I get it now, Eric is just twisting the meaning of words so they mean what he wants them to mean.


I mean no offense, Eric, but you are as close-minded as any fundamentalist Christian that dismisses any evidence that runs counter to his views as "the devil trying to fool me". You "know" you are right and no amount of arguing and reason will budge you from your position. You have no intellectual humility at all. Socrates (the real Socrates, not Plato's literary sock-puppet) would have a field day with you.

Originally Posted by Odin

I get it now, Eric is just twisting the meaning of words so they mean what he wants them to mean.


I mean no offense, Eric, but you are as close-minded as any fundamentalist Christian that dismisses any evidence that runs counter to his views as "the devil trying to fool me". You "know" you are right and no amount of arguing and reason will budge you from your position. You have no intellectual humility at all. Socrates (the real Socrates, not Plato's literary sock-puppet) would have a field day with you.

Nevertheless, that is offensive, and does not merit a reply (so I will also ignore your previous post)

Originally Posted by Brian Rush

No reason they can't, but if all they're doing is describing experiences then they're not engaged in philosophy no matter what terms they use.

As I said, though, I'm not convinced that's really the case; I'm not familiar with phenomenology and thus in no place to say.

So why keep arguing? Read some Heidegger or Husserl and then comment.

Good-o. Words are just tags. They have no inherent argument, and arguments by definition are always fallacious except when you're ONLY discussing the meaning of a word. What we mean by "machine" has certain common characteristics. It's created deliberately by an intelligence (human, so far, but it could be alien- or machine-made). Generally more complex than a "tool." You've introduced another feature which is common to machines so far, and made it part of your definition: a machine has no will of its own and exists only to serve the will of its creator. If that's the definition, then something which is deliberately created by an intelligence and more complicated than a tool, but which is also self-willed and self-aware, cannot be called a "machine." Nonetheless, it's still a complex mechanism deliberately created by an intelligence. So we are left with an AI as a quasi-machine (so to speak) which is self-willed and self-aware. The definition you have presented of "machine" does nothing towards arguing either that such a thing can't be built, or that if built it would not be conscious.

You want to keep arguing even though I agreed! I will have to beg off soon.

You love arguing so much you can't admit defeat. I knew that. But you also love arguing so much you can't admit victory!

Well, let's put it this way. We know how eyes work. We know that they perceive the visible spectrum of light. Using tests based on that understanding, we can determine that there is no aura to be seen -- in the literal sense of seeing with the eyes. If you want to claim to the contrary, you need to present an alternative theory of how the eyes work.
...

I am not interested in doing that. For starters, I know when I see an aura, I am looking through my eyes and see something. I am not enough of an expert on how others see auras to debate with someone who has such complicated arguments and requirements. Maybe later when I know more. But I don't say, this is the theory; therefore this is how sight works; no, vice-versa, theories explain experiences, and if the experience goes beyond what science says, then it is science that needs to adjust and maybe get a new paradigm.

Everything in the universe has structure, patterns, and organization. Actually, if you were a bit more open-minded and flexible, that might lead to some place where something like the idea of forms had some validity. The problem here is that you seem tied down to very crude ideas of exactly what the forms are.

Your original question was

So you have some non-epistemological first principles that exist alongside facts taken from observation? I'm curious as to what those might be.

I just mentioned colors first because I thought that was a very interesting case, and it's what first convinced me. I was not especially convinced by such things as mathematical patterns. But I have looked at those too, and no doubt can do more study. I can answer your question about what principles I know, and you might have other ones. What do you think, for example, about number patterns in nature. The prevalence of the phi proportion in living things and natural structures, for example? Or the appearance of numbers related to 9 in the earth, moon and sun? I linked a video before which discussed these, among other things.

Other interesting things I have run across, that you may or may not consider significant. Why are there just 5 "Platonic solids" for example? The name is an historical accident; Plato didn't discover them; he just wrote about them in Timeaus, correlating them to the Greek elements. Eventually all 5 were linked to all 5 elements. We would not accept the reasons for this today, but the fact that this number pattern appears is interesting. And you mentioned DNA. The fact that DNA correlates with the color of eyes, propensity to diseases and so on is not "something like an idea of forms," but physical explanation. What's interesting is there are exactly 4 kinds of DNA molecules of which long chains are made up, plus a 5th one used in RNA.

I don't know what more flexibility you need. Colors were just my starting point. What you may consider "inflexible" is when I say, if a physical cause explains them, they aren't forms. But that's just the definition; it's not a different cause then; it's not an archetype that can't be explained away as a non-archetype. Facts taken from observation, mechanical laws; these are not Forms, according to Plato or any philosopher.

That's not true. We have proof, as I said, that diurnal birds see in a wider spectrum than we do, being able to see into the ultraviolet portion of the spectrum. You insist, without any good reason to do so, that a bird sees ultraviolet as the same color as one we see, but since the bird also sees every color that we see, how does it then distinguish between ultraviolet light and, say, purple light? Would they both seem purple? Is there some sort of truncation of the spectrum that can possibly be seen by anything regardless of its optical equipment? Why would you believe that? Other than that it's necessary in order to hold onto that other belief that you want to hang onto, which is of course an irrational reason.

I said another shade of purple. That's all that could exist on the color wheel, which is closed.

What I am saying that I don't think you get, is that it doesn't matter to the idea of colors as Forms, whether different conscious beings see the same colors differently. If red is seen as green, then OK, what is seen is green. That's still green. The colors, not the medium or the instrument, is what Platonists claim to be forms. In order to break open this color wheel system, you'd have to see or imagine some color outside of it. I'm confident noone I could imagine, could ever imagine doing so, and you can't refute this. You can only say the equipment might be different, or that someone might put a different name on one of the same colors in the system.

It does, but that's irrelevant here. What's important is that you find it necessary to uphold it using logical fallacies and absurd, straw-grabbing arguments. An example is your claim that because it's impossible to show you colors outside the ones we can see, they must not exist. This is a logical fallacy called "argument from ignorance," taking the form "because you can't disprove it, it is true." But that's not so.

You are saying because something might conceivably exist, that disproves my claim about what does. I don't claim infallible knowledge about what colors exist. I only say I am using an empirical method that allowed me to see formal patterns in what I can know empirically that exists.

But the color wheel is an artificial abstraction, like the alphabet,

That is what any non-Platonist says about any Form.

and does not encompass all possible colors any more than the alphabet encompasses all possible sounds. It could just as easily be arranged as a color line (and sometimes is).

No, it's NOT a line; it's a wheel. You're not looking at the wheel. I have assumed you are familiar with it, but perhaps not. The shades between red and purple do not allow for any other shades, and connect red with purple. There's no other color possible beyond purple, other than going back to red. All other colors are combinations of: all colors on the wheel, no color, two opposite colors, or combinations between these and the color wheel. If you chop up the wheel at some point and stretch it into a line, that is what is arbitrary.

