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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Apr 27, 2011 - 11:33am PT
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I know you like the irony, but to me it's a stretch.
You consult an expert on science, but you do not have to, the logic of science, the observations, experiments, methods and techniques, these things are open and available for all to study. You do not have to declare your philosophy, nor do you have to proclaim your faith for any creed or loyalty to any sect.
It starts first as measurement, and then proceeds to the relationship of those measurements. The language best suited for this, mathematics, is one that anyone can master. It is not a language that is fixed, it grows on, wonderfully, sometimes on its own, sometimes when prodded to provide insight to those physical phenomena quantified in our observations.
Mathematics often seems a barrier, and those of us who take to it wonder why those that do not have a problem. It would be interesting to hear from those who teach mathematics on the process of learning mathematics.
The world so measured starts to unfold a myriad of relationships, each supplying the means to expand the extent of the web to other phenomena, to categorize among relationship, to analogize. Bit-by-bit we are able to understand more, to predict more, and slowly in our minds, but rapidly compared to the scale of our history, and incredibly quick compared to our existence, the veil lifts from before our eyes to reveal a marvelous universe, with a unity hinted at in ancient beliefs, but now laid out before us with incredible logic and an extensive body of observation.
What it is that we learn may not be what we initially hoped to know, but science doesn't yield to our desires. It was described to me as a young man, by an old man, to be "a conversation with nature. One which requires us to listen to carefully." It is a conversation open to all.
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jstan
climber
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Apr 27, 2011 - 11:53am PT
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Jan:
No. I don't think his agenda is religious at all. It appears to be so only because it gave cover in this instance. It was "used."
Look at all of his other stuff. Integrate over the whole.
Americans presently are subject to one of the greatest deceptions of all time. We salute capitalism because the idea of a free market is very appealing and is probably the way to go.
But what is the first thing a "capitalist" does? He tries to destroy his competition so he might have a monopoly. Why? Because people who try to pass themselves off under the free market banner value only money. And money is something it is impossible to have too much of. For money - monopoly is the way to go.
America is not capitalistic. Not even vaguely.
And we buy into the ruse.
Deception is the order of the day.
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bookworm
Social climber
Falls Church, VA
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Apr 27, 2011 - 12:02pm PT
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"He has unwittingly taken the role of the ignorant, non-sensical interlocutor who criticizes scientists for going on faith (which they aren't), while paradoxically, he would undoubtably maintain his faith as being a good thing, as well as, it would seem, not making any effort to truly understand or provide any evidence to refute the science he would criticize."
it seems your literary understanding matches my mathematical understanding
pointing out the irony is NOT a criticism of the scientists' apparent "faith"; rather, it's a criticism of some scientists' continual, acerbic, and often personally contemptuous response to the faith that others express in an unseen, unproven higher power
from ed, himself:
"and by the way, we learn not only in the confirmation of prediction, but also in the failure to confirm. If the Higgs particle does not exist, we learn a lot about physics. Either way it is something new about the universe. The old theories would have to be revised or discarded."
so there are scientists who BELIEVE in this thing that even ed confirms may "not exist"...they believe in something for which there is no proof, simply "prediction" or hypothesis...if that's not "faith", i don't know what is...again, that is not a criticism of the scientists or the scientific process, merely an observation and, perhaps, a gentle request to those like jstan and lennox to show a little respect for those who disagree or, even, simply question
check this out (ed, with all due respect):
You consult an expert on poetry, but you do not have to, the beauty of poetry, the observations, experiments, methods and techniques, these things are open and available for all to study. You do not have to declare your philosophy, nor do you have to proclaim your faith for any creed or loyalty to any sect.
It starts first as measurement, and then proceeds to the relationship of those measurements. The language best suited for this, poetry, is one that anyone can master. It is not a language that is fixed, it grows on, wonderfully, sometimes on its own, sometimes when prodded to provide insight to those spiritual phenomena quantified in our observations.
Poetry often seems a barrier, and those of us who take to it wonder why those that do not have a problem. It would be interesting to hear from those who teach poetry on the process of learning poetry.
The world so measured starts to unfold a myriad of relationships, each supplying the means to expand the extent of the web to other phenomena, to categorize among relationship, to analogize. Bit-by-bit we are able to understand more, to predict more, and slowly in our minds and hearts, but rapidly compared to the scale of our history, and incredibly quick compared to our existence, the veil lifts from before our eyes to reveal a marvelous universe, with a unity hinted at in ancient beliefs, but now laid out before us with incredible logic and an extensive body of observation.
