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Pastimes : Don't Ask Rambi -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Rick Julian who wrote (41826)	11/15/1999 1:01:00 AM
From: epicure	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 71178

But some scientists are philosophers or poets or artists (or you could say some artists are philosophers and scientists)- and some of the most wonderful things come from people who are capable of synthesis between the external and internal. I think you probably miss out on a big chunk of existence if you can't appreciate both domains.

To: Rick Julian who wrote (41826)	11/15/1999 1:42:00 AM
From: JF Quinnelly	Respond to of 71178

And the physical sciences themselves must rely on non-materials, like logic. The very definitions of what science is are drawn from the field of epistemology and philosophy. Mathematics itself cannot be a closed system, as Goedel's Theorem states. A good concise book on the error of "scientism" is Friedrick von Hayek's The Counter-Revolution of Science. Epistemology is the study of "how we can know what we know". And the act of measuring, the basis of the physical sciences, is not the only sort of knowledge we have. Even with the physical sciences we tell stories about the data we accumulate, and make inductive leaps. We structure the data, it doesn't structure itself. That structuring is an internal process. To think that science is separate from philosophy is folly.

To: Rick Julian who wrote (41826)	11/15/1999 4:33:00 AM
From: nihil	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 71178

Sure, but in the universal scheme of things, man is next to nothing. He takes himself much too seriously. In a few billion years the sun will expand into a red giant and burn the Earth -- man, philosophy, theology, art, language, every human thing into toast -- unless we learn enough science and technology to send some of our descendants into space to find a new home. Until we solve this problem, I think all that "inner stuff" is wasting valuable time.