In reality, understanding that color is the way we see wavelengths of light, if the color wheel is taken as a representation of reality then it is false. Purple light does not run back to red light; it goes on to ultraviolet light. Red light does not swing back around to purple; it goes on to infrared. Light has a lower wavelength limit of zero (well, actually of Planck's constant) and an upper limit of infinity, and the visible spectrum is only a small part of this range. The fact that people have sometimes used the convention of the color wheel to visually display the range of visible colors does not mean anything. It's just a convention.

At least you are debating a bit more on my own ground, like in my paper. Very good. But you are just taking the view of Bergson or any non-Platonist. ("It's just a convention.") And you are still relying too much on the physical wavelength; that is not color, it's just the means of communicating or stimulating it; the occasion for color. The color is what we see, not the mechanical explanation of how it is transmitted. Wavelengths don't show any color until transmitted to the eyes (and by the way, are you sure we really understand what light is?). But the form has to do with the color itself. You can say the wheel is a convention, but it works in mixing paints and light rays, and the shades between red and purple are quite real thank you very much. Magenta is not a convention, and there are no other possible shades below red or above purple than the ones we see, any more than between any other two primary and secondary colors. That's not me being stubborn; that's the facts being stubborn.

For all I know, the bird sees the UV wavelength as another shade of red. That would be in keeping with what happens with tones. Why do octaves occur in musical tones, if tones are not Forms, as Pythagoras taught? Another possibility is, beings who see a different portion of the wavelength spectrum, see the colors extended. So for them, what WE call infrared waves might be red, red waves might be orange, up to purple waves might be blue, UV rays purple... Different beings can see colors differently; if so, they are still the same colors; there aren't other ones.

Originally Posted by Eric the Green

So why keep arguing? Read some Heidegger or Husserl and then comment.

I was presenting an if-then, which remains valid whether the if part is true or false.

I am not interested in doing that. For starters, I know when I see an aura, I am looking through my eyes and see something.

It's demonstrable, provable, that you are not in fact seeing something. Your eyes are not receiving light, therefore what you are experiencing is not really sight. So no, you don't know.

What do you think, for example, about number patterns in nature. The prevalence of the phi proportion in living things and natural structures, for example? Or the the appearance of numbers related to 9 in the earth, moon and sun?

I'm actually thinking more along the lines of the fractal patterns and strange attractors of Chaos theory, an emergence of order from apparent randomness in a way that is reminiscent of magic (and probably is magical in nature).

Other interesting things I have run across, that you may or may not consider significant. Why are there just 5 "Platonic solids" for example?

There are two mathematical proofs of this, only one of which I understand. (I've never studied topography.) It goes like this:

1) In a Platonic solid, each vertex must coincide with one vertex of at least three faces.
2) At each vertex, the total of the angles among the adjacent faces between their adjacent sides must be less than 360 degrees.
3) The angles at all vertices of a Platonic solid are identical, so each vertex of each face must contribute less than 120 degrees (360/3).
4) Since regular polygons of 6 or more sides can only have angles of 120 degrees or more, in order to meet the above conditions the faces must be either triangles, squares, or pentagons.

If they are triangles: each vertex is a 60 degree angle, so no more than 5 faces can meet at a vertex, as 6 x 60 = 360 and the sum must be less (5 faces = icosahedron).
If they are squares: each corner is 90 degrees, so there can only be three faces to a vertex, allowing only one solid, the cube, because 4 x 90 = 360
If they are pentagons: each corner is 108 degrees, so again there can only be three faces to a vertex and thus only one solid, the dodecahedron, because 4 x 109 > 360.

As for linking them to the elements, this is a standard practice in magic of coordinating one system with a number of features to another system with a comparable number of features. The solids aren't much used in magic nowadays, but there's no reason they couldn't be for the geometrically inclined.

What you may consider "inflexible" is when I say, if a physical cause explains them, they aren't forms.

No, that's not what I mean. Truth is, I'm not absolutely certain what I'm getting at here. The idea is in gestation. But if anything may be considered a universal archetype, it must be broad and, well, universal, not limited merely to humanity, let alone to one culture. Although it could be that we have something akin to fractals in which there are layers of meaning, more and less universal, just as fractal patterns are mirrored at each level of magnification.

Note, colors are not a spectrum.

Yes, they are. That's why the color wheel is a false image. It is possible to exactly map the colors that we can see onto a portion of the light spectrum as measured by instruments. http://science-edu.larc.nasa.gov/EDD...or_Colors.html

On the right-hand side you can see an illustration of the light spectrum from gamma rays (very short wavelength) to radio waves (very long wavelengths), with visible light a narrow band between ultraviolet and infrared. The visible spectrum runs from about 400 nm, which we see as violet, to 650 nm, which we see as red. Much shorter or longer than this range, and we can no longer see the light, although we can detect it in other ways. This is not circular, it's linear. If we could see a broader spectrum, there is no reason to suppose we would not be able to see more colors that don't exist in our experience as things are.

The fact that the spectrum of light "is not color" in some cosmic sense (or, as I would put it, that color is a subjective experience rather than an objective feature of the universe) is not significant. It remains true that there is an exact correspondence between the wavelengths of light detected by instruments and the colors that we see. If you want to insist that the frequencies of light are not themselves "color," nonetheless color conforms exactly to those frequencies and so the fact that the frequencies represent a linear scale means that colors do, too, and any presentation of them to the contrary is in error.

The colors, not the medium or the instrument, is what Platonists claim to be forms. In order to break open this color wheel system, you'd have to see or imagine some color outside of it. I'm confident noone I could imagine, could ever imagine doing so, and you can't refute this. You can only say the equipment might be different, or that someone might put a different name on one of the same colors in the system.

What I'm saying is that the fact that you or I cannot imagine it is no proof of anything except our own limitations. A blind person who has never had vision can't imagine any colors at all, but that doesn't limit our own ability to see the colors we are equipped to see. By extension, the fact that we cannot see (and therefore cannot imagine) what ultraviolet looks like to a bird doesn't mean that this color isn't real to the bird. The default assumption should be that it is real to the bird -- that the limits of our own visual ability are not universal but rather unique to our species. Other species have other limits in this regard, some more restrictive than ours (many species are color-blind), others less so.

You are saying because something might conceivably exist, that disproves my claim about what does. I don't claim infallible knowledge about what colors exist. I only say I am using an empirical method that allowed me to see formal patterns in what I can know empirically that exists.

You are not reasoning correctly from your observations. You are not factoring in the limitations that you know apply to those observations: that you can see only a small slice of the electromagnetic spectrum. This is akin to saying that there can be no planets orbiting other stars because you are unable to see them with your naked eye. There are at present no instruments that will allow us to see colors beyond the visible spectrum (the closest we can come is with instruments that detect longer or shorter wavelengths and convert them into visible light, such as military night-goggles or radar screens). But it is not absolutely impossible in theory. We could conceivably use genetic engineering to create humans who can see ultraviolet light like birds.

