Science: a marvellous machine.

Philosophy Forums Science, Technology, and Math
1

I have been reading a child’s encyclopaedia of science (Usborne) and have been getting an interesting perspective on the subject. I read quickly, not bothering to make sure I understood everything and not attempting to memorise anything, because my object was to get an overview, to get a sense of what the whole structure looks like. And that is what I ended up with.

I got a very strong sense of how things have not really changed, not in any SIGNIFICANT way, since Ptolemy tried to create a wheels-within-wheels mechanism to account for the motions of the stars. Putting the sun at the centre of the solar system, as Copernicus did, did not essentially change anything in so far as the main point is that the universe was conceived of as being a mechanism, or at least, as behaving like a mechanism. This attitude is well represented by the Grand orrery which became popular in the hey-day of clockwork. I love these machines. They are still often seen in museums with all the little planets and moons turning and wheeling on long stalks, all going at their different speeds and all turning about the sun at the centre.

The big change came when Newton ---- I do not want to argue about exactly who did what, so I will use the name Newton to represent the scientists in general who were around at the time and contributed to the changes ---- so, as I say, the big change came when the solid mechanism of wheels-within-wheels was replaced my a mathematical mechanism. The thing is that it still remains a mechanism. It may no longer LOOK like a machine, but it still BEHAVES like a machine.

There is a film called ‘The Dark Crystal’ in which the hero has to find a piece of crystal, and to do this he has to visit a seer. This seer lives in a cave on the top of a mountain. Most of the space in the cave is taken up with a grand orrery. It looks and works just like the ones one sees in museums, except that there are no visible stalks, wires or wheels; the planets and moons are orbiting, floating around the sun as if by magic — the mechanism has been, as it were, made invisible. Nevertheless, one senses that it is still there.

This is what Newton did: he changed nothing except that he waved the magic wand of maths and made the mechanisms that turn the world invisible. (My apologies to Kepler.) This leaves the universe, from the smallest to the largest bits, atoms to galaxies, as being a grand orrery. To visualise the universe of science leads one to a vision of a vast mechanism, with all the beauty of those wonderful clocks and watches that were made in past centuries and which have now ended up in museums. The mechanisms are so precise, and the cogs and wheels so neat and polished ---- they are a wonder to behold.

There is a TV series, Longitude, which portrays the life of John Harrison who devoted his life to making the time-piece that the British Navy needed in order to measure longitude at sea. There were scenes where one saw him lovingly polishing and filing the most delicate components of his clocks, and then putting them together and tweaking and balancing and adjusting the mechanism with the utmost precision until he had his latest clock assembled. They were the most marvellous and intricate machines.

The film had a second thread running in modern times showing a man finding these clocks wherever they languished and lovingly restoring them to their former glory. I think we could do with someone to do the same for science: it has become too untidy and bitty and piecey and has lost sight of its foundations. If someone had the patience and the care to restore it, then I feel it would become a marvel again.

Actually, it is perhaps more than just restoring. Bertrand Russell did an inestimable service to maths when he placed it on its proper foundations in his Principia Mathematica (?); science would benefit from something similar — without that it is rather all over the place and lacks cohesion.

The situation was relatively simple in Newton’s day, but as scientists busy themselves ferreting out new effects and observations new cogs and wheel have to be added to the mechanism — just as new wheels had to be added to the orery whenever a new planet or moon was discovered. If the housework is not done, and boys don’t like housework, then that means that the mechanism becomes messy and begins to sprawl. It becomes something more like the work of Professor Brainstrom the John Harrison.

The universe of science beats all of the most marvellous machines: it has more cogs and wheels and is more highly polished and intricate, a real dream. The only thing is that it exists only in the imagination. Really, that is why Newton was needed: the mechanism was becoming so complex that it could no longer be constructed in the real world, and so had to retreat into the world of the imagination; solid reality had to be replaced by maths.

It makes me think of Lord Dunsany’s imaginary palace, Erlathdronian. In the short story of that name, the king wants to build the most marvellous and wonderful palace ever seen. He calls to him all his wise men and architects and builders and poets etc. One of his wise men tells him that there is a place where north meets south, and that if he built a palace there then on the north side of the palace, when it was winter, on the south side it would be summer, and in the courtyard it would be ever autumn and spring.

The king then asked his poets to describe how this palace would look. When they had done so the kind decided not to build the real palace because the palace of the imagination, created by the poets was such a marvel in itself that nothing more was needed.

That is science: it is a wonder of the imagination which there is no need to build in reality, but which we need poets to bring alive. We need poets to imagine and describe the marvellous machine that is science.

That, then, is MY vision of science. Does anyone have a different vision? Does anyone have a different perception of what science is?

2

Science is just another tool of human beings to conquer each other and the natural world.

Information, innovation, and knowledge are just other forms of power.

3

Science is the element of sentience that Man had always left out and thus it became the focus as if it were the only thing ever required. That is always what happens when one leaves out an essential element to one’s makeup.

Science is the verification, the confirmation, the second eye on the reality that corrects for the presumptions of singular perspective and the lust to believe in hope and threat.

Sentience;
0) For sake of anentropic harmony;
1) Clarify; see and teach the orders and means concerning the situation (the perception of hopes and threats).
2) Verify; [Science] cross check and demonstrate the reliability of the principles involving the situation.
3) Instill; remember and document a record of what has been seen and verified.
4) Reinforce; protect and maintain the record of the verified activities concerning the situation.

4

First, what you suggest is inhuman. It is a system that is far too cumbersome and demanding and serious to be tolerable. Humans need to live above all, and they need to want to live. Burdened with your requirements for anentropic harmony they would loose the will to live. Secondly, the idea that the singular perspective is in any way wrong or incorrect is wrong. In fact, in a meaningful world, that is a world which is “ordered” meaningfully rather than logically/mathematically, the singular perspective rules. It will be impossible for you to understand this, and it would take too long to explain, but individual takes on reality are normal and are consistent with an harmonious existence, in a meaningful world. In a meaningful world, the individual is all, and yet community does not suffer. In fact, community only prospers when the individual is allowed to be an individual, and that includes in his perception of the world.

5

You might well think of it as “inhuman”, but other than that verification, Science, part, it is what every living thing is already doing, and always has been. It is what you were doing while trying to write that post. They just have trouble understanding it and getting it just right.

I was merely applying it to Man, not the hue of Man, humans.

You already have two eyes, two brains (one of which you seem to have shut down apparently due to some frustrated hatred), two arms, and two legs, all so that you can gain better balance via two perspectives. Try shutting one eye, tying one hand back and one leg up, and see how well you get along with reality without the help of another person.

6

And your post here, and all the others, would also be this. Does this mean your posts have no useful information?

7

No, there are very significant differences. I know it has become fashionable for scientists to wave their hands and say, “But science is just what we’re all doing, and have doen, anyway”. This is extreme naivety, but not accidental. It is intended to validate science to the extent that people will begin to just accept it without question. It is empire building. And of course it is untrue. History of science books usually try to make out that the discovery of science and the scientific method was one of the high poinbts of civilisation. You really can’t have it both ways: either it is a marvellous invention of western cultures or it’s just something we’ve always done.

As to getting along without another person, wrong again. Traditionally, I believe, there have been people who have found they can rely on their god and thus do without other people. There are other options, but they all mean that there are ways of doing without other people — other people are not important for one’s understanding of the world, but they may be important just simply for company.