The Myth of Science
Science is mostly indirection, denotation, symbol, the “Intentionality of Use”, it is abstraction, it is like astronomy - observation, measurement, construction of some mental model with some possible predictions and the loop continues (notice how most modern science deals with things that are ever more far away, remote, both in size and distance and energy levels, we observe items that are “billions of kilometers away”, we observe events at very high “particle accelerator” energy levels, etc.). The mental model is a mathematical - logical - and/or somehow language expressed model, something that our mind can contain, that gives us the illusion of control, the illusion that we can contain within our mind and the model and relationships occupying our mind large complex ensembles of chunks of Matter interacting and playing out and configuring itself according to random internal contrasting forces.
Hence the myth of the “Unification of the Forces of Physics” in a few short tidy “equations” (except that, when you have to really use them for real calculations of real ensembles of chunks of Matter, like protein folding, you must execute trillions of calculations on computers hoping that the results can be mapped to reality since the differential equations expressing the forces rarely have “exact solutions”, then in what sense are the forces “unified” ?) so that they can be contained in our mind and give us a feeling of being on top of them.
But even more interestingly, science is kind of like trying to compress information in less space, how to find the master patterns that can summarize a lot of apparently different events, how to say more with less words. Only that something is always lost in the compression, there are always some details that just get canceled or simply ignored never telling us the whole story. But science is mostly a short story, only so much can be said in the end: try to predict the exact shape of the next wave on the shore.
But an even greater limitation of our science is that it always finds a one to one correspondence of reality to some mental narrative, to some language, to a sequence of symbols whether they are expressing a concept in language or expressing quantative relationships between various measurements (that is chopping up reality into distinct pieces and measuring these pieces and then relating them to other pieces through possible additions, subtractions, multiplications, even though the equations and symbols make you think that something more is going on, all the equations are just how measurements are associated to other measurements according to a more or less long combination of additions and subtractions and multiplications as in the “numerical models” of physical systems on supercomputers) no matter what. If we perceive it, we invent it, we create it, we automatically find the relation because the relation is the perception from the outset, it is already given and assigned by how we are designed.
But this finding the correspondence is mostly forcing a correspondence, is inventing a correspondence even when there is none (may be the case of quantum mechanics with all of its vagueness), as if we format and/or translate reality according to our mind - brain, according to how our sense organs and mind have delimited reality in distinct chunks of events, extensions, sensations, all carved out according to arbitrary pain/pleasure circuits and arbitrarily imposed “target programs” in our mind - brain - body like “avoid pain” and “last as long as possible”, etc. by the way that huge random fluke of Natural Evolution “Designed” us.
So we already know from the outset, from the get go, that any future science, formulas, discoveries will always be simply relationships that our mind can “relate to”, will just be a new combination of symbols that more closely map and translate and format reality according to our mind - brain, and much more subtly according to our culture, our “Intentionality of Use” of the results (build new models ? simulate them on computers ? build new contraptions ? build new devices (ipads?) to sell - which means new behaviors as in Man is the Infinitely Programmable Machine ?), our interaction and relation with Matter outside of us, etc.
But change the design of the mind, the sense organs, the interactions these have with “outside Matter - Reality” (?), and we get a completely new and different science for a completely new and different world.
One question would be, is there a one to one correspondence between the narrative (in symbols, equations, concepts) of the “old world” formatted by the old clunker brain and the new world formatted by a new Man Brain ? Maybe, maybe not, but this is not observable, you would need some third brain containing both brains to “objectively measure” and say this, but how can any objectivity exist if it always depends on the random design of the observer ? So no matter how many different brain designs a containing brain has, it will never be objective, but completely subjective, a completely subjective - fluke - random contraption that thinks that it is interacting with some kind of “objective external reality”, when in all truth it is simply interacting with itself, its own decodings and encodings of reality, its own narrative and mental models and symbols of reality, but nothing else.
Therefore the universe just subjectively thinks itself into existence and then disappears, it is a virtual particle that exists and doesn’t exist at the same time, a pure contradiction, there is no one to one correspondence between reality and our mental models, only sense organ inputs encoded and then formatted and translated - decoded into a narrative of the world our mind is always telling itself: we are simply Matter talking to itself and making it all up.
An interesting thing that brought me to think this up is what happens when a star collapses and becomes a “neutron star”. We can’t really touch one or manipulate one or interact with one given how far away it is and how remote it is compared to us (as in Man is the Measure of All ?) : but we create mental models of what we think happens simply extrapolating what we know at the energy levels we already know. But there may be new laws of physics, new phase transitions, new rules of the game just like when quantum mechanics had to be invented to deal with atoms that we are unaware of. Or there may even be no longer any rules of the game at all (after all, isn’t predicting “black holes” a way of declaring that rules and laws of physics don’t operate anymore ?), but given that most of the Matter of the universe is either in “neutron stars”, “black holes”, “Dark Matter” and “Dark Energy” it appears that our planet and Man with all of his “Nature” is an extremely rare configuration of Matter, is really a total fluke - random invention, therefore totally fake, more fake than any virtual reality (or just as fake) we invent and make up.