Writer's Block: Proven by Science
Thursday, 13 August 2009 07:16 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
miriam_e[Error: unknown template qotd]
It seems pretty obvious that everything has a scientific explanation. Science is the study of reality. By its nature it opens up more questions as it provides more answers, but there is nothing mystical about this. Imagine all knowledge as an infinite plane. What you know is the illuminated area inside a spotlight on that plane; what you don't know is the dark region around it; your questions constitute the circumference of the spotlight. People who don't know much have few questions. People who know more have many more questions. This is natural and invigorating.
Religion, mysticism, superstition all close off inquiry. Science inquires.
It seems pretty obvious that everything has a scientific explanation. Science is the study of reality. By its nature it opens up more questions as it provides more answers, but there is nothing mystical about this. Imagine all knowledge as an infinite plane. What you know is the illuminated area inside a spotlight on that plane; what you don't know is the dark region around it; your questions constitute the circumference of the spotlight. People who don't know much have few questions. People who know more have many more questions. This is natural and invigorating.
Religion, mysticism, superstition all close off inquiry. Science inquires.
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Lies the Shadow
Date: 2009-08-13 04:27 am (UTC)You're forgetting the umbra and the penumbra.
That which is brightly illuminated, that which is partly illuminated (speculations), and that which still lies in the dark.
Where do you feel the borderline of science lies? (At the edges speculation is rife - as it must be - are these speculations "science" or "superstition?")
Cheers,
MG.
Re: Lies the Shadow
Date: 2009-08-13 01:15 pm (UTC)Well, it is only a metaphor; even if it is a very good one there are still limits to how far it can be stretched. The partial shadows? Partial understanding?
I don't think superstition has any place in a truthful view of reality. It is, by its nature anti-knowledge. It is where a person stops seeking knowledge and elects instead to believe something without supporting facts.
Speculation is okay so long as it is not taken for any more than what it is: an attempt at fitting together widely separated bits of information. Speculation can help us uncover undreamed of connections between disparate areas of knowledge that more conservative thinking couldn't hope to find. But it can also lead us far astray from reality if we let ourselves become too attached to pretty, but false, syntheses.
Re: Lies the Shadow
Date: 2009-08-17 03:06 am (UTC)Chariot for the Sun perhaps?
MFG is me.