String Theory linked to Alchemy
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...at the cutting edge of modern physics, string theory purports to offer a complete but possibly unprovable explanation of the universe based on 11 dimensions and imperceptibly tiny strings. Alchemists wouldn't recognize the mathematics behind the theory. But in its grandeur, in its claim to total authority, in its unprovability, they would surely recognize its spirit. Read more here: http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2009/03/15/good_as_gold/[^]
Best wishes, Hans
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ahmed zahmed wrote:
...I believe in God and for very rational reasons.
Fine, but believing in God is completely different to following or believing in a religion. Religion, the opiate of the masses, is a powerful tool used by people for personal gain. Anyone not using it for this purpose is on the other end of the stick; brainwashed and blissfully ignorant to the reality of organised dogma. ALL religions ARE irrational belief systems. Believing in God, as far as I am concerned, is a way to negate the fear of mortality, which can hardly be regarded as irrational. It's quite rational. It takes balls to stand against the universe believing you are on your own, and actually be comfortable with this belief. Religion/God as a way of escaping the thought of a meaningless existence would be, for me, too easy. Arrgh! Religion! It's a bastard of a topic. I mean NO OFFENCE to anyone, this is purely my opinion. If you don't like it, ignore it, cheers!
MichaelGallagher wrote:
Religion, the opiate of the masses, is a powerful tool used by people for personal gain. Anyone not using it for this purpose is on the other end of the stick; brainwashed and blissfully ignorant to the reality of organised dogma. ALL religions ARE irrational belief systems. Believing in God, as far as I am concerned, is a way to negate the fear of mortality, which can hardly be regarded as irrational. It's quite rational. It takes balls to stand against the universe believing you are on your own, and actually be comfortable with this belief.
At the risk of coming off ironic may I shout a hearty AMEN! to that Michael. <couldn't find a smiley with it's hands folded in prayer>
Mike Devenney
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Chris Maunder wrote:
Super-dooper large hardon colider
Ah, you've met my ex then? :)
Henry Minute Do not read medical books! You could die of a misprint. - Mark Twain Girl: (staring) "Why do you need an icy cucumber?" “I want to report a fraud. The government is lying to us all.”
COFFEE, MEET MONITORS. :laugh:
Mike Devenney
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I remember watching a documentary about evolution and creationism and the guy they were interviewing was a scientist who believed strongly in the big bang event, and also in creationism, meaning that he believed that God logically created the universe and everything in it, but no in seven days; he believed that God created the big bang itself. ( Sounds much more likely than anything i've heard from fundamentalist christians, etc, but I still disagree ;P ) Anyway, the guy being interviewed said something like
Scientist on TV said:
"When I tell people about a theory such as the big bang, or evolution, they say 'Yeah, thats right, it's JUST a theory!' and, baffled, I explain to them that a theory gains credibility based on many variables, one of which is the number of people who accept said theory as a possibility. Evolution, as a theory, is accepted widely by the scientific community, by thousands and thousands of educated and accredited professors and intellectuals. To the majority, the word theory has connotations of some crazy hair-brained scientist sitting in a dark cellar for decades with a half-baked idea. [they believe this].. most likely because the majority are barely educated, and tend to react rather than reason..."
NOTE: that hair-brained scientist was a reference to Einstein I think, among others. Not to say a theory is validated due to popular opinion alone, but it does help. The theory of Evolution has millions of peices of evidence pointing to it being true, yet it is still classified as a THEORY, primarily because of the religious and evangelical people in the world... a lot of people realise that upsetting them would be a bad, bad thing, hence they stick with a "theory", but believe it completely. rant rant rant, don't even know whats in the first sentence! :confused: anyway, let the dictionary do the talking: 1. A set of statements or principles devised to explain a group of facts or phenomena, especially one that has been repeatedly tested or is widely accepted and can be used to make predictions about natural phenomena. 2. The branch of a science or art consisting of its explanatory statements, accepted principles, and methods of analysis, as opposed to practice: a fine musician who had never studied theory. 3. A set of theorems that constitute a systematic view of a branch of mathematics. :-\ 4. Abstract reasoning; speculation: a decision based on experience rather
MichaelGallagher wrote:
NOTE: that hair-brained scientist was a reference to Einstein I think, among others.
So where does the term hair-brained stem from? I know I could google it and know in a few clicks but I'm having trouble seeing through the coffee smears from my earlier eruption.
Mike Devenney
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The universe was the result of my morning motion ealier today. It's a "complete but possibly unprovable explanation of the universe" so why aren't I earning lots of money from it?
hmmm pie
fly904 wrote:
The universe was the result of my morning motion ealier today. It's a "complete but possibly unprovable explanation of the universe" so why aren't I earning lots of money from it?
Because your "motion" requires not billions of dollars of electromagnets and real estate but a couple of dollars of saline solution in a plastic squeeze bottle to, um, "engender motion". In other words, your theory doesn't cost enough to matter :laugh::laugh:
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Hans Dietrich wrote:
string theory purports to offer a complete but possibly unprovable explanation
i thought the idea behind a theory is that it is accepted as "fact" until proven false, i.e., is it falsifiable...
ahmed zahmed wrote:
i thought the idea behind a theory is that it is accepted as "fact" until proven false, i.e., is it falsifiable...
Incorrect. Theories can be verifiable as well. Einstein's general relativity suggested that the orbit of Venus would be faster than accountable by Newtonian physics...and, in fact, it was. Einstein also described the photoelectric effect as a testable consequence of the theory of quantum mechanics, and this description was verified by others in experiments, leading to Einstein's Nobel Prize (ironically, he never received a Nobel for any of his work in special or general relativity, and the irony is compounded, when you consider his objections to the probabilistic assertions of the theory of quantum mechanics, by an award for work demonstrating the very theory to which he had so many objections).
