avevale_intelligencer (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
avevale_intelligencer) wrote2011-02-21 08:44 am
avevale_intelligencer) wrote2011-02-21 08:44 am
Early morning thought before I start in on the housework
Prompted by this quote, relaed by ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
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.
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.
no subject
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.
no subject
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.