Deron Stewart wrote:
>>The rational world view is great -- unequalled even -- in dealing with
>>things that are simple enough to understand: General Relativity, heart
>>transplants, human cloning, logic, selfish genes, Mars explorers,
>>astrophysics...that kind of stuff. These are some of the little boxes I
>>referred to.
David McFadzean wrote:
>Astrophysics is one "little" box? OK...
I wasn't entirely happy with that last sentence either. The "little boxes" refer more to the categories that an individual has in their mind...everything that comes in gets sorted into one or more of the ready made categories, A,B,C....(I think this may be closely tied to Richard's distinguish and discard concept ).
These boxes then provide the necessary axioms, premises, and data to fuel the logic engine and manufacture new boxes. (Edward De Bono writes about similar things...he's well worth a read).
When something is well understood. like the above examples, then the boxes are highly useful. Newton's second law is a very useful tool to have in the tool kit, and for an engineer there is no need to contemplate other worldviews when designing a crankshaft.
(I used to think that physics was hard -- which was satisfying since this is what I studied at university. But something Feynman wrote made me rethink it (ref?) -- the problems of physics aren't hard, they're easy...that's why the answers can be formulated with such precision. The hard stuff we don't have equations for...)
>>But what about the tough stuff? Gang warfare, human relationships,
finding
>>meaning, addiction, the Middle East, dealing with tragedy, .. stuff like
>>that. Science has little or nothing to say about this, nor does the
>>"rational" world view (by itself).
>I respectfully disagree. The rational world view says a great deal about
>all these issues. Or am I missing something? Are you indicting all of
>science because it hasn't solved all the world's problems?
I'm not indicting science at all. I think science is great!
Where science has solved something I need look no further (though often it is hard to tell when it's really solved because there is the "test of time" to consider. Just because something is in the current issue of "The New England Journal of Medicine" doesn't mean I'd bet the farm on it).
But I agree with what you've implicitly said: science hasn't solved all the world's problems. So what is someone with a scientific worldview supposed to do in the meantime about these problems?
I know that a warm and fuzzy reassuring answer can be given to the above question within the fold of the scientific worldview -- in fact I'm sure someone on the list will provide it, but in practice these things are simply ignored within that worldview. (How many books do you own that deal with things on the first list? And on the second?)
More later on the other comments...this is getting too long...
Cheers,
Deron