so everything must be 100% Heaven-approved, solving the
> problem at a blow.
I agree with that: magic, of course, was as heretical as
postulating that natural laws existed or operated independently of
the deity.
But it further supports the view that the separation of natural and
super-natural occurrences into two categories would fall at the
first intellectual hurdle.
> Of course, there could then be no such thing
> as free will or evil, either, so that one might need to spend a
> night in the shop.
--
Donna Richoux
> On Fri, 1 Jan 2010 13:27:34 +0100, tr...@euronet.nl (Donna Richoux) wrote:
>
> >Steve Hayes <haye...@telkomsa.net> wrote:
> >> Since observed by, yours faithfully, God.
> >>
> >> Scans better.
> >
> >What about this rule we've been told about, on when to say "faithfully"
> >-- does it fit?
>
> Which rule is that?
It's not a rule in the US, but I've seen it mentioned here a few times.
Nick reminded me which way it goes -- you're supposed to say "Yours
sincerely" if you begin with a name, and "Yours faithfully" if you don't
(like "Dear Sir").
I think "faithfully" looks rather elegant. In the US, it's pretty much
down to "Yours truly" or "Sincerely yours" or "Sincerely".
--
Best -- Donna Richoux
Steve Hayes
>Steve Hayes <haye...@telkomsa.net> wrote:
>
>> On Fri, 1 Jan 2010 13:27:34 +0100, tr...@euronet.nl (Donna Richoux) wrote:
>>
>> >Steve Hayes <haye...@telkomsa.net> wrote:
>
>> >> Since observed by, yours faithfully, God.
>> >>
>> >> Scans better.
>> >
>> >What about this rule we've been told about, on when to say "faithfully"
>> >-- does it fit?
>>
>> Which rule is that?
>
>It's not a rule in the US, but I've seen it mentioned here a few times.
>Nick reminded me which way it goes -- you're supposed to say "Yours
>sincerely" if you begin with a name, and "Yours faithfully" if you don't
>(like "Dear Sir").
>
>I think "faithfully" looks rather elegant. In the US, it's pretty much
>down to "Yours truly" or "Sincerely yours" or "Sincerely".
Well, that fits too then. I think I was taught that at school.
Steve Hayes
<ma...@peterduncanson.net> wrote:
>On Sat, 02 Jan 2010 05:03:12 +0200, Steve Hayes <haye...@telkomsa.net>
>wrote:
>
>>
>>As others have pointed out, the "laws of nature" are not prescriptive but
>>descriptive. I won't go into the question whether prescriptive laws need a
>>prescriber, but I'm pretty certain that descriptive laws need a describer. In
>>other words, the "laws of nature" are human constructs, based on human
>>observation, experience and description. As our knowledge of how the universe
>>works increases, so the "laws of nature" change, to take into account this
>>broadened understanding.
>
>The phrase "the laws of nature" can be used in two distinct ways.
>
>Science assumes that nature, the universe, works according to certain
>principles. These are sometimes called the Laws of Nature. They exist
>regardless of whether or not they are known by humans or any other
>species. The principles are the way things are. They are about the
>inherent nature of things, the "Nature of Nature".
I don't disagree. I think you said something I was saying in a somewhat more
verbose way.
Can anyone find a reference to the word "scientist" before 1840?
Peter Duncanson (BrE)
wrote:
>On Sat, 02 Jan 2010 12:15:23 +0000, "Peter Duncanson (BrE)"
><ma...@peterduncanson.net> wrote:
>
>>On Sat, 02 Jan 2010 05:03:12 +0200, Steve Hayes <haye...@telkomsa.net>
>>wrote:
>>
>>>
>>>As others have pointed out, the "laws of nature" are not prescriptive but
>>>descriptive. I won't go into the question whether prescriptive laws need a
>>>prescriber, but I'm pretty certain that descriptive laws need a describer. In
>>>other words, the "laws of nature" are human constructs, based on human
>>>observation, experience and description. As our knowledge of how the universe
>>>works increases, so the "laws of nature" change, to take into account this
>>>broadened understanding.
