[MD] Is Morality innate in the cosmos?

Heather Perella spiritualadirondack at yahoo.com
Thu Feb 9 08:39:44 PST 2006


Hey Ham,
     I am sure this is your philosophy, and I am not
taking your thesis as a history.  I was only pointing
out what you said, which is other philosophers, past
or present, help support, point towards, or are
antithetical to our understandings.  It is we who have
the final understanding when it comes to what we
ourselves are trying or do say.  
     Just a side note:  My wife is a history teacher
and she has reminded me at times that even history
books are just the interpretation of the past.  There
are varying viewpoints.
     Thomas Kuhn was a philosopher of science.  The
concepts of scientific method, deduction, and
induction are just some ideas that philosophers, not
scientists, have come up with to explain scientific
inquiry.  Scientists do not inquiry into what they
themselves are doing (the strict logical positivist
[another philosophy concept by a philosopher] approach
that some or most, if not all, scientists take  would
abhor any thought or feeling occurring in the
scientific field of experimentation and fact
collecting).  Kuhn introduced persuasion into science.
 He was arguing that scientists at times are persuaded
into using a certain theory, because it explains more
and such.  For instance, Newtonian physics is not
wrong it's just that Einsteins theories in physics
work better at times and are more accurate at times. 
Newtonian physics can be still used and are a lot, but
when it comes to GPS and building huge skyscrapers
Einsteins theories work better because his theories
account for curvature.  In astronomy, Newtons physics
are still taught, but astrophysics use only Einsteins
theories to come to conclusions about black holes and
such.  Even his theories are being dropped by students
who find String Theory to be neat.  String Theory can
not be proved at this time.  For instance to even see
a string in an accelerator, the accelerator would
probably have to be as big as the solar system.  The
voyager probe that was launched in the 1970's just
recently reached the edge of the solar system just to
give you an idea as to how big this system we live in,
is.  Why are students filling the classrooms that
teach String Theory even though experimentation may
not be available (a hallmark of what any science is or
must do - that has to do what Popper said)?  Well,
because it sounds neat.  String Theory talks about
worm holes, sheets of fabric that bang into each other
creating black holes, and time travel etc... 
Einsteins theories work, and String Theory can not
even be experimented upon as of yet.  Yet, some
science students, professors, and scientists
themselves are becoming persuaded by what it promises
(on faith so to speak) if only they could come up with
a way to prove it.  This is an example of what Kuhn
was trying to point out in science.  Science is a
society of people that persuade each other, put off
anomalies for as long as possible, all until too much
contradiction occurs and they need a way to explain
things that are happening that don't fit into current
theories.  Stephen Jay Gould pointed this out when it
came to what was actually seen in the fossil record,
and what paleontologists interpreted as just missing
strata because Darwin said fossils change slowly, not
suddenly.  So even what paleontologists saw right
before their eyes in the dirt was not enough to make
them question their perspective or way of seeing the
fossil record.  Darwins' (I can't think of the
technical word right now) slow evolution over time
theory dictated over the observation in the field. 
Darwins slow evolution over time still exists, even in
the fossil record, but punctuated equilibrium seems to
be happening much more often so far.

SA

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