avevale_intelligencer | Early morning thought before I start in on the housework

Early morning thought before I start in on the housework

Prompted by this quote, relaed by

earth_wizard.

There are two kinds of things we can do, exemplified by washing up and learning a poem. Washing up is always necessary and always there; it doesn't end, it goes on, and even if you use paper plates and plastic cutlery there'll always be something that needs cleaning. Washing up is infinite.

Learning a poem, on the other hand, involves starting at the beginning, memorising each line in its relation to the others, till you get to the end, and there stopping. Once it's done it's done, and as long as you refresh your memory every so often you won't need to do it again. Learning a poem, learning anything, is finite.

But if every time you went back to the book there were a hundred more lines to learn, you'd soon give up in despair.

It's tempting to see this belief (that the task of learning how the universe works is unending) as a desperate grab by some secular scientists at some kind of mysticism. They don't have room in their probably finite universe for an infinite god, so they figure something has to be infinite here. Why not the quest for knowledge? So far it's been a series of Chinese boxes, each one containing a smaller one; why shouldn't that literally go on for ever? Pattern under the chaos, chaos under the pattern, alternating into eternity, and always more to learn. As if, every time you turned up for your driving lesson, there was a new knob or a new pedal or a new lever in the car that you had to learn about before you could take your test, and you knew there always would be, every single time.

I'm quite convinced we haven't cracked the secrets of the universe yet. The task of science is nowhere near complete, and any scientist who says so is mistaken, I think. But that the task is completable--that it is finite--that has to be true, or else there is no point or purpose to learning anything. Understanding must be attainable, or we might as well go and do the dishes. At least they'll be done for a little while.

And speaking of which.

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Thought provoking, though most of my thoughts started with "but..." :-)

Cleaning dishes vs poetry may be an extendable analogy, so let's go that way first.
There are always more dishes to be washed, but there are different techniques, different technologies, there's exchanging painted china for dishwasher safe china for recyclable paper and plastic and, who knows, perhaps in the future we'll have "forcefield" or "self-cleaning", or even "totally recyclable" plates where the dirty plates disappear into the table to have all organic matter recycled and the table passes the clean plates back into the plate store (or disintegrates them back into hoppers to make new plates for the next meal).

Poetry, as you say, you learn once ... and then have to refresh your memory or it disappears. Some people are very lucky and require very little refreshing (eidetic memory), others need to re-read it every year for it to stick well. But the *meaning* of the poetry and the effect can change as you change through life. You find new insights, it reveals something else about the human condition, or you learn that it is insipid and banal, or derivative of a poem that you hadn't heard of before. Your relationship to that poem can change.

Science is seeking for the "how" and "why" and attempting to understand what may well be the infinite. But things are learned along the way, many of which are of use to people in general (or specific). And that journey is the point of science, not reaching an end where everything is known, but finding out how the heart works (which can then lead to artificial hearts and save lives) or how dolphins communicate, or how the universe was formed, or how a bee flies ... there *is* a point and purpose to learning so very much, even if science is not completable. I will never understand another person completely, but there's still a point in learning more about other people.

I can see technology as a useful side benefit of science, but as the point? No. If the reason we had gone to the moon was to come up with a non-stick saucepan, I'd feel cheated.

Let's try the car analogy. Say the universe is a car. There's no manual, and the instructor has stepped out for a while, possibly muttering something about updating his will, and we're here, in the driver's seat. Now, if we can learn to switch on the wipers, put the seat back and operate the mini bar and sandwich maker, that's all well and good...but if all we're going to do apart from that is sit behind the wheel making "vroom vroom" noises and marvelling at the construction, then it's going to get old. Sooner or later we've got to find out how to start the engine and leave the garage--especially if, as I believe, the ultimate goal is to design a better car of our own.

As for understanding other people, I think most of us don't try beyond a certain point, whether out of laziness, or courtesy, or a feeling that understanding oneself should be the first step, or again from this sense of mysticism. Complete understanding is theoretically possible and therefore practically possible, and I utterly disagree with the commenters below. But I'll address them separately.

Washing up isn't infinite. It lasts, at most, for less than my lifetime (I didn't start doing washing up until I was probably around 5 years old, and there will probably be some time before I die when someone (or some thing) does the washing up for me).

A single poem is finite, yes. But If I ever knew that I had read the last poem or the last book because they had all been written then it would be a cause for despair indeed. Some writers have indeed declared that there are "only 6 plots" -- and then gone on to write many times that number of books (Georgette Heyer, for example).