>>
>>The phrase "the laws of nature" can be used in two distinct ways.
>>
>>Science assumes that nature, the universe, works according to certain
>>principles. These are sometimes called the Laws of Nature. They exist
>>regardless of whether or not they are known by humans or any other
>>species. The principles are the way things are. They are about the
>>inherent nature of things, the "Nature of Nature".
>
>I don't disagree. I think you said something I was saying in a somewhat more
>verbose way.
>
>Can anyone find a reference to the word "scientist" before 1840?
The OED has this:
1834 Q. Rev. LI. 59 Science..loses all traces of unity. A curious
illustration of this result may be observed in the want of any name
by which we can designate the students of the knowledge of the
material world collectively. We are informed that this difficulty
was felt very oppressively by the members of the British Association
for the Advancement of Science, at their meetings..in the last three
summers... Philosophers was felt to be too wide and too lofty a
term,..; savans was rather assuming,..; some ingenious gentleman
proposed that, by analogy with artist, they might form scientist,
and added that there could be no scruple in making free with this
termination when we have such words as sciolist, economist, and
atheist but this was not generally palatable.
Robin Bignall
<jerry_f...@yahoo.com> wrote:
[Magic and technology]
>But that's not the distinction. Magic has often been imagined as
>involving regular phenomena--for instance, alchemy was presented that
>way, and astrology books still tell you that if you were born under
>this sign, you'll have these qualities. Or in sf, I think you like
>Jack Vance's /Dying Earth/ books, which present magic that way. The
>distinction is that technology works better than magic--not that magic
>doesn't work, since it can work as a placebo. And if you're imagining
>explaining the conceptual difference to somebody who's sharp with
>concepts, you might have trouble convincing the person that the
>placebo effect is on the side of science, not magic.
>
On the repeatability of experiments, science states that provided the
experimenter is competent the results should be independent of who
performs the experiment. In the case of magic it appears that only
certain people -- wizards, warlocks etc. -- can do it and others
can't, to the point where such others suffer terrible fates for
trying. This suggest to me that magic, if it exists, is connected
with psi powers, if they exist.
Eric Walker
[...]
> I'm afraid your doubt is insufficient evidence, as I still think that
> your understanding of the nature of pre-modern scientific thought is
> weak.
I'm not sure where that gets us if I doubt the validity of your doubt;
that cycle could go on indefinitely. Instead of doubting, let's try the
expedient of looking at actual evidence.
Wikipedia, for what it's worth, defines 'miracle' as "a perceptible
interruption of the laws of nature, such that can be attempted to be
explained by divine intervention"; that signifies "laws of nature" whose
"interruption" would be a notable exception to their normal functioning.
The Catholic Encyclopedia--which seems (http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/)
to be authoritative--states that "in the case of inanimate things, this
Divine direction is provided for in the nature which God has given to
each; in them determinism reigns." *Determinism*, ok?
Also, speaking of 'miracle' it says: "The term miracle here implies the
direct opposition of the effect actually produced to the natural causes
at work." And what do we suppose "natural causes" signifies there?
>> Second, a firm belief that all things flow from God is no barrier to a
>> belief in natural law.
>
> It was, however, a fundamental barrier to dividing natural and
> super-natural laws into two separate and distinct categories.
The Catholic Encyclopedia (which I repeatedly quote because it was the
easiest and quickest source for Christian concepts Google turned up) does
not agree. As you see, it is replete with references to the
"determinism" of inanimate things and of "natural causes", and in general
has no trouble distinguishing between the natural and the supernatural.
Indeed, the very word "supernatural" necessarily implies such a
distinction, else it has no referent or meaning.
[...]
> It's not that a mediaeval Pope would reject the idea of natural laws;
> what would be rejected is the separation of the mechanisms behind
> natural and super-natural occurrences into two categories.
