[MD] snippet on rationalism vs. empiricism

[118]

Hi Platt,

I think another way of looking at this is to ask why has mathematics been so
useful in depicting nature's secrets.  I do not believe there is any
uncovering going on, but building.  And indeed, harmony is to be expected,
as above so below.  The Church of Reason is an agreement we enter into.  It
is hard to avoid with at least 14 years of early training in the subject.
 To challenge such a thing is to challenge our educational system.  However,
once one has completed the education in Reason, there are often life events
or cracks which spread, resulting in questions or outright rebellion and
sometimes institutionalization.

Using reason to assault reason is like trying to think of a way to think
differently.  The wall of prejudice also supports the structure against it,
like a duplex.  If one accepts modes of thought as constructs to enable
harmony within, then it is possible to free oneself of their bewitchment.
 However, using reason, it is possible to encapsulate such freeing as yet
another bewitchment.  Contemplating what one looked like before gestation or
birth is one subjective method for enlightenment.

Mark

On Fri, Oct 15, 2010 at 10:54 AM, <plattholden at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi John C,
>
> For a long time philosophers have wondered why mathematics, a purely human
> creation, has proven so useful in uncovering nature's secrets. That there
> appears to be a harmony between man's mind and the physical universe is
> just
> another chink in the armor of subject-object metaphysics -- a chink Pirsig
> has
> exploited with vigor along with other chinks such as how the mind of
> science
> and reason emerges from a congregation of mindless brain cells. It's high
> time
> the Church of Reason is challenged as viciously as the Church of God.
> Pirsig
> began the assault in ZAMM, then backed away in Lila, probably because
> hitting
> reason's "wall of prejudice" again and again caused him to conclude that
> discretion was the better part of valor.
>
> Platt
>
>
>
> On 15 Oct 2010 at 9:32, John Carl wrote:
>
> Ok, I came across something in my travels that finally explained what so
> many on this forum have been trying to get across about uber-control of
> all-knowing mind or whatever...
>
>
> "If we can reason, it is because our thoughts can obey the order of the
> logical relations among propositions-- so here again we depend on a
> Platonic
> harmony.... I call this view alarming... [because] it is hard to know what
> world picture to associate it with, and difficult to avoid the suspicion
> that the picture will be religious, or quasi-religious.  Rationalism has
> always had a more religious flavor than empiricism.  Even with God, the
> idea
> of a natural sympathy between the deepest truths of nature and the deepest
> layers of the human mind, which can be exploited to allow gradual
> development of a truer and truer conception of reality, makes us more at
> home in the universe than is secularly comfortable."
>
> The Last Word, Thomas Nagel
>
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