h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Hi! I just read something you sent into the "Creationism vs. Evolution" forum, and I'm impressed. Your perspective is balanced - that is a worthy accomplishment!

So, you're a nuclear safety engineer, and you like The Simpsons? PLEASE reassure me that Homer's workplace antics aren't true to life!

JD, it saddens me how many people are loaded down with opinions and they don't even know half a thing about what they are talking. This is true on many of these h2g2 forums. I have this weird idea that I believe people are responsible for what they say and that karma will ensure that their words come back to haunt them if they are careless. Goodness knows, it has happened to me plenty of times already. So I believe there is plenty of objective data to support this as a general religious principle, even though it is scientifically unprovable!

But I agree with your contentions that the "Truth" is a coin with two sides. Unfortunately it seems that with our species at its current state of development, if anybody even bothers to turn the coin over, he/she will forget what the other side looked like. For far too long science has ignored religion, and religion has ignored science, and this to both their detriments. The problems created by this exclusivity are now coming back to haunt us with a vengeance.

Consider the statement of one particular correspondent to the forum you've just contributed to. According to him/her: 1)science looks into different theories while religion does not; 2)science has nothing to do with religion. Both these statements are hogwash. Any religious person is free to investigate many different religions. It's true that many religions are dogmatic. But then, so are many scientists. There is a kind of scientific closed-mindedness that hinders the development of new theories, even when they can be extremeley useful and are quite probably true. And interestingly concerning point 2 there's a lot of modern science going on that promises to bring concepts formerly the exclusive property of religions firmly into the province of science. Dr. Brian Josephson for instance is doing work at Cambridge on the Human Consciousness that to me has profound implications. And on the "fringe" of science religion is running rampant in many guises. But not many laypeople are aware of all of this.

As for me, I'm not a scientist, I'm just an interested average guy. I understand the scientific method, I hope, but there are many methods for finding the Truth. My own method is listening to what people have to say, checking it for internal consistency, checking it for its consistency with what other people have said, and checking it against my own intuition and experience of reality. And my conclusion is that reality is subtle and elusive; there can be many different ways of looking at it and understanding it, and perhaps we even need a number of seemingly mutually exclusive models to explain it. And more promising, perhaps those "mutually exclusive" models can turn out to complement and augment each other.

Anyways, thanks for restoring my faith in the human intellect to steer safely between the Scylla of scientism and the Charybdis of religionism. And don't ever be afraid of saying too much. Say what is true, and the words will find the right target!

Be Well.
The Case

Hello Case ... nice nickname. heh - I tried to be original once, but then it became un-original since I used it so much that I ... uhm, well, let's just not go there.

Anyhoo, thanks for the note. Yeah, I try hard to steer clear of either of the two extremes of philosophical debate. I was trained as a scientist, raised in a religious family, and eventually became an engineer. Go figure. I believe in God, not in religion, believe in the scientific method, but rarely in science. Dunno if that makes any sense. Makes me sound like I doubt science and hate religion, but neither is the case.

I think, for my own observations, that science is abused too much (i.e. very few things are understood as exactly as they should be - we get too hung up on "fact" and "theory" sometimes). By the same token, I feel that religion is abused too much as well, trying to hard to be "religious" (whatever I mean by that) ... well, I guess I mean that where religions tend to fail in my eyes is to try to explain the hows and whys of things through faith and belief rather than direct observation. It seems to me that religion's place is not to teach how things are, or WHY they are, but to help us live better lives with each other as people and scocieties. Science has little to say on that matter, and I think we could all do with a good learnin' on that there lesson.

My favorite film of all time (so far!) is Contact - quite a lot of good stuff in that film, and one the statements that I like most is, "ironically, what science has strived to give us the most is the one thing it has failed to give our lives - meaning." I think I messed that quote up, but the gist is there. I don't think this is a failing of science - I think it is a failing of people applying science. And I don't think it is a failing of religion, not being able to give everyone meaning to their lives - but a failing of many of us to apply it.

What I'm trying to say is that the real failing is that science and religion have rarely been applied together by societies to give meaning to our lives, our universe. Instead, it seems that it is either one or the other (or one dressed up to look like the other as the case, increasingly, seems to be) that attempts to give meaning to our lives through understanding of our universe. I merely like to ask why it is that science needs to be treated as religion (as in such meaningless phrases as "scientific fact," "proven correct," "statistically shown" or my personal favorite, "studies have shown"). In a similar vein, I find the greatest failing of religion is its steadfast refusal to accept the scientific method (perhaps due to their own misunderstanding of what science really is) as a viable means for one to decide to believe in God or not. The "good advice" stuff seems to have nothing to do with why people dislike religions, which I find farnkly stunning as it is the one thing common to almost every religion and the one thing that has no basis in any kind of science whatsoever - the mere act of selflessness, of giving of oneself to another. Almost every religion (other than those of perhaps Satanist or Hedonist origin) preaches some sort of compassion for others.

Ah well. I've gone on and on again. I don't feel bad about going on and on, it's not a bad way to spend one's lunch break. I just get so annoyed and upset at the nearly universal misunderstanding and subsequent misapplication of science throughout society, from our highest policy makers and religious leaders, down through the media and popular culture (particulary the internet), on to the average everyday kinda guy, the so-called "man on the street" that is the great litmus test of our cultural attitude. It just bothers me very much ... until I have a nice fresh tuna sandwich and forget about it all. Mmmmmmm.

Hi JD - me again, just been posting to you somewhere else.

The point about religions is that they may have grasped something more fundamental that science. The fact that no amount of describing of behaviour gives you an explanation of its cause - its motive. It can appear to - because once you give one cause a name , say 'the strong force' then you can explain a whole load of other causes and effects in terms of it. But we forget that we don't actually have a clue what the strong force, weak force, gravity etc actually are. We have accepted their existence and then explained a whole lot of other things in terms of them. This is a cheap trick of a different kind to most religions, but still a cheap trick.

Hi, guys. I wanted to respond earlier, but my sister is getting married this weekend and we are all in a flatspin. JD, Virus 1, I agree with what you said about science and religion. I also would like to talk about science and religion in a bit more detail. But that will have to wait. I'll write something and post it, next week sometime.

Take Care,
Case

Above all we are all human, and I think from time to time we just have to sit back and examine our own thoughts and our own views of the world. I get the idea people easily become very complacent about themselves and their ideas. I sometimes get mental claustrophobia when reading scientific or religious or philosophic material, because it seems to me these people are restricting themselves to such a terribly narrow little avenue while thoughts actually want to wander free and wide.

Science ... what ought it to be? The scientific method means observing, using all kinds of equipment for observation, and drawing conclusions by means of logic, and sharing those conclusions with others who will check them up by doing their own observations. But you also have a very strong unpredictable element in the form of brilliant scientists like Einstein and Bohr and Schrödinger and Feynman who get these momentous insights out of the blue and then back-track towards plausible, logical-sounding explanations. And you have the very scientific drive itself, the drive to find out what is going on in the world, and that is a very human drive. Science is subjective and creative, and the unpredictable human element in it needs to be more clearly recognised. Science is about values. We value knowledge, we value truth, we value understanding, we value thoroughness and painstakingness, we value logic. The deeper meaning is there, but it so often gets disguised in jargon.