What I am getting at is that your inability (and mine) to visually imagine colors beyond the ones we can see is not a limitation on reality but rather on us. It is by no means impossible to imagine such colors conceptually, even though that doesn't allow me to actually see them in my mind's eye.

No, it's NOT a line; it's a wheel. You're not looking at the wheel.

I can look at the wheel without accepting what you are saying about it.

The shades between red and purple do not allow for any other shades, and connect red with purple.

In terms of the optical spectrum there are no shades between red and purple; red and purple are on opposite ends of the visible spectrum and what is between them are (starting with purple) indigo, blue, green, yellow, and orange. It's true that if you mix red and blue pigments you get a purple shade, but that's something completely different and unrelated. Here is an explanation of how that works:

http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_is_mix...m_mixing_light

Originally Posted by Answers.com

Mixing pigments is subtractive. Mixing light is additive. Let's take the primary pigments, red, blue and yellow. Red pigment is red because the chemical it is made of absorbs (subtracts) blue and yellow light that falls on it and reflects only red light to your eye. Similarly, blue pigment is blue because it absorbs red and yellow light and reflects only blue.
So when you mix the three primary pigments together, you produce something that absorbs all of the light falling on it in equal amounts and reflects nothing to your eye. Thus, it appears black.
In contrast, when you mix only red and blue light, there isn't any yellow in it, so the resulting light appears purple (the complement of yellow). Likewise, if you mix red and yellow light it appears orange (the complement of blue). If you mix all three colors of light together (in equal amounts), the resulting light appears white because it contains all of the "colors" of the spectrum. This explanation is sound, although greatly simplified.

You are taking a convention and confusing it with observed reality. The reality is that color is the way we see the spectrum of electromagnetic light, or a small part of it, and there is a continuum from red to violet on that visible spectrum that is a straight line and in no sense a circle. Violet does not "go back to red," except on the convention of the color wheel. It goes on to ultraviolet, which we cannot see.

It's true that there is no way to finally prove that creatures capable of seeing the ultraviolet see new colors to which we are blind, but there is absolutely no reason to suppose otherwise, either. And it is simply nonsense to suggest that our own sensory limits are limits of the cosmos. They aren't. They're limits of us, and only of us.

Originally Posted by Brian Rush

I appreciate your candor here, Eric. You have stated above -- don't bother to deny this -- that you are anti-science. No claims to the contrary will ever again be believed by me. That is your agenda.

Tell that to Summer in the Fall!
I did not say I am anti-science, I commented on the modernist sensibility. That is what you are defending then.

The scientific method is indeed narrowly crafted and intended for a specific purpose: to create models of observable, objective, and preferably measurable reality. It can understand the way that observable, objective, and preferably measurable reality operates, and answer all questions that can be put into operational terms, which is to say all objective questions of fact about what can be observed. It cannot understand anything else, but that doesn't mean it can't understand "anything at all," merely that there are aspects of reality it can't understand and questions that it can't answer.

Agreed.

Supernatural, as I'm using the word, describes an alleged fact or process in observable reality that cannot be accounted for using the scientific method, not only at present (there are many processes like that) but ever, in principle. We must proceed on the assumption that there are no such processes;

No, science must do so, within its method; not "we" (whatever that means).

to assume to the contrary is to give up on understanding how things work and fall back on "God did it."

And that's OK, outside science's proper sphere. It is better to leave what is God's, in God's hands. Religion and spirituality has its place in understanding reality, which science can't enter, except to falsely claim it has entered through interpretation. Science cannot understand everything that happens in the world we observe. It can only account for things that its method can study. There's a vast difference there.

And finally, natural laws are not laws of technology. That is a side-effect of science, not its intent. There is much in basic scientific research that has no technological value at all. What science strives for is prediction: the ability to look at a process that has not been specifically seen before and predict how it will come out. That's the test of the validity of a scientific theory, NOT any technological applications.

I disagree. The so-called laws of nature were created in order to create tools. The only field in which these laws exist are in the realm of machines. The world is understood on that model, so that it can be adapted to that way of operation. I'm not saying that was the original intent of the first scientists, even in the 1600s; quite the contrary. But it happened in a culture that was increasingly interested to explore land and conquer territory and amass wealth and power. So science moved in that direction.

If biologists had a good, workable, and demonstrated model of how life began (which they don't as yet, although they're getting closer), then it would show that under certain circumstances life could be expected to originate X% of the time. That's enough. That's really all that can ever be proven about any process. Causation, like the real, independent existence of physical reality, is something that can never be demonstrated -- and that doesn't matter.

That's where we come closer to agreement. And as I already said, I have no problem with science giving an account of what happens under certain conditions at certain times.

Since you are using the word "life" to mean something non-scientific, science is making no such claim -- it does not discuss what you mean by that word. And it carefully defines what it means by the word, so there can be no cause for confusion. You have no legitimate complaint here.

I wish that were true. But your words below contradict yourself. You and others claim that because it has no observable evidence of "life as something non-scientific," then "sure it can" account for creation by denying it.

My complaint is when I hear scientists say they have accounted for life, or the theory of everything, or how life began, or how it evolves, etc., and I don't think they are qualifying their comments in the way you advise above.

Sure it can. There is no evidence anywhere in the known universe of direct creation of anything by any conscious intelligence, except for the creation on a small scale performed by intelligent animals (such as ourselves). All of the observable effects involved in the origin of life can be accounted for without resorting to that hypothesis. If there are non-observable effects in connection with life, that's something science can't talk about, doesn't talk about, and has no interest in; you are free to play with ideas about non-observable causes of these non-observable effects all you want, but they result in no legitimate complaint on your part. Science can, however, claim that there are no non-observable factors behind observable effects, and it does, and rightly so. (Of course, "non-observable" is not synonymous with "currently non-observed.")

The observable effects of life include organization, counter-entropic activity, replication, and purposeful behavior. Science deals only with these things (and any others I've erred in leaving out of the list). Other aspects of life are non-observable and therefore outside scientific competence. If you are claiming a divine (or whatever) element in connection with non-observable aspects of life, science has nothing to say on the subject and you have no legitimate complaint. If however you are claiming a divine (or whatever) element in connection with life's observable aspects, then you are intruding on science's proper sphere, and in that sphere it is right and you, if you disagree, are wrong. (Well -- unless you are doing good science and you happen to be right. But that's not the sense I'm getting.)

Not quite so. If I claim a divine element in life's observable aspects, I am not intruding at all. I would not thereby be claiming that the scientific method could observe such an element, but that non-scientific methods can observe it. Observe would not have the narrow meaning in that case, of how it is used in scientific protocol. I would be intruding however, if I demanded that empirical science provide evidence or proof of such a divine element, and even more intruding if I demanded that it produce one, or else stop investigating or teaching about it (what the religious right seems to want, or close to it).

