[MD] Some historical perspective

[skutvik at online.no]

Platt, All 

Oct 13. you wrote: 

> An essay about Einstein, Oppenheimer and the rise and fall of nuclear
> physics in popularity among media elites contains a passage which puts our
> present discussions about the reality of subjects and objects in
> historical perspective:

This from Bertrand Russell on Einstein, Gödel and Pauli reminds me 
of our MOQ Discuss, particularly about the problem of arriving at 
common premises. 

    These discussions were in some ways disappointing, for, 
    although all three of them were Jews and exiles and, in 
    intention, cosmopolitans, I found that they all had a German 
    bias towards metaphysics, and in spite of our utmost 
    endeavors we never arrived at common premises from which 
    to argue.  

IMO the most weighty quote was this

    Meanwhile, there remains philosophical work to be done. The 
    questions concerning technology that tormented 
    Oppenheimer, and the yearning for a philosophical resolution 
    of them, were not the imagined anxieties of a neurotic 
    individual but a sensitive manTMs reflection of perplexities that 
    run deep in American culture, sometimes shaping public 
    policy. In short, America needs a philosophy that is capable of 
    contextualizing the scientific adventure satisfyingly within the 
    American spirit.  

A bit US-centered, I would say that all the world need a philosophical 
resolution and that the MOQ is the resolution, but Pirsig's ambiguity 
and the resulting ability to come to an agreement hinders its  
application. And the intellectual level is and remains what all hinges 
on. The way Dr McWatt presents it (intellect) in in his treatise  
removes the revolutionary Quality from the MOQ.  

Platt:
> "As an example of the interdisciplinary and highly philosophical tone
> of Göttingen in the 1920s, Robert Jungk thus describes Born´s weekly
> "Seminar on Matter": 

     "These debates were concerned more and more with the 
    most basic problems of epistemology. Had the discoveries of 
    atomic physics abolished the duality between the human 
    observer and the world observed? Was there no longer any 
    real distinction between subject and object? Could two 
    mutually exclusive propositions on the same topic both be 
    regarded as correct from a loftier standpoint? Would one be 
    justified in abandoning the view that the foundation of physics 
    is the close connection of cause and effect? But in that case 
    could there ever be any such thing as laws of Nature? Could 
    any reliable scientific forecasts ever be made?"  

"No longer any real distinction between subject and object". Phew, 
that's the point. The intellectual level IS the S/O distinction, while it's 
static "rank" means that this distinction doe not go further down than 
the social level, the "real" distinction is the Dynamic/Static one. The 
MOQ resolves it all in its gigantic metaphysical in-out-turn It's a bit 
too much to call Jung, Born (Bohr?) Einstein - the lot - SOMists, but 
all who don't know the MOQ are SOMists (exception for the Orientals 
but they don't know they have transcended it) 

But, the problem is that most people don't understand the initial in-
out-turn, they want it presented in some arm-long article by a 
physicist with as many titles and by Quantum Physics terminology. 
The madman from an obscure school in MOntana who now lives  
even more obscurely in New Hampshire is not convincing and a 
discussion that has as many opinions on the fundamentals as 
participants does not help.   

> The full article that those with interest in quantum physics will find of
> interest is at:
 
> http://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/the-lost-prestige-of-nuclear-
> physics

Bodvar