We need a re-examination of the principles of science, we need a more widespread and thorough teaching of science to laypeople, and we need a better integration of the method and knowledge of science with other human projects. I think we need a more open definition and understanding of science, one that can accomodate a greater variety of truth-seeking activities, because what is considered to be "objective science" is just one out of a vast spectrum of possibilities. At the moment this leads to a schizophrenic view, with science itself cut up into myriads of apparently unrelated and poorly integrated fields, and artificial but unbreachable barriers between science and the so-called "humanities", like art, history, language, philosophy and religion. But in actuality the entire thing is a whole and ought to hang together.

About religion: I believe there is a realm where science and religion meet and I am personally very interested in this particular twilight zone. It is called "consciousness research" and it is brilliantly bold and speculative and controversial. This can help to liven up science. Anyways, despite the case that it is speculative there are some really important things being said and done. For instance there are experiments with paranormal phenomena. Now personally I know paranormal phenomena exist because I have experience of it. And I think science had better try to figure out what is really going on. Science is supposed to work like this: when phenomena are observed that contradict theories, the theories are supposed to be updated to accommodate them. But at the moment the phenomena are ignored to save the existing theories, and that probably will continue until there is so much evidence that for traditional scientists even closing their eyes and putting their fingers in their ears and going "lalalalala" will not be enough to shut it out.

But paranormal phenomena are firmly in the realm of observation and the experimental investigation. And I believe that an understanding of these things will give us a clue about:

1) The nature of our own minds
2) The nature of reality
3) The meaning and purpose of it all

And also there might be striking matches between discoveries in this realm and stuff that have been and are asserted by various religions. Already what is suggested is totally fascinating. At the very least I say we cannot discount a real breakthrough, something that will propel us into an entirely different universe of understanding, so that our present problems of ignorance will evaporate and our new problems of ignorance will be entirely different.

I might be wrong, but my gut feeling tells me I'm not. Time will tell.

But it's not necessary that we discover an "ultimate Truth", so long as we improve on our present extremely poor understanding. You mention the internet as an example of a place where science is misapplied, but there are such a great diversity of views on the 'net that amidst the wrong ones are many right ones. And people will in time learn to discriminate, I hope. Anyways we now have a means of disseminating information much better than ever before, and I believe the truth will simply outshine misconceptions. By truth I don't mean Absolute Final Truth, merely rigorous, accurate and honest attempts to discover and communicate what is going on in the world and the universe.

I didn't mention morality as such, but consciousness research has deep implications for morality also. Anyways I think the divisions we have in our words and our ideas and in our society itself are wrong - morality features everywhere in our lives, and is relevant to every field.

Before I begin, Mr. Bedsheet-Which-Shall-Remain-Unmentioned, I just want to say thanks for stopping by - this has made my last few weeks' lunchbreaks far more interesting, talking to you, Virus I, and reading the stuff in the Ask H2G2 forum. Quite a good exercise for the ol' noodle!

You make some interesting statements here. But first, I'd like to clarify what I meant by the internet being a common place for misapplication of science - what I was referring to is the tendency to believe the information presented on the internet just because it is written down somewhere. There is an incredible amount of information disseminated every second, and much of it is inaccurate, misleading, and/or just plain wrong. Most of this is of the relatively harmless, chain-letter email type, but some of it is genuinely scientifically wrong (I refer to a lot of information I've read recently concerning radiation emitted by cellular telephones - but in my line of work, I find that while very few people in the world understand even the basics of what radiation and radioactivity are, there is no shortage of people on both sides of the arguements who have vehement opinions on the matters which they do not understand, and no qualms about stating incomplete results of so-called studies in order to attempt to manipulate public opinion for their own ends).

Which actually brings me to the most interesting part of your post, IMHO. You stated this: "We need a re-examination of the principles of science, we need a more widespread and thorough teaching of science to laypeople, and we need a better integration of the method and knowledge of science with other human projects." I couldn't agree more with that, except the "re-examination of the principles of science" bit. I don't think it's a bad system, it's just not commonly applied or understood. You see, I think the greatest problem with science is with how we're taught to think about it. Sciences are taught to us all too often as theory first, explanation of theory second. This not only leads to a misunderstanding in the minds of students that all science is "discovered" or "made" by first dreaming something up then explaning it (a practice which is in flat contradiction to the scientific method IF it excludes testing and validation of the explanation), but it also leads the student to memorize science and call it "scientific fact" in order to just pass the class and move on. It is this fundamental attitude that is prvalent amongst laymen that, in my opinion, leads to the vast majority of misunderstandings and misapplications of what science really is. As for better integrating science into other human projects, that's a fantastic idea. The true freedom of thought, the REAL ability to learn, is to understand HOW to apply the scientific method to EVERYTHING. After all, science IS about everything. Science is such a broad term, but it really is just a way of thinking in order to explain things we see, taste, touch, hear, feel, etc. We practice science every day without really understanding it as such, because we have been taught that science is something that is learned in school, usually just memorized, and is about planets, chemicals, billiard balls colliding, time travel, dinosaurs, evolution, and aliens and is really just for nerds and Governments to confuse and control all of us normal people just trying to eke out a living. In that respect, science becomes little different from religious dogma; "believe what we say, or fail the test, flunk out of school, and become a bum on welfare" is not too far removed from "believe what we say, or we'll excommunicate you, banish you, or even have you burned at the stake." It's just a little more applicable to our modern age, though I think a slight improvement over the being-burned-at-the-stake days!

You also said this: "But you also have a very strong unpredictable element in the form of brilliant scientists like Einstein and Bohr and Schrödinger and Feynman who get these momentous insights out of the blue and then back-track towards plausible, logical-sounding explanations." This is exactly what I was talking about above. If I understand your sentiment correctly, this is not how Einstein, Bohr, Schrödinger and Feynman thought up their theories; it may have been how we were TAUGHT the theories, but that's not how they came up with them. For one thing, most of the theories that were eventually put forth actually started out as attempts to discredit previous theories but wound up corroborating them instead, much to the surprise and even dismay of the scientists that put them forth. Without getting into the complexity of theories like quantum mechanics, relativity, atomic structure and such, I just want to point out that just because one isn't taught the mechanism of how the theory was tested, experimented, and expounded from hypothesis to theory doesn't mean that's how it was discovered. This is the biggest problem I have with how science is taught, particularly very complicated and new, evolving science. Of course, the possibility exists that those four scientists as well as many others came up with their theories first then "backtracked towards plausible explanations," merely because they were brilliant enough to come up with the correct (such as that word can even apply here) theory prior to any validation. This is certainly desirable amongst scientists, and is the ultimate goal - to "get it right" so to speak. However, the desire to be right the first time, or as close to it as possible, can lead to some unwillingness to believe the theory could be flawed. We've seen a spectacular example of this very human trait at least once very recently; you might recall the so-called "cold fusion" fiasco of about a dozen years ago where some scientists thought they'd achieved fusion at extraodiarily low temperatures - of course, such a discovery would mean so much for mankind's energy problems that there was a strong desire to be right about it that perhaps clouded the better judgement of science in this case, as well as some fantastic media attention that helped spread misconceptions about how the scientific method is supposed to work. My point is that I agree there is a great temptation, due to the fact that scientists are all people (as much as all people are also scientists) and we tend to jump to conclusions that we'd like to see, or that we have a "gut feeling" about, or (more rarely) just have that brilliant insight.

