Le 04-août-05, à 18:11, chris peck a écrit :
> Bruno wrote:
>
>> No. But then your definition of theology is perhaps a little bit to
>> much a contingent matter.
>> Perhaps the word "theology" has too many connotations.
>
> I agree largely.
>
> I think the correct distinction to make between what people seem to
> mean wrt the religion/science dispute is between 'recieved wisdom' and
> 'reasoned wisdom'.
>
> Religion and theology begin to encroach on liberty when the wisdom is
> 'recieved'. When things are true 'because that is how it is written'.
> It leaves little space for question or change.
I agree. Thanks for mentioning this important point. Here I deeply
believed that just teaching logic could help people. Indeed, once you
understand enough logic you understand that even in mathematics, few
"text" can have an univocal interpretation and it helps you to be
cautious in front of any "literal" interpretation of any text.
>
> Theology takes on a different character in the hands of a Descartes
> because he reasons for his ideas. In doing so he opens himself up for
> criticism and refutation. We can analyse his methodology and deductive
> accuracy.
Absolutely. Note that before Descartes some other were reasoning nicely
to. I am tring to have a better understanding of the thread Plato,
Plotin, Proclus and other neo-platonists.
Note that Descartes miss logic, due to the exaggeration of many
"scholastic" logicians, but he is really a good reasoner (which by the
way shows we don't need logic to be a good reasoner).
>
> Science can and does adopt sometimes a 'received' methodology. There
> is a prevailing world view, a chauvanism towards certain
> methodologies. A bias towards rewarding certain research projects over
> others. There seems to be little understanding that paradigmatic
> shifts in science often come from left field. Theories are judged to
> an extent on how well they fit in to the current model - however many
> difficulties that model is encountering.
Yes.
>
> As you point out, many ideas here have mystical consequences really.
> They are reasoned for however. Whilst life after death is common to
> many religious and philsophical models, in those presented here we can
> see how the conclusions are arrived at and why.
Exactly. An expression like "quantum immortality" *is* theological. To
negate this consists in making science not only theological again, but
dogmatically so!
>
> For me thats a critical difference.
I rarely share opinions with "post-modernist" and other
"deconstructivists", but I do share with some of them the idea that the
frontier between fields are biological-cultural, just locally useful,
constructions. Actually I don't believe in science at all. I believe
just in honest and curious people capable of trying to make clear and
sharable their ideas and works. Some gardiners and parapsychologist(*)
can be more rigorous than mathematician and physicists. It is really a
question of attitude.
(*) I am thinking to that chef-d'oeuvre of science: "In search of the
Light" by Suzanne Blackmore (much more rigorous than her more recent
book on Memes, actually). The original discovery that lucid dreaming
can be tested in laboratory (in a third person verifiable way) has been
done by a parapsychologist (Hearne). The scientific community will
gives the credit to a neuroscientist and mathematician though, Laberge,
when he (re)published the results in "scientific" journal.
Some mathematician acts like Pavlov Dog. They dismiss any text has non
serious if some words appears in it, like "mind", "quantum" (sic).
Empirically I have discovered that engineers are most of the time more
open to serious reasoning on fundamental questions. In science they
still exist "popes", and truth need to wait they leaves the planet to
progress. I am not alluding to anything personal here, but what I say
is clear from any books on the history of sciences.
Bruno
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
Received on Fri Aug 05 2005 - 06:18:58 PDT