I say that I can observe the world, and see the divine element, and I do it every moment, quite profusely. As I understand it, you don't think so. The world, knowable only by scientific observation, is the outward reflection of the spiritual unitary being, which is only known interiorly. Is that correct? Or are you more "flexible" than this?

I am. As I said before, I am a one-consciousness maximalist, and you are a minimalist of such. Consciousness is all, that means everything I see outside as well as inside and everywhere whatsoever. You seem to say, consciousness is all, but it is nothing, and everything else can only be observed with scientific methods.

If so, that's where we disagree.

Where does art fit in?

... Again, what scientists mean by the words they use is very carefully defined, and you have no excuse for confusion, and no cause for complaint....

Confused? No, I just used the phrases "creation" or "the big bang" "is happening now," to show that the claim of a time when things began is absurd. But scientists do this all the time. They really think the big bang is the beginning. You may be correct to say "science" does not, but that's not the problem, any more than religion is a problem. It's how people use one to stamp out or discredit the other. It need not happen, I agree!

Originally Posted by Brian Rush

It's demonstrable, provable, that you are not in fact seeing something. Your eyes are not receiving light, therefore what you are experiencing is not really sight. So no, you don't know.

Not enough to convince you. I know what I experienced, and I may be receiving light, in fact, when I see an aura.

I'm actually thinking more along the lines of the fractal patterns and strange attractors of Chaos theory, an emergence of order from apparent randomness in a way that is reminiscent of magic (and probably is magical in nature).

There's another fascinating example, fractiles, which are quite similar, it seems to me, as holograms.

There are two mathematical proofs of this, only one of which I understand.

Which are proofs that there can only be 5 such solids.

As for linking them to the elements, this is a standard practice in magic of coordinating one system with a number of features to another system with a comparable number of features. The solids aren't much used in magic nowadays, but there's no reason they couldn't be for the geometrically inclined.

I'm inclined toward the study of how different systems coordinate. To some degree at least, there is a commonality between them. That could be archetypal.

No, that's not what I mean. Truth is, I'm not absolutely certain what I'm getting at here. The idea is in gestation. But if anything may be considered a universal archetype, it must be broad and, well, universal, not limited merely to humanity, let alone to one culture. Although it could be that we have something akin to fractals in which there are layers of meaning, more and less universal, just as fractal patterns are mirrored at each level of magnification.

Indeed, the microcosm within the macrocosm; as above, so below.

The fact that the spectrum of light "is not color" in some cosmic sense (or, as I would put it, that color is a subjective experience rather than an objective feature of the universe) is not significant. It remains true that there is an exact correspondence between the wavelengths of light detected by instruments and the colors that we see. If you want to insist that the frequencies of light are not themselves "color," nonetheless color conforms exactly to those frequencies and so the fact that the frequencies represent a linear scale means that colors do, too, and any presentation of them to the contrary is in error.

I am familiar with the spectrum of wavelengths. That's not new to me. What was new is to realize the fact that the color wheel IS in fact significant, and is not an error.

What I'm saying is that the fact that you or I cannot imagine it is no proof of anything except our own limitations. A blind person who has never had vision can't imagine any colors at all, but that doesn't limit our own ability to see the colors we are equipped to see. By extension, the fact that we cannot see (and therefore cannot imagine) what ultraviolet looks like to a bird doesn't mean that this color isn't real to the bird. The default assumption should be that it is real to the bird -- that the limits of our own visual ability are not universal but rather unique to our species. Other species have other limits in this regard, some more restrictive than ours (many species are color-blind), others less so.

But you say we should stick within the limits of the scientific method when saying what we observe (to intrude the other conversation into this one).

I can say the color that the bird sees, is a color I see, because the color wheel shows color is a closed system, and all colors relate to each other on a circle, and those shades between red and purple are real and natural and connect red and purple in an uninterrupted, continuous shading, so they are just as real as indigo and blue-green and so on.

(the closest we can come is with instruments that detect longer or shorter wavelengths and convert them into visible light, such as military night-goggles or radar screens).

Maybe that's what the birds do! As I said, they probably see UV as a shade of purple.

What I am getting at is that your inability (and mine) to visually imagine colors beyond the ones we can see is not a limitation on reality but rather on us. It is by no means impossible to imagine such colors conceptually, even though that doesn't allow me to actually see them in my mind's eye.

Conceptually means nothing; colors are something you see or visualize, not something you just speculate might exist or not.

You are taking a convention and confusing it with observed reality. The reality is that color is the way we see the spectrum of electromagnetic light, or a small part of it, and there is a continuum from red to violet on that visible spectrum that is a straight line and in no sense a circle. Violet does not "go back to red," except on the convention of the color wheel. It goes on to ultraviolet, which we cannot see.

But what is clear, even on that spectrum (assuming the spectrum includes all the colors that in fact are seen on the spectrum, not just the ones in that model you showed me at the link), is that the highest level of purple is virtually identical to the lowest shade of red, so close that there's virtually no difference, and so a circle in effect. The wheel is just the representation of the fact. The archetypally-significant fact, is that the top and bottom of the spectrum DO in fact connect, making in effect a circle. What should be clear is that a bird is not likely to be seeing a color between that highest and lowest spectra, that is outside the system; and since UV adjoins purple, it is not likely to be some color outside the system altogether either.

What could be true is that UV is the start of a higher octave, and IR a lower octave, but that's just speculation.

Originally Posted by Eric the Green

Tell that to Summer in the Fall!

She's on my ignore list; I'm not telling her a damned thing.

No, science must do so, within its method; not "we" (whatever that means).

If we are addressing processes of observable reality, and we are doing so outside of scientific method, then we are in error. I stand by what I said as I said it.

And that's OK, outside science's proper sphere.

But there is no part of observed reality, no observable function in nature, that is outside science's proper sphere. Science's proper sphere is the entire universe and there is nothing outside of it. There are, to be sure, questions that may be asked that are not properly addressed through scientific method: questions of value, of meaning, of purpose, of aesthetics. But these are not questions about parts of reality that are outside science's domain. The same parts of reality to which those questions apply are also appropriate for scientific investigation, although in the context of different questions.

All questions of objective fact about anything that can be observed are scientific questions and it is not appropriate to apply any other methods to answering them. The only questions for which this is not true, are those that are not questions of objective fact. It has nothing to do with the subject matter, but only with the nature of the question.

It is better to leave what is God's, in God's hands.

Just as the sphere of science is the entire universe (although not all questions about it), so there is no part of reality that is "in God's hands" in the sense you mean. There may, however, be questions that are of a spiritual or mystical nature, not appropriate for scientific inquiry. Thus (to come back to life) there are questions about life that are not scientific questions; nevertheless life is a subject for scientific inquiry.

Religion and spirituality has its place in understanding reality, which science can't enter, except to falsely claim it has entered through interpretation.