Aside from repeating what I just said, let me note that any such
rejection is immaterial to the original point, which is whether or not
some thing or phenomenon derives from the operation of natural law or of
"magic". Of 'magic', the already quoted Encyclopedia says it "is the
attempt to work miracles not by the power of God, gratuitously
communicated to man, but by the use of hidden forces beyond man's
control. Its advocates, despairing to move the Deity by supplication,
seek the desired result by evoking powers ordinarily reserved to the
Deity."
After a remarkably long, scholarly, and indeed fascinating history of
early magic, it remarks that: "Two main reasons account for the belief
[in magic]: first, ignorance of physical laws. When the boundary between
the physically possible and impossible was uncertain, some individuals
were supposed to have gained almost limitless control over nature. . . .
[T]hey knew the mystery of numbers and in consequence their powers
exceeded the common understanding. This, however, was natural magic.
But, secondly, belief in the frequency of diabolical interference with
the forces of nature led easily to belief in real magic."
Note the reference to "natural magic", apparently meaning simply what we
now call science--"physical laws" understood and manipulated by those
knowing "the mystery of numbers". Note also the characterization of what
we might call "real magic" as "diabolical interference with the forces of
nature", implying that whatever the cause, such things exist--but are
clearly separate and distinct from "physical law".
[...]
> Well, no, I don't think we did: your rationale (which I've left below)
> remains a post-Renaissance (or even a post-Enlightenment) one.
>
> As I read it, you proposed starting your explanation by stating that
> there are two classes of occurrence: natural (explainable) occurrences,
> and super-natural (unexplainable) occurrences.
Well, you read it wrong: the parenthetical words are supplied by you, not
me. I am well aware that, to the ancients, supernatural occurrences were
readily explicable by resort to either a deity or a counter-deity, as we
saw at length above. That has no relevance to the plainly well-accepted
division of phenomenon into those deriving from the operation of physical/
natural law and those representing _ad hoc_ supernatural intervention in
the operation of such law.
> I suspect that an educated and sophisticated mediaeval audience would
> stop you at that point, and say that the mechanisms behind super-natural
> occurrences may have been unknowable, but that didn't mean they were
> unexplainable: they were precisely the same mechanisms as those behind
> the natural occurrences, the only difference being that we were not
> privy to them.
But you are taking great swings with your weaponry at a straw man.
Explainability is irrelevant. If a thing or occurrence follows the
familiar patterns of everyday life, it is a manifestation of natural
law. If it appears to nontrivially breach those familiar patterns--as
our hypothetical techie device would in their era--then, given the
posited sophisticated person, it becomes a case of deciding whether the
artifact or its operations are supernatural or simply following natural
laws not yet well known or understood. The difficulty (or lack of it) in
persuading our equally hypothetical ancient as to which is the case is
what this subthread is entirely about.
[...]
> I agree with that: magic, of course, was as heretical as postulating
> that natural laws existed or operated independently of the deity.
No: it wasn't. Performing it was probably heretical, but acknowledging
its existence wasn't--indeed, _denying_ it might have been. Magic was
seen as, again, "diabolical interference with the forces of nature".
That is no more independent of the deity than the mere existence of
diabolic forces, which was universally acknowledged by both the church
and the laity of the middle ages.
(Incidentally, the discussion was supposed to be generic to all pre-
scientific cultures, but seems to have become bogged down in the middle
ages and the specific things believed then.)
> But it further supports the view that the separation of natural and
> super-natural occurrences into two categories would fall at the first
> intellectual hurdle.
As we now--I certainly hope--see clearly, that is utterly wrong.
Eric Walker
[...]
> On the repeatability of experiments, science states that provided the
> experimenter is competent the results should be independent of who
> performs the experiment. In the case of magic it appears that only
> certain people -- wizards, warlocks etc. -- can do it and others can't,
> to the point where such others suffer terrible fates for trying. This
> suggest to me that magic, if it exists, is connected with psi powers, if
> they exist.
