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Re: ZERO (was: Evidence for "Big Bang Theory"
Eric Shook (Panopticon@oubliette.COM)
Sun, 14 May 95 16:30:58 CST
In article <3oueiv$hc7@sun001.spd.dsccc.com> afargnol@spd.dsccc.com (Al Fargnoli) writes:
> Well, I do want to apologize for claiming that Eric didn't
> understand math or English. Whatever he wrote that I was
> responding to, couldn't have warranted my comments.
>
> I should have quoted the statements to which I objected,
> and explained my objection (only now, I don't have the
> post that I was originally responding to).
>
> It has been extremely frustrating to read people's rantings,
> especially when they don't seem to know what they're talking
> about. Is that what this newsgroup is for?
>
> Al Fargnoli
> Who should, sometimes, sit on his hands until he calms down!
That's OK, Al! We all do this, and then resent that we did not save the
posts in question.
Well, I went into my university's archives and extracted the entire thread
to make certain that I was not wrong about what I recall having said, and to
possibly find the place where I may have been attributed the other person's
lines.
Well, I found nothing of that sort, and instead of posting the entire
exchange, I just chose to restate my point. The exchange was confusing,
simply because the guy telling me that I was wrong had misunderstood that
I was not making a value judgment about the big bang, but instead, simply
disagreeing with the idea that one symbol can be an intellectual concept,
while another cannot be.
Non-epistemologists can easily become confused by the idea that a symbol,
in and of itself, is also an intellectual concept, and that all thoughts
are abstractions of reality. They often want to call one thing abstract,
and another concrete as if some things were not mere observations, and
instead, required an imagination to conceive of. These folks usually
are highly scientific men who do not understand that all of our
observations are, by necessity, mediated by our senses, and our brains.
A rare scientist, actually. But, most often it is a scientist that
is overly confident and highly presumes that being a scientist means
that he has a mechanically fine brain, or higher auto-understanding.
Nobody has a clean and tidy brain. We taint things all the time, and
so, our mental representations, while being identifiable with external
stimuli, are helplessly abstract.
BUT! I would not say that this makes the abstraction anything but
intensely accurate for those of us who keep it all in mind what a
stunningly treacherous path thinking is. Some of us are constantly
objectifying reality, and others somehow come to the conclusion that they
are objective by following a few simple rules of logic. In the end we
cannot assume anything without maintaining a constant participation in
its maintenance, and growth. Of course, this is not then an assumption!
Our perception of reality is not static, and by means of heirarchies
of intellectual concepts we evaluate all concretes. It is the ability
to think about the concrete abstractly that equates to intelligence.
To maintain that there is seperation between one "sensible" object,
and another "intellectual concept" is a lie which demeans one and
makes the other evident. A farce I say! A farce! :-)
So, I pointed this out as shoddily as I have here, and paid dearly.
But, it is relevent. It is deeply involved with scientific theory.
Yet, there will also be a bunch of folks who post to us telling us
of how the conversation has diiminished into a small, and unrelated
point. Which, is the most absurd thing that they could say, as it only
identifies their inability to trace any of their scientific premises back
to their original, base question: "How do I know?" The answer to this
question when you do not continually seek its answer is, "I don't know."
I would now go back and make this post entirely readable, but I haven't the
time to forge a little elegance, or to abbreviate. Which is a shame, since
accuracy in this case is the most important thing. So, I am preparing
myself for the counter arguments, and those who wish to deny that
science is a process of thought which is subject to all of normal
inaccuracies. It is, after all, based upon theory, and the questions you do
or do not ask are limited by experience, cultural or otherwise.
-- Eric Nelson --
University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee:
ENShook@Alpha1.csd.UWM.edu
Home:
Panopticon@Oubliette.com
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