You wondered what science ought to be ... I admit, I've been wondering a lot about this myself recently. You seemed a little irritated with some scientists' apparent lack of willingness to acknowledge so-called paranormal phenomena, and I assure you that anyone who ignores possible explanations for phenomena without a basis for discrediting or ignoring the explanation is not practicing the scientific method, and is thus not a scientist. I would respectfully submit that while some of the more popular "paranormal theories" and/or explanations seem rather outlandish and unlikely (insert trendy reference to Occam's Razor principle here**), they haven't been completely discounted by scientists, merely challenged through alternate explanations. Paranormal phenomena are, by their very nature, difficult to explain since they are so difficult to observe due to their rare or unusual occurences. That's part of what makes them so fascinating, of course, but it in no way means that we are at the stage for making "theories" about paranormal phenomena - there simply just aren't enough data to make theories about them, in the true scientific definition of the term. Instead, I think the scientific method leaves us little option but to do what we are already doing - hypothesize, and try try try to observe, test, and maybe - just maybe - we'll get to some theories.

**Personally, I'm very tired of hearing people bandy around the Occam's Razor principle without really understanding why it holds true - it has to do with statistical mathematic theory, which applicable in the same way towards phenomena with very limited data and/or occurences. I'm not saying it's a bad principle at all, it's a very good one I think - it's just that it's become a trendy thing to use in order to dismiss what we think is highly improbable when we really haven't evaluated the nature of our data all that well. To (try to) quote our favorite author in one of the Dirk Gentley books, "Sherlock Holmes used to say that once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains however improbable is your explanation. I, however, do not like to eliminate the impossible." Very wise, that Dirk Gentley.

Science and religion have no other purpose than what we give them. This is your life, as much as my life is mine - we are all alone in this world, and yet we're all alone in it together. It's been said (by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, I think) that "solitude is the profoundest fact of the human condition; man is the only creature who knows he is alone, and to seek out another." What Marquez meant was that mankind is the only species to search for meaning in our existence. Many animals seek out each other as a means of mutual benefit and survival of their species, but mankind needs more. We need meaning to our lives, and how we get it is the true reason for having science and religion. It's an interesting time to be alive, now that science has seemed to sway the balance of power (so to speak) for knowledge in our society, and perhaps this isn't a bad thing AS LONG AS the freedom of thought is allowed to continue, and people are free to make up their own minds about life ... the universe ... and, well, everything pretty much. Heh. That's the key, really - the ability to observe, hypothesize, test, theorize, and decide for oneself; the ability to LEARN this way; and the ability to give ourselves meaning. Is it enough just to KNOW stuff? Is that all we need to do to give meaning to our lives? I seriously doubt you'll find anyone so hermitic and self-centered to think that all knowledge is for personal benefit alone, as if some cosmic scorecard is kept on knowledge of The Truth (whatever that may be). The real joy comes from passing on knowledge to others, the sharing of that knowledge. That's one of the reasons that the internet is so attractive, and is a big reason why we're all right here right now in this very forum - we love to share what we know, how we think, and learn. In that respect, the internet is perhaps the greatest tool we've ever had for increasing knowledge throughout the world - but it's incredible power for disseminating information does come with a down side, and that is its inherent ability to be abused.

In any event, I've said a lot again, but in closing this out, I'll quote you again: "At the moment this leads to a schizophrenic view, with science itself cut up into myriads of apparently unrelated and poorly integrated fields, and artificial but unbreachable barriers between science and the so-called "humanities", like art, history, language, philosophy and religion. But in actuality the entire thing is a whole
and ought to hang together." Well said. That perception is all too accurate a picture of science, and perhaps it is because there really is SO MUCH information that just managing and organizing it all is preventing us from unifying it all. Hmmmm, interesting dilemma there. I like the bit about the humanities studies being so separated - I myself am an artist, having been involved in music since I was six, but I do not practice this art for a living, choosing instead the more stable career of engineering to one in the music business. I think that doesn't make me any less of an artist, any more than it makes me less of a scientist; it also gives me some meaning to my life, as it allows me to explore the sorts of things that science just doesn't have any explanation for yet - perhaps this is the spritual or paranormal or philosophical/mental health/epistemological side of things, whatever words you want to use to describe it, that science is so ill-equipped to deal with on a broad, species-wide sense. It's the internal universe, the one which only the individual - only I - can observe and wonder and decide about. Ultimately, that's where we're all alone together, searching for meaning.
In the meantime, it's time to wipe the crumbs of my turkey sandwich from my desk and get back to work.

Hi again, just want to say I really enjoy these long postings of yours, keep 'em coming, don't hold back!

Just what is the deal with the radiation emitted by cellular phones? My guess is that it isn't gamma-rays, at least. This is one issue that I'm not really up to date on because I don't believe I will ever have a cellular phone.

Just what are the underlying principles of science? First of all, that the universe has laws that we can discover and understand. This is a more or less taken-for-granted thing, but in fact we need to think about it really hard. Consider: is there an "end point" to scientific knowledge, a "theory of everything"? Is it possible that the universe might have laws that preclude their own discovery? How much further will our scientific understanding be able to progress? You see, before we even get to the point of practising science by experiment and theory there are assumptions we have to make. Many, if not most, scientists today don't ever consider these assumptions, they just go on working inside the framework that's been handed to them. But perhaps they need to look at the framework itself. I think that the mere fact that the universe is "understandable" and displays order is something more or less magical. And considering how far we've been able to come so far it is possible that we might be able to go much farther still. Maybe the "understandability" of the universe goes FAR BEYOND what most scientists will allow. Personally I believe that there are still some extremely profound discoveries about the universe to be made. But some scientists act as if they themselves represent the culmination of science, as if we are now very close to the end of the road and can relax. I believe there are still a few - or even an infinity of - surprises in store.

Here is another interesting thing that it amazes me so few scientists ever mention it - in fact I can't remember any scientist ever mentioning it. In the old days we thought we were at the center of the universe, and we also thought that we were created very close to the beginning of creation. Turns out that was hoghwash - or was it? Consider time. The universe is ONLY fifteen billion years old right now. How old is the universe IN TOTAL? Many cosmologists reckon the universe will still exist for a very long time. Perhaps it will exist forever - getting bigger and thinner, but still existing. A practical end might come with the decay of protons - that might happen after a billion billion billion billion years. So in that case we find ourselves living in more or less the first hundred million billion billionth of the existence of the universe. That is just about at the very start. So we have come into existence with mind-warping rapidity. And if we get our act together, we might spread to other planets, carrying all kinds of living creatures with us, and to other star systems, and eventually the universe will be a gigantic thing brimming with life, and the centre of this "living" universe will be good old planet Earth - because that's where we spread from, and we will certainly spread more or less equally fast in all directions.

Of course there are complications - for instance we might wipe ourselves out, or there might be alien races who have begun the process of colonization before us. But the scenario above is not entirely out of the question, and if true it will put man in a way at the centre and at the start of the universe.

Do you know much about quantum mechanics? Which interpretation of the electron double-slit experiment do you think is true - the Copenhagen interpretation, the Many Worlds interpretation, the "Hidden Variable" theory, or another one still?

Anyways, there are some really interesting aspects to our existence and our search for meaning. One of the things that I find most mysterious is time. When is "now"? Do you realize, scientifically speaking there is no such thing as "now"?! There are just an order to events - one comes before, the other after - relative to a particular frame of reference, of course, and the speed of light sets the limit for the transmission of information about events. But the concept of "now" is not scientifically definable. Ever think about that? What does that tell us about the nature of our own subjectivity?