Will 'science' ever totally understand people? I hope not, because if it does then we will have nothing left, no one would every try to write a book or a poem because it will be known exactly why they did it beforehand. A science which included total knowledge of why and how music is appreciated would be like "the ultimate tune", it would come up with the perfect melody and all composers would be out of a job. Indeed, a science that knows everything would no longer have any place for free will or surprises or unpredictability, it would be a monobloc and totally sterile.

If "understanding must be attainable", why does anyone bother? No one at our stage can know everything, so why not just give up? That we don't do that indicates that your "all or nothing" approach is not correct.

I don't understand this at all. Maybe I never will.

Someone doing the washing up for you doesn't mean the washing up has ended. So that doesn't stand up. It's very probable that after I die there will be dirty dishes; just because somebody else will be stuck with them doesn't mean they don't exist. As long as anyone eats off reusable utensils there will be washing up, so for all practical purposes it's infinite; there will never be a point of clean dishes for everyone, for ever. (Unless some clown invents the self-cleaning plate, but that's a paradigm shift that invalidates the analogy anyway.)

You seem to think that understanding is all there is, that when there is total understanding everything stops, and that doesn't make sense to me. After you've learned the last poem you write another one. Also, "learning" (as I used the term) and "understanding" (as you're using that one) are not congruent. I was just talking about reciting off-book.

And your last question is just a reversal of mine, and I don't see the sense in that either. An attainable goal is worth striving for, even if you can't attain it yourself. An unattainable goal is not. Which is not to say that there are not other benefits to be gained, but I think I've covered that in my reply to

the_magician. The point is not that if I think the goal is unattainable I think we should stop trying for it. The point is that I think the goal is attainable, and don't understand the view that says it isn't and tries anyway.

There will be a point where I no longer create things that need to be washed up. Unless you believe that the human race is destined for an indefinite existence then there will be a time when no one creates anything to be washed up (plenty of other species don't do it, and I suspect that neither have humans all through their history). But, for all practical purposes, I can look forward to a time when I don't do it any more. Indeed, I can look at it and say "the washing up is done" until some point when someone (possibly me) creates some more.

If you are trying to compare it with poetry, the analogous thing is with poetry in general. Certainly, you can memorise one poem -- but by the time you've done that people will have written several more (much like your washing up). It's effectively infinite[1] (in that there will always -- I hope -- be more poems than any one person could possibly read). Or, it's finite in that once you have memorised one poem (equivalent to the washing up from one meal) you have accomplished that task.

"An attainable goal is worth striving for, even if you can't attain it yourself." Assertion. That may be true for you, but it isn't for most people, who see no point in striving to climb a mountain, for instance. And while attainable goals may be worthwhile as steps, people do seem to see them as only steps on the way to the unattainable goals. No one will ever write the "perfect tune", it doesn't stop composers from trying to get ever better.

Again, /in your view/ there is no point in striving for an unattainable goal. Yes, you make that clear. I don't understand that because I can see lots of goals which are unattainable but people strive for them anyway. People who try to become "the best" at anything are in this category (because someone will always beat their 'record'). Scientists who try to get as close as possible to Absolute Zero (they'll never make it, but it doesn't stop them trying to get that fraction closer).

To me, hoping that the amount of knowledge and understanding is finite is like hoping that people will stop writing books or music. If it ever happened life would be very boring, and at that point there would indeed be no point in striving to to anything, because it would have all been done. Indeed, something like that happened towards the end of the 19th century when several scientists did think that everything was likely to be known very soon and all that would be left would be refining a few more decimal points, and it put a damper on anyone entering the field, who wants to be left with the "washing up" with no meal?

[1] Anything 'infinite' may be restricted by the life span of the universe, if you believe that it has one. But in any practical terms, for an individual, the amount they can know is finite and bounded by their lifespan and so they will always die, like Newton, having played on the beach and picked up a few pebbles with an unknowable amount left to learn.

No, the analogy is between one job of washing up (which will need to be done again in a few hours' time, and again and again for as long as you continue to eat) and learning one poem (which once done is done). Subsequent comments have blurred the point, but it remains valid.

Again with perfection. I'm not talking about creation, which is open-ended; I'm talking about the acquisition of knowledge, which you seem to want to be open-ended but which isn't proven to be and doesn't have to be.

"To me, hoping that the amount of knowledge and understanding is finite is like hoping that people will stop writing books or music. If it ever happened life would be very boring..." Assertion. That may be true for you, but it may not be for some people. Apart from the fact that the two things are apples and oranges, there is far, far more to life than the search for knowledge, or even than books or music (and you know how I feel about those). And good gods, what's wrong with re-reading?

