Originally Posted by MJA  Great Thread Rufus,
A short story on theories:
I once visited one of the great known meccas of physics, the University of Califoirnia Berkeley, to find the truth of nature. I did a free-lance survey in the departments of physics, by asking this question: is nature measurable? In other words, I asked the scientists of the science of physics, or the measurers of the measure of nature, if measure had any certainty or truth, or was it only theoretical and uncertain at best. The questiion brought much tension and uncomfortableness. For those that would help me the answer was generally that I was in the wrong department, that my question should be asked in the halls of philosophy. HMM! Undaunted, I went to the philosophy department and asked the same question: Is nature measureable? The philosophers that I surveyed, in general, told me again that I was in the wrong department, that the measure of nature is the science of physics.
I understood then and there that if my simple question of measure could not be answered, the truth of nature's measure was uncertain, that it was only theory much like faith, and had no truth. Then the truth must be somewhere else, perhaps I thought, between the departments of the science of physics and the department of truth or philosophy. I went there that day, physically and mentally, by roughly approximating the middle ground between the two departments and found myself standing outside in the middle of nature. I knew at that moment I had found the truth. The truth was not to be found in the halls of theory, the halls of science, in the buidings that surrounded me as I stood in the middle of nature on that great day of discovery, but rather, the truth was nature itself.
What a profound day that was.
Thanks again,
MJA |