Le 26-juil.-06, à 13:34, Russell Standish wrote :
>
> Yes, although you do have a different perception of theology to Rees,
> and indeed practically all other scientists I know of. I won't comment
> on theologians of course, I don't really know any all that well.
>
> Not to say your perception is wrong, but it will take a Herculean
> effort to get other to think along your lines.
All what I say is that IF we assume the Comp Hypothesis then there is
no choice in the matter.
I have already done the Herculean effort under the UDA. I don't think
there is problem with that. Even in this list, if you look carefully,
critics always converge toward a critics of COMP, not of the reasoning.
I would say in the average 50% of those who really doesn't like the
idea of the reversal Physics/psycho-bio-theo-logy-number-theory will
criticize the "yes" doctor or the Arithmetical realism (until they see
what I mean by it). I have never met a critics of Church thesis, except
the physicalist reinterpretation done by David Deutsch (which does not
work).
Let me quote Danny who send this message sometime ago, + an answer I
wrote at that time but never send, and which can give clue why the
reversal will ndeed take time to be swallowed. In one word: it is just
that theology is a taboo field since the Roman made theology reserved
for political purposes. Dogmatic Materialist and Atheist has always
benefit of this by an apparent reaction which really goes in the same
Aristotelian direction.
Danny wrote (some times ago):
> I doubt Marchal's ideas will be made widely known or popularized in
> the foreseeable future. The problem isn't with the name of his
> theory, or with any problem with Bruno per se beyond this: There
> doesn't seem to be an easily reducible way to summarize the theory in
> a manner that is digestible to anyone beyond the highly specialized in
> similar fields. I certainly understand the basics of some of his
> ideas, but when it gets into all his logical analysis I just have
> never found myself willing to devote myself to the time required to
> really get into the detail of where he is coming from. And I would
> consider myself highly interested in these topics and at least
> reasonably intelligent.
>
> Even something as mundane as the MWI (to this group at least) runs
> into a brickwall when presented to the layperson. You should see the
> conversations I have with my wife. Tell people everything is made of
> strings. Or space and time can be warped and curved. They may not
> understand the science and math behind it at all, but at least you are
> speaking their language.
>
> The world is not ready for his ideas. Even for the most part the
> world of scientists in my opinion.
An old attempt toward an answer:
<<
Let us go back at the eve of humanity ...
Since humans are humans, mainly two very opposite ways to handle
fundamental questions has been developed. Note that ten thousand
intermediate positions between those two ways exists.
Those two ways are:
1) Close your eyes, and think.
2) Open your eyes, and think.
We could call the first way the mystical way, and the second the
empirical way. Unfortunately today we are living with some prejudices,
and many "scientist" would say that the mystical way are unscientific
and that only the empirical way would be scientific.
Personally I doubt very much that such a separation should be done
there. Empirist can be as irrational as some mystics can be. And
history tells us that mysticism can lead to rationalism. Indeed, in
our civilization mystical rationalism has lead to about one millenium
of *rational* mysticism or rational theology from Pythagoras to
Proclus: it can be called "platonism". The main gift of that rational
mysticism (platonism) has been the *science* of mathematics (as opposed
as its art and technic which Pythagoras knew by its many travels in the
east and south).
Today "1)" is close to the theoretical minded mind, and "2)" is close
to the experimentalist minded mind, and I don't think it would be an
exaggeration to say everybody believes science has developed through a
perpetuating back and forth between both theories and experimentations.
And a darwinist could add that we have now empirical reasons to believe
that such a back and forth between theory/representation and
experiment/practice has begun well before humanity. Our evolved genome
and brain is already reflecting the presence of build-in "theories"
(innate ideas) an trials.
Nevertheless, although locally "1)" and "2)" are both necessary for
surviving, it seems to me that at a deeper level, with respect to the
fundamental inquiries, the difference between "1)" and "2)" cannot been
neglected. The difference culminated through the work of Plato and
Aristotle with their very different conceptions of reality.
For Plato (and many eastern researchers) , grosso modo, reality should
explain what we see without taking it for granted. In particular matter
and nature are considered as the border, or the shadow, of a deeper
reality, which we can guess by math and reason. This lead to a
counter-intuitive notion of reality generally conceived as being out of
time and space.
For Aristotle, what we see and measure is part of reality, if not the
whole of the "scientific" reality. This leads to the (successful)
*intuitive* idea of natural reality and its separation from metaphysics
and theology. The popular success can be explained by the fact that
such a notion of reality does not hurt common sense (the cat already
believes in the reality of the mouse), but also by the fact that such a
notion of reality will make it possible to separate theology (in the
one millenium greek sense; the Greeks were just searching *everything*
theory avant-la-lettre) and natural science (information compressing of
taxonomical observation). The separation between theology and science
will be successful because it will make it possible to fuse religion
and state, making religion open to irrationality, arbitrariness, well
making it a powerful popular opium.
Aristotle was the most brilliant pupil of Plato. I like to consider him
as the first serious scientist, and I am afraid, perhaps the last one
too, except for a bunch of neoplatonists. Unlike Plato, all his
theories are rather clearly refutable, and actually most of his
"physics" (science of nature) has been refuted (from Galileo to Kochen
and Specker (imo)). Everybody accepts the fact that Aristotle dynamics
has been refuted by Galileo (even by a thought experiment although some
philosopher of sciences disagrees on that special point). Alas if you
dare to give the shadow of the impression that you think that his
theology can be refuted you get problem with both the Christians (only
the dogmatic kind to be sure) and still more problems with the atheists
(which are all, as far as I know, more catholic in spirit than the
Pope). And this despite the existence of the neoplatonist who will
clearly show that Aristotle's theology cannot be maintained for reason
of internal inconsistencies (see Plotinus Ennead V-6 for example).
But the fact that Aristotle theology has been refuted just shows how
far Aristotle has been able to be enough clear and precise in a domain
which will be made non refutable by the Roman Church, notably through
the idea of revelation, sacred text, etc. This has lead, through the
addition of proselytism, to "modern" eliminative materialism, (a very
old idea thus) and even, arguably, to the elimination of persons and
ideas (look at history).
....
>>
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
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Received on Fri Jul 28 2006 - 05:40:06 PDT