And maybe the speed of light is not such an absolute limit after all. At the moment we only have tantalizing hints, but at least some of them come from experiments in non-local effects in quantum-correlated systems.

I believe we have many extremely helpful hints from some of the new scientific theories to help us understand our own deeper natures. This may not be a "final" understanding but it will be a better one - probably radically better - than we have had up to now. My own religious ideas revolve around the interconnectedness of things - the way everything is linked with and affects everything else. I am a strong believer in non-local effects - in other words the transmission of information and influence from one thing to another in a way that bypasses the apparent restrictions of the speed of light which is the same thing as the cause/effect relationship. I believe that something exists called a "strange loop" - where a phenomenon causes itself - and that this factor is absolutely vital in the origin and evolution of the universe, including us - self-conscious, self-aware creatures. Self-awareness is in fact a strange loop. But mainstream science needs to open up its ground-assumptions a bit before it will be able to handle strange loops. And once we grok strange loops there will be much more we will suddenly also understand as well. Let me make it clear that I don't know where strange loops come from, but I know a few things about their features - there is an off-beat logic to it all.

Here's an example of a strange loop that falls in that twilight zone I mentioned a bit earlier. A girl had a weird dream. In her dream a friend of hers came to tell her that her boyfriend was in hospital; he had a road-accident. And instead of feeling shock or dismay, she burst out laughing! She woke up. Her friend and her boyfriend came to visit her, and she told them of her dream. They thought it was funny. They left. A little while later the phone rang. Her friend informed her that her boyfriend was in hospital; he had a road-accident. So she burst out laughing - it was a practical joke, right? Not - he had really had an accident. And her dream was totally on the money!

Now the weird bit - the strange part of the dream was the reason she mentioned it - the fact that she had laughed. And because she mentioned it, she thought that her friend's message was a practical joke, and laughed. So the dream was the cause of the strange reaction. That is simple enough, but the problem is that her boyfriend was injured, for real - and that was totally outside her control. And therefore her dream was a precognitive one; the future situation was the cause of the dream. So the dream caused the situation and the situation caused the dream - a strange loop. Whether this story is true or not, it serves to illustrate the quirky logic of strange loops.

All of this is of course way beyond current mainstream science. When I subtly expressed irritation with scientists, I was not talking about all scientists. I was talking about complacent scientists - those who do not think beyond their own fields. I think every person must be a scientist. If a person makes a claim in the name of science, that person at that instant is a scientist. And I have hear many, many people making really idiotic claims in the name of science, mostly of the closed-minded kind: "What I cannot conceive of, cannot be true". But really great scientists were and are never like that. What bugs me about closed-minded people is that they are unwilling to understand or credit even the ACCEPTED new theories, like the theories of relativity and the many different kind of quantum mechanical theories, let alone the more conjectural stuff like superstring theories. Their world-view is still the Newtonian one, and that seems to be so far from the truth that it's just pitiful. I don't ask people to believe everything, just to refrain from making dogmatic statements when they haven't even investigated the huge variety of alternative models and theories. We need to teach people at least relativity and twentieth-century quantum mechanics and that will already revolutionise people's world-views. I am very strongly in favour of the popularisation of science. By that I mean we must raise the average person's intelligence and awareness to the level where he/she can understand the "gist" of the entire field of modern science. That is not as difficult as it might seem.

I've could write a whole post just answering this: "Just what is the deal with the radiation emitted by cellular phones? My guess is that it isn't gamma-rays, at least. This is one issue that I'm not really up to date on because I don't believe I will ever have a cellular phone." In fact, I think I will.

Here's an excellent and edited entry on cell phone radiation: http://www.h2g2.com/A283213 and here is one on radiation in general (it even mentions Max Planck who basically defined the modern theory of electromagnetic radiation, and also was the Father of Quantum Mechanics, a theory he himself tried very hard to discredit): http://www.h2g2.com/A270037

Probably the most confusing thing about radiation in general is that it's a concept not easily understandable and involves things not readily observable (well, not without ill effects or, more to the point, what we typically mean by "radiation" is not observable without ill effects). You see, there are three main technical definitions of the term, "radiation:" (1) the emission and propagation of waves transmitting energy through space or through some medium (e.g., the emission and propagation of electromagnetic, sound, or elastic waves); (2) the energy transmitted by waves through space or some medium (which usually is referring to electromagnetic radiation like the kind that come from cellular phones and many other sources); and (3) a stream of particles, such as electrons, neutrons, protons, alpha-particles, high-energy photons, or a mixture of these (which is usually referring to ionizing radiation, but I'll get to that in a minute). This means that sunlight is a form of radiation - harmful radiation, as anyone with a bad sunburn or, to a greater and much more somber extent, skin cancer can tell you. Warmth, or heat that you feel without touching the hot surface of the hot object is radiation. Visible light is radiation. Microwaves are radiation. X-rays are radiation. And yes, even radio waves are radiation. Cellular phones use a type of microwave radiation for transmitting signals from the phone to a nearby tower which relays it on. Microwaves are a very broad category of electromagnetic radiation, and can have frequencies between 1 and 100 gigahertz (though infrared radiation is higher than that and radio waves are lower than that, there is no sharp boundary to differentiate the three classes of radiation). So, if one were to suspect microwave radiation that cell phones emit to be harmful, it would seem (to this researcher, anyhow) that the "normal" radio waves that we use to listen to music and watch TV would similarly effect the human body. Is that a concern? Well, if it were, would we not have noticed some effect by now, after some two generations of people in the USA having been born never knowing a world without TV? Just some food for thought.

The key here is to differentiate between harmful radiation and harmless radiation. Without embarking on any more detail about all the different types of radiation (because I don't wish to write a textbook here), there is a general classification of radiation that has to do with it's relative energy that we KNOW will cause harm to human tissue. This is called "ionizing radiation" or sometimes "the ionization radiation." This, simply put, refers to particles or photons that have sufficient energy to ionize the atoms of a substance directly by their passage through the substance. Ionization is a process where an atom loses or gains an electron(s), generally making it more reactive and ... well, sort of unwilling to stay put and behave itself, to make a silly little analogy. When this happens to DNA in the cells of our bodies, bad things can happen when it comes time for the cell to perform its function. If enough cells all fail to perform functions, this can lead to large-scale loss of tissue functions and thus organ functions and finally life itself. So. Ionizing radiation we KNOW to be bad. How much is bad? Well, there's been an awful lot of research performed on that subject, not a scrap of which is applicable to the radation associated with cellular phone operation because cell phones do not emit ionizing radiation. They emit a much weaker, non-ionizing radiation instead.