There's a whole lot of confusion here between the individual and humanity in general, between finding knowledge and understanding and creative endeavour, between "understanding" and "perfection", between "the universe" and "people," and if I've caused it or contributed to it I'm sorry. What I am trying to say is that I believe it is possible that some day humanity in general will have learned everything about how this universe works. Is that the sum total of possible knowledge? No, I don't think it is, but it's this universe that the quote talked about and it's this universe that I believe is fathomable and this universe that I keep getting told isn't. I think that's not true.

Being the best you can be at something is an attainable goal, and that's what most people realistically strive for. Getting the lowest temperature you can get is an attainable goal, and that, I assume, is what the scientists are striving for. Adding something to the sum of human knowledge is an attainable goal...but if there is no way to understand a finite universe completely, then sooner or later we're going to hit a wall far more painful than the one you seem to be postulating, one that says "THUS FAR AND NO FARTHER" when you can see that there is farther to go. Personally, if the choice were between boredom and frustration (I don't think it is), I'll take boredom any day.

Science has to proceed on the basis that everything is eventually knowable, whatever the individual scientist may choose to believe. At least that's the impression I've gathered. And that's why I don't understand this point of view, not only that everything is not knowable but that somehow that's a happy. I don't get it.

"No, the analogy is between one job of washing up (which will need to be done again in a few hours' time, and again and again for as long as you continue to eat) and learning one poem (which once done is done)."

Which is a false analogy, because you aren't comparing like with like. The analogy would be comparing one job of washing up with learning one poem, whether you decide to do some more washing up or learning is irrelevant. OK, you might claim that you have to do the washing up but not learn a poem, in which case the analogy breaks down from the start.

"I'm talking about the acquisition of knowledge, which you seem to want to be open-ended but which isn't proven to be and doesn't have to be."

But neither is it proven to be finite, and it doesn't have to be finite either. Both are assumptions. However, I am stating that the infinite is an assumption (and therefore may not be true -- since it's untestable because by definition something infinite it can only ever be an assumption), whereas you seem to be asserting that it is false (which is indeed testable, all you have to do is find an end to knowledge).

"if there is no way to understand a finite universe completely, then sooner or later we're going to hit a wall far more painful than the one you seem to be postulating, one that says "THUS FAR AND NO FARTHER" when you can see that there is farther to go."

Huh? Where's that wall come from? My visualisation of the Cosmic All has no need for any such wall, because no matter how big we get the universe will always be bigger. The only limitation, in my weltanschauung, is that as mortal beings (and if we become immortal we will no longer be human in any normal sense) we cannot know the infinite.

"To me, hoping that the amount of knowledge and understanding is finite is like hoping that people will stop writing books or music. If it ever happened life would be very boring..." Assertion.

Er, yes, that's what "to me" means. In My Opinion. I did not assert it as an absolute or about anyone else, and explicitly said so.

Re-reading? I love it. But there are already quite a few books which I don't reread because I know them too well (it's been around 25 years, I guess, since I last reread LotR, and I feel no particular desire to do so. But I keep the books because it's possible I might want to reread them sometime before I die.)

"not only that everything is not knowable but that somehow that's a happy"

Negative in the wrong place. I didn't say that everything is unknowable, I said that not everything is knowable, i.e. there are some things which are not totally knowable. For instance, in order to say that "there is no other intelligent life in the universe" one would have to explore every part of it -- and still while one was looking in one place they could have gone (or evolved) somewhere else. Can we know what came before the Big Bang (if that theory's still current)? Can we even know what is out there beyond the red-shift boundary, if we are limited by the speed of light? (Yes, that's a 'wall', possibly, and I don't like it.)

I don't think that "science has to proceed on the basis that everything is eventually knowable", Certainly it doesn't at the moment, it ignores areas where it can't find repeatable results and where there are no testable theories (from what I've heard that's part of the definition of science, that if it dealt with those other things then it might be philosophy or something).

Which one is "a happy" is a matter of taste (de gustibus And All That). I'm happy knowing that there is more to the universe than I, or anyone I know, will ever know. You aren't. You say "Personally, if the choice were between boredom and frustration (I don't think it is), I'll take boredom any day" -- I can't argue with that, because that's your personal taste (and mine is different). I do argue with an (apparent) assertion that the way you feel is the way everyone else does (or should) feel about it.

I don't believe you understand what I'm saying. And since I certainly don't understand what you're saying (or how it applies to what I'm saying), we may as well leave it there till the next time.

If I may step in?

The reason why there is always more washing up to be done is that there are always people generating more washing up. Assuming that living sentient beings will always generate something that may be called "washing up", then it's an infinite task in so much as the persistence of sentient life is infinite (which I certainly hope it is, but who knows?).

The reason why there is an end to the reading of the poem is that the person who wrote the poem decided to end it at a particular point, and doesn't keep adding new verses.