A first problem there is a confounding of the experimenter with the
subjects of the experiment. The experimenter would not be the purported
magic-worker, but one who is testing others for magical abilities.
(Saving the case--not uncommon in reality through even the early
twentieth century--when the experimenter was the subject, an unwise
approach for more than one reason.)
But even with that minor caveat, it remains so that a quite scientific
experiment can reveal differences in ability to perform a task among a
set of subjects. If the experiment is to state which pieces of paper (or
whatever) are of different colors, performing the experiment with a
reasonably large, representative segment of the population will give, for
differing subjects, different results (owing to the occasional incidence
of partial or complete color-blindness).
Thus, for magic, that some can do it and some can't is no criterion. The
real question is whether any can do it repeatably. If it were to be
shown that some can, the next questions are whether or not their ability
can be described as owing to previously unknown or misunderstood laws of
nature, such as John Campbell's old fave, those "psi powers". If some
putative wizard could indeed repeatedly perform acts that breach our
current understanding of natural law, can we incorporate his workings
into an extended natural law?
The crux, I firmly believe, is whether or not the practitioner is
directly impressing his or her will on reality itself, with no
intermediary force beyond that will. Obviously, when we say that natural
law is regular and that by definition magic is irregular, we can't quite
mean that, because there's always that semantic fallback (an echo of
Aleister Crowley): complete lack of law is itself a law. What we mean is
that _fiat_ (or perhaps better, _sit_) is the whole of the law of magic:
that reality responds to the magic-worker's mere will.
RichardMaurer
But what would a well-educated person in Caligula's
Rome think of television, the motor car etc? Would he
(we call it technology) that they had already started
to develop. I'm still unsure whether Arthur Clarke's
famous quote about advanced technology seeming
miraculous is actually true to people who are not lost
in superstition.
..
A related question:
What was the first invention that an an aue certified
time traveler might leave beind on a table in a gazebo
that would have been seen as magic or incomprehensible?
The time time traveler would have to go back 100 or 300
years before the actual invention, I expect.
The travel could leave some instructions.
The telescope might be one such. At least while
onlookers were allowed to engage at speculation
at a distance, before they were allowed to take it apart.
We can continue on to MIOTSK (Miraculous Inventions of
the Second Kind) -- if sophisticated onlookers can
take apart the invention and still not figure out
how it works. Perhaps the telegraph was the first such.
Or penicillin.
--
-- -------------------------------------
Richard Maurer To reply, remove half
Sunnyvale, California of a homonym of a synonym for also.
------------------------------------------------------------
(The Doozies are history)
(And what is the proper tense for that hypothetical?)
Steve Hayes
wrote:
>On Fri, 01 Jan 2010 13:49:13 +0200, Steve Hayes wrote:
>
>[...]
>
>> But that is precisely the point that I disagree with. *One* theological
>> system, the scholastic one, defined miracles in terms of breaking laws
>> of nature, but that does not mean that all theological systems do so,
>> nor do they insist that something cannot be a miracle unless it broke
>> some natural law.
>
>OK, List for us some theological systems within which the concept of
>"miracle", if it exists as a component of the theology, means "Gee, I
>would never have expected that."
This isn't really the place for theological discussions that go beyond the
topic of the meanings of words, but pre-Scholastic theology would be one
example, and post-Scholastic theologies that were not influenced by
scholasticism, or that reacted against the scholastic view.
Here's an explanation of some of the problems with the scholastic view:
http://fatherstephen.wordpress.com/2009/07/11/miracles-and-creation/
Scholasticism was in some way a precursor of modernity, and the Enlightenment
provides and extreme development of that.
Steve Hayes
wrote:
Do you have a cite for that? A list of publications by "science", and possibly
his or her qualifications?
I've heard rumours that it has been found that the presence of an observer
alters the result of an experiment. No cites, but perhaps it was also
"science" who said that.
