>>
>> Quite right. In many ways we are far ahead of where the Greeks were. We
>> are way behind them in understanding that emotion and intellect/rationality
>> are integrated and inseparable.
>>
>
>It doesn't really matter for science the circumstance
>if which a scientical theory was made, the only thing
>that matters if there is enough evidence that it works.
But the "scientific" evaluation of how it works has all these metaphors and
cultural assumptions embedded in it. They help determine what will be
accepted as scientifically proven and what not. That is why Einstein
repudiated statistical mechanics and Heisenberg accepted it. It had
nothing to do with the experimental data, but with a deep philosophical
difference of opinion on the nature of science and the scientifc method
captured by Einsteins famous justification for repudiating statistical
mechanics, that "God does not play dice with the universe." There is no
empirical content in that statement. It is a statement of cultural values
and belief. It is beliefs like that which shape how science is done and
what is accepted as legitimate data and what not.
This notion of a value free science which somehow floats around independent
of humans and human nature is a chimera.
>
>Same with arts - whether the artists were a rotten human
>being (very often they were, self-absorbed/antisocial)
>won't count in evaluating/enjoyig their art.
>
>> 17 Century Scientific Revolution. It is another convention that this
>> mechanical view became insupportable as a result of the development of
>> statistical mechanics in the early part of this century because
>> investigation of sub-atomic phenomena using statistical mechanics found
>> that the old mechanical simple linear cause and effect mechanism no longer
>> held. That is what Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle and the Copenhagen
>> Interpretation are all about. Someone aware of cultural history would note
>> that Einstein, who never accepted these interpretations, but clove to
>> Newtonian certitudes, was reflecting the cultural biases of Judeo-Christian
>> culture with its emphasis on absolutes and certainty and Heisenberg and
>> Bohr, who were both students of Eastern Philosophy, had no problem with it
>> at all, as it resonates with the Eastern acceptance of paradox and
>> uncertainty and timelessness. So the bases upon which scientists accept or
>> reject theories and data sets go a great deal deeper than most people and
>> certainly most practicing scientists, suppose.
>>
>
>I think there are lot's of counterarguments,
>your cultural background can at times turn you
>to the opposite.
Then please present them.
Also,
>The more valid arguments,
>valid comfirming data are collected, the more
>people will acept an idea, whatever their
>background.
Why did people cling to the Ptolemaic view of astronomy despite the
contrary data from Tycho Brahe and Johannes Kepler and even when Copernicus
came up with a theory which matched their data ? For the best part of two
hundred years ? Because it meant giving up an entire cultural world view
and all the social values and power structures that went with it.
Statistical mechanics presents a similar challenge. It rejects the simple
mechanical cause and effect arguments of the industrial culture in which
progress is a value free term and can no more be denied than the earth can
be prevented from circling round the sun. Progress is the equivalent in
classical and neo-classical economics to gravity in Newtonian Mechanics.
It is an anonymous, unexplained external force which governs everything and
has the force of scientific truth. The whole of classical and neoclassical
economics apes the classical scientific model. If classical science goes,
so does neo-classical economics. Just as statisical mechanics requires the
development of a new science in which the interdependence of observer and
observed has to be expressly defined, so must an economics be developed in
which this value neutral position which apes the independence of observer
and observed in classical science, is dumped and in which values and human
cultural intentionality is integrated (something which I had the impression
you favour).
Mike