So the question of whether there is an end to the knowledge that can be acquired boils down to "is there someone, something, or some ongoing process, that causes new potentially knowable (but as yet unknown) things to exist?"

And scientifically speaking, we don't have an answer to that question, nor can I imagine any way we could detect the existence of such a thing. (But that doesn't mean no one will ever manage to imagine such a detector, or indeed get around to building it. I just can't get my head around what that would involve... But then, that's one of the things science has done for us: Given us the tools and the language to get our heads around various things we could never even conceive of before. Long may that continue!)

But here's a philosphical issue: it's been postulated that in our quest to know everything, we ourselves might actually be *generating* new unknowables. That maybe quarks didn't "really" exist until we strted trying to figure out what atoms electrons were made of, and electrons didn't exist till we started investigating what made the various phenomena we now ascribe to "electricity" tick. Maybe there's some deom out there, or some power within our own minds, thyat creates new mysteries so long as we have the hunger to solve them. In that case, the washing up analogy is spot on: We create the new washing up as a by-product of enjoying our food served on the plates we washed yesterday.

I hope that isn't the case, as it would seem as though we've just been fooling ourselves all along.. and yet, at the same time, wouldn't that be a really neat way of making humans be creative? Causing us, by dint of our own acts of wonder and investigation and discovery, to create the very unknowns that we are then driven to investigate, as a consequence of which we are able to invent new tools to do stuff with, and new ideas to speculate and write about in things called SF novels... How much more "made in the image of the creator" could you get?

I'm trying to think where I read that "we create the things we look for" idea, it was central to a story. The idea that scientists and other inquisitive and creative people actually caused our 'laws' to be as they are by observing them. (And Quantum Theory does have this thing about things not happening unless they are observed, much like the bishop's tree in the forest.)

That also ties into the fractal idea, that we create the infinitely small detail by looking at it closely.

But even without that, if free will is postulated we create more information just by existing, which we then don't fully understand and in trying to understand it that generates still more.

I don't think of it as fooling ourselves, though, or at least no more so than our tendency to tell each other (and ourselves) fiction. We seem to be a creature which delights in inventing something 'false' if we haven't got enough 'real' stuff coming in (indeed, in sensory deprivation our brains generate illusions all by themselves).

"An attainable goal is worth striving for, even if you can't attain it yourself. An unattainable goal is not. "

Ah! There I think we have the crux of the matter, and of my disagreement.

Option 1: "Aim for a height of 5 metres. We know from past experience that you'll achieve something in the range of 4.5 to 5.5 metres"

Option 2: "Aim for a height of 9 metres. We know from past experience that you'll probably achieve around 6 to 7 metres".

Option 3: "Aim for a height of infinity! It's impossible to reach it, of course, but experience has shown this is the only way anyone has ever achieved a height greater than 10 metres... and who knows, you might be the first person in the world to achieve 11!"

Which option would you choose?

And as ever, back to the gospel: It's a switch from the old way of judging moral rectitude - "As long as I meet the minimum standard of behaviour, as specified by the law, I'm OK (Corollary: But if I fail, I'm buggered!)" - to the new way - "forget about the minimum standard, it's a total red herring; I want (and God wants me) to achieve the highest level of goodness I'm capable of! Therefore I will take as a role model no less a person than Jesus Christ, the human incarnation of God, because even though a sin-infected mortal like me can't possibly ever attain his standard of goodness - can never *be* Jesus - I know that only by setting my sights on the target of his perfection (and failing, and then learning from my failure, and trying again, repeatedly) will I ever become the best *me* that I can be."

Edited 2011-02-21 19:40 (UTC)

Option 4: "Stand here and hold this ruler."

Option 3: "Aim for a height of infinity! It's impossible to reach it, of course, but experience has shown this is the only way anyone has ever achieved a height greater than 10 metres... and who knows, you might be the first person in the world to achieve 11!"

"A man's reach should exceed his grasp, or what's a Heaven for?"

" An attainable goal is worth striving for, even if you can't attain it yourself. An unattainable goal is not."

I am reasonably convinced (but have not tried to mathematically prove/disprove) that there will always be more left to learn, in science, even if it comes down to counting turtles[*].

But if the goal is, "I want to understand as much as I can about X," or "I want to help all of understand as much as we can about the universe," then the goal is by definition possible: it's to find out just how much "as much as we can" is.

Note that (in the case of "we") it is never completable[**], but for each generation, that generation's version of it is attainable -- do our best, keep probing, and find out how much we can understand in our span.

[*] Recasting "what came before the Big Bang ... okay, what was the origin of that ... fine, what caused that?" as a "turtles all the way down" for the moment, even if it turns out not to be.

[**] Unless of course you are right and I am wrong about total knowledge being finite.