Which is, in fact, never done. Again, you are making an inexcusable error about language and terms. All terms in science are carefully defined, and there is no excuse for confusing their meaning. You have no legitimate complaint here.

Science cannot understand everything that happens in the world we observe. It can only account for things that its method can study. There's a vast difference there.

No, there isn't. I would agree if you had said, instead of your first sentence, "Science cannot answer every possible question about the world we observe." But instead, you said that science cannot understand everything that happens. And that is not the case. It can. Understanding, in its own terms and framework, what happens in the world is exactly what science is good for. There are questions about the world which are not appropriate for scientific inquiry, but they are not questions about "what happens."

I disagree.

Then you are wrong. This is another example of you going off half-cocked, jumping to conclusions, and making inexcusable errors because you think you know and can't be bothered to check your facts. You are expressing pure ignorance, and stubborn ignorance at that. Inexcusable.

I wish that were true. But your words below contradict yourself.

I do not. You don't understand what I meant, that's all. Perhaps the above will help clarify it. There are no subject matters -- including the origin of life -- that are outside the domain of science. There are only questions that are outside of the domain of science, and none of those questions are questions of objective fact. Questions about life that are non-scientific include life's meaning and purpose, its subjective qualities, questions of aesthetics and of moral values. But how life originated is not a question of this sort. It's a question of objective fact, and therefore a proper scientific question.

My complaint is when I hear scientists say they have accounted for life, or the theory of everything, or how life began, or how it evolves, etc., and I don't think they are qualifying their comments in the way you advise above.

They don't need to. All they need to do is to define their terms, and that is always done. If you don't pay attention to the definitions, and jump to false conclusions for that reason, it's no one's fault but your own.

Not quite so. If I claim a divine element in life's observable aspects, I am not intruding at all

Yes, you are -- or might be, depending on what you mean by "a divine element in life's observable aspects." I guess you could be misinterpreting mystical experience as "observation," which it's not, and mean only that you can go into meditation and experience subjectively a oneness with the cosmos. I would agree that this is not intruding on the sphere of science; what I would not agree is that it is claiming a divine element in life's observable aspects.

On the other hand, if you were to claim that life could not have begun on Earth without divine intervention, and by this you don't mean anything metaphorical or cosmic but rather something crude and Biblical, then yes, you would be doing both.

I say that I can observe the world, and see the divine element, and I do it every moment, quite profusely.

Then you are using the word "observe" in a completely different meaning than is used in science, and as science defines its terms very carefully you have no excuse for being confused about the two. As science uses the term "observe," your statement is false. As there is no right or wrong definition of any word, to use a different one without making that distinction is simply to confuse matters, and there is no excuse for that.

As I understand it, you don't think so.

I am using the word "observe" to mean something different than you mean by it. I agree with everything you are talking about here -- I'm a mystic too, you may recall -- but that is not what I mean by "observe." As words are only tags and there are no true or false definitions, this means that you are not doing what I mean by "observing." To insist on using that word for it in spite of this is only confusing matters and accomplishes nothing.

The world, knowable only by scientific observation, is the outward reflection of the spiritual unitary being, which is only known interiorly. Is that correct? Or are you more "flexible" than this?

I'm not sure that statement has meaning and so I'm not prepared to commit to it. I can recognize congruences between inner and outer. I can also see, however, that it is not appropriate to use the same method for either.

Where does art fit in?

It's another way of understanding, answering questions that are neither scientific nor spiritual although it may touch on both.

Confused? No, I just used the phrases "creation" or "the big bang" "is happening now," to show that the claim of a time when things began is absurd.

You didn't succeed in showing this.

Even the big bang is not entirely paradoxical although there are paradoxes associated with it and it defies intuitive comprehension; for example there is no time before the big bang. The beginning of life however is entirely mundane. There was a time when the earth had no life on it, and then events occurred, and afterwards life existed on the planet. Very simple, in terms of temporal flow. No paradoxes, no confusion -- unless you add confusion deliberately for the sake of muddying the waters.

But scientists do this all the time. They really think the big bang is the beginning.

And there is every indication that they are right about that. There was nothing before the big bang. There are non-scientific questions about the origin of the universe in its cosmic implications and poetic significance that science cannot answer (actually, come to think of it there are plenty of scientific questions about that can't be answered yet, too), but there is no other that is before or outside the singularity that started the universe, or rather than was the universe at the beginning of time.

There are questions which are outside the scope of science. But there are no subject matters that are.

Originally Posted by Eric the Green

Not enough to convince you. I know what I experienced, and I may be receiving light, in fact, when I see an aura.

No, you aren't. That's not a matter for any subjective fuzziness. It's provable. You aren't.

I'm inclined toward the study of how different systems coordinate. To some degree at least, there is a commonality between them. That could be archetypal.

Yes, it's possible that there's something in there somewhere. LOL is that vague enough for you? As I said, this is in gestation and I'm still not sure where I'm going with it.

I am familiar with the spectrum of wavelengths. That's not new to me. What was new is to realize the fact that the color wheel IS in fact significant, and is not an error.

What the hell does that mean? Does it mean anything? When the reality behind sight is a straight line, and the color wheel depicts it as a circle, it's either a metaphor or a mistake. The way you were taking it, it's a mistake.

I can say the color that the bird sees, is a color I see, because the color wheel shows color is a closed system

Exactly parallel statement: "I can say that every sound in Chinese is also a sound in English, because the alphabet shows that there are only twenty-six letters and so so the only sounds are those that can be made from those letters."

Equally wrong, and for the same reason. If the color wheel says that colors are a closed system, then it lies, because they are not and that's that.

Conceptually means nothing; colors are something you see or visualize, not something you just speculate might exist or not.

Colors are something someone or something sees or visualizes, whether or not I can do so. And I can speculate that some other entity might be able to see or visualize colors that I can't, without being able to visualize them myself. It's called "rational abstract thinking." A very useful tool.

But what is clear, even on that spectrum (assuming the spectrum includes all the colors that in fact are seen on the spectrum, not just the ones in that model you showed me at the link), is that the highest level of purple is virtually identical to the lowest shade of red

Not to my eyes. I see them as quite different.

Originally Posted by Brian Rush

She's on my ignore list; I'm not telling her a damned thing.

OK

If we are addressing processes of observable reality, and we are doing so outside of scientific method, then we are in error. I stand by what I said as I said it.

This is where we completely disagree, apparently. If you are saying, as I believe you are, that "observation" is only about "objective facts" as science defines them. Very narrow; I observe things now and all the time, and I am not doing science most of the time.

Just as the sphere of science is the entire universe (although not all questions about it), so there is no part of reality that is "in God's hands" in the sense you mean.

All parts of reality whatsoever are in God's hands. God is All.

There may, however, be questions that are of a spiritual or mystical nature, not appropriate for scientific inquiry. Thus (to come back to life) there are questions about life that are not scientific questions; nevertheless life is a subject for scientific inquiry.

