In Conversations with remarkable people Fritjov Capra, an "Analytical Physicist" writes.
"My continuing association and intensive discussions with Geoffrey Chew, together with my studies and practice of Buddhism and Taoist philosophy, have allowed me to become completely comfortable with one of the most radical aspects of the new scientific paradigm---the lack of any firm foundation. Throughout the history of Western science and philosophy, there has always been the belief that any body of knowledge had to be based on firm foundations. Accordingly, scientists and philosophers throughtout the ages have used archetectural metaphors to deiscribe knowledge. Physicist looked for the "basic building-blocks" of matter and expressed their theories in terms of "basic" principles, "fundamental" equations, and "fundemental" constants. Whenever major scientific revolutions occured it was felt that the foundations of science were moving. Thus Descartes wrote in is celebrated
Discourse on Method: "In so far as [the sciences] borrow their principles from philosophy, I consider that nothing solid could be built on such shifting foundations."
Three hundred years later, Heisenberg wrote in his
Physics and Philosophy that the foundations of classical physics, that is, of the very edifice Descartes had built, were shifting.
"The violent reaction to the recent developement of modern physics can only be understood when one realizes that here the foundations of physics have started moving; and that this motion has caused the feeling that the ground would be cut from under science."
Einstein, in his autobiography, describerd his feelings in terms very similar to Heisenberg's:
"It was as if the ground had been pulled out from under one, with no firm foundation to be seen anywhere, upon which one could have built."
It appears that the science of the future will no longer need any firm foundation, that the metaphor of the building will be replaced by that of the web, or network, in which o part is more fundamental than any other part.
Chew's bootstrap theory is the first scientific theory in which such a "web philosophy" has been formulated explicitly and in which he agrees that abandoning the need for firm foundation may be the major shift and deepest change in natural science.
Self enquiry is the only test that need be done, but then for one who thinks as you do, maybe that would be an impossibility, where's your true sense of "discovery", try it on yourself, the proof is in the pudding.
Don't knock it until you've tried it Lloyd.
That's only fair, equitable, and impartial, isn't it?
I find your assumption unremarkable and without foundation.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Lloyd Gillespie  Try psychology and science, as the base variables of understanding___It's much easier, and science is the only test of psychology's truth___Possible...
Lloyd |
tee hee
just don't get me started ..
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