HVS
> On Sat, 02 Jan 2010 14:34:28 +0000, HVS wrote:
Is it fair to assume that the said Encyclopaedia is a current
edition? That is, that its explanations of phenomena reflect
Catholic/Christian doctrine as it currently stands in relation to
modern (post-Renaissance/post-Enlightenment/post-Darwin) science?
If so, it's not really relevant to how these things were viewed by
a mediaeval mind: it reflects attempts to resolve earlier
certainties with contrary scientific evidence of independent
natural causes established since then.
I don't think we're going to come to an agreement on this, though,
so I shall now retire from the discussion. (It's Sunday, and
there's cricket to watch from South Africa.)
Steve Hayes
>On 02 Jan 2010, Eric Walker wrote
>> The Catholic Encyclopedia (which I repeatedly quote because it
>> was the easiest and quickest source for Christian concepts
>> Google turned up) does not agree. As you see, it is replete
>> with references to the "determinism" of inanimate things and of
>> "natural causes", and in general has no trouble distinguishing
>> between the natural and the supernatural. Indeed, the very word
>> "supernatural" necessarily implies such a distinction, else it
>> has no referent or meaning.
>
>Is it fair to assume that the said Encyclopaedia is a current
>edition? That is, that its explanations of phenomena reflect
>Catholic/Christian doctrine as it currently stands in relation to
>modern (post-Renaissance/post-Enlightenment/post-Darwin) science?
It reflects modern (post-Renaissance/post-Enlightenment) Catholic theology
which was originally developed in the 13th century, and was a precursor to
modernity.
And that is the problem. It's mired in modernity.
>If so, it's not really relevant to how these things were viewed by
>a mediaeval mind: it reflects attempts to resolve earlier
>certainties with contrary scientific evidence of independent
>natural causes established since then.
Actually it seeks to resolve earlier fuzziness, ambiguity and paradox by
reworking it in accordance with rationalism.
>I don't think we're going to come to an agreement on this, though,
>so I shall now retire from the discussion. (It's Sunday, and
>there's cricket to watch from South Africa.)
Probably not. The problem with modernity is not that moderns think it is a
useful way of thinking, but they think it's the ONLY way of thinking. I think
I'll go and watch the cricket too.
Eric Walker
[...]
> A related question:
> What was the first invention that an an aue certified time traveler
> might leave beind on a table in a gazebo that would have been seen as
> magic or incomprehensible? The time time traveler would have to go
> back 100 or 300 years before the actual invention, I expect. The
> travel could leave some instructions.
Looking at Wikipedia's "Timeline of historic inventions" is interesting.
Regrettably, I can't offer "alcoholic beverages" (10th millennium BCE)
owing to the "gazebo" constraint (gazebos are at least 5,000 years old,
going back to Egypt, but they already had alcohol). Silk (3630 BCE)
doesn't quite seem an "invention". Maybe plywood (3500 BCE)? Cement
(not exactly dated)?
More details on some of the inventions listed there would allow better
choices, but so also would some idea of the whenabouts of the gazebo in
question . . . .
Eric Walker
[...]
> If so, it's not really relevant to how these things were viewed by a
> mediaeval mind: it reflects attempts to resolve earlier certainties
> with contrary scientific evidence of independent natural causes
> established since then. . . .
Since it frequently quotes from "fathers of the church", who include
Augustine, I don't think its doctrines are especially modern.
Eric Walker
[...]
> It reflects modern (post-Renaissance/post-Enlightenment) Catholic
> theology which was originally developed in the 13th century, and was a
> precursor to modernity.
>
> And that is the problem. It's mired in modernity.
Doctrinal attributions to, for example, Augustine (354 – 430) do not
strike me as examples of thought "mired in modernity", but I guess when
you are clearly drowning, you clutch at straws.
Peter Duncanson (BrE)
wrote:
>I've heard rumours that it has been found that the presence of an observer
>alters the result of an experiment. No cites, but perhaps it was also
>"science" who said that.
It is the process of observation that can affect the result of an
experiment. Observation, to a greater or lesser extent, involves
interaction with that which is being observed, or interaction with
external effects that the observed object or phenomenom might cause.
