Sleepwalking: A Scientific Philosophy.

[Graybeard]

You've got to accentuate the positive
Eliminate the negative
Latch on to the affirmative
Don't mess with Mister In-Between

You've got to spread joy up to the maximum
Bring gloom down to the minimum
Have faith or pandemonium
Liable to walk upon the scene


The Sleepwalkers: A History of Man's Changing Vision of the Universe is a 1959 book by Arthur Koestler, and one of the main accounts of the history of cosmology and astronomy in the Western World, beginning in ancient Mesopotamia and ending with Isaac Newton.

The history of cosmic theories can be called, without exaggeration, a history of collective obsessions and controlled schizophrenias, and the manner in which some discoveries have been made resemble the conduct of a sleepwalker, rather than the performance of an electronic brain.

Arthur Koestler, The Sleepwalkers

Koestler starts off the book by looking back into his childhood about his philosophy of the world. He states that when he looks at the world, he looks at it as how the Babylonians did. He goes on to talk about where the Babylonians and Egyptians left off and the Greeks took over philosophy. "Homer's world is another, more colourful oyster, a floating disc surrounded by Okeanus."

The book challenges the habitual idea of a progressive science working towards a definite goal.

The suggestion of the title is that the scientific discoveries and the geniuses that come to them are like a game of sleepwalking. Not that they come by pure chance, but that often the genius doesn't really know that he has discovered, as it is evident for instance in the three Laws of Kepler.

We can add to our knowledge, But we cannot subtract from it. - Arthur Koestler

A central theme of The Sleepwalkers is the changing relationship between faith and reason.

Koestler explores how these seemingly contradictory threads existed harmoniously in many of the greatest intellectuals of the West. He illustrates that while the two are estranged today, in the past the most ground-breaking thinkers were often very spiritual.

Another recurrent theme of this book is the breaking of paradigms in order to create new ones.

People - scientists included - hold onto cherished old beliefs with such love and attachment that they refuse to see the wrong in their ideas and the truth in the ideas that are to replace them.

The conclusion he puts forward at the end of the book is that modern science is trying too hard to be rational.

Scientists have been at their best when they allowed themselves to behave as "sleepwalkers," instead of trying too earnestly to "ratiocinate."


My reason for posting this here is to try to accentuate the positive aspects that exist between the factions of 'faith' and 'reason'. Not the negative.

Hopefully we can explore the best of both Philosophy and Science. There must be some reason I love Poetry, and that reason ain't Science.

All positive contributions welcome.

A philosophical discussion of where faith and reason meet would be appreciated ? eg: We all have 'faith' in some things, otherwise we could not conduct our daily lives. No human is without faith of one sort or another.

Is it true that Science can be too rational, and in doing so overlook positive contributions from the emotional side ?

Is Science, on past successes, too dismissive of others avenues of information ?

cool bananas ... greg

[austintorn@aol.com]

The emotional side supplies the awe than can lead to the delving into mystery by the logical side.

Poetry is often more concise an precise in its words than prose, as well as unveiling beauty and truths that might otherwise go unapprehended. (The logic side still supplies the poem's structure, as. too, often some part of its content.)

Decisions can be made by emotions, for example, of buying a home that has airy open spaces, even though the square footage is thereby reduced. (in its logic, too)

[Nobody Nowhere]

Being an advocate of yoga nidra I can relate to a faith based on total trust. Sort of a tapping into the subconscious to allow the universe to work through you.

Some people believe that we function at our best when "in the zone," where we can do certain things better without having to think about it. I think it was Bruce Lee who said something like, "Self consciousness is the greatest hindrance to ability." And he had the fastest reaction time in history.

[austintorn@aol.com]

I don't make connections or cross-associations of ideas because I endlessly pore over them; they get made because the constituents are simply there in memory as known, the brain doing the connecting on its own.

[austintorn@aol.com]

Emotions are actions accompanied by ideas and certain modes of thinking, while feelings, from emotions, are mostly perceptions of what our bodies do during the emoting along with perception of our own state of mind during that same period of time.

So it is, that, as far as the body is concerned, that feelings are images of actions rather than the actions themselves.

Emotions are complex, largely automated programs of actions concocted by evolution that are carried out in our bodies, such facial expressions, postures, changes in organs, and changes in internal settings and environment.

[Graybeard]

I think a common link between those who favour Material Deductive Science and those who favour Anthropomorphic Principles is the Gaia Hypothesis.

It bridges both sides. The Earth must be alive because life is found on it, the solar system must be alive because it contains the earth, the ...

greg

[Lloyd Gillespie]

Hi Greg, I reworked my note into this post...

Scientific induction is not about accuracy in building models. It's about using the mind loosely, so's the ideas will flow in from all assets of the mind, much as what your presenting here. When you clamp the mind too tight, it ceases to function. It's much like this 'Sleepwalking' philosophy post of yours. You probably have missed the main idea of how I work each time, as you are only aroung once in a while, but others of us are on TQ most of the time__I've always stated, "I'm working in loose generalities__we'll straighten out the accuracies later__or could be put as 'A Sleepwalking Method'." This is how my mind works__I hate being restricted by convention, so I'll always try to destroy convention, when in exploratory mode__unless it's useful convention to the subject area at hand...

I'm a bit better model experimenter than you often give me credit for, as I explore every model possible, of every subject possible__to draw new ideas from all possible realms__The same as Francis Bacon long ago suggested about the inductive method of science. You probably won't recognize anything of mine, until the end product, as it's a simple and complex journey__to find what I'm looking for, when even I do not know what I'm looking for, but I have the experience in other fields of knowing the journey produces results__Always...