"OK, Jon, then what are the health effects of non-ionizing radition?" you ask, or would if I'd let you but I'll save you the time and ask it for you in order to proceed directly to the answer subsequently, which is, shortly, "no one knows." There have been MANY studies (see that first ref. I mentioned), but in the end everyone has to admit that the long-term health effects of non-ionizing radiation are so subtle as to get lost in the experimental noise - the all-too familiar statement applies, "the data are inconclusive." To steal another phrase, "the subtlety of cause and effect defy analysis." That isn't to say that we won't EVER know - quite a lot of dollars and pounds and other currency is going into research as we speak, as the public eye is very watchful about all things that involve the "r" word. This, if the studies are truly done well, can be a good thing, as I think we should understand the effects of non-ionizing radiation on the human body. There very may well be some effect on all of us and our environment. However, I think at this time, it is important to realize that the mechanisms for the effects of radiation that is so weak as to fail to even ionize atoms are inherently empirical as there is (at present) no theoretical evidence for harmful effects. What that means in English is that we have to perform "studies," which is what is meant by the term "empirical" as evidence is merely observed and gathered, not hypothesized, tested, and accepted as theory. THAT is why I initially made my complaint about the lack of following scientific method surrounding this cell phone radiation confusion. It is, quite simply, only the beginning of the application of the method, and far too many people are making the error of confusing empirical data (not only that, but scant and questionable empirical data) with theory and even that magical mythical thing created by some confused non-scientist, that holy grail of small minded and fearful people, the oxymoronic term, "scientific fact."
In the case of cell phones, I think most of the confusion and paranoia is because radiation scares us. A lot of people think of radiation as being entirely of the more sensational and awesome and deadly kind. While it is plainly not true that ALL radiation is as harmful as that emitted from a nuclear detonation, the most terrific form of nuclear reaction that simultaneously represents the most extraodinary examples of wanton destruction known to mankind as well as the very very thing that gives us life (i.e. the Sun), it is quite understandable a sort of fear and general distrust for all things that involve radiation exists. The fears are still, however, rooted in a fear of a very dangerous sort of radiation not found in cellular phones, TVs, radios, or computer monitors. The kind of ionizing radiation evolved from a nuclear detonation is so powerful that it kills through the sheer amount of thermal energy released, which is then absorbed in a very short time by all the matter around it - including people. This absorption, typically within a millesecond time frame, results in immediate vaporization and is what happens to all things within a certain radius of a supercritical nuclear reaction like that of a nuclear detonation. A star, like our Sun, is a massive, continuous nuclear explosion of a kind - the Sun undergoes fusion, which releases far more energy than fission, and does indeed send quite a bit of ionizing radiation our way. While the levels that are evolved from a large scale detonation of a nuclear weapon are puny compared to any give microsecond of the Sun's routine operation, the fact is the weapons are about 9 billion miles closer to us. The type of radiation that DOESN'T vaporize us right away but still kills us relatively quickly can happen with nuclear reactions that are designed to hover right at criticality or just above, at supercritical levels. Nuclear reactors (the kind used in both power plants and on many warships for propulsion) utilize these kinds of reactions, and do not represent "explosion" hazards that are somewhat commonly misunderstood. Generally when people are exposed to the massive doses of ionizing radiation associated with nuclear reactions that remain around criticality, they quickly fall ill and die due to immediate tissue failure (anywhere from a couple of minutes to a couple of months). Not exactly as ... sensational ... as being literally vaporized in a millesecond, perhaps, but still quite a bit more painful and nasty in the long run. This is, sadly, how the three workers at the recent Tokaimura accident in Japan died, though they lived quite a bit longer than many experts predicted they would. Again, it's not a pretty thing, any way you look at it. I mention these sobering and tragic things about radiation not to shock, but to point out how different they are from the things that we generally try to avoid when we say "radiation." You are exposed to radiation at this very moment, as you are most likely looking at a cathode-ray tube computer screen, sitting under some kind of light emitting device so you can see (or daylight is entering your workplace), and you are even slightly warmer than your environment most likely and are thus emitting infrared radiation to the surrounding environment yourself. Is this bad radiation? Obviously not, or you'd be dead now. In fact, if you didn't emit and absorb radiation all the time you WOULD be dead, rather quickly, too. Not emitting but absorbing means you'd heat up rapidly, and vice versa means you'd cool to absolute zero almost as rapidly. If we want to exist without absorbing or emitting radiation, we'd have to find another way for us to make energy and see and hear, 'cos that's the only way it happens. Cell phones? I think you're far more likely to wreck your car or take the wrong elevator or annoy those around you than you would be to harm your body through the microwave radiation they emit.

Hi Bedstuff & JD.

I just took a couple of days off and return to pages of text, I must work harder to keep up. Horrors, this seems to be a wholly sensible conversation, with which I mostly agree.

A couple of things. I don't quite see the point about scientific hypotheses being different to explanations or theories. I feel them to be all the same thing, although each has perhaps a different perceived status in respect of credibility and proof. Usually it is unclear what level of proof/evidence is required for each and thus they become interchangable.

The electron two slit experiment need not be the problem it appears to be. Both our concepts of the fundamental nature of the world explain it adequately, so they are both equally accurate. However - there is something deeper here...

I am with Sir Arthur Eddington and (I think) Heisenberg in believing that the Universe is composed entirely of 'mind stuff', in other words created by conciousness. Where I might differ from them is that I believe also that the truth of this can be proven using the scientific method, and have (hubris notwithstanding) an idea of how it can be done. However time is a bit short to get into that now.

If you believe that we (and 'we' needs a clear definition here) actually create (ditto definition) the Universe (ditto definition), which to me seems the only possible explanation for it, then the ramifications of the inferred knowledge that derives from this, from the analysis of our concept-structure (which includes the physical Universe but is greater than it) are awe inspiring on the one hand, and at the same time have remarkable explanatory power. (Sorry - In other words the idea explains a lot).

This is not an unusual view but one held by a lengthy succession of scientists and philosophers from Plato on (as Eddington says - all we ever see are 'the readings on the dial'). However it is a hypothesis that has never been given proper attention - perhaps for the simple reason that it appears untestable and in a sense pointless, just word play. But it is not just word play, and if you derive conclusions from it in the same way that you would with a scientific hypothesis (in order to test it) then it leads to a perfectly coherent theory of mostly everything.

UMP - if by 'strange loop' you mean that the Universe is constructed from tautologies, from false dualities, then I'm with you. Tautologies is in the end all we have, it is by definition all that science can give us.

It may be that everything that we can, and therefore do, conceive of does exist in some sense and to some degree.

The difficulty with this kind of conversation is that it feels like reality is being left behind and the momentum then drains away. My own view is that this kind of thinking offers the only! possibility of making sense of the Universe. Science is remarkable in its complexity and rigour, but in the end describes only itself in its own terms, describes only how our concepts behave in relation to each other according to imaginary scales and with no explanation of motive or meaning.

Phew! Better stop here. before going I ought to say that this is a most enjoyable dialogue.

JD, thanks for the long radiation post. That's a very good exposition of the issue. Just one question: microwave radiation is of the non-ionizing kind, but even so, it is able to rapidly cook food. This has to be due to a kind of resonating interaction with water molecules. So might a cellphone fry the user's brain? The issue can be put in a clearer perspective by comparing:

1) The wavelength of cellphone microwaves with those of a microwave oven
2) The intensity of cellphone microwaves with those of a microwave oven
3) The direction in which cellphone microwaves are emitted with way the interior of a microwave oven reflects and directs the radiation

I believe a straightforward "facts and figures" expo of this kind ought to give a person a kind of general idea of whether this is a problem or not, in the absence of any statistical studies whatsoever.

Virus, I am very interested in your ideas. I'll get back to you in a while - I know of a few websites you might be interested in.

