Early morning thought before I start in on the housework

[avevale_intelligencer]

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.

Comments

[redaxe.livejournal.com]

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.

[zanda-myrande.livejournal.com]

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.

[pbristow.livejournal.com]

"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}

[redaxe.livejournal.com]

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.

[zanda-myrande.livejournal.com]

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.

[pbristow.livejournal.com]

"-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}

[zanda-myrande.livejournal.com]

"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.