Hmm. How is knowledge about the universe stored? At some point, don't we run out of electrons with which to store the data about (among other things) the states of the electrons ... thus making the universe itself our only complete representation of the universe, with no entity within it able to know everything about it?

Most honest scientists believe that we never will fully understand the universe -- and that it's okay, because we'll always understand it better tomorrow than we do today. I can't see it as completable, as long as we can always measure something more closely, or find something we hadn't noticed before, that doesn't fit our then-current models. That's what makes the universe wonderful and awesome, in the literal meanings of those words, and a very good reason to keep on keeping on. Perfection doesn't need to be attained: it's a nice thought, but it's the carrot that keeps us donkeys moving in the right direction.

This, again, is back-door mysticism, I think, and I'm fine with that as long as it's acknowledged as such. There's no proof of it, just as there's no evidence for deity; this just substitutes "the universe" (or "people") for "God." Again, that's perfectly fine, as long as there is acknowledgment that in this you are on the same footing with people who use the shorter word for what they think they will never understand. Most honest scientists, then, are in this respect mystics. Okay.

Again, "understanding" and "perfection" are two different things. One is defined, one is completely indefinable. If the donkey knew it could never get the carrot, or that the carrot was actually plastic, it would stop dead, and quite right too. If it got the carrot it would look around for another one, or maybe (if one wasn't forthcoming) evolve opposable thumbs and plant some seeds.

I'm quite prepared to believe there will be more to understand and to learn once we've got this carrot. And I have respect, tinged with confusion, for those who think they know the carrot is unattainable and keep working nonetheless. I just can't do that myself.

"If the donkey knew it could never get the carrot, or that the carrot was actually plastic, it would stop dead, and quite right too."

...unless it noticed that as long as it followed the carrot it tended to get fed good things, wheras when it didn't follow the carrot it tended to go hungry. =:o}

Not mysticism at all, backdoor, front door, or window. It's established fact that science progresses, often, based on better measurement, or random observation, that raises questions about existing understandings. That being the case, there's no reason to believe we'll hit a limit on these things, in which we have a perfect understanding of the universe.

A good analogy would be fractals. In many ways, we're just beginning to understand how they work, and also, how fundamentally the universe expresses itself fractally (rather than in simple dimensionality as in classic physics and math). Remember that with fractals, it's possible to continue exceedingly deeply (infinitely, in mathematical fractals; it may be less so in physical systems) and discover both self-similarity and differences. (This may well be the truth of the old belief "as above, so below.")

For that matter, there's no reason to believe that the universe itself isn't changing (the scientific word is "dynamic"), to the point where it's never going to be possible to fully understand it because it's different tomorrow from the way it is today.

If you want to argue that science doesn't address a "why", rather than a "how", in these areas, you certainly have a case. But calling it "backdoor mysticism" is assigning a motive that doesn't, in my understanding and experience, exist for many of the folks involved. Curiosity, sure. But there's nothing of the supernatural involved at all.

This may be a definition problem. To me, anyone who talks about how awesome and wonderful it is that we don't know something is talking about some form of mysticism. There doesn't have to be a deity or anything supernatural involved--just a Void at which we are required to marvel without looking behind the curtain. And the less there is in the Void, the more we are called upon to marvel.

As I've said, I have no problem with this when it calls itself by its right name.

"-just a Void at which we are required to marvel without looking behind the curtain"

...Except that it's a void at which we marvel *and then look behind the curtain anyway*. We get to study and admire each new curtain and it's relationship to the void, and then we go past the curtain to find the next one. It's just one big art-show of void-encompassing curtainage, where the tour group consists of not only of those who wanna press on as quickly as possible, but also those who wanna stay and admire one particular curtain in depth, and those who, having spotted a nifty design on one of the curtains decide to take a quick sketch of it and then run back to entrance to start printing it on T-shirts. =:o}

"For that matter, there's no reason to believe that the universe itself isn't changing (the scientific word is "dynamic"), to the point where it's never going to be possible to fully understand it because it's different tomorrow from the way it is today."

I ask for enlightenment and I get "Ghost Light." :) Zeno's paradox restated by Marc Platt. If we understand the natural processes by which it changes, then we can achieve a dynamic understanding. If it doesn't change according to natural processes, but changes suddenly and without discernible cause, then we have a clue to the existence of something that is changing it deliberately, possibly to confuse us. But I hope that isn't the case. Either way, the arrow does hit the tortoise eventually, and I'm told there's good eating on one of those.

A fine poem about work which can never be completed.

I don't see the same problem you do. It's mostly that I see science as getting some solid information (I think the periodic table is a permanent accomplishment) and moving forward into ever weirder and more useful information.