See you all soon!
Case

UMP: good points about how to clearly identify and address the differences between cell phone microwave radiation and that from a microwave. I'm not THAT much of an expert, but even I can figure out that the power used to make cell phone microwaves is far below that used to cook food in a microwave oven (just look at the power rating on your microwave and then compare it to the one on your cell phone's battery, or if it isn't there try your battery charger [which is actually higher than the power output by the battery]). I suspect (but do not know) that cell phones stay away from that particular frequency that causes water molecules to "wiggle" or flip-flop around and heat up. I think it's highly unlikely that cell phones will cook your brain, even if they are omnidirectional unlike microwave ovens. The heat one feels from the phone itself is most likely heat from the battery as it goes through the electrochemical reactions it needs to in order to provide power to the phone. Also, body heat keeps the phone nice and warm next to one's face - just like a regular cordless (or any other) phone. I agree, these details should be brought out by the industry/government, and I'm not sure why they aren't. They are 'facts and figures' that make sense of the issues and hazards.

Virus I - I've been thinking on what you wrote for a while. I must admit I have a strong attraction to the idea of "brain stuff" and the many similar concepts I've heard about. The idea, "We are God because only We can create the idea of his existence in our Holy Minds" is an interesting one, and appeals to my sense of logic. It also, however, must be said that such a concept is inherently flawed by its self-empowering, un-testable and infallible nature. That is, it can't be tested, proved, or disproved. I know I've said that there really isn't any such thing as "scientific fact," which would seem to indicate that there is no such thing as "proof." However, when we're talking about something that can't even be tested, how can it arrive to the stage of theory? You see, THAT is the difference between hypothesis and theory - that one is based on observation in a single set of circumstances or environmental parameters and to test the idea in other constructs to see if one's hypothesis holds when varying the governing parameters is central to the idea of the scientific method and is the way something becomes a theory.

You wrote: "A couple of things. I don't quite see the point about scientific hypotheses being different to explanations or theories. I feel them to be all the same thing, although each has perhaps a different perceived status in respect of credibility and proof. Usually it is unclear what level of proof/evidence is required for each and thus they become interchangable." This gives me a terrible feeling in the pit of my stomach - the difference isn't just "level of credibility/proof," but the all-important concept of circumstance, cause-and-effect, environment, etc. One of the goals or applications of the scientific method is to be able to predict other things using a theory - but the method does NOT allow one to predict using a hypothesis! The abuse of this happens frequently in our common culture when people use hypotheses and explanations and studies to predict instead of theories. THAT is why the difference is important.

The words "theory" and "hypothesis" have been corrupted in our common cultural definitions of them because, in general, the idea behind the scientific method has been corrupted. I find this to be a tradegy of modern thought and logic. It's almost as if the scientific method has hardly been given a fair chance. It IS relatively knew, you know - only a couple hundred years old, I believe (first proposed in the 1600's, I think). I think too many people accept the scientific method as a replacement for religion, but use the exact same mechnisms to accept what other people, particularly 'scientists' as the much-maligned term is inevitably applied, tell them. I've been over this ground before, so I won't repeat myself - except to say that I have great concern and doubts about the future of a world and culture that continues to misapply the terms "hypothesis" and "theory."

You also said: "The difficulty with this kind of conversation is that it feels like reality is being left behind and the momentum then drains away. My own view is that this kind of thinking offers the only! possibility of making sense of the Universe." Well-said, I like that way of putting it. I've often felt that way myself about thinking/philosophizing.

"Science is remarkable in its complexity and rigour, but in the end describes only itself in its own terms, describes only how our concepts behave in relation to each other according to imaginary scales and with no explanation of motive or meaning." Quite so. I ask you, is it the purpose of science to provide motive or meaning? As you say, I think that science excels at providing a method for describing phenomena (or behavior, etc.) without providing an ultimate source, or prime motive, for the existence of the phenomena. "Yes, alright, we have gravity and know how it works, but WHY is it an inherent property of matter?" Who knows? No one; but that's not to stop us from coming up with hypotheses. Of course, it may be that someday we know that gravity (and other forces) is a property of matter because of XY as expounded through the Z Theorem, and all that is well and good - but begs the question, "why is there XY?" So, in the constructs of our own minds, we are constantly free to provide our own, ultimate prime motive. Some would say that this is where religion could fit in rather nicely; some prefer to think of it as a never-ending onion, with only layer after layer there for us to peel off as we gain more knowledge, and that there is no 'prime motive' at all. For you see, the confusion all stems from a fundamental nature of the human condition: mankind is the only species to realize that we are alone, and the only one to seek out another. We are all search for meaning in our lives, either through scientific or religious methods or some combination of the two. The "how" is of course up to us. Most of us eventually provide some kind of meaning to our lives through each other, which is perhaps why people have families, go to work, buy things, get really angry with irrational drivers and traffic lights, bum around on the internet writing philosophical treatises when one should be out shopping for one's little sister's Christmas gifts, and all sorts of other things like that. In that way, I have to agree that science and the scientific method can only take us so far - at some point, we all need to sit back and wonder at certain things that simply defy analysis, and that have largely no business being analyzed scientifically at all. Life would be rather dull without them, I think.

-- JD (not a scientist)

JD - I do agree with you, and then again I don't. One at a time...

The theory/hypothesis thing was really about the way we actually use the words rather than what the should actually mean. As you say their uses have become sloppy and that is what I meant to say. I would have to say that I am not clear myself as to the dictionary definitions - but then dictionaries are just historical records of useage and origin.

Even so, there is a debate to be had about whether gravity is a theory or a hypothesis. The theory predicts behaviour brilliantly , but as an argument for the existence of a 'thing' called gravity it remains a hypothesis until someone can find a bit of it. It seems exists as both theory and hypothesis. Perhaps this is where the confusion over gravity as a thing and gravity as a pattern of behaviour begins.

However there is something else behind this. I'm not wholly sure I understand your point about hypotheses being about prediction and theories being about something else. In any case a key idea behind this this point seems to concern symmetry - as related to the idea of the replicability of observations under identical conditions, part of the definition of hypothesis and of prediction. It strikes me that this version of the idea of symmetry is again a tautology, certain to be true because it is defined as being true. In other words if the observation is not repeated it must be because the conditions are different. A slippery point this one but often it appears that scientists work back to front on this and suggest that the conditions must be the same because the observation is the same. This is a very very easy trap to fall into.

I also have to face ridicule by suggesting that scientific hypothethes, perhaps the scientific method, works so well only because of the tautological axiom system that science uses. Without going into this, which in any case I would probably be short of the intellect its explanation requires, suppose for a moment that the only true things that can be said about existence, the Universe, are tautological (certain to be true regardless of observation) and ultimately untestable. Logic suggests (OK - my logic) that there is a real chance that this is the case.

In a sense this is in principle a testable hypothesis/theory in that if we disprove all other possible hypotheses it might be left as the only remaining possibility. Science is after all perhaps more than anything else about reducing the number of possible explanations. On shaky ground here I know.

Your point about science being perhaps incapable of answering the question of motive, of first cause etc. is pretty much bound to be true by the current definition of science, and seems to be accepted with equilibrium by scientists. But I wonder why we have given up so easily. I believe that a real understanding of the Universe is possible, and depends and logic and the scientific method for its achievement. However we must start applying the scientific method where it can address the real issues, namely by fully recognising that the Universe, both physical and non-physical, is constructed out of concepts which exist only in our own conciousnesses. It is these, the logical structure that emerges from the interplay of those concepts, that science should be exploring. Such a study calls for a system of study that falls somewhere between science and philosophy.