What it is that we learn may not be what we initially hoped to know, but poetry doesn't yield to our desires. It was described to me as a young man, by an old man, to be "a conversation with ourselves. One which requires us to listen to carefully." It is a conversation open to all.
finally, i defer to francis collins, former head of the genome project and barry's pick to head the nih:
http://articles.cnn.com/2007-04-03/us/collins.commentary_1_god-dna-revelation?_s=PM:US
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Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
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Topic Author's Reply - Apr 27, 2011 - 12:04pm PT
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"Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves. " - Carl Sagan
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Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
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Topic Author's Reply - Apr 27, 2011 - 12:07pm PT
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jstan
climber
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Apr 27, 2011 - 12:13pm PT
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"so there are scientists who BELIEVE in this thing that even ed confirms may "not exist"
Misrepresentation enabled by misuse of language.
Not just "even Ed." Scientists do not "BELIEVE". Book abuses the word
Note how many words this time though. The beast is wounded.
Conscious and calculated deception.
Book is not this stupid.
He "BELIEVES" we are however.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Apr 27, 2011 - 12:20pm PT
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this is considered art by some, and a vial debased statement by others... which is it?
Piss Jesus by Andres Serrano (1987)
when you talk about those things touching on human aesthetics, bookworm, you inevitably have to define what it is... take poetry for instance... or art above, or literature.
While you have replaced my "science" with your "poetry" you cannot define poetry independent of human aesthetic, while science may lead us far from what we believe the aesthetic "should be," as witnessed by the debate on this very thread, which is largely the objection to science's presumed aesthetic vs. human belief.
There is not much of science which I leave to belief for very long, and those things which are ill posed may be the subject of scientific opinion, but such matters of importance pass from the ill posed to the more precisely stated hypothesis and then are subject to test, and however they fair in those tests we learn something about the science. This independent of our desire as to how the test should turn out, or our belief in how it should turn out.
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bookworm
Social climber
Falls Church, VA
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Apr 27, 2011 - 12:28pm PT
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http://www.exploratorium.edu/origins/cern/ideas/higgs.html
"Higgs, they believe, is a particle, or set of particles, that might give others mass."
see it? "they BELIEVE"
i'm not sure what you mean by claiming that i'm misusing or misrepresenting words...do you mean there are no scientists who BELIEVE this thing exists? this article seems to refute that claim:
http://www.npr.org/blogs/13.7/2011/04/27/135754004/the-god-particle-a-disclaimer
here's another: http://www.exploratorium.edu/origins/cern/ideas/higgs.html
"The first inclination is to assume that W and Z simply exist and interact with other elemental particles. But for mathematical reasons, the giant masses of W and Z raise inconsistencies in the Standard Model. To address this, physicists postulate that there must be at least one other particle -- the Higgs boson.
The simplest theories predict only one boson, but others say there might be several. In fact, the search for the Higgs particle(s) is some of the most exciting research happening, because it could lead to completely new discoveries in particle physics. Some theorists say it could bring to light entirely new types of strong interactions, and others believe research will reveal a new fundamental physical symmetry called "supersymmetry."
CERN scientists were unsure whether these events recorded by the ALEPH detector indicated the presence of a Higgs boson. Check out the links listed below for the latest information on the search for the Higgs Boson.
First, though, scientists want to determine whether the Higgs boson exists. The search has been on for over ten years, both at CERN's Large Electron Positron Collider (LEP) in Geneva and at Fermilab in Illinois. To look for the particle, researchers must smash other particles together at very high speeds. If the energy from that collision is high enough, it is converted into smaller bits of matter -- particles -- one of which could be a Higgs boson. The Higgs will only last for a small fraction of a second, and then decay into other particles. So in order to tell whether the Higgs appeared in the collision, researchers look for evidence of what it would have decayed into."
here are the highlights (from a english teacher's perspective):
"The first inclination is to assume that W and Z simply exist"
"others believe research will reveal a new fundamental physical symmetry called "supersymmetry.""
"CERN scientists were unsure whether these events recorded by the ALEPH detector indicated the presence of a Higgs boson."
"First, though, scientists want to determine whether the Higgs boson exists."
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dirtbag
climber
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Apr 27, 2011 - 12:38pm PT
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I'd like to see Higgs' Bosom.
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jstan
climber
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Apr 27, 2011 - 12:41pm PT
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I'll repeat what I have said before but not for Book's benefit. He knows what he is doing.
"Believe" used to mean one thought something to be true.
The word has been co-opted to mean you believe something to be true without data. It's religious application has crowded out its former meaning.
With that misuse of the word Book gets the room he needs to write nonsense without it being quite so evident.
I can't say I "believe" Book calculated all of this beforehand.
I can say I think it.
Edit: 3:50PM
Half a day has gone by with no response from our friend.
If you look back through several years of ST you will find this is unusual. So I advance a hypothesis. A hypothesis being a model we are ever prepared to abandon the moment better is found. cf. footnote 1. below
Here on ST we may increase our chance of not swimming endlessly in exchanges leading nowhere, merely by carefully deconstructing positions, so as to make the confusion upon which they so often rest
obvious.