Even if we get a final understanding of the ultimate principles of the universe, this doesn't mean we'll have a grasp of the very complex consequences of the way those principles work out. Ever notice how biology keeps finding out how much more crucial detail there is to living things?

"The larger the island of knowledge, the longer the shoreline of wonder."

Not that I expect to convince you-- I suspect our emotional defaults are very different.

Excuse me, but "desperate grab" at "some kind of mysticism" sounds pretty rude. I think it's much more reasonable to view this attitude as based on past experience. Maybe someday it will make sense to close the patent office because everything has already been invented, but it didn't work out the last time it was tried.

But suppose it's true. Sit down and consider it a little. What would that mean about who believes it versus who doesn't? Religious scientists, like Francis Collins, wouldn't "need" the belief and wouldn't have it. Especially given that it is a "desperate grab." Atheistic scientists, would "need" (ugh) the belief and would be more likely to have it.

Do you really think that's true? Only atheist scientists believe gathering knowledge about the physical world can go on forever, religious scientists (at least half of all scientists and probably more) think it's limited and we'll have to stop at some point?

Second. But that the task is completable--that it is finite--that has to be true, or else there is no point or purpose to learning anything.

??

It is not possible to learn every song. Even if you had a prodigious memory and knew every language, there are new songs being written all the time. Therefore there is no purpose to learning a new song?

It is not possible to view every painting. Yada yada there are new paintings being made all the time. Therefore there is no purpose to viewing any painting.

It is not possible to see every dance, every play, every movie; it is not possible to learn every language, read every book, hike every trail...

Why does a task have to be complete-able for doing part of it to be worthwhile?

If partial understanding weren't worthwhile nobody would ever *start* to learn everything, because partial understanding is all you can achieve in any kind of reasonable time frame. Heck I got a Ph.D. in Molecular Biology and only achieved a partial understanding of the field.

Sorry. No rudeness was intended. (I said it was "tempting"; I didn't say I'd yielded to the temptation.) I don't know how this belief correlates with religiousness among scientists, and wouldn't presume to guess. I believe that it is mysticism, though, whether intended or not.

I think I've covered your other point in previous comments. I'll reiterate that this is a failure of understanding on my part, probably due as Nancy says to different emotional axioms. Nobody's managed to explain it to me yet in a way I can grok. Which doesn't mean nobody ever will...

(I said it was "tempting"; I didn't say I'd yielded to the temptation.)

Zander, no.

Putting "it is tempting" in front of an insult does not make it less insulting.

If you need a demonstration, I have a really good one all ready to go.

No, I don't. As I said, I intended no insult, and apologise.

What's always been interesting is the divided idea of what scientists mean by a 'Theory of Everything': most layman think of TOE as the idea that science can someday lock down all possible solutions to a description of the universe and its laws; whereas scientists, at least the many I've studied and spoken to over the years, see it not as a finality, some closure to the grand scheme of scientific enquiry that will then say: yes, now we have a fully qualified description of life, the universe, and everything.... no, this is not the real TOE, that is the ficiton, the babble of journalists, instead of scientists.

Instead scientists themselves see TOE as but the apprehension of a special case of theoretical physics that will only give them a limited set of mathematical descriptions and a new foundation for the sciences, a sort of - to use a Arnoldian term, 'touchstone' for all possible cases of the universe. For as most scientists will tell you we are limited minds seeking possible answers to a complex ever-changing universe that can never be apprehended in the moment of now by a finite mind, and even if that mind could formutlate a mathematical theorem to describe those laws that describe the universe: the universe that they describe would always already be a dead universe; i.e., a universe that was past, cut off from our ever-changing time-moving universe we all live in.

The universe is dynamic and our descriptions of it are only and always a topigraphical mapping of its surface tensions, never the actual thing itself; the thing-in-itself will always remain outside our calculations, that is why poetry and the universe are closer to the untruth that is; for truth is always a slice, a partial grasp of the universe through the lens of a finite mind called the human.

As we are discovering, even the brain itself changes, has plasticity: and, from infancy to old age we learn new things about both the universe and ourselves. The universe may be finite: but we do not know that for a fact... It might be stranger than we have yet thought... maybe the poets are closer to the truth or untruth, maybe hyperbole and metaphor reaches into the dark recesses better than scientific description.

Science as we know it now is hooked to technology and industry and is therefore locked into a political and goal oriented system of production rather than some impersonal pursuit of truth.

At least that is my take... although many scientists would love us to believe they are bound to some idealist pursuit of truth rather than the pragmatic ventures of investment bankers that sponsor them and their institutions. But that is another tale...