Yes....

Which is, in fact, never done. Again, you are making an inexcusable error about language and terms. All terms in science are carefully defined, and there is no excuse for confusing their meaning. You have no legitimate complaint here.

We disagree. Even that article you linked to about birds is rife with this sort of error, as I explained before.

No, there isn't. I would agree if you had said, instead of your first sentence, "Science cannot answer every possible question about the world we observe." But instead, you said that science cannot understand everything that happens. And that is not the case. It can. Understanding, in its own terms and framework, what happens in the world is exactly what science is good for. There are questions about the world which are not appropriate for scientific inquiry, but they are not questions about "what happens."

No,science does not understand what happens. It can give an account of what happens, in its terms.

Then you are wrong. This is another example of you going off half-cocked, jumping to conclusions, and making inexcusable errors because you think you know and can't be bothered to check your facts. You are expressing pure ignorance, and stubborn ignorance at that. Inexcusable.

Many philosophers say so. There's no other reason I can think of to model the world after a machine, than to understand the world in mechanical terms, in order to build machines. I do think some more-recent science (as well as early scientists) does/did not have that model or objective though. But even the use of the words mechanism, mechanistic, etc. implies completely that what is being talked about is the world as a machine. There's only one reason for that. To use those "laws" to build machines. And that's exactly what has been done with this science. Life, however, is not understood on that model.

I do not. You don't understand what I meant, that's all. Perhaps the above will help clarify it. There are no subject matters -- including the origin of life -- that are outside the domain of science. There are only questions that are outside of the domain of science, and none of those questions are questions of objective fact. Questions about life that are non-scientific include life's meaning and purpose, its subjective qualities, questions of aesthetics and of moral values. But how life originated is not a question of this sort. It's a question of objective fact, and therefore a proper scientific question.

Proper in the sense I described it. It can and does give accounts of what happened when and under what conditions, yes.

Yes, you are -- or might be, depending on what you mean by "a divine element in life's observable aspects." I guess you could be misinterpreting mystical experience as "observation," which it's not, and mean only that you can go into meditation and experience subjectively a oneness with the cosmos. I would agree that this is not intruding on the sphere of science; what I would not agree is that it is claiming a divine element in life's observable aspects.

It sees it there, observes it there; so how could it "claim" anything otherwise?

Then you are using the word "observe" in a completely different meaning than is used in science, and as science defines its terms very carefully you have no excuse for being confused about the two. As science uses the term "observe," your statement is false. As there is no right or wrong definition of any word, to use a different one without making that distinction is simply to confuse matters, and there is no excuse for that.

You are using the word "observe" incorrectly. It's use in English is not confined to its use in science. In my dictionary it's only sense #5. There is no "excuse" for claiming that I or anyone else should speak in scientific terms, whenever I describe anything I observe.

And there is every indication that they are right about that. There was nothing before the big bang. There are non-scientific questions about the origin of the universe in its cosmic implications and poetic significance that science cannot answer (actually, come to think of it there are plenty of scientific questions about that can't be answered yet, too), but there is no other that is before or outside the singularity that started the universe, or rather than was the universe at the beginning of time.

There can be no such time or thing as a beginning. Although time is change, there is no time but what we experience this very moment. What existed at the big bang was eternal; what exists now is eternal. And divine, all of IT. All the time.

There are questions which are outside the scope of science. But there are no subject matters that are.

Agreed. Including consciousness. All subjects.

Originally Posted by Brian Rush

No, you aren't. That's not a matter for any subjective fuzziness. It's provable. You aren't.



Yes, it's possible that there's something in there somewhere. LOL is that vague enough for you? As I said, this is in gestation and I'm still not sure where I'm going with it.

Good. Then we have a common gestation going on, regarding your original question of me. My gestation is quite thorough; if you want to check it out, go to my Bach link.

But meanwhile, I'm fuzzy about auras. I still see them too fuzzily. So, LOL, I'm vague on that one. But a theory of physical light that excludes them, won't help me much.

Exactly parallel statement: "I can say that every sound in Chinese is also a sound in English, because the alphabet shows that there are only twenty-six letters and so so the only sounds are those that can be made from those letters."

Not parallel in the slightest. The Chinese language is quite observable and hearable. Colors outside the color wheel system are not.

Colors are something someone or something sees or visualizes, whether or not I can do so. And I can speculate that some other entity might be able to see or visualize colors that I can't, without being able to visualize them myself. It's called "rational abstract thinking." A very useful tool.

But not sufficient in this case to disprove my point.

Not to my eyes. I see them as quite different.

No, you see them the same. It is quite clear. Upper purple is the same as lower red. You can just deny you can see magenta, for example, but I know you can. I see cherry right now, because my Fair flyers are in that color. It is between purple and red. There are lots of colors there. You are being silly, boy!

Originally Posted by Eric the Green

This is where we completely disagree, apparently. If you are saying, as I believe you are, that "observation" is only about "objective facts" as science defines them. Very narrow; I observe things now and all the time, and I am not doing science most of the time.

That is what I mean by the word "observe." When I say "observe," that's what I'm talking about. It is something different from, say, mystical experience. The fact that you are prepared to apply the same word to both does not make them the same. They are different, and I am only talking about the first. Unless you actually believe there is no difference of significance between the two activities, we don't disagree, we are just using language differently.

All parts of reality whatsoever are in God's hands. God is All.

That which is everything is nothing in particular.

Besides, the phrase you used is left in God's hands, which implies taken out of the hands of science. Obviously you are now using the phrase to mean something different. You can't have it both ways.

We disagree. Even that article you linked to about birds is rife with this sort of error, as I explained before.

There were no errors in it. There was simply the use of terms which you would prefer to use to mean something totally different.

No, science does not understand what happens. It can give an account of what happens, in its terms.

Same thing.

Many philosophers say so.

Philosophers can be astonishingly stupid.

Scientists never say so. And they're the ones to know.

You are using the word "observe" incorrectly.

There are no right or wrong definitions. I am using it as I am using it, to mean what I mean by it. All arguments from definition are fallacious.

There can be no such time or thing as a beginning.

That turns out not to be the case. Also, as you expressed it, that's just plain absurd. Perhaps I should assume you meant "a beginning of time itself"?

Although time is change, there is no time but what we experience this very moment.

In the context that we are discussing, that is not true. The context in which it is true, has no bearing on the subject under discussion.

Let's avoid the formless goo, shall we?

Originally Posted by Eric the Green

But meanwhile, I'm fuzzy about auras. I still see them too fuzzily. So, LOL, I'm vague on that one. But a theory of physical light that excludes them, won't help me much.

It can help you to understand what seeing auras isn't, which is one important step towards understanding what it is. In itself, I agree that optics provides us with no theory that can explain auras.

Not parallel in the slightest. The Chinese language is quite observable and hearable. Colors outside the color wheel system are not.

