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Tap..tap..tap..We are blind creatures tapping through life

 
 
coberst
 
Reply Thu 20 Dec, 2007 04:17 am
Tap..tap..tap..We are blind creatures tapping through life

Richard Feynman, now deceased, was a theoretical physicist and professor of physics at MIT gave to his students the following description of what physics is all about:

"We can imagine that this complicated array of moving things which constitutes "the world" is something like a great chess game being played by the gods, and we are observers of the game. We do not know what the rules of the game are; all we are allowed to do is to watch the playing. Of course, if we watch long enough, we may eventually catch on to a few of the rules. The rules of the game are what we mean by fundamental physics. Even if we know every rule, howeverÂ…what we really can explain in terms of those rules is very limited, because almost all situations are so enormously complicated that we cannot follow the plays of the game using the rules, much less tell what is going to happen next. We must, therefore, limit ourselves to the more basic question of the rules of the game. If we know the rules, we consider that we "understand" the world."

The natural sciences, especially physics, have been very successful at learning the rules of the game. Our didactic (teaching by telling) educational system has been very successful at teaching these rules to their students. The students have been very successful at using these rules and the algorithms and paradigms developed from these rules in developing the high tech economy that we have. We have not been equally as successful in matters regarding the human sciences; thus we kill and destroy constantly.The Holy Roman Empire, i.e. the Catholic Church, packaged life so that the uncritical could exist within the womb of dogma. This lasted for a millennium; post Enlightenment humans became too sophisticated for such slavish attachment and thus we moderns must create our own zone of normalcy.
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coberst
 
  1  
Reply Fri 21 Dec, 2007 07:28 am
The Catholic Church dominated Western society for hundreds of years. The local priests taught the people what they needed to do to save their souls and thus the people did not need to critically examine their lives but slavishly followed the dictates of the Church. With the Renaissance followed by the Reformation and then the Enlightenment this Catholic structure crumbled and we were thrown on our own recourses for finding how to tame our anxieties about living and dying.

So far we have found only our markets and our technology to help us to live together and to face death.
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Cyracuz
 
  1  
Reply Fri 21 Dec, 2007 08:29 am
Quote:
With the Renaissance followed by the Reformation and then the Enlightenment this Catholic structure crumbled


I wish that was true.
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coberst
 
  1  
Reply Sat 22 Dec, 2007 02:46 am
"Yet man also knows more or less that the lost paradise [mother] cannot be found; that he is condemned to live with uncertainty and risks; that he has to rely on his own efforts, and only the full development of his powers can give him a modicum of strength and fearlessness. Thus he is torn between two tendencies since the moment of his birth: one, to emerge to the light and the other to regress to the womb; one for adventure and the other for certainty; one for the risk of independence and the other for protection and dependence"

Quotes from "The Heart of Man" by Erich Fromm
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farmerman
 
  1  
Reply Sat 22 Dec, 2007 06:29 am
Conservative religious interpretations are growing worldwide. You forget that the majority of the world is unaffected by these " philosophical voids that technology has wrought".
In lthose parts of the world we have animism now being supplanted by some sort of Conservative "modern" religion , all evenly . stirred with AK-47's , Stinger Missiles and RPG's.

For a few Billion people about the world, weapons technology serves as an acolyte for their "priests"


Have a Merry Christmas
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