If so, there is hope for us, yet.
1. This process of immediately abandoning the good as soon as better has been found was operative in producing the computer Bookworm uses. At Bell they started out looking at point contacts on germanium but in very short order they decamped to studies of silicon. To the benefit of us all.
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Jan
Mountain climber
Okinawa, Japan
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Apr 27, 2011 - 01:32pm PT
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And so go the American culture wars.
Abandon all humor, irony and hope who enter here.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Apr 27, 2011 - 02:02pm PT
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belief is a question of faith
faith can be based on many things
in religion, faith is based on revealed truth, the revealer being an agent of a deity. One's belief is confirmed through interpreting life's events as a consequence of those truths. The concept of truth is absolute.
in science, faith is based on the logical tenets of the physical theory as derived through mathematically rigorous logic and tested by experiment and observation. One's belief can be disproved in science. The failure of belief does not lead to a rejection of the science, but in the expansion of understanding. Here the concept of "truth" is provisionary.
The differences between concepts of faith and belief in religion and science are so different as to be unrecognized by proponents of either... a scientist and a religonist may use the same words and mean utterly different things. Take bookworm's interpretation of scientists' use of the language above to show that science is the same as religion. Similarly, the attempt to make a science of creationism, which though appropriating the terminology of science, utterly fails any test of it being a science.
If science proceeds using the broadly termed "scientific method" one cares not at all what the user of this method believes, the method corrects for the human foibles which are introduced, inevitability, by that user. It is an evolutionary process were ideas die at the hand of experimental confirmation, and surviving ideas propagate new ideas to be tested in that landscape. It changes and adapts to our expanding knowledge. It renews itself.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Apr 27, 2011 - 02:07pm PT
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I'd like to see Higgs' Bosom.
you'd be underwhelmed, and probably creeped out
Peter Higgs
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rectorsquid
climber
Lake Tahoe
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Apr 27, 2011 - 02:11pm PT
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... it can be abused and that is why some governmental oversight is necessary.
I'd just like to point out that this is not entirely true. Some form of economic oversight is necessary but government oversight is much more efficient than individual oversight, not mandatory or required. It's the same as police and fire departments; they are not mandatory or required and each individual could have a fire truck and gun. It's just more efficient to have a government handle those things so we don't all have to buy fire trucks!
Capitalism is natural and all organisms strive for monopoly. A monopoly for eating a food source has a better chance to lead a species to survival than sharing the food source with other species. Those species that don't strive for monopoly just die out because they can't compete with the species that do.
Dave
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dirtbag
climber
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Apr 27, 2011 - 02:13pm PT
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you'd be underwhelmed, and probably creeped out
Thanks for nothing Ed.
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rectorsquid
climber
Lake Tahoe
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Apr 27, 2011 - 02:33pm PT
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in religion, faith is based on revealed truth, the revealer being an agent of a deity. One's belief is confirmed through interpreting life's events as a consequence of those truths. The concept of truth is absolute.
Huh? If God revealed himself to me then I would not need any faith to believe. I would have proof if only for that moment that He was revealed to me.
With proof, there is no need for faith. With faith, there can be no proof or it is not faith.
Proof is absolute. Truth is abstract. Proof can be shared but the "truth" that you speak of cannot be shared. It is personal and therefore prone to all of the baggage that comes with each person who spouts off about the "truth."
Here is the joke version; "A Christian, Jew, and Muslim walk into a bar. Each tells me that they know the truth. Do the liars in the group know that they are lying?"
Do you know if you are lying?
Dave
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Lennox
climber
just southwest of the center of the universe
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Apr 27, 2011 - 05:57pm PT
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My literary understanding is just fine bookworm.
Please tell me that the county with the highest median income in this country does not employ you to teach AP English Language.
Either you really are ignorant of the difference between a scientist's belief in her work--until it is disproved--and a christian's unyielding belief in his deity, or you must have an anti-science agenda and are just playing word games.
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Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
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Topic Author's Reply - Apr 27, 2011 - 06:10pm PT
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County with the highest median income?
Isn't that Los Alamos County, New Mexico?
Right next to Rio Ariba County, one of the poorest.
I live in New Mexico, above is just what I have been told, did not google for the "truth"
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
Full Silos of Iowa
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Apr 27, 2011 - 06:25pm PT
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A creation story as good as any other:
My father's people say that at the birth of the sun and of his brother the moon, their mother died. So the sun gave to the earth her body, from which was to spring all life. And he drew forth from her breast the stars, and the stars he threw into the night sky to remind him of her soul.
Hawkeye to Clara, relating the Mohican creation story
Last of the Mohicans
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