And any explanation that emerges must make all other explantions right in some senset, not contradict them. After all they all exist in the Universe.

Pardon me - got carried away there. I know that some of this needs much more explanation if it is not to sound like wanderingly mystical nonsense. You'll have to take my word for the fact that no mysticism is intended, I intend to talk only about science.

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Hi Pillowcase

I did not mean to bring metaphysics into this. I am a firm believer in logic and the scientific method. However I do believe that more and more of what is commonly termed metaphysical ought to be brought into the domain of science.

I'm still not happy with the distinction between hypothesis and theory. The distinction can't be based on provability, since theories can in principle never be fully proved. It seems to me that the name of 'theory' is used as a more respectable way of describing hypotheses. Relativity, conservation of energy, all the sacred cows of physics, are just hypotheses. As you say it's crazy to say they are not true, they are the best explanations we have, but none are proved beyond doubt. They are working hypotheses.

However there is something here which relates to your question about axioms and tautologies. It may be possible, despite what I have just said, to prove something like the Uncertainty Principle to be true beyond doubt. This is because it says something fundamental not about the Universe, but about concepts.

Given our concepts of the nature of matter, quanta, wavicles, velocity, mass, etc., then the Unc-Prin may be an unavoidable consequence of the logic of those concepts. In other words it has to be true once we accept the concepts which have led us to discover it. So it is, lets say, totally true not as an unavoidable aspect of the Universe, but as an unavoidable consequence of our basic concept of the Universe (the fact that we have the concepts of velocity, mass, quanta etc). This is what I was getting at elsewhere - that our concepts are in fact our axioms.

This is not to say we can get nowhere by studying these. In fact we can go as far as we want. We must - it is the only way we can discover whether our axioms, the only things which connect our world of concepts to that of reality, are coherent or 'true'.

Mathematics is easier to see in this way. It is clearly built on a small (perhaps just one) number of axioms. If these are correct then vast edifices of mathematical logic can be constructed. 1+1=2 becomes undeniably true. However mathematics can only be believed to tell us anything about the real world to the extent that its axioms can be believed to be true. Mathematicians acknowledge this, they know they are exploring a constructed world.

However physicists generally have a way to go towards acknowledging that what they are exploring are in fact our concepts of the world, and only the world itself to the extent that those concepts are 'true'. Those concepts are the axioms of physics.

This is where the tautology point arises. A concepts, any concept, brings with it a whole structure of other concepts on which it depends for its existence. For instance you can not have a concept of space without a concept of time. They are logically intertwined in a manner that does not allow them to seperated - not physically but conceptually. The moment you are adopt a concept of space you have to adopt one also of time, or be certain of inferring its existence. This seems a bit obvious. What is less obvious is that these two concepts lead, like some vast and expanding conceptual crystalline structure, unavoidably to a host of other logically derived concepts. They lead in fact to the Universe.

The question is which comes first - the concept or the thing? Perhaps a deeper question is is there any difference between the concept and the thing? An even deeper question is does the Universe emerge as an unavoidable consequence of the seperation between the concept and the thing? And is this an argument, based on the clearly discernable logic of our concepts, our axioms, and not on the muddled world of observation, that conciousness played an essential role in the creation of the Universe. A role that it has to take because otherwise our concepts, when explored, lead us into paradox and nonsense.

Damn, went metaphysical again.

Why is this forum so quiet? Maybe it was all the excitement of Christmas and New Year and so on. From my side let me wish you all a very prosperous New Year!

Virus, I don't think metaphysics is illogical at all, I think it is something that people should ponder about even if it doesn't give any
clear and certain information. It gives people a feeling for the
mysteriousness of existence.

I would be very interested if you can give me a small indication of how it might be possible to prove the Uncertainty Principle by showing it to be based on a logical, conceptual framework. Remember that the Uncertainty Principle is tied to a constant, Planck's constant. Any theory of why the Uncertainty Principle has to be true must also specify why Planck's constant has the value that it has - by the way, it's value is 6.6260755*10^-34 J s.

I have more to say about your final assertions about the priority of the concept or the thing, but first I challenge you to logically/tautologically prove Planck's Constant. This is in fact one of the challenge that current physicists are facing in their search for the Theory of Everything, so if you can do it, you might become as famous as Einstein! So give it a fair try!

Help! Planck who? No seriously, ahem. On the spot again.

I used the Uncertainty Principle as an example rather than something of which I had a decent understanding. I understand the link to P's constant but could certainly not hold a coherent conversation about it.

I will think about your challenge but I suspect that I do not have the maths or physics to do a job that a physicist would be happy with. However this was really a generic comment about all proofs. For now I'll come at it from just the principles involved. Bear with me a moment (this is tough while at work!)

Once we have a concept of good we must of logical necessity have a concept of evil. We therefore have a concept of good and evil. Concepts of this kind create a kind of infinite dimension or scale in that we can just about conceive, or at least consider the idea, of infinite goodness or infinite evil, and a spectrum in the middle. Thus God and the Devil. From this we conclude that all things in the world are good or evil only to some extent, for if a thing is not infinitely good it must be partly evil. We conclude that all things in the world are to some extent both good and evil.

If I say (which by the way I wouldn't) that all things are partly good and partly evil what does that mean? It appears to be a statement about the world. In fact it is simply a statement that I believe that there is a thing called 'good' and that this is a natural consequence of that belief. That if I ever prove the existence of good then I can show that all things are partially good and evil.

This is a very simple, the simplest I could find, example of what I mean by a logical chain of concepts which appears to lead to a statement about the world. It is really just mathematical reasoning.

The problem with most of our knowledge and beliefs is that they are dependent on much longer and more complex chains of logic than this. Often so long that we lose sight of the beginning and forget that they do not start with knowledge, they start with a belief. Whether the belief is right or wrong is not an issue. What is an issue is the fact that a belief is identical to an axiom, and the same questions about axioms and their links to reality are raised.

So - back to Planck. What I was suggesting was that the entire system of concepts (cause and effect, detirminism, symmetry, fields, c, molecules, atoms, electrons, quarks, wavicles, probability etc) that leads to Planck and the UP may be necessary and logical given a few basic initial concepts/beliefs. In other words it may be that if we can prove a few basic concepts then we can prove the UP to be necessarily correct. Please note that I am not (quite) saying that this is so, just that it may be so, and that it is very difficult to show that it is not so.

Looked at another way we say that the UP is correct insofar as it accords with all our other concepts, is logically in step with them, and thus with the observations on which they are based.

Related to all this is a law of connections - roughly that the connections within a system multiply far faster than the elements which are being connected. If you consider the Universe to consist, for us, of a system of connected concepts then it becomes a structure of beliefs that is probably too complex to ever trace back to its origins. Add in the fact that no concept can exist in isolation - that the creation of a concept, even if it the very first one, the dawn of conciousness, leads instantly and unavoidably to a vast complexity of logically consequent concepts then the scale of the problem becomes apparent. (Well -I think it it should if I've put this sensibly).

Put briefly, all our beliefs depend on other beliefs and we prove them in terms of each other and it's difficult to be sure where it is that they refer properly to reality, should such a thing exist, assuming that the concept of existence has some meaning.

I'll think some more on the question because I've rushed this. If it's gibberish my apologies but must dash.