There is nothing magic about this.
Eric Walker
> On Fri, 1 Jan 2010 22:15:11 +0000 (UTC), Eric Walker
> <em...@owlcroft.com> wrote:
[...]
>>OK, List for us some theological systems within which the concept of
>>"miracle", if it exists as a component of the theology, means "Gee, I
>>would never have expected that."
>
> This isn't really the place for theological discussions that go beyond
> the topic of the meanings of words, but pre-Scholastic theology would be
> one example, and post-Scholastic theologies that were not influenced by
> scholasticism, or that reacted against the scholastic view.
>
> Here's an explanation of some of the problems with the scholastic view:
>
> http://fatherstephen.wordpress.com/2009/07/11/miracles-and-creation/
>
> Scholasticism was in some way a precursor of modernity, and the
> Enlightenment provides and extreme development of that.
OK, so the answer to "provide some examples" is no example but--from
someone who complains about doctrinal quotations being tainted by modern
views--a quotation from one contemporary individual who prefaces his
remarks on the topic with "It seems to me".
Let us not lose sight of the original point: that a reasonably but not
extraordinarily sophisticated--for his or her times--person of a pre-
scientific-age culture could and would accept without undue strain that
there is an order in nature that is regular, deterministic, and
universal: rules that all things and phenomena follow save in cases of
supernatural intervention (which no one is trying, in this hypothesis, to
deny to such a person). That's all.
To argue against that proposition is to argue that there were cultures in
which the common belief of their more sophisticated members was that
there is no pattern or regularity in affairs and that every last detail
of existence is _ad hoc_, meaning that when it rains from the sky down
instead of the ground up, we were just lucky that day.
As I say, adduce an example of such a culture.
Peter Duncanson (BrE)
<em...@owlcroft.com> wrote:
>On Sat, 02 Jan 2010 17:23:12 -0800, RichardMaurer wrote:
>
>[...]
>
>> A related question:
>> What was the first invention that an an aue certified time traveler
>> might leave beind on a table in a gazebo that would have been seen as
>> magic or incomprehensible? The time time traveler would have to go
>> back 100 or 300 years before the actual invention, I expect. The
>> travel could leave some instructions.
>
>Looking at Wikipedia's "Timeline of historic inventions" is interesting.
>Regrettably, I can't offer "alcoholic beverages" (10th millennium BCE)
>owing to the "gazebo" constraint (gazebos are at least 5,000 years old,
>going back to Egypt, but they already had alcohol). Silk (3630 BCE)
>doesn't quite seem an "invention".
An invention can be the use of something for a new purpose.
The word "silk" is very often used to mean silk fabric. In that sense
silk could be said to have been invented in 3630 BCE (or thereabouts).
Chuck Riggs
Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle and the strange field of quantum
mechanics that resulted from it often appear to be mysterious and
without explanation, which meets the definition of magic as I
understand the word.
--
Regards,
Chuck Riggs,
An American who lives near Dublin, Ireland and usually spells in BrE
Jerry Friedman
> On Fri, 1 Jan 2010 20:21:40 -0800 (PST), Jerry Friedman
>
>
> [Magic and technology]
>
> >But that's not the distinction. Magic has often been imagined as
> >involving regular phenomena--for instance, alchemy was presented that
> >way, and astrology books still tell you that if you were born under
> >this sign, you'll have these qualities. Or in sf, I think you like
> >Jack Vance's /Dying Earth/ books, which present magic that way. The
> >distinction is that technology works better than magic--not that magic
> >doesn't work, since it can work as a placebo. And if you're imagining
> >explaining the conceptual difference to somebody who's sharp with
> >concepts, you might have trouble convincing the person that the
> >placebo effect is on the side of science, not magic.
>
> On the repeatability of experiments, science states that provided the
> experimenter is competent the results should be independent of who
> performs the experiment. In the case of magic it appears that only
> certain people -- wizards, warlocks etc. -- can do it and others
> can't, to the point where such others suffer terrible fates for
> trying.