Induction is the sleepwalking method of scientific discovery...

Accuracy of the model is the end step, not the first, imo... All the errors must be made first, to discover the accurate truth__That's how induction works. Deduction simply subtracts from the existing, whereas induction adds to the existing__That's why all new knowledge comes from induction, even though it's a fallible and crude process, until the final accurate scientific deductions and experiments are made on the model__to bring it into conformity with all the laws and facts of reality...

Deductionists, like yourself, have always all throughout history, had trouble following inductionists’(myself) ideas, because deductionists just about always over-correct, and quite often miss the most important inductive knowledge additions to the puzzle__And almost every philosophical and scientific argument is between these two camps of thinkers' thinking processes, imo...

The same is probably true of and within all walks of life...

Inductionists draw a far wider line aroung what science is, and is not, than do deductionists__yet the inductionist also has a boundary between what is useful, and what is not useful... It's just that boundary line is far different between inductionists and deductionists...

The Earth must be alive because life is found on it, the solar system must be alive because it contains the earth, the ...

Sorry Greg, but no scientific or logical evidence exists, for this sentence to be true. This is even outside the inductionist's wide net... Just because Earth has life, there's no logic possible to infer, the Solar System, or the greater Universe is alive, and then ever the Earth is only partially alive, i.e., its surface biology only__the fungi and bugs__The geology of Earth is dead, by all scientific and philosophical definitions...

Btw, material deductive science, is but a very small part of the scientific process__the end deduction... You go to the end deduction too quick, and you miss what philosophy and science are truly all about...

[Nobody Nowhere]

I think a common link between those who favour Material Deductive Science and those who favour Anthropomorphic Principles is the Gaia Hypothesis.

It bridges both sides. The Earth must be alive because life is found on it, the solar system must be alive because it contains the earth, the ...

greg

I could go for that providing there are very large gaps in the scales, whereby the interactions of the gaps support and add to the order of lesser and greater systems.

Even so, I looked up Gaia Hypothesis and it says there has been a 25-30% increase in the sun's output. If this is true, how is it possible it hasn't had a greater effect on the earth?

[Nobody Nowhere]

Hi Greg, I reworked my note into this post...

Scientific induction is not about accuracy in building models. It's about using the mind loosely, so's the ideas will flow in from all assets of the mind, much as what your presenting here. When you clamp the mind too tight, it ceases to function. It's much like this 'Sleepwalking' philosophy post of yours. You probably have missed the main idea of how I work each time, as you are only aroung once in a while, but others of us are on TQ most of the time__I've always stated, "I'm working in loose generalities__we'll straighten out the accuracies later__or could be put as 'A Sleepwalking Method'." This is how my mind works__I hate being restricted by convention, so I'll always try to destroy convention, when in exploratory mode__unless it's useful convention to the subject area at hand...

I'm a bit better model experimenter than you often give me credit for, as I explore every model possible, of every subject possible__to draw new ideas from all possible realms__The same as Francis Bacon long ago suggested about the inductive method of science. You probably won't recognize anything of mine, until the end product, as it's a simple and complex journey__to find what I'm looking for, when even I do not know what I'm looking for, but I have the experience in other fields of knowing the journey produces results__Always...

Induction is the sleepwalking method of scientific discovery...

Accuracy of the model is the end step, not the first, imo... All the errors must be made first, to discover the accurate truth__That's how induction works. Deduction simply subtracts from the existing, whereas induction adds to the existing__That's why all new knowledge comes from induction, even though it's a fallible and crude process, until the final accurate scientific deductions and experiments are made on the model__to bring it into conformity with all the laws and facts of reality...

Deductionists, like yourself, have always all throughout history, had trouble following inductionists’(myself) ideas, because deductionists just about always over-correct, and quite often miss the most important inductive knowledge additions to the puzzle__And almost every philosophical and scientific argument is between these two camps of thinkers' thinking processes, imo...

The same is probably true of and within all walks of life...

Inductionists draw a far wider line aroung what science is, and is not, than do deductionists__yet the inductionist also has a boundary between what is useful, and what is not useful... It's just that boundary line is far different between inductionists and deductionists...


Sorry Greg, but no scientific or logical evidence exists, for this sentence to be true. This is even outside the inductionist's wide net... Just because Earth has life, there's no logic possible to infer, the Solar System, or the greater Universe is alive, and then ever the Earth is only partially alive, i.e., its surface biology only__the fungi and bugs__The geology of Earth is dead, by all scientific and philosophical definitions...

Btw, material deductive science, is but a very small part of the scientific process__the end deduction... You go to the end deduction too quick, and you miss what philosophy and science are truly all about...

Good read, Lloyd, but I don't know why you would limit life to the earth's organisms, when they originate through an inanimate time-dependent process?

[Lloyd Gillespie]

Good read, Lloyd, but I don't know why you would limit life to the earth's organisms, when they originate through an inanimate time-dependent process?

It's just if we don't respect first definitions, all the way from our first philosophers, we risk the fault of destroying our universal grammar ability of talking the same language. This doesn't mean that terms can't change if science proves they need to change__but until science proves a sun or a black-hole has bio-life__I respect our most ancient ancestors definitions, as the most fundamental meanings, simply to preserve continuity of meanings...

Can you imagine what the world would be like, if we all had and used totally private interpretations of meanings...???