Bye

Virus, I'm responding now without having read your entry because it's past two in the morning and I just want to tell you that I WILL read your post and respond to it a bit later. I glanced at it, though, and it goes into some interesting directions. Don't worry about talking gibberish - anybody trying to grapple with the puzzles of existence is bound to find themselves bewildered. Go for the gibberish, I say - be intellectually daring! Maybe people will only understand and appreciate your words a thousand years from now!

But anyways so far you haven't been talking any gibberish, it's been highly interesting. As for me, I know I have been talking lots of nonsense, guff and hooplah myself and I'm not even going to apologize for it - because I am so bewildered and confused myself that it is honestly the best that I can do!

Sorry I've been ignoring this (my own!) forum for so long. I assure you, the only reason is for my own thought processes taking so long to get to a point where I felt I could intelligently express them. That, and I've been busy trying to get work done after an extraordinarily relaxing holiday season.

So. First, let me respond to this statement by Case: "I would be very interested if you can give me a small indication of how it might be possible to prove the Uncertainty Principle by showing it to be based on a logical, conceptual framework. Remember that the Uncertainty Principle is tied to a constant, Planck's constant. Any theory of why the Uncertainty Principle has to be true must also specify why Planck's constant has the value that it has ..." This has been done, by Planck himself (and several others). However, since it is a very long and detailed proof, the vast majority of which made little sense to me with my limited advanced physics knowledge as a nuclear safety engineer and not a quantum physicist (actually, as you point out in a roundabout way, quantum physics was born the moment Planck provided his theory for why his Law worked so well in describing spectral emittance as measured). Being a very conservative scientist, Planck himself, like many physicists that have worked in with the theories of quantum mechanics in it's earliest years, tried in vain to DISprove or circumvent the quantization postulate of energy. But, Planck was also the best kind of scientist - thorough, and a firm believer in the principles of the scientific method. It is this characteristic of the method of learning or gaining knowledge that keeps me going on and on about the beauty of the scientific method; it is the very principle of the scientific method that compels a scientist to a theory no matter what their opinions are about the possible implications or ramifications of the theory might be. In other words, the human nature, the personality, the individual prejudices, beliefs, opinions, and ideas of a scientist will have no bearing on the theory they come up with. THAT is the true beauty of the application of the scientific method.

Of course, this isn't to say that the method is applied perfectly all the time - frequently, it is not, and something is touted as "scientific theory" when it is in fact something more like "opionated conjecture." Also, my statement above (and now I'm attempting to bring in what Virus I has been pointing out) does not preclude the fact that everything, ultimately, is based on some amount of assumed truths, or axioms, that we (for the sake of being able to think at all) accept or believe in. Ultimately, Virus I is right - the keystone of our logic is, as was first suggested not very long ago, "I think; therefore I am." It would seem, therefore, that nearly everything can be deduced from that simple first logical axiom (and adding a few more along the way, though perhaps not as many as some might think), and observing the Universe with increasingly accurate instruments, on and on, until everything that can be observed has been observed, leading one ultimately to some final explanation of it all. Sort of like Deep Thought's starting with "I think; therefore I am" and getting "as far as deducing the existence of rice pudding and income tax before anyone managed to turn it off." Perhaps someone or something is trying to turn US off, our Universe off, and we're just existing in the meantime before they realize their carelessness of leaving the metaphysical/Universal/Grand Unification Theoretical equivalent of the oven on.

Whew. I feel kind of drained after writing all that. Heheh. Actually, although I was sort of getting "out there" for a second, can it really be denied that science ultimately has such a goal? And can it really be denied that such a goal is any different from at least one of the primary goals of religions? How about the goals of philosophies? I'd argue that they're one and the same. It's time that all three modes of thought were combined or allowed by the great thinkers in the world. It's time they were part of EVERYone's thinking, as we are ALL the great thinkers of the world! With as complex as the world is already, and as more complex it seems to get every minute, it's hardly any wonder that people "just don't have time" to "think about it all" like this. That saddens me, because it isn't a requirement to think about this sort of stuff. One doesn't have to have a major degree in physics or philosophy or have become a bishop or shaman or whatever. I only think that it should be a requirement to LEARN how to think, how to learn and gain the knowledge of those who prefer thought in those methods over the others (i.e. the experts) possess, and ultimately to contribute some small amount to the great bucket of human knowledge.

Wow, I certainly am feeling lightheaded now. I suppose I've been holding these thoughts in a bit too long. Quite optimistic of me, I'll admit, but I really do believe in a future where humankind has learned HOW to learn rather than learned knowledge alone. Books, journals, magazines, papers, and now more than ever, computers, are the places for knowledge to be stored, not our brains. Our brains are better suited for observing, making logical leaps we call hypotheses, turning them into theories, and thus into practical expectations of how our immediate universe will behave so that we can move through it and manipulate it; as in, for example, my current situation of making a couple ham sandwiches whilst posting a note on an internet forum and putting on some Bach in the meantime to help keep the mind and fingers flowing together like the counterpoint melodies and polychords of Tocatta and Fugue in Dm.

Ah. There we are. That's much better. I think that calls for me to manipulate my universe about a bit until I'm drinking one of these: . In the meantime, I want to wind down with the statement that while I agree with most of what I've read from both Case and Virus I, I feel that tautologies are not needed to explain the Universe, and in fact while they may seem related in the quantum mechanical and general relativity theories, they are really ways of avoiding the consequence of observing, not directly dealing with the consequence. Firstly, I want to be sure there's not some kind of UK definition of the word that we Americans don't use: my dictionary defines the logical sense of the term "tautology" as "a statement composed of simpler statements in a fashion that makes it true whether or not the simpler statements are true or false," as in "either it will rain tomorrow or it will not rain tomorrow." That's the only pertinent definition, unless you consider the definition that the word is synonymous with "redundancy" or "repitition" to our discussions, which I do not. Getting back to the point, I have to admit that tautologies may be a way to describe all of our current scientific theories, in the sense that one might say, "they are either going to be accepted as truth or denied as truth tomorrow," but that's sort of phlegmatic. I mean, we can sit around all day and spout logical tautologies, but what does that get us? Perhaps that's the point one of you was trying to make, that all we know is really just one big tautology. I don't know if I can accept that, if that's the case. I find it particularly wimpy and unnecessarily pessimistic to think of everything as such; I'd far rather make some assumptions, observe, make some predictions, test it, and move on from there with all due arrogance and righteous assumption of truth until I'm shown (or generally agreed) to be either a bald-faced liar or an idiot. Before you accuse my American upbringing of being at fault for this (I was also exaggeratting it a bit for the benefit of the stereotype), I propose that if one TRULY believes that the universe can only be explained through logical tautologies, then how does one type on that keyboard or look at a computer screen or enjoy a lovely ham sandwich and a pint of Guinness? I mean, you'd have to assume that either there is or is not a Guinness in this glass (which may or may not be there at all) which may or may not taste like a memory one may or may not have about how good a glass of Guinness may or may not have tasted and you may or may not enjoy it as such. Maybe. Then we'd obviously have to call you Vroomfondle, a nickname *I* would rather leave up to one's significant other, thankyouverymuch.

Whew, this stuff is more fun than I may or may not have remembered it being, had it been at all. I'm going to go manipulate the universe a bit more elsewhere now, possibly involving another one of my little pet concepts I call "a Guinness" as this one's disappearing rather rapidly now. Have a pleasant diurnal anomaly!

- JD (here, have a on me)