But that's exactly the same as your provision that the experimenter
must be competent (sometimes even including the terrible fates).
Warlocks and witches have their competence at magic because of some
combination of talent and training, like competent experimenters, and
willingness to get on good terms with powerful beings, like
experimenters who will write grants.
> This suggest to me that magic, if it exists, is connected
> with psi powers, if they exist.
Well, I'd have said that psionics was an attempt to think about
apparent magic powers scientifically.
--
Jerry Friedman
HVS
>> I don't think we're going to come to an agreement on this,
>> though, so I shall now retire from the discussion. (It's
>> Sunday, and there's cricket to watch from South Africa.)
>
> Probably not. The problem with modernity is not that moderns
> think it is a useful way of thinking, but they think it's the
> ONLY way of thinking. I think I'll go and watch the cricket too.
Fairly even honours today, I'd say -- England for a while there, but
Kallis hauled it back for you guys. Shall watch tomorrow with
interest.
(Big fan of tests rather than other forms of the game.)
Pat Durkin
"Steve Hayes" <haye...@telkomsa.net> wrote in message
news:sjr0k5pum9a5f05hm...@4ax.com...
My sister's daughter-in-law is raising her children to pray before
meals, a custom the rest of us have universally given up. She got
into an argument with her brother-in-law (my nephew) over the real
celebration of January 1 in Church Calendars. When Tony said it was
to commemorate the Circumcision, she insisted that "No. It is
something to do with Mary." I looked it up in the CE and found one
citation that indicates a sop to Mary-lovers and other feminists.
Some of the prayers in the Mass are devoted to Mary. Poor Joseph,
left out again. But maybe those prayers emphasize that Jesus was a
Jew by virtue of his mother's Jewishness.
It's OK. Revisionism happens, re-happens, et cetera ad infinitum.
From: http://www.newadvent.org/ (Home > Catholic Encyclopedia > C >
Feast of the Circumcision)
"The earliest Byzantine calendars (eighth and ninth centuries) give
for the first of January both the Circumcision and the anniversary of
St. Basil. The Feast of the Circumcision was observed in Spain before
the death of St. Isidore (636), for the "Regula Monachorum", X, reads:
"For it hath pleased the Fathers to appoint a holy season from the day
of the Lord's birth to the day of His Circumcision" (P.L., LXXXIII,
880). It seems, therefore, that the octave was more prominent in the
early centuries, and the Circumcision later.
It is to be noted also that the Blessed Virgin Mary was not forgotten
in the festivities of the holy season, and the Mass in her honour was
sometimes said on this day. Today, also, while in both Missal and
Breviary the feast bears the title "In Circumcisione Domini et Octav
Nativitatis", the prayers have special reference to the Blessed
Virgin, and in the Office, the responses and antiphons set forth her
privileges and extol her wonderful prerogatives. The psalms for
Vespers are those appointed for her feasts, and the antiphons and hymn
of Lauds keep her constantly in view. As paganism passed away the
religious festivities of the Circumcision became more conspicuous and
solemn; yet, even in the tenth century, Atto, Bishop of Vercelli,
rebuked those who profaned the holy season by pagan dances, songs, and
the lighting of lamps (P.L. CXXXIV, 43)."
Steve Hayes
wrote:
>On Sun, 03 Jan 2010 12:22:35 +0200, Steve Hayes wrote:
>
>[...]
>
>> It reflects modern (post-Renaissance/post-Enlightenment) Catholic
>> theology which was originally developed in the 13th century, and was a
>> precursor to modernity.
>>
>> And that is the problem. It's mired in modernity.
>
>Doctrinal attributions to, for example, Augustine (354 � 430) do not
>strike me as examples of thought "mired in modernity", but I guess when
>you are clearly drowning, you clutch at straws.
Do you have anything to contribute to the discussion, or can you just porst ad
hominems?
Steve Hayes
And your point is?
Looks like a bit of a non sequitur to me,