Sure they are. Just not by me. And even I can observe them indirectly.

But not sufficient in this case to disprove my point.

There is no need to disprove your point, as it has no evidence in support of it and the default assumption in this case should be that you are mistaken, as what you are saying defies all reason and common sense. Absent compelling evidence in favor of it, therefore, we should reject it.

No, you see them the same.

Don't tell me what I see, jackass. I have eyes of my own, thanks very much.

Originally Posted by Brian Rush

That is what I mean by the word "observe." When I say "observe," that's what I'm talking about. It is something different from, say, mystical experience. The fact that you are prepared to apply the same word to both does not make them the same. They are different, and I am only talking about the first. Unless you actually believe there is no difference of significance between the two activities, we don't disagree, we are just using language differently.

"Observe" has many many meanings and senses, not just those two.

That which is everything is nothing in particular.

We disagree. I am a maximalist, you are a minimalist. That which is everything, is everything in particular. God is all, period.

Besides, the phrase you used is left in God's hands, which implies taken out of the hands of science. Obviously you are now using the phrase to mean something different. You can't have it both ways.

God can.

But yes, we were talking about the provinces of religion and science. Science studies by its method, and gets results accordingly. Religion, mysticism, etc. knows by its methods, and gets its results accordingly. Both study everything. Science does, as you admit. So does religion. Different questions, only means: difference in method.

There were no errors in it. There was simply the use of terms which you would prefer to use to mean something totally different.

I disagree, but I already explained why. Locke is nonsense.

Same thing.

No, understanding is much deeper. Spontaneous behavior cannot be reduced to an object, for example.

Philosophers can be astonishingly stupid.

Scientists never say so. And they're the ones to know.

Philosophy is the only field that can know what science can and can't do, and the meaning of their terms. Science just assumes and uses them. But whatever.

There are no right or wrong definitions. I am using it as I am using it, to mean what I mean by it. All arguments from definition are fallacious.

Ha ha, pretty vague for a disciple of "science." Look up the word, and use it accordingly, if you want to do as you tell me to do; that is, use the word correctly. I observe this screen I am writing on, and this keyboard. I am not studying it scientifically.

That turns out not to be the case. Also, as you expressed it, that's just plain absurd. Perhaps I should assume you meant "a beginning of time itself"?

No, what I said is sufficient.

In the context that we are discussing, that is not true. The context in which it is true, has no bearing on the subject under discussion.

Let's avoid the formless goo, shall we?

You prefer prickles, but there are no prickles without goo.

Originally Posted by Brian Rush

Don't tell me what I see, jackass. I have eyes of my own, thanks very much.

Ok silly boy, can you see this:
http://www.google.com/search?q=magen...2&ved=0CFkQsAQ

Actually, I think you're right; if you look at the spectrum, you won't see magenta or similar shades at the top and bottom.

Newton generated magenta with his prisms by superimposing blue and red light.

Nevertheless, the color exists. You can say it exists in the brain. However, real objects exist which emit the waves that we always see as magenta. Like fuchsia flowers. It is part of the color wheel system, and so it's archetypal.

Looking at some articles on this, I feel pretty safe in speculating that what birds see with the bit of UV spectra they see, are darker shades of purple we are not sensitive enough to see.

Good article: http://www.biotele.com/magenta.html
might support some of what you say, and some of what I say....

what strikes me is the green and pink/magenta are the colors associated with the heart chakra. If green has no complement except a color not on the spectra, does this say something about the chakra? Also, I noticed before that there are no green stars; they are white in the order of star temperature. Green seems to exist on Earth and not in the sky. No arguments there, just musings. Maybe too much goo for you and Odin.

Originally Posted by Eric the Green

"Observe" has many many meanings and senses, not just those two.

I am still only using it in one. All other meanings are therefore irrelevant and serve only to confuse matters.

But yes, we were talking about the provinces of religion and science. Science studies by its method, and gets results accordingly. Religion, mysticism, etc. knows by its methods, and gets its results accordingly. Both study everything. Science does, as you admit. So does religion. Different questions, only means: difference in method.

No, it also means different questions. The question, "How did life originate on Earth?" is not a religious question. The question, "What is the purpose of life in the cosmos?" is not a scientific question. You cannot use religious methods to answer the first, nor scientific method to answer the second.

No, understanding is much deeper.

Again, you are using language differently than I am. That does not aid understanding.

Philosophy is the only field that can know what science can and can't do, and the meaning of their terms.

We're discussing the intent and purpose for which science is done, not what science can and can't do. We are, at root, discussing the motivations of scientists, which scientists are in a much better position to know about than philosophers are.

use the word correctly.

There are no true or false definitions.

You prefer prickles, but there are no prickles without goo.

You prefer goo, I notice, whenever the prickles begin to irritate your skin. You use the goo, in other words, as a way of negating all rational thought and so avoiding being proven wrong. And that is why I always call you on it.

Originally Posted by Brian Rush

I am still only using it in one. All other meanings are therefore irrelevant and serve only to confuse matters.

I should speak Rushian.
Niet.

We're discussing the intent and purpose for which science is done, not what science can and can't do. We are, at root, discussing the motivations of scientists, which scientists are in a much better position to know about than philosophers are.

Not really; the mechanistic nature of much of science shows what its primary purpose is.

You prefer goo, I notice, whenever the prickles begin to irritate your skin. You use the goo, in other words, as a way of negating all rational thought and so avoiding being proven wrong. And that is why I always call you on it.

When you get too prickly, you need some goo, or you desicate.

On "understanding life" maybe I'll need to get back on that. Although I think you know what I mean. There's just a lot more going on than science can describe, in living creatures and evolution. Science can't describe it, so other methods are needed too.

Originally Posted by Eric the Green

Not really; the mechanistic nature of much of science shows what its primary purpose is.

Jumping to conclusions again. Scientists will tell you why they do science and it's not to create technology. Engineering is what creates technology. That you find science to be "mechanistic" is merely your own personal preference showing and has no bearing on the purpose of it.

When you get too prickly, you need some goo, or you desicate.

The point is that you use it as a dodge, invalidating all rational thought so you can hide, like someone losing a chess game whose move is to overturn the table.

On "understanding life" maybe I'll need to get back on that. Although I think you know what I mean. There's just a lot more going on than science can describe, in living creatures and evolution. Science can't describe it, so other methods are needed too.

Understanding is always partial. That is not a valid criticism.

Regarding magenta light, I looked up its wavelength and found this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magenta

"Magenta . . . is an extra-spectral color, meaning it cannot be generated by a single wavelength of light, being a mixture of red and blue wavelengths." Red is near one end of the visible spectrum while blue is near (but not at) the other end. Regardless of how the color is produced in art or what it looks like, your characteristic of it as being at the violet end of the spectrum and leading the whole thing back to red is incorrect. You see it as between red and violet because it is in fact a mix of light colors, not because it really is at a midpoint between them.

I would like to join this argument.

What exactly are we debating and who is winning?

Originally Posted by Brian Rush

I'm actually thinking more along the lines of the fractal patterns and strange attractors of Chaos theory, an emergence of order from apparent randomness in a way that is reminiscent of magic (and probably is magical in nature).

Wouldn't this issue be addressed if the underlying geometry of space-time could be represented by mirror Calabi-Yau manifolds?

The inherent geometry of space time would then have an underlying fractal order that could be described using irrational (geometric) numbers such as pi.

I thought I achieved some clarity in the culture war, with this post:

"There is a pathway to resolve the culture wars, at least some of them anyway. The two warring, very-primitive worldviews are called "creationism" and "evolutionism." But let's look at that a little.

The creation story is the primary myth of our culture. Exoteric religious believers take it literally. But those who have studied the story on an esoteric level know what it is really saying. They are the Jewish mystics of the kaballah. For them, the creation story is not really a story of creation at all. It is a map of life and consciousness. It is connected to (and probably in part based on) Plato's "unwritten" theory of emanation, which was first written down only by Plotinus. This theory says the world consists of interacting levels of being, from the spiritual to the material, and with receptive and active currents. It has been connected to depth psychology, as well as to other maps of consciousness such as the chakras, astrology and (in my view in an incorrect way) to the tarot deck. The primary symbol used for this map is the Tree of Life symbol, based on the image in Genesis, and based directly on the creation story. The Tree of Life shows the process of life, and from it the scientists took the word "evolution." It consists of both evolution and involution. This knowledge is not a narrative of how God created the world 6000 years ago at all. It is a map of the ongoing process of life. And from it the scientists took the concept of "evolution." But the kaballah is only a map of consciousness. It does not tell us the details of what creatures exist (except in general terms), or how they behave, or which diseases they get, or their actual history according to the fossil record, etc. That is beyond its capabilities. You need to do science to know those things.

The evolution theory is part of the other great myth of our culture, the fully automatic model. Some scientists take this model literally too. It is assumed to be mechanical, and deterministic. But it need not be assumed to be such. What evolutionary biology is, is a set of observations of what living beings exist in the world, their history, and a coherent account of how they connect together through time. It tells us various processes that happen in our bodies and how they connect to processes in the world. It is useful for many purposes, such as finding cures for diseases, and (whether this is a good purpose or not) genetic modification. It gives us info on the behavior of animals and plants, and thus how to adapt to them and use them. But it is not an account of what life is, how it evolved at a deeper level, where it came from, whether it has a purpose or not, the nature of sentience, and whether beings are sentient, etc. That is beyond the capability of empirical science.

Does science need to "disprove" the Wizard of Oz, or other myths? Then religion does not need to be disproved. It just needs to be taken for what it is. Does religion need to attack science, as if it could really provide an alternative myth that explains life, or a map of consciousness? Let it provide what it does provide us.

The problem is, religionists want to attack science, as some kind of infidelity, and interfere with the teaching of science. They see science and evolution theory as a threat to the primacy of their belief system, which could threaten morality or perhaps their ambitions for theocracy. Meanwhile, scientists want to use science to disprove religion, or overturn superstition, which they have seen as oppressive, since at times it is, and to substitute science for religion wherever possible, as the "true" knowledge. But I think spiritualists and scientists can be left to pursue their own paths in peace. Let the scientists observe the world carefully with empirical methods, get the facts, and relate them in a coherent account. Let spirituality and religion help us on our path to enlightenment and an understanding of life by providing us with symbolic maps and stories and spiritual practices. Once each one leaves the other alone to pursue the knowledge that is within its competence, and does not try to discredit the other, this aspect of the culture war will cease.

The two methods can be combined, in philosophical science. That does not diminish the need and value of each in its separate realm. We need all three of these approaches, and more besides."

The gist of Brian's critique is that scientists define their terms very clearly and limit their meaning enough so that religious or spiritual people should have no complaint. Summer in the Fall says the debate is unbalanced, since science makes no room for religion and pro-science people insult it. Odin could say nothing except that I am arrogant and twist words into what I want them to mean.
Anyone else have any response?

It's true, I say to pro-science folks like Odin and Brian, it's difficult for me to be anything but vague and fuzzy about what science cannot include in its study of the origins and nature of life, even though this "what" is most of life and essential to it. Probably for that reason, this "what" can't be part of science, although it's part of life and reality. Only poetry like Blake's, or music like Bach's, can do it anything close to justice. The aesthetic, the purpose of life and so on, these are the heart of life; not only human, but all life and being. The only thing we can do with science regarding this, is to see it clearly for what it is, and maybe let it prove for itself (as physics and math have done, if perhaps biology hasn't) that it can't know these things, and to encourage pro-science people to have more respect for the spiritual, as SITF suggests. How that is to happen, though, if pro-science people see no need to change, I'm not sure. And what would make pro-religion back off from attacks on science, I'm not sure either. I'm not complaining necessarily; if people want their culture war, it's a free country. I just think peace would be better.

Originally Posted by JonLaw

I would like to join this argument.

What exactly are we debating and who is winning?

I think noone is winning because we are skillfully talking past each other. But what you think about these topics? Weigh in anyway if you like; we need more voices.

And what are "mirror Calabi-Yau manifolds" ??

Originally Posted by Eric the Green

It is connected to (and probably in part based on) Plato's "unwritten" theory of emanation, which was first written down only by Plotinus. This theory says the world consists of interacting levels of being, from the spiritual to the material, and with receptive and active currents.

You mean like God----->Spirit------>Mind------>Life------->Matter?

I liked Meditations on the Tarot. Good book.

Living things have mechanistic aspects to them.

Biology tells us how to fix living things and genetics is certainly useful.

Originally Posted by Eric the Green

And what are "mirror Calabi-Yau manifolds" ??

"In superstring theory the extra dimensions of spacetime are sometimes conjectured to take the form of a 6-dimensional Calabi–Yau manifold, which led to the idea of mirror symmetry."

I suspect that this is where the irrational geometric numbers of this particular universe come from.

Pi, e, etc.

Mirror symmetry is important. Kind of like chaos theory is important.

Originally Posted by JonLaw

You mean like God----->Spirit------>Mind------>Life------->Matter?

Yes; though later writers and esoteric practitiioners and such added more levels, like the Tree of Life has.

I liked Meditations on the Tarot. Good book.

By whom?

Living things have mechanistic aspects to them.

Yes, and supposedly mechanistic things have living aspects to them!

Biology tells us how to fix living things and genetics is certainly useful.

I agree, although I think holistic medicine is better than mechanistic medicine alone.

Originally Posted by Eric the Green

By whom?

Yes, and supposedly mechanistic things have living aspects to them!

Valentin Tomberg.

I'm pretty sure that a lump of lead is pretty much dead (to us).