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fly904 wrote:
The universe was the result of my morning motion ealier today. It's a "complete but possibly unprovable explanation of the universe" so why aren't I earning lots of money from it?
Because your "motion" requires not billions of dollars of electromagnets and real estate but a couple of dollars of saline solution in a plastic squeeze bottle to, um, "engender motion". In other words, your theory doesn't cost enough to matter :laugh::laugh:
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MichaelGallagher wrote:
Religion, the opiate of the masses, is a powerful tool used by people for personal gain. Anyone not using it for this purpose is on the other end of the stick; brainwashed and blissfully ignorant to the reality of organised dogma. ALL religions ARE irrational belief systems. Believing in God, as far as I am concerned, is a way to negate the fear of mortality, which can hardly be regarded as irrational. It's quite rational. It takes balls to stand against the universe believing you are on your own, and actually be comfortable with this belief.
At the risk of coming off ironic may I shout a hearty AMEN! to that Michael. <couldn't find a smiley with it's hands folded in prayer>
Mike Devenney
I'm going to take a flyer here and offer you and others like you a suggestion. A devotion of too great a depth to "rationality" can anesthetize you to capabilities you may have that do not "make sense." Atheism can be as binding a straitjacket as any other dogma. Humans may use reasoning and rationale, but we are, in fact, not rational except in a limited set of circumstances (conversational discourse being one of the most common of these). I still remember the plaint of a neuroscientist as quoted in Time in 1982: "I began my career thinking that the brain was like a computer. I am ending my career thinking the brain is much more like an endocrine gland." By the time I was well into my own programming career, some were comparing the mind that is the emergent property of the brain to a standing wave of quantum logic, which I assure you is not the Boolean logic we love so well in our profession/avocation which draws us here. What we are is not explainable in purely rational terms, because our rationale depends on language, and we don't have the language to truly describe what we are and probably never will. The final test of a belief system is, how well does it get you through the night, literally or figuratively. Everything else to be said about it is simply entertainment. So, feel free to entertain yourself with responses to this post :D
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I'm going to take a flyer here and offer you and others like you a suggestion. A devotion of too great a depth to "rationality" can anesthetize you to capabilities you may have that do not "make sense." Atheism can be as binding a straitjacket as any other dogma. Humans may use reasoning and rationale, but we are, in fact, not rational except in a limited set of circumstances (conversational discourse being one of the most common of these). I still remember the plaint of a neuroscientist as quoted in Time in 1982: "I began my career thinking that the brain was like a computer. I am ending my career thinking the brain is much more like an endocrine gland." By the time I was well into my own programming career, some were comparing the mind that is the emergent property of the brain to a standing wave of quantum logic, which I assure you is not the Boolean logic we love so well in our profession/avocation which draws us here. What we are is not explainable in purely rational terms, because our rationale depends on language, and we don't have the language to truly describe what we are and probably never will. The final test of a belief system is, how well does it get you through the night, literally or figuratively. Everything else to be said about it is simply entertainment. So, feel free to entertain yourself with responses to this post :D
cpkilekofp wrote:
The final test of a belief system is, how well does it get you through the night, literally or figuratively. Everything else to be said about it is simply entertainment. So, feel free to entertain yourself with responses to this post :D
I spent 12 "entertaining" years in Catholic school and found that I just couldn't swallow the whole pill of religious scandals, child raping priests and SHOW ME THE MONEY!!! from the very group that filled my mind with stories of being good, praying to god and doing the right thing. I guess you could say it didn't get me through the night. I don't currently subscribe to the beliefs of athieism any more than I subscribe to those of Catholicism. I find I'm much happier just doing what I do, without questioning where my abilities came from or who is responsible for them other than me. I sleep quite well at night and will admit to looking up occasionally and wondering where it all came from. Not to get too hokey... but "I still feel small when I stand beside the ocean", I just don't worry about who created that ocean, or if I've done anything today that might piss him/her/it off. :)
Mike Devenney
modified on Friday, March 20, 2009 2:32 PM
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They couldn't falsify ether either ... but years later we had entire networks built from it ... so there!
The Michelson-Morley experiments were accepted at the time as falsifications of ether as it was then understood. In these experiments, ether was assumed to be a static fluid-like field through which the Earth moved, so it followed that light, which propagated through the ether, would have different velocities from different angles, and that a sufficiently sensitive experiment could verify the existence of the ether and perhaps verify whether it was static or had currents. The stunning result of the Michelson-Morley experiments was that light propagated at the same velocity from EVERY direction. It was this result that set Einstein to thinking about trains and planes (of reference, that is) which then led to E = mc^2. Any ether theory that takes account of the Michelson-Morely results must assume that ether is at rest with respect to every distance across which the speed of light has been measured. Previous ether theories did not make such an assumption, and were therefore falsified. Besides, everyone knows that Ethernet is the propagation medium of the Etherbunny, cousin to the Eveready Rabbit. However, even though my cat kicks like a rabbit and I tell her she has rabbit feet, she will never be the Etherbunny. That Bugs me. If you've read to this point, I'm still too far away for you to hit me with that pitcher :laugh:
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MichaelGallagher wrote:
NOTE: that hair-brained scientist was a reference to Einstein I think, among others.
So where does the term hair-brained stem from? I know I could google it and know in a few clicks but I'm having trouble seeing through the coffee smears from my earlier eruption.
Mike Devenney