Edited 2011-02-21 15:19 (UTC)

My first reaction ... well, I checked to see if anyone else had said this, and I don't think they have, so here goes:

But that the task is completable--that it is finite--that has to be true, or else there is no point or purpose to learning anything.

O RLY? How tall are you? No, don't round it off: tell me precisely. Or choose any other measurement in the real world.* And the answer is unattainable, because the precision required is infinite.

* (Even if there are some real-world measurements with integer values, there are at least as many whose values are irrational and probably transcendent.)

That's one way in which complete knowledge of the universe is unattainable. I'm at work, so I'll stop here, at least for now.

I'm one Zander tall. Precisely. How's that for an attainable (if not necessarily useful) answer?

The goal is to be God. The goal is to make universes, to make life. That seems to me to be the best possible guess as to our purpose here, if we have one; and if we don't, it still seems to me to be the best, most meaningful thing we can focus on trying to do as a species. That's what I've believed for as long as I can remember. I think it's why I'm a writer, a creator of fictional worlds, however ineptly. It's important to me, as the question of whether or not there is a god could never be. Whether we're growing up to be like Dad (or Mum), or just finding something to do that will survive when this universe has burned out, this seems the obvious choice, the only real choice.

This, to me, is what science is for. All the rest, all the technology, is just glorified survival behaviour: more food, more land, better spears, better cooking pots. This goal, to me, puts science on an equal footing with art, in the service of human creativity.

In order to achieve this goal, in order to make a universe, we have to understand how universes work. In order to understand how universes work, we have to start by understanding how this universe works. Therefore, for the goal to make sense, it has to be possible to understand how this universe works.

I will admit that the idea that this isn't possible--that we can only grope endlessly after an ever-receding horizon--upsets me, at a visceral level I can't reason away. I'm completely happy with the idea that it will take thousands of years, maybe hundreds of thousands, before we get to that level of understanding. That's not a problem.

But I can't accept that we never will, and I can't understand how anyone could accept that. It does in fact seem wrong to me, fundamentally wrong, an abdication of responsibility, almost a betrayal. Merely basking in the awe and wonder of it all and not wanting more, being content just to know some of it and content that that will never change, seems to me like a waste of our time and our potential, and makes me want to scream at people. I know that's unreasonable. I'm afraid I can't help it.

And that is why I come off the way I do on this subject. Sorry I caused upset.

I can totally get feeling like it's fundamentally wrong to just bask in the awe and wonder of it all and not want to know more.

But what's wrong with always wanting to know more and simultaneously believing that there will always be more unknown?

Well, obviously nothing for most people. And I don't necessarily have a problem with it stated that way...but in view of the long-term goal as I formulated it, saying that there will always be more unknown about this universe we're in seems to me to defeat the object.

The worst outcome I could imagine is that we maybe find out some of how to make a universe, and do it, and get it horribly wrong...and then find we can't learn the rest of what we need to know, because for whatever reason it's unlearnable. I don't know why that wouldn't bother anyone.

The conflict here seems to be between what I think of as the poetic view of the universe and what I think of as the scientific. (Which is ironic in itself given that "poet" means "maker.") I'm all for awe and wonder in its place, as long as it's accompanied by a refusal to settle for it. Ideally I'd have both--to understand and still to wonder. I don't see why they should be mutually exclusive, and that seems to be what some of the commenters here are saying; that once you understand something it's no longer wonderful. I don't think I've ever found that.

If I believed in a god, I would have to believe that sooner or later we would find that god, get to know him, her or it, understand what makes him, her or it tick, and ultimately surpass or at least equal him, her or it. That's what I think a god would expect of his, her or its creation; in the absence of a god, it still seems like a good goal to aim for, but only if there's some chance of achieving it. Reaching without being able to grasp just makes your arms tired.

Maybe there are other levels of being beyond this one, and maybe then we'll find our limits...but if we've already found them, if our brains are truly not sufficient to grasp this single universe and turn it all ways up and find the mainspring, then I can't help wondering what the ultimate point of them is. Inventing a better dishwasher doesn't cut it for me.

"that seems to be what some of the commenters here are saying; that once you understand something it's no longer wonderful"

I don't see anyone here who has said that, and I certainly don't believe it. I 'know' how rainbows work, that doesn't stop me from going 'ooh' when I see a spectacular one. The same with fireworks. Heck, the same with TV and computers. At the same time, I don't expect (or need) to know down to the quantum level what every particle is doing to achieve the effect.

Which also ties into your thing about creating a universe. Assuming that this is your goal (for humanity, although if you want to do it personally I'd only ask that you tell me stories about it), I don't think that it requires that you know everything about it. Steam engines were build and worked without anyone knowing about what heat is or why it turned water into steam and moved things, all they had to know was that it has those effects. Electric lightbulbs worked before they worked out why. And plenty of authors have written great books without knowing every word in the language.

