Logic is universal
29 09 11 - 16:56
No universals exist because you cannot count on all humans to be logical in the same way. There are other factors: personality, perceptual difficulty, biological intelligence, sanity level, distraction level, etc.
An interesting study by Rice University recently found that in one of the one of the more voracious social (and increasingly political) battlegrounds, science v. religion there is more common ground that most folks believe. In fact, according to the study, only 15% of scientists at major US research universities see religion and science as always in conflict.
"When it comes to questions about the meaning of life, ways of understanding reality, origins of Earth and how life developed on it, many have seen religion and science as being at odds and even in irreconcilable conflict," But a majority of scientists interviewed viewed both religion and science as "valid avenues of knowledge" that can bring broader understanding to important questions, said study author Rice sociologist Elaine Howard Ecklund in a statement. - Network World
We live in the same world.
We perceive it through logical abstractions.
When one of those is more descriptive than others, we bump it up the chain closer to "fact."
If religion and science both perform this function, is it possible they describe the same thing using different vocabularies?
Science is weak because it focuses on material details. That is to say, things that are (a) material and (b) details. You don't get a worldview out of science, which is why it is useless in philosophy, political science, literature, leadership, and religion.
Religion is weak in the inverse of science. It does not focus on material details, but patterns. This means religion is useless if you want to answer why water boils, or which sandwich you should eat for lunch. This is why in general, even the fundamentalists are abandoning the detailed rules in their holy books. 2000 years ago, there was probably a bacteriological explanation for why you should not rape a camel while your wife is pregnant. Now, that's not so much of a problem -- go right ahead.
The point is that religion isn't bunk, and science is best constrained by philosophy, religion and leadership, since science is useless in those areas but many scientists (and more importantly, the audience of bleating useful idiots who repeat their ideas as political dogma) are arrogant and science then tries to expand to where it is useless.
It is interesting how the professionals in science differ from the average nose-picking voter and his arrogant, mis-informed, short-sighted view of "science."
twelve comments
That's correct. Case in point: natural selection and the rest of evolutionary biology, which is completely useless as a guide to politics, leadership, or anything else having to do with how humans treat, or "should" treat, other humans. So, ya know, shut up about it. - 29-09-’11 18:33
That is not to say that one can't be informed by evolutionary biology in deciding how to behave. Indeed, pharmacologists directly apply this knowledge all the time.
But there's nothing inherently good about trying to imitate processes which we observe in nature, and that is all people are doing when they try to implement some sort of "natural selection" politically, e.g. eugenics or social darwininsm. (I say "natural selection" because it is then no longer natural, it's artificial.)
Such people also typically don't understand actual evolution, which of course doesn't necessarily lead to a "better" situation for a species at all. It leads to a species better adapted for a specific environment, and it's constrained by the way genetics works, so certain traits can never be developed or changed that way.
Such people are indeed "bleating useful idiots who repeat their ideas as political dogma", since scientific ideas are meants neither as political nor as dogma.
The same applies to people who say "every action has an equal and opposite reaction" to refer to revenge, which pisses me off to no end, although I suppose there it's fairly harmless. So, for once, I agree! - 29-09-’11 21:14
I hope you can see the point here. Malcolm Sex - 30-09-’11 05:47
He also says somewhere that ancient conquering tribes would rape women in order to gift them with their superior genetic material. Well, no. They raped them because they could, to show their power and get some cheap sex with no consequences. They had no idea what "genetic material" even was, and if they did, they wouldn't care.
But yes, the science of evolution, like any other insight about how the world works, can be used to inform someone's project for affecting the world, for good or bad. No confusion - 30-09-’11 13:38