Indeed, I can see one reason for wanting to create a universe being the same as why people like me write programs to simulate stuff -- to find out more about it, by doing it. It would certainly explain why some of this universe seems to be rather oddly designed, perhaps the Designer has since made some better ones...

I was thinking of things like:

"Will 'science' ever totally understand people? I hope not, because if it does then we will have nothing left..."

which I don't believe to be true.

"The goal is to be God. The goal is to make universes, to make life. "

*Your* goal is this. Possibly the reason why you're confused about how other people see things is that this isn't their goal at all. And this assertion of what the goal should be certainly counts as mysticism in my book, since "should" is an appeal to authority.

I think this is something where you need to accept that you're marching to the beat of your own drummer, Zan. Which is fine, and I'll be happy to come and watch any parades you care to put on... so long as you don't then criticise the folks on the next parade ground over for being off the beat.

I wouldn't deny being a bit of a mystic about this, though I don't think I'm hiding anything behind a curtain.

I would ask "well, if that isn't the goal, the reason we're here or at least a worthwhile objective to aim for, then what is?" but I probably wouldn't understand the answer. "To mill around aimlessly for a few thousand years and then die off" doesn't do it for me. "To conquer and exploit every planet and life form in the universe"...nope. "To create one ultimate work of art that perfectly expresses the epitome of what it means to be human"...mmm, well, maybe, but I think that's kind of what I'm talking about anyway. "To bring about the destruction of reality itself"...who let the guy in the knobbly wheelchair in here?

You'd maybe say--I don't know--that we're incapable of understanding our purpose, if any, and that we don't need to understand it to fulfil it. And that would bring me back full circle to my initial beef.

I think I'd rather think I'm hearing a beat that nobody else is yet. And that's fine, because nobody else needs to, yet, and it's certainly not doing me any good. As for the things that make me want to scream, I'll try and confine it to a stifled whimper.

When you talk about "the goal", then the natural thing to ask is "who's goal are you talking about?"

If you're asking what motivates *scientists* to do what they do, then you need to ask the actual scientists, and be prepared for them to all have their own indivisual answers. But it seems more like you're asking what "The Goal of Science(TM)" is, in some absolute sense... which, to be a meaningful question at all, requires there to be some Absolute Person(TM) who has this Goal(TM) to which you refer... which naturally means you're going to be talking at cross purposes to half your readers, whom you already know are atheists, when you ask the question.

Edited 2011-02-22 19:15 (UTC)

But that the task is completable--that it is finite--that has to be true, or else there is no point or purpose to learning anything.

This just baffles me. Most scientists are not saying "I want to learn everything about everything" they're saying "I want to learn this one thing about this one entity."

Like, "I want to know why stag beetles have such big horns, so I will look at stag beetles in the wild and see if horn size correlates with reproductive success, or food gathering or predator evasion."

Obviously knowing everything about everything is impossible. Perhaps I shouldn't mention it, but species don't live forever, therefore humans almost certainly won't be around forever, therefore we have a limited amount of time to learn.

But learning one thing about one entity certainly is possible. And it's the people who think that is worth doing, and never mind if humans are around in another million years, who look around and say "you know, I don't think we'll ever run out of things to learn, and that's wonderful." They also happen to be the people who do science.

Science is like poetry--written, and learned, one poem at a time.

And seriously, if your goal is to be a God and create universes (other than metaphorical universes in writing and so on, but you were talking about science before, which deals with the physical world, so I had the impression you were talking about real universes), what are you doing to make that happen?

I am assuming it's your goal, because you say it's "the goal" and it's certainly not mine. But goals are things the goal holder normally actually takes steps to attain. Are you planning to study physics and cosmology or do you intend to take a more metaphysical tack?

And if it's not your goal, why are you telling me it's mine, or someone else's, or the goal of a whole field, like science? How do you know? Who are you to say?

(Of course I will note that making life is a much simpler thing than making universes. The question becomes how lifeless do the components have to be, and how different does the created life have to be from the life that already exists, for it to count? Because by some measures we've done it already.)

I'm a human being, and my view of what we're here to do is presumably as valid as anyone else's. You're free to disagree, as most people do.

Strangely, I'm not stupid enough to believe that I, or any other human being right now, can create a universe. As I've said, I think it's going to take millennia before we know enough to do it right.

So what am I doing to try to bring the goal I believe in a little closer? This. In other words, upset people needlessly and make myself look like a lunatic. It is, after all, what I do best. :)

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Early morning thought before I start in on the housework

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Rounding off--a